Frank YangWho: Forest City Lovers, Snowblink, Snailhouse, Bocce, Kite Hill, Richard Laviolette, Octoberman, The Meek, Jenny Omnichord
What/Why: Local label Out Of This Spark is turning five years old in 2012, and they’re marking a half-decade of discovering, incubating and launching some of the area’s best new talent the way any good anniversary should – with family, friends and a tonne of great music. Details on the event over here.
When: Saturday, February 25, 2012
Where: The Tranzac in Toronto (19+)
Who else: What, the bands listed above aren’t enough for you? Come on.
How: Tickets for the show are $15 in advance but courtesy of Out Of This Spark, I’ve got a special prize pack to give away consisting not only of a pair of passes to the event, but a complete Out Of This Spark catalog on CD – that’s all ten albums listed here including the ones that are essentially out of print, like the first Friends In Bellwoods compilation that launched the label and the pre-Arts & Crafts reissue of Timber Timbre’s breakout self-titled album. Because you know the collector in you wants it. To enter, email me at contests AT chromewaves.net with “I want to be Out Of This Spark” in the subject line and your full name in the body, and have that in to me before midnight, February 21.

MP3: Forest City Lovers – “Light You Up”
MP3: Snowblink – “Ambergris”
MP3: Snailhouse – “I Never Woke Up”
MP3: Octoberman – “Thirty Reasons”

Frank YangYou may have noticed that the Sunday Cleaning features I used to run on, well, Sundays have largely fallen by the wayside this year. In fact I’ve run a grand total of one in 2009. Shameful. Fact is, time has become more and more scarce and it just wasn’t possible to put together reviews of even that length on top of the regular week of feature writing. But I continue to get stuff sent to me, both physically and digitally, that I want to at least put out there in some sense, even without accompanying essay or implied endorsement.

Enter Sunday Cleaning v2.0. This will be not capsule reviews, but pellet reviews. Maybe not even reviews, but just informational bits related to upcoming shows or releases. Impressions, not necessarily fully-formed and subject to change. Mainly a way for me to clear out stuff I’m sent that otherwise would just sit and gather dust, not necessarily for lack of interest but just lack of time. In theory, this will encourage me to listen to more random stuff since I won’t feel the (self-inflicted) pressure of having to do a full write-up on it. We’ll see how this goes.

And there won’t be this much preamble in the future. Or probably any. This is just to offer some context and kick myself in the ass.

Who: Juliette Commagere
What: Los Angeles singer-songwriter affiliated with Hello Stranger and The Bird & the Bee whose 2008 album Queens Die Proudly is unabashedly pretty and polished adult-contemporary-ish pop, equal parts orchestrated and synthetic, but with more teeth and inclination to wander than you might expect.
MP3: Juliette Commagere – “Overcome”
MySpace: Juliette Commagere

Who: Octoberman
What: Like Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous fronting a welterweight Crazy Horse, the Toronto/Vancouver-based quintent has just released their third album in Fortresses and are on a Cross-Canada tour which brings them to the Dakota Tavern in Toronto on October 8.
MP3: Octoberman – “Trapped In The New Scene”
Video: Octoberman – “Trapped In The New Scene”
Video: Octoberman – “Thirty Reasons”

Who: Kids Love Lies
What: Scrappy London five-piece that sounds like The Grates if they traded their childlike exuberance for some adolescent snottiness.
Video: Kids Love Lies – “Count In My Head”