Good video for the season…although as I am sure everyone would agree, the whole concept of a band playing in a field, with the camera circling around is a bit played out. The cynics like me can’t help but think about how much they’re faking…I mean they are being filmed pretending to sing and play their instruments. It’s kinda weird….contrived…But the band is good and it’s seasonal so it plays on Foxtrott. I like the pumpkins…nice touch…
Archive for the ‘Toronto’ Category
Zombie City Shakedown
April 21, 2009
Black Hat Brigade- Zombie City Shake
Perhaps it is mere proximity that has me talking about Canada as if it were the hydroponic greenhouse of good music. Whatever the case, Black Hat Brigade, from somewhere-or-another Ontario, has penetrated into New York, prompting me to tell you how great they are. They are like a nine-headed hydra, with each viperous head representing an enduring tradition of independent spirited stylistic wisdom. What the fuck does that even mean? It has been said that these guys are post-rock, which can be deduced from the lyricless sprawls, cavernous reverberations, and extended buildups, as in the song epically titled Swords. But the outfit has no problem shifting to into an indie dance beat that approaches the realm of Eagle Seagull or Talking Heads; the specter of late seventies Mancunian music appearing throughout.
No matter what their slightly schizophrenic style choice is for any particular moment, Black Hat Brigade makes great music. They are asking for donations to self-release their newest EP Fathers due out May 29th. Of course a donation of $10 or more gets you a copy of their EP. This sounds to me an awful lot like they are selling the thing for $10 (or more if you really like it). With the industry as saturated and volatile as it is, it seems everyone is finding creative ways to fund their projects. But I say if they want to be bums, it is time they travel to New York and pander in the clubs of Brooklyn.
-FF
http://myspace.com/blackhatbrigade
Tour
April 23rd – Lee’s Palace, TORONTO w/ Youth Group and Bellewoods
May 29th – El Mocambo, TORONTO **FATHERS EP Release Party!
PS I know they are from Brampton
Great Bloomers to Release Full Length
March 24, 2009
Great Bloomers- The Young Ones Slept
This track from Great Bloomers’ forthcoming full length is well worth a listen. The track is called The Young Ones Slept and the new LP has been named Speak of Trouble. It is being released on Maple Music Recordings, a tip of the hat to Canada’s burgeoning music scene. The recording and production of their new material is much more polished, possibly a sign that they have left behind some of the more Pavement-esque song structures that require a calculated measure of unevenness and low fidelity. Of course we will have to wait and see when the record is released in April. If The Young Ones Slept is any indication, we eagerly anticipate another taste of this indie-pop confection.
-FF
Great Bloomers- Great Bloomers (EP)
May 11, 2008
Great Bloomers
Great Bloomers (EP)
May 27th 2008 (iTunes)
Grifter Records
Canada has yet again dipped into the time tested tradition of folk rock. It is a beautiful sight to behold. The blank and too often standard canvass that the folk genre has become has allowed for heaps of redundancy, monotony, and predictability to seep onto record shop shelves everywhere. In the past as now, folk rock shines when musicians recognize this tendency and confront it head on, sometimes resulting, through experimentation, in music that on its face has little resemblance to its initial root. Acts like Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Eagle Seagull, Modest Mouse, The National, and Wilco all share this readiness to experiment beyond the initial structure of verse/chorus. Toronto’s Great Bloomers have endeavored to contribute to this style with the same reflexive perspective.
In less than 20 minutes, the Great Bloomers’ new self titled EP smears their biography thickly. Lyrically this EP serves as a collection of letters, never annoyingly saccharin, yet caught up in nostalgia and idealism. Catching Up opens the disc with an upbeat, high spirited pop track dressed in a symphony of feedback and speckles of unimposing harmonica. Black Rising Fire continues the EP with an awkward melody that seems lifted directly from early 1990’s pop rock, but as the song teeters it transforms into a bass walking Americana jig, which then descends into a choir of feathered voices.
The energy and musicianship of the Great Bloomers is to be commended. A criticism they may have to overcome would involve their flirtation with sing-song simplicity as in the intro to Market of the Night. However every time a song approaches catastrophe they pull it out of the water. The changeups are not schizophrenic; rather they are subtle shifts in pop sensibilities from banality to the road less traveled. This modal awareness is what makes the Great Bloomers a promising troupe. Look for their full length LP coming soon.
-FF
Born Ruffians- Red Yellow & Blue
March 15, 2008
Born Ruffians
Red Yellow & Blue
March 4th 2008
Warp Records
This Toronto trio has finally released a full length. While they receive relatively little press, Born Ruffians deserve volumes. Red Yellow & Blue has a lot of the same charm as their intensely hip 2006 self-titled debut EP, even if it is less quirky and more refined. Not to say these guys take themselves too seriously. Quite the opposite is true. The glossed nature of Red Yellow & Blue comes completely from production quality. If their self-titled is The Velvet Underground & Nico, then Red Yellow & Blue is Transformer.
Guitarist and singer Luke Lolonde has an obsession with quaint and extended utterances like “whoa,” “oh,” and “ho!” There is hardly a song that neglects this tendency. At points the extended vowels seem not to be much more than vocal gymnastics aimed at annoying the unfamiliar ear, but these persistent melodiums give Born Ruffians a stylistic distinction that lacks in so much of today’s up-and-comers. Lolonde’s high pitched croon solicits a knee-jerk compulsion to move to the groove of the motha fuckin’ music. He unassumingly plays his guitar like a drum. Rather than play separate and complimentary parts, the drum, bass, and guitar combine into a focused and purposeful beat, all telling the listener to do the same thing. Dance bitch!
Red Yellow & Blue is long enough to include a few soft songs like Little Garçon played to the melody of a French squeeze box and harmonica. The slower, more subtle tracks of the record give it more variety than the blanket high energy of their 2006 release. The only real mistake of the record was the needless reworking of Hedonistic Me, which is the only song harvested from their debut EP. The original was grittier and comparatively raw, but its newest incarnation does not improve it. So why reuse it?
Born Ruffians are fun, creative, and original. They are wholly representative of our generation and yet they are entirely unepic. Red Yellow & Blue may not be quite as delicious as their first EP, but it definitely doesn’t disappoint. Born Ruffians are a great band and have as much of my attention as their ADHD brains can handle. When they return to New York City I promise they will be greeted enthusiastically by the masses. These guys are good and you should listen to them- even when you aren’t drunk.
http://www.bornruffians.com
http://www.myspace.com/bornruffians
Other Music
Born Ruffians- 2006
Hummingbird- 2007
Shows
Mar 14th 11:00PM @ SXSW- Austin, Texas
Mar 15th 9:00PM @ Hailey’s- Denton, Texas
Mar 17th 9:00PM @ Rhythm Room- Pheonix, Arizona
Mar 18th 9:00PM @ Casbah- San Diego, California
Mar 19th 9:00PM @ Echo- Los Angeles, California
Mar 20th 9:00PM @ Bottom of the Hill- San Francisco, California
Mar 21st 9:00PM @ Holocene- Portland, Oregon
Mar 22nd 9:00PM @ High Dive- Seattle, Washington
Mar 25th 9:00PM @ Lucky Bar- Victoria, British Columbia
Mar 26th 9:00PM @ The Media Club- Vancouver, British Columbia
Mar 28th 9:00PM @ The Velvet Underground- Edmonton, Alberta
Mar 29th 9:00PM @ The Hi Fi Club- Calgary, Alberta
Mar 30th 9:00PM @ Amigo’s Cafe- Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mar 31st 9:00PM @ West End Cultural Centre- Winnipeg, Manitoba
Apr 1st 9:00PM @ 7th Street Entry- Minneapolis, Minnesota
Apr 2nd 9:00PM @ Empty Bottle- Chicago, Illinois
Apr 3rd 9:00PM @ Grog Shop- Cleveland, Ohio
Apr 4th 9:00PM @ Pike Room- Pontiac, Michigan
Apr 10th 9:00PM @ Casbah- Hamilton, Ontario
Apr 11th 9:00PM @ Ford Plant- Brantford, Ontario
Apr 12th 9:00PM @ Call the Office- London, Ontario
Apr 17th 9:00PM @ Zaphod’s- Ottawa, Ontario
Apr 18th 9:00PM @ Grad Club- Kingston, Ontario
Apr 19th 9:00PM @ Casa- Montreal, Quebec
Apr 24th 9:00PM @ Vinyl- Guelph, Ontario
Apr 26th 9:00PM @ Lee’s Palace- Toronto, Ontario
Kevin Drew- Sprit If…
November 15, 2007
Broken Social Scene Presents:
Kevin Drew
Spirit If…
Arts & Crafts
September 18th 2007
Spirit If… has a message for me louder than the music. Kevin Drew is the heart of my affection for Broken Social Scene. With the Broken Social Scene Presents project underway, various members are releasing albums centered on the individualistic contributions to the whole. Broken Social Scene has always been associated with big shows with a dozen or so music makers romping the stage, instilling a fervor and zeal in the audience rarely witnessed outside the confines of an evangelical church. Some bands find ways to individualize their traditionally collective sound by striping off some of the layers, exposing the bare bones of the focal band members. Other times band members get involved in a series of solo projects, wishing that their musical prowess be recognized in and of itself. After a few years of collective recognition and association some musicians yearn for their own identity. Sometimes validation can only occur under a spotlight, away from the muddling impositions of others’ ideas. Still other bands go the way of Outkast and Broken Social Scene, releasing albums that deliver the full effect of the collective band, but under the direction and as an expression of one member. While the direction originates from a defined personality, many members of Broken Social Scene have come together to realize the vision of the popped collar king.
Suicides and fucked up kids dominate the lyrical themes of Spirit If…. This, as much as any layered instrumentation, is a part of Broken Social Scene’s genetics. The album begins with the droney, off center, and coterminally lumpy and charming song Farewell to the Pressure Kids. The first track introduces the psychedelic environment in which Mr. Drew constructs his warped reality. Too Beautiful to Fuck follows as an intimate love song and a beautiful exhalation expressing a calm adoration of beauty with a sweet and crude realism. The most progressive and impressive track on Spirit If… is Frightening Lives. His vocals are purposefully intense and the dingy guitars are fortified with synthesized rhythms and casiotone accents. I will remember every word to this song and play it at every party. While it is important to evaluate a solo endeavor on its own merits, and to resist using previous collaborations as a criterion or point of comparison, Spirit If… illustrates the difficulty in ignoring how much Broken Social Scene’s identity is rooted within Kevin Drew, not the other way around.
The beauty of Spirit If… is its clarity. While Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, and the rest of the gang are important to Broken Social Scene’s makeup, Kevin Drew’s effort best distills the mode in which Broken Social Scene operates. The lyrics are quirky and delicious. Even careless strings like “They say size doesn’t count but my heart is a house” make me jealous of Mr. Drew’s ability to transform awkward phrases into meaningful supplications. The drums are loose, metronomically switching between the snare and high hat. Nearly all of my favorite aspects of Broken Social Scene are encapsulated in this record. Kevin Drew hasn’t sounded this tender since You Forgot It in People. It is almost as if their self titled record, while fucking amazing, incorporated so much that Drew’s soft and tender voice was lost amongst a symphony and Spirit If… has surfaced to reclaim that space once occupied and delimited by his own creative moments. In 2008 Brendan Canning will release his own record. I am sure that as other albums are released, I’ll be similarly impressed by the manner in which the essence of Broken Social Scene is captured. Perhaps it is true that the parts make a whole, but Kevin Drew has certainly claimed a large piece for himself.
Other Records
Feel Good Lost- 2001
You Forgot It in People- 2002
Bee Hives- 2004
Broken Social Scene- 2005
