Cults ' debut self-titled LP (out June 7th ) shines in the dark, and at the same time, lies hidden in gloom. Brooklyn duo Madeline Follin and boyfriend Brian Oblivion create rituals in musical form, and their worship is beauty, painting it in different variations of black. "He took my heart away and left me to bleed out, bleed out," wails Follin in the opening track "Abducted" – her vocals at first seeming distant and washed out by luminous noise. But then Follin bursts into a cry, a plea that haunts from close distance. [...]
Read my concert review of Austra's homecoming at Lee's Palace on BlogTO.
Video / Donate Broken Social Scene covers Modest Mouse 's "The World at Large" for The Voice Project – a non-profit organization that supports the women and the peace movement in Uganda. Kevin Drew and other two founding fathers of BSS – Charles Spearin and Brendan Canning - gather in Spearin's Toronto home studio to offer their best adaptation of the track from Good News for People Who Love Bad News . "The only thing about it is that I'm no [...]
Video / Buy As part of the National Parks Project , Ryan J. Noth curates a collection of Cabot McNenly 's images and scenes and sets them to the temperate tune of "Bruce Beckons". The song - performed by John K. Samson (The Weakerthans), Christine Fellows and Sandro Perri – is part of the NPP Daniel Cockburn -directed film Material . And Material is one of the thirteen short films [...]
I would like for people to enjoy my music in a very cerebral way, and also on the dance floor in a very physical way. One of the best things about interviewing musicians or people in general is learning unexpected things about them. You listen to their words just as you listen to their songs, and it feels like those worlds they've built begin to open up for you. You can hear and read Katie Stelmanis ' state of mind and vision – her style and structure - in Feel It Break [...]
Cults – "Abducted" Video / Buy Cults may sound as sweet as magnolia flower petals smell in spring, thanks to Madeline Follin's naive vocals and the band's gleaming arrangements. But their track "Abducted" reveals a hard sweetness – an untamed love story that leads to dark consequences. It's a brutal affair in which people lose their heads. The official video – directed by David Altobelli – literalizes the song's lyric, "He tore me up 'cause I really loved him", revealing a story with a [...]
Austra 's Feel It Break rests on a musical fortress – a mix of classical and electronic - forged by the trio of Katie Stelmanis, Dorian Wolf and Maya Postepski. When Austra lowers the drawbridge, hypnotic hysteria follows, the LP's opener "Darken Her Horse" shaking walls with bass, synths striking like ricocheting arrowheads against cement. Stelmanis' haunting operatic vocals echo. Feel It Break pounds, its heavy bass artillery and icy arrangements engulfing listeners into an abyss, a place to escape and let their bodies loose. The album's first single [...]
I like going into a trance with people that want to hear a woman sing her songs. I like opening my eyes and knowing it's over, and that it was good and honest. It's no surprise that I've come to really like Jennifer Castle 's Castlemusic : a record about life, love, grief, liberation and imagination. She engages you in her world – through half-opened eyes, always on the threshold of reality and daydream - singing songs about her experiences: about the petty miseries that grind us down, about the [...]
1. Kurt Vile – "Baby's Arms" / Buy I am a living skeleton of my grandfather. His dusty blood growls and shrouds my flesh. I am elsewhere, sauntering with scattered words, now graved in my head. 2. Cults – "Oh My God" / Link Your quiet face and demeanour is an empty place. Words crumple and we're merely in the places we had been. 3. PS22 Chorus – "Kids (MGMT Cover)" / [...]
Heartbeat Hotel - "Windowsill 13 Video / Free Album Download I see you, but you won't come back. You accidentally turned around and it's summer, flies bumping into each other. I did not say anything. There was no choice, nothing decided, and you became an heirloom somewhere. We must resist. We must refuse to disappear .
Distant Thunder by Andrew Wyeth To my darling sister, Happy Birthday! I love you always! We slept in today – a rainy Sunday. We took our time making breakfast, and then spent the afternoon driving around and thrifting. Amy found some cool shirts and sweaters, along with an old Andrew Wyeth art book. She took all the photos on my previous post. - Read my latest interview with Toronto shoegaze musician Philip James , and then listen to The [...]
1. Memoryhouse – "Lately (Troisieme)" Buy Jon Brion 's " Phone Call " resonates in this drifting track, while Denise Nouvion 's voice peels your memory. 2. California Wives – "Tokyo" Link "I'm alive," she screams in horror as her limbs and her (daddy long) legs turn into oak. The house is happy with its furniture and a chair that guards the window. 3. Broken Social Scene – "Sentimental X's" [...]
" Make it sound good, I guess. Enjoy and destroy yourselves ." – Daniel Lee Hooded Fang borrow their name from a children's book and are an indie-pop collective, one of Toronto's breakout bands of 2010. Now, you can read my interview with co-lead vocalist Daniel Lee and bass-guitarist April Aliermo on BlogTO. Thanks to Dan and "Apes" (as she sometimes refers to herself), as well as the entire gang for being good sports. Watch Hooded Fang's off-stage performance of "Laughing" [...]
" Make it sound good, I guess. Enjoy and destroy yourselves ." – Daniel Lee Borrowing their name from a children's book, Hooded Fang are an indie-pop collective, one of Toronto's breakout bands of 2010. Now, you can read my interview with co-lead vocalist Daniel Lee and bass-guitarist April Aliermo on BlogTO. Thanks to Dan and "Apes", as well as the entire gang for being good sports. Watch Hooded Fang's off-stage performance of "Laughing" at Toronto's 69 Vintage [...]
" Took too long to see, I was wrong to believe in me only ." – Wilco ("Solitaire") I became a big fan of Bong Joon-ho 's work after watching Mother . In a week, I watched three more of his films: The Host , Memories of Murder and his short film Shaking Tokyo . Shaking Tokyo , part of a three-part collection of short [...]
Just a few things I've been working on this past couple of weeks: 1. Interview with Toronto singer-songwriter Abigail Lapell . 2. Interview with electronic-pop whiz Digits (Alt Altman). 3. The Neighbourhood Mixtape: Weekend Wars and Ponytail . Read 'em and weep!
The Raveonettes - "Recharge & Revolt" Video / Buy "When I'm terrified I close my eyes / When I'm sad and blue I choose to fight / Heartbreak only can take you to the other side." I used to think that thunder was a hunter in the sky, armed with the wildest aim. My grandparents would place a pillow over my head on rainy days because they thought I was a target for lightning – an old superstition they believed was true of children having two crowns on their head. It's why [...]
Aldrin wrote about Mother , and I wanted to add my thoughts to his. He called Do-Joon's mother's acupuncture kit a "MacGuffin"; I thought it to be more of a linchpin. While each needle seeks a pressure point to unblock the truth's gnarled qi, it also finds hooks on which to hang the whole loose, webbed matrix of the story. In the film, mother and son live and sleep side by side – taking unconscious turns at letting one's yin's cold, slow, and passive balance the other's yang's hot, [...]
J Mascis - "Not Enough" Video / Buy We change like single notes on a music box or dinosaur sponges that grow in water. "Can we be love? Can we be three? Can we be all these things you said to me?" No one will believe it, but the world will find out – details coming from the heart into parchment.
werenotbroken
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