Frank Yang Who: Laura Marling What: English folk artist whose prodigious talent is dwarfed only by her prolific output; Once I Was An Eagle will be her fourth album in just over five years, and she's barely 23 years old. Why: Eagle is out May 25, but Marling is kicking off her North American tour behind it a full ten days earlier. In fact, it's on right now. When: Saturday, May 25, 2013 [...]
Kjell B Persson Know what the worst thing about not going to SXSW this Spring was? Not missing SXSW, but not having my previously annual late-Winter vacation. In fact, save for a weekend jaunt to New York last November, the last time I got out of the 416 was Labour Day - that's well over eight months ago, and right mental. And while I'd like to say that the European theme of this post is a hint as to where I'm getting away to, it unfortunately is not. I still hope to make it across the Atlantic later [...]
Denis Nazarov Though at least some of his current profile comes from being associated with the same Montreal scene that produced Grimes, those expecting more electro-pop cotton candy from Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz had best adjust their expectations. His full-length debut Impersonator is electronic, yes, but is also spare, haunting, and unflinchingly emotional, circling heavy lyrical topics like death and desire. One would expect that at the Matador company picnic, he'll be keeping more company with Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius than, say, Belle & Sebastian's Stuart [...]
Craig Kief Spring is only barely here - the past few days' weather notwithstanding - but the concert announcement machine is already making eyes at Autumn with the unveiling of a couple of pretty high profile tours coming through town when the leaves start to change and the days get shorter. Sam Beam, the walking epitome of bearded folk music, released Ghost On Ghost - his fifth album as Iron & Wine - last month, but until now only had Spring dates in the northeast and Europe confirmed [...]
Deirdre O'Callaghan Predictability typically carries negative connotations in the context of art, but in the case of The National , it's more about promises kept. For the third May in six years, following Boxer in 2007 and High Violet in 2010 - and though Alligator came out in April 2005 but I bought it in June, averaging out to May - they've released a sterling new album in Trouble Will Find Me . [...]
Frank Yang 2010 wasn't really that long ago, but apparently it was long enough that I'd just about forgotten about Oxford, England's Stornoway despite their debut Beachcomber's Windowsill making it onto my year-end list , helped along by a stellar local live debut that December at the El Mocambo. Which is not to say that I had forgotten them completely or that I liked them, but by the time their follow-up album Tales From Terra Firma came out in mid-March, they'd [...]
Jesper Skouboelling Who: D'Angelo What: Modern American soul singer born Michael Archer whose legend is as much based on his two released albums - 19952s Brown Sugar and 20002s Voodoo - as the now-mythical third, which has been rumoured and laboured over for the past 13 years and counting. Why: After many fits and starts, 2013 appears to be the year of D'Angelo's comeback. Album number three - James River - should be out this year [...]
Frank Yang Things move quickly these days; this I know and understand, and yet it still manages to astound me sometimes. The ascent of London's Daughter , for example. It wasn't much over a year ago that the trio was still largely unknown, only getting on my radar by old-fashioned word of mouth and becoming one of my favourite discoveries of SXSW 2012 . When they came around to make their Toronto debut last October - still a ways off from releasing their debut album or making any real promotional push - they still [...]
Robert Semmer On the list of ideal days on which to announce a tour itinerary, there's not many occasions better than the day the album you're actually going to promote goes on sale. And so yesterday, with the official release of their latest full-length Monomania , Atlanta's Deerhunter have announced the itinerary for their Fall tour behind it. It's an outing that brings them to The Phoenix in Toronto on September 12, and that leg of the tour also includes support from Marnie Stern , who herself released [...]
Matt Spalding At the risk of being overly literal, it probably goes without saying that a band called Editors would hardly be averse to making changes. But the Birmingham band's decision to push synthesizers to the fore on their third album, 20092s In This Light And On This Evening , might have been a little more stylistic revision than they or their fans bargained for. It didn't fare nearly as well, commercially-speaking, as either of its predecessors - fans apparently preferred them when they were aping Joy Division rather than New [...]
Frank Yang Though inconvenient and unfortunate in real terms, there was something appropriate about the fact that half of Rachel Zeffira's first North American tour was canceled on account of visa issues. After all, her musical career only took the course that it did because of an overzealous British immigration officer refused her entry to the country, causing her to miss her an important music college audition. That all worked out for the best, of course, as it set her on the course to become half of Cat's Eyes with Faris Badwan [...]
Nick Bostick That Arcade Fire will release a new record this year - possibly/probably produced by or at least involving James Murphy - is pretty much a given. But also a given is that it won't be out until Fall, at the earliest, because a) it's already Spring and it's not done, and b) Fall is still when all the big records come out and this is about as big as they get. It would be nice to be able to say that Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld will be able [...]
Chona Kasinger Next week is a pretty big week for new album releases, particularly if you're favourably inclined towards records coming out of the UK, which means that this week is a pretty big week for advance album streams. And while it's not the one that everyone will tell you you should be paying attention to, Still Corners' second record Strange Pleasures is one you shouldn't overlook - particularly if you assumed you knew what they were all about from their 2011 debut Creatures Of [...]
John Wright The last time that Pet Shop Boys were in town, it was for V Fest 2009 and while I was excited for their performance, it was more because I wanted to see their audience intersect with the Nine Inch Nails fans who were there to see Trent and company, who were playing immediately afterwards, than out of any real sort of fandom. Their show, however, blew me away with its technicolour visuals, elaborate choreography, and top-notch pop songcraft that they were easily the highlight of the weekend and, having since gotten to [...]
Will Westbrook Guys, in case it wasn't obvious, running a music blog that tries to update daily is hard work. So when something comes down the wire like, oh, a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion, it's not the sort of low-hanging fruit one passes up, even if everyone and their mother is reporting it. And so even though you've surely already heard, Jeff Mangum - having confirmed via his 2011 solo tour that people do indeed still care about his old band - has gotten Scott Spillane, Julian Koster, and Jeremy Barnes to reform the [...]
Frank Yang For the better part of the past 20 years, I've kept with me a copy of the January, 1990 issue of Guitar Player , the cover of which features a too-cool black-and-white photo of Johnny Marr under the title of "Anti-Guitar Hero". It's the image and epithet that I think of first when I think of Marr, along with the phrase "consummate sideman", who in addition to being the true genius behind The Smiths , has lent his guitar and songwriting skills to The Pretenders, The The, Electronic, [...]
Autumn De Wilde Who: The Postal Service What: The scrappy electro-pop offspring of Death Cab For Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard and DNTEL's Jimmy Tamborello which, with a little help from a couple of Jennifers - Wood and Lewis - crafted an album that would template much of indie- and electro-pop for the next decade and beyond and find a special place in the hearts of a generation of indie kids everywhere. Why: After ten years of refusing to tour or record a second record, Gibbard and Tamborello [...]
Robert Nethery And the theme of today's post is videos. Domestic videos if you're Canadian, and exotic foreign ones if you're not. And led off by Mr. Colin Stetson - who is in fact American by birth but Canadian by immigration - because he will be releasing his new album New History Warfare Vol 3: To See More Light next week on April 30, and because the man has a big horn. He's actually rolled out a few clips over the past few weeks - one doing double-duty [...]
Frode & Marcus I get why people have such affection for Shout Out Louds' 2005 debut Howl Howl Gaff Gaff ; the way it tapped into the scrappy, garage-rock sound in vogue at the time but rather than the insouciant attitude that typically came with the aesthetic, it offered a wide-eyed and sincere charm and stood apart from the pack for it. That said, it was only with 20072s Our Ill Wills , which polished up their pop and expanded it to widescreen dimensions, that I [...]
John Shearer The era of the touring festival has by and large given way to massive destination and regional festivals - it seemingly being easier to bring a bunch of bands and tens of thousands of fans to one place than it is to bring a bunch of bands to hundreds of thousands of fans in a bunch of places - but sometimes a touring bill is so impressive that it warrants a fancy name of its own. And the bill of Bob Dylan , Wilco , My Morning Jacket , and Richard Thompson [...]
Chromewaves
Album Review: Daft Punk – Random Access Memories
Song : Phoenix : “Trying To Be Cool” (Silver Swans Remix)
The National
MVSCLES- Sweet n Sour
Watch The Lonely Island rap through mid-life crises in “Diaper Money” video
