Sigurd Grunbërger Who: The Asteroids Galaxy Tour What: A six-piece cosmic-electro-jazz-disco-psyc h-pop party-time ensemble from Copenhagen. Yeah, another one of those. Why: Their second album Out Of Frequency is coming out this Tuesday, January 31, and they're touring it across the asteroid galaxy we call North America . When: Monday, February 6, 2012 Where: The Hoxton in Toronto (19+) Who else: Vacationer open things up. [...]
thekills.tv Who: The Kills What: Anglo-American electro-blues duo who're sexier than you and probably most people you know. Why: They've already toured through once in support of last year's Blood Pressures but they're back for another visit, ostensibly because they're releasing a 123 EP for "The Last Goodbye" on February 14 and also because it's the 10th anniversary of their first gig. When: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 Where: The Kool Haus in [...]
Billy Pavone Traditionally, the gift for tenth anniversaries is tin. I don't really know what you can buy these days that's made of tin. I suppose the modern equivalent of aluminum offers more options, but New York's Walkmen have got their own idea that I can get behind. They've been staging a handful of one-off (okay, two-off for San Francisco) shows where they showcase material drawn from across all of their ten years and five albums of original material - though maybe the Harry Nillson covers album Pussy Cats [...]
Neil Thomas Douglas As I understand it, yesterday was Robbie Burns Day and while I may have missed out on my annual tradition of posting something suitably Scottish to mark the day - a tradition I've marked exactly zero times in the past forever years - I'm going to make up for it a little bit by leading with some Scots-related content. Firstly, We Were Promised Jetpacks have finally scheduled a second North American tour in support of last year's In The Pit Of The Stomach [...]
Frank Yang Though his punk credentials are beyond reproach thans to his tenure in Propagandhi , John K. Samson has always cut a bit of a curious figure in front of The Weakerthans . While his bandmates are more than willing and able to play the part of rockers in turning out muscular guitar riffs and solos, Samson by comparison has always been a bit slight of stature, reedy of voice, sheepish of grin; the thoughtful and verbose folksinger who somehow ended up fronting a rock band. I don't know if the [...]
Facebook Matt Ward has had a pretty good last few years thanks to his willingness to not be Matt Ward, or more specifically M. Ward . Yes, putting his solo endeavours largely on the backburner since 20092s Hold Time has allowed him to put out two She & Him albums with Zooey Deschanel and one Monsters Of Folk record with Jim James and Conor Oberst , and certainly garner more popular success than he ever has on his own. But apparently [...]
Facebook On paper, London's Big Deal doesn't really bring a lot to the table. Two guitars - one acoustic, one electric - and two voices - one American male, one English female - and that's about it. There's not much in the way of virtuosity in the former and neither Kacey Underwood or Alice Costelloe's vocals would stop anyone in their tracks either alone or in harmony. To hear it described, you'd be forgiven for expecting it to lean towards being rather conventional and/or pedestrian. And yet their debut album [...]
War Child When The Hold Steady get likened to Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band , it's usually in reference to the big, raucous, arena-sized bar-rock that the latter invented and the former aspire to. So it kind of made sense that the two would be paired up for the 2009 War Child: Heroes benefit compilation wherein artists covered their inspirations, but the song selection was a bit curious. "Atlantic City" comes from Springsteen's 1982 record Nebraska and being a [...]
Paul Valencia PI Who: Cass McCombs What: American singer-songwriter of many accolades and no fixed address. Why: After garnering praise for his dark and stark 2011 release Wit's End , McCombs attempted to let a little light in with his second album of the year, Humour Risk . When: Friday, January 27, 2012 Where: The Garrison in Toronto (19+) Who else: Opening up are Frank Fairfield and [...]
Shervin Lainez Who: Jukebox The Ghost What: Philly-based, fun-infused, power-pop trio whose last album was Everything Under The Sun . Why: They're a little ways removed from the release of their second album, but getting invited along to open up and road-test new material is rarely a bad thing. So they're doing that. When: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 Where: The Sound Academy in Toronto (all-ages) Who else: They're opening up for [...]
Autumn de Wilde Ben Gibbard's songwriting is kind of emo/heart-on-sleeve on the best of days, so how could he ratchet up the melancholy quotient now that he's officially Mr. Ex-Zooey Deschanel? By adding strings, of course! To be fair, Death Cab For Cutie's just-announced Spring tour was probably in the works well before news of his break-up was announced, but it seems appropriate that the Death Cab canon will be getting performed with an extra layer of drama thanks to the contributions of San Francisco's Magik*Magik Orchestra , who will be [...]
Ladyhawkemusic.com NME has an interview with Pip Brown, aka New Zealand synth-pop star Ladyhawke , who is getting closer and closer to officially following up her super-tasty 2008 self-titled debut . Anxiety is set for a March 20 release and according to Brown, is synth-free and much more guitar-heavy in the style of '90s bands like Blur and Pixies; well, at least she's keeping things retro. There's no preview track or advance single yet - "Black, White and Blue" will be released on February [...]
Jeremy Balderson At first, it's hard to imagine what need there is for a Craig Finn solo album. After all, he gets to run roughshod over The Hold Steady records with as many words as he can manage to pair with their classic rock attack - has he really got a backlog of ideas that don't fit that broad and welcoming template? As Clear Heart, Full Eyes , out next Tuesday but now available to stream in whole at NPR demonstrates, yeah he does. [...]
Todd V Wolfson I feel that I should say up front that any reservations I have about Kathleen Edwards and her work are entirely my own issues. Since her 2002 debut Failer , I've enjoyed her honest, roots-rock fare but always felt like I expected more from her creatively even though across her first three albums, she'd never shown any signs that she had ambitions beyond being a good singer-songwriter. That said, the fact that she spent her downtime following 20082s Asking For Flowers [...]
last.fm I've been meaning to write up Without Why , the debut album from Rose Elinor Dougall , for well over a year now but for whatever reason never actually got around to it. And while normally almost year and a half on from its release is too long to give a record props, the fact that Ms Dougall is back on the radar with a new stopgap release while she wraps up work on her second album is good enough reason for me to revisit it. If her [...]
Wikipedia Folks of a certain age got an unexpected thrill this past Thursday night when on Parks & Recreation - assuming they were home watching television (or torrenting it for later) - Adam Scott showed up on their screens wearing a Letters To Cleo t-shirt. LTC were never amongst the A-list of the '90s college rock scene, or even the '90s Boston college rock scene, but they held a special place in the hearts of fans of scrappy power pop and to see them getting name-checked out of the [...]
Facebook Who: Los Campesinos! What: Prolific and precocious Welsh pop collective for whom constant roster turnover is apparently no impediment Why: Album number four Hello Sadness came out at the tail of of 2011, and the North American tour for it kicks off next week. When: Sunday, January 22, 2012 (the second of the two-night stand) Where: Lee's Palace in Toronto (19+) Who else: Portland's Parenthetical Girls [...]
Paul Heartfield Who: Fujiya & Miyagi What: Brighton-based Krautrock/electro-pop devotees named for a Japanese audio equipment manufacturer and Ralph Macchio's mentor in the Karate Kid films. Why: They released their fourth album Ventriloquizzing last year. Why wouldn't they want to take it on tour ? When: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 Where: Wrongbar in Toronto (19+) Who else: Toronto's Volcano Playground open up. How: [...]
Frank Yang It's quite possible that people headed out to the Horseshoe on Wednesday night because both halves of the touring bill consisted of New York-based bands with a good head of steam and impressive record label behind them - Caveman , having just signed to Fat Possum and Hospitality preparing to release their debut record very shortly on Merge . Either or both could reasonably emerge as one of the year's rookie success stories, and who wouldn't want the bragging rights to say they saw them early on at a [...]
Facebook Nestled amidst some concert announcements in a post last week were a couple of odd one-offs for No Joy and PS I Love You which were not part of any announced tour or timely promotional cycle. It didn't occur to me to ask why, but just a little bit of thought would have made the answer obvious - Wavelength . The dates of their shows corresponded to the four-day weekend of the Toronto music series' twelfth anniversary festival, and though neither of those acts is properly local - they [...]
Chromewaves
Check Out: d’Eon – “Transparency pt. II”
the Weekender ::: New music from Catcall // the National // Summer Camp
KNIFE PARTY – RAGE VALLEY EP
