Blog: Quick Before It Melts

I've been reading a lot lately about food engineering and how researchers are manipulating sugar, salt, and fat to determine the "bliss point" of a product: the amount of each of the aforementioned components that need to be added to food to maximize customer satisfaction and elicit the greatest level of craving, while maintaining the least amount of expense possible in creating your product.  It's a subtle skill, because the idea isn't to push sweetness or saltiness to the point where most people will recoil with duckfaces; you want to find the point where you please the most people (and [...]

The following review first appeared at BSide Magazine earlier this week.  I'm very excited and happy to be working with BSide as a contributing writer, and hope you will add the site as a source of great music news and reviews . The cynic in me is sick of  the term "indie folk", whether it's used as a musical descriptor in a press release, as a Bandcamp download tag, or as a one-size-fits-all classification for any band that uses a piano, acoustic guitar, banjo and/or violin [...]

I've been rebuilding my digital music library for months now, and while it has been a big pain in the arse, it's also been a great way to get reacquainted with a lot of the forgotten records in my collection.  When I hit "L", I was reminded of   Lightning Dust , the duo of Black Mountain's Amber Webber and Josh Wells.  Their last record was 20092s  Infinite Light , so I figured it may be about time to hear new music from them, but little did I expect that just a week later I'd [...]

The first photo of Hooded Fang I ever posted had seven members in it; the second, six.  In today's post, the Toronto band seems to be down to a succinct four: April Aliermo, Daniel Lee, D. Alex Meeks, and Lane Halley, if Facebook is to be believed.  The reason for the post is that there's soon to be a new sibling in the 'Fang's family of albums.  Gravez , Hooded Fang's third full length will be released on May 27, 2013 via Daps Records in Canada (and Full Time Hobby in the US and [...]

Jason Ogden and Penny Blacks is back with a new EP that's inspired by a love of cinema as wide and expansive as the sounds within it.  The Silver Screen is a four song mini soundtrack to a lost, and long ago forgotten movie masterpiece, or at least that's what you might imagine is the case.  Inspired by late night television viewing, and the classics that have found a new home on the boob tube, The Silver Screen serves as a nice bridge between Penny Blacks'  debut full length and [...]

After a self -titled EP in 2009 came out, Pick A Piper 's Brad Weber has been spending the bulk of his time playing drums with Dan Snaith as part of Caribou's live band.  With those obligations fulfilled, and Snaith reportedly working on material for the next Caribou disc, Weber has had time to return to Pick A Piper, and dropped a new eponymous recording earlier this month, this time a full length. Pick A Piper is a percussionists wet dream; layers upon layers of  beats and bleeps and found [...]

The Besnard Lakes  are making an early play for next year's Prism Prize with their super trippy (and flippy) video for "People of the Sticks", from  Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO .  What to take away from this? Don't take candy with Jace Lasek's face on it from bald, overly bearded men in white suits. Buy: The Besnard Lakes, Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO CBC Music: The Besnard Lakes Facebook: [...]

Last time I posted about Vancouver's Rec Centre , you knew as much about the band as I did: lo-fi powerpop, that calls to mind lazy, hazy, humid, summer days that go on forever. This time I out, I can tell you a little more, primarily that Rec Centre is, for all intents and purposes, Alex Hudson, whose sometimes joined by friends on his debut full length, Times A  Billion , like Rose Melberg or Brave Irene, Tiger Trap, and the Softies.  Apollo Ghosts' Jay Arner helped Hudson out in the recording [...]

(photo: facebook) Recording an album in an old church isn't a new idea, but you can't beat the atmospherics and texture of these buildings.  Years and years of song and prayer, death and birth, coat all the surfaces like a fine film of dust, and the history can't help but seep into the songs. So it is with Whitebrow , who decamped to St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in rural Burlington, Ontario, to record their self-titled debut back in December.  The result is a creeky, creepy, and utterly compelling 11 [...]

(photo: Amanda Thirkill ) I probably shouldn't tell you that The Almighty Rhombus made their debut EP available for free for the month of March, as we're now 72+ hours deep into April, but being the discerning music lovers you are, you shouldn't have any issue shelling out a couple shekels for their self-titled five song intro. I imagine The Almighty Rhombus gathering together on Saturday nights in their hometown of Sudbury (and probably every other night of the week), banging away at these spry pop nuggets, [...]

In the very first post I ever made on Quick Before It Melts, I featured The Bicycles , who had just released their debut album, The Good, The Bad, and the Cuddly and were tickling my twee-pop funny bone.  A few years later, the band went on an indefinite hiatus after their sophomore album, Oh No, It's Love was released, and it seemed like that was the end of that for The Bicycles being featured on QBiM. You can't keep a good pop band down, though, and [...]

You'd think that declaring a record your Disc of the Week would make it an easy album to write about, but I've been struggling with composing this post about Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO since deciding to bestow the honour upon it.  Least of my troubles was the fact that I couldn't for the life of me remember the record's proper name without making a crib sheet; the bigger challenge was pinning down a succinct summary of my feelings towards the new record.  Besides having a signature big name, Until In Excess... (as I've come to [...]

Snowblink  has premiered a new video for the song “Inner Mini-Mississippi”, directed by Bruce Peninsula's Neil Haverty.  It's a must-see for the hula hoop enthusiast in you. CBC Music: Snowblink Facebook: Snowblink Twitter: Snowblink First Bowie came back, then Suede, and now Platinum Blonde (yes, Platinum fuckin' Blonde!) returns with "Beautiful", a new single and video, directed by [...]

It's clear from the outpouring of grief and sadness, and the countless tributes that have come since his passing earlier this month, that Stompin’ Tom Connors ’ relationship with his country defined a nation for the rest of us. Friends, fellow musicians and family members are pleased to announce a tribute concert to the legendary Stompin’ Tom Connors at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on Wednesday, April 10.  Members of Bidiniband, Elliott Brood, Rheostatics, Blue Rodeo and others will provide the all-star backing support to guest vocalists including Tom Wilson, Daniel Romano, MP [...]

Already one of my favourite local bands thanks to their drop-dead gorgeous debut self-titled EP, Gdansk are releasing a new single today, called "Atlas" that's rocketed to the top of my list of favourite songs of the year. Tim Mann from Gdansk calls the track "a shift in direction" for the band, but I think that whatever the direction they're headed in is the right way to go.  He went on to tell me that the material they're working on now further explores some of textures and tones they've hit upon on [...]

If ever a musical outfit fit the "alt-folk" description, it would be Montreal-based AroarA , the new project from Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene and Apostle of Hustle) and his wife, Ariel Engle.  Their EP, In The Pines , is adapted from a book of poems by American writer Alice Notley.  Her book of poetry, "In The Pines", was first published in 2007, and follows the spiritual and visionary experiences of a woman undergoing a cure for Hepatitis C.  Recorded in various living rooms across Canada and mixed by Sandro Perri, In The [...]

It's nice to know that this past Canadian Music Week won't solely be remembered for the emergence of Slagging Off (if you need to, Google it), thanks to the inaugural Prism Prize being awarded to the music video voted best of the 2012 calendar year by a jury of over 90 journalists, filmmakers, bloggers, broadcasters, and critics. It took two rounds of voting (one to narrow down to the 10 video short list, and a final round to determine the winner) before the first Prism Prize winner was awarded on Sunday night [...]

Canada recently lost a national treasure when Stompin' Tom Connors past away on March 6, 2013.  There will never be another Stompin' Tom-may his dear soul rest in eternal peace and his songs live on in our hearts-but, if there's any one musician working in Canada today that has the potential to become as ingrained in the country's consciousness and culture as Connors did, it's Shotgun Jimmie .  Let me tell you why I'm confident in making such a proclamation. Everything, Everything , Jimmie's fourth and latest solo record, is unencumbered [...]

You might not have known it by reading this past week's postings here, but it's been Canadian Music Week in Toronto, so this week's round up will focus on some local bands at CMW. St. Catharines' Waterbodies released their debut full length, The Evil We Know earlier this year, and though I've been derelict in covering it, the record has gotten them recognition on Canadian college radio.  The band are playing their second of two CMW shows tonight at Global Village Backpackers.  The trio recently released a video for "How To [...]

There's no denying the the retro sound de jour is early 90s guitar drone rock, but be careful if you go crawling the interweb for Decades , Toronto's latest reverb-friendly group, you may end up somewhere you don't want to be . The quartet, drummer Peter Gosling, bassist Greg Peters, vocalist Mike Kaminski and guitarist Justin Lemaire, have been playing together since 2010, and are about ready to release their self-titled debut on April 30 through White Girl Records.  The album was recorded in Toronto with producer/engineer Alex Bonenfant (who previously worked [...]