I pretty much listen to music 24/7 and do what I can to navigate through and discover as much new music as I possibly can. But there is just so much good music out there, new and old, that is just waiting to be discovered that every once in a while a song or two may slip through the cracks. Case and point is this radiant little Indie jam from Sunparlour Players. "Runner" has only been out a few months now and it just so happened that this morning was the day that I first came across [...]
Toronto - If there is one thing that I hope people have taken away from my years of writing for the Panic Manual, it is this: I highly recommend that you go see the Sunparlour Players live. Judging by the size of crowds the band still gets in Toronto, either I have failed to be very convincing, or I’m just not being read by that many people. It’s too bad, because if there’s one thing that the SPP show last Saturday night cemented in my mind, it’s that this is the best live band I know, by far. [...]
As with previous years we will be posting over the next few days the Top Ten track selections for 2011 of various MM friends and contributors, as well as our Best Albums of 2011 and own best of the year list. To kick us off we have Polly Pocket. 10. Friends - I'm His Girl A great getting ready to go out kind of a tune. a 9. Ben Howard - Old Pine [...]
It’s been a long, tiring and sad week. Death is all around, so it seems. And even when you’re viewing it in the third person, it’s hard to watch. It settles over you with a deft hand, weighting its heaviness into your head and inevitably your heart. Yet still the world continues to turn; life does go on for the rest of us, so it seems. Where does it leave those in the inner circle of grief? Suffocating, slow and leaden. With Christmas lights twinkling all around, I’m sure seasonal cheer in all its lurid kitsch and sparkle [...]
![Album Review: The Sunparlour Players – Us Little Devils [2011, Outside Music]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3872593_lg.jpg)
Toronto - I find myself in something of a music rut lately. You know what I mean: it's the sort of rut that sees you making lacklustre mix CD's for the car filled with tunes you played to death five years ago and filling your mp3 player with old Nas and Four Tet albums for something a little different, that kind of thing. I could be getting old and nostalgic, ready to make the permanent switch to oldies and "light favourites" stations. Or possibly ten weeks of diaper changes and spit-up has been a little distracting for me. [...]
To celebrate our downloads working again we thought we would re-post our best of the month mix from October - more than 20 great tracks selected from our October posts and six new ones too. This time you can download and dive in. Download The Minks – Araby mp3 (from Araby 7″) Endearingly gloomy slice of indie-pop. Download The Bloody Hollies – Dirty Sex mp3 (from Yours Until The Bitter End) The dark side of raw garage punk with touches of organ, violin and xylophone. Download Bare Bones – Hope [...]
Another month, more than 20 great tracks selected from our October posts and five new ones too. Download and dive in. Download The Minks – Araby mp3 (from Araby 7″) Endearingly gloomy slice of indie-pop. Download The Bloody Hollies – Dirty Sex mp3 (from Yours Until The Bitter End) The dark side of raw garage punk with touches of organ, violin and xylophone. Download Bare Bones – Hope & Feather mp3 (from Bare Bones EP) Gallops along on the back of perfectly [...]
The Sunparlour Players are one of our favourite bands of the past five years. Both 20072s Hymns For The Happy and 20092s Wave North were superb albums chock full of wonderful folk tales, stomping bluegrass, anthemic country rock and impassioned lyrics. Euphoria would give way to melancholy and back again in two sets of perfectly judged and executed records that reminded us of a Canadian Felice Brothers crossed with Delta Spirit . You can imagine our excitement then to discover that yesterday they had released a new album, Us [...]
This one is a no-brainer for me...come on, Calgary Folk Fest . As most folk fests tend to do, these festivals attract a good sized crowd, great selection of artists and in particular, provide Slowcoustic the opportunity to see many, many artists in one music packed weekend. The festival is set in Prince's Island Park, and while working for a few years in the Eau Claire area of downtown, I always saw all these yahoos walking to the park with their blankets, lawn chairs and smiles on their faces every July. This year, I will [...]
It was an insane May 1, 2010. One of a few shows that I attended in Ottawa. First stop was Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was a day festival called May Whee! The acts that played were Sunparlour Players , Snailhouse , Rolf Klausener , Leif Vollebekk and That's The Spirit . The only act I manage to see were: Leif Vollebekk That's The Spirit [...]
Review to come. Chromewaves , The Mad Ones , and She Does The City have reviews of and or photos from the show. Photos: Mumford and Sons, Sunparlour Players @ Lee's Palace, Toronto (February 15, 2010) MySpace: Sunparlour Players MySpace: Mumford and Sons --------- Working on the Mumford and Sons review still but I just got my review up for the Wavelength 500 [...]
Feb 17, 2010, 5:37pm
MBV
Frank Yang Just one question for everyone at Lee's Palace for Mumford & Sons on Monday night. Where did you all come from? This question doesn't just come from the fact that this band - whose debut album Sigh No More was only just released in North America yesterday and who were conducting this super-short, four-date North American tour without, at least to my knowledge, any major promotional push - had sold out Lee's Palace, but had filled it not with curious musical passers-by, but raving, honest-to-god [...]
Frank Yang Just one question for everyone at Lee's Palace for Mumford & Sons on Monday night. Where did you all come from? This question doesn't just come from the fact that this band - whose debut album Sigh No More was only just released in North America yesterday and who were conducting this super-short, four-date North American tour without, at least to my knowledge, any major promotional push - had sold out Lee's Palace, but had filled it not with curious musical passers-by, but raving, honest-to-god [...]
It's Chris T Popper's turn now. Office stalwart, Foghorn Leghorn impersonator, charmer, exaggerator, tea maker, ten pin bowling loser, and Pop Master contestant extraordinaire.Once more, without further ado...Firstly I think I need to try and give you an idea of why my list contains the songs they do and explain some of my influences this year. In March I took my first trip to America and the
When I started compiling my year end list and trying to rank everything, it became exceedingly clear to me that comparing local Toronto band X to Jay-Z just wasn't going to work. Not that I haven't done that in the past, my top three albums last year were Chad VanGaalen's Soft Airplane , Ketch Harbour Wolves' Dead Calm Horizon , and Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreaks , but it just seemed like this year, there was going to be such a weird grouping of albums that it didn't really make sense [...]
If I've had a more personally eventful year than 2009, I don't know when it would've been. I started the year unemployed in Toronto. As I write this I've just gotten back from a weekend in Copenhagen to my apartment in The Hague, Netherlands, where I'm living for another few months working for a prominent international organization. I'm also spending the Holidays in Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. So that's been a bit of a change. At the start of 2009 I also had all of four articles under my belt at this esteemed website. After press passes to [...]
If you haven't noticed on this site that I've been doing my Best of 2009 list . While compiling my best of "Canadian albums". I felt I shouldn't do a Top 10 since there were alot of great albums released in 2009. Decided to break it down to a top 50 list and in five parts. So here is the first part which I am counting from #41-#51 Fortesses - Octoberman Best tracks on this album [...]
If you haven't noticed on this site that I've been doing my Best of 2009 list . While compiling my best of "Canadian albums". I felt I shouldn't do a Top 10 since there were alot of great albums released in 2009. Decided to break it down to a top 50 list and in five parts. So here is the first part which I am counting from #41-#51 Fortesses - Octoberman Best tracks on this album [...]
Has any music loving Haligonian actually recovered from another amazing HPX? '09 brought in an embarrassment of National and International talent but the rocking just doesn't stop here in Canada's ocean playground. In the next 10 days, we have some absolutely stellar acts playing shows and the hill wouldn't be doing it's duty if we didn't talk about the bands still willing to make the extra 12-hour trek from Montreal. The Sunparlour Players are probably one of the best live acts in Canada. That statement is said so [...]
Music That's Nu2Me
The Panic Manual
Mad Mackerel's Blog
Ground Control
Slowcoustic
PhotogMusic.com
For the 'records'
Chromewaves
London, ON: Burgeoning Metropolis
Herohill
Daft Punk: When anonymity goes wrong
Washed Out Announces New Album: Paracosm
Review: Body Language – Grammar [EP]
Daft Punk “Get Lucky” With 1st Top 10 Hit In America
