the popcast & the mass

PopCast #50 - 2008 is Broken (for Henry)

2008-12-18T19:07:00.002-05:00

Episode 50! A special extended 2008 year in review episode!

PopCast #50 - 2008 is Broken (for Henry)

Actually, I know that I've done way more than 50 of these things since I started this podcast back in 2005. Chalk it up to way too many "Side A"s and "Part 2s". It being a special end of year wrap-up, and twice as long as your standard episode, there was no way I was going to call it "Episode 47" or something lame like that. So here you have it, ten songs from ten great albums that came out this year, plus some extra nuggets.

Dedicated to Henry Benjamin Rose, born October 30th, 2008!

PopCast the Next Generation - Burn the Tapes (Episode 46?)

2008-10-01T19:53:00.000-04:00

The PopCast returns. Maybe? Either way it's October 1st, 2008, and this is a PopCast episode, in the old style of previewing bands playing the Pop Montreal festival, which is underway today.

PopCast the Next Generation / Episode 46 - Burn the Tapes

In this episode!

Valleys, My People Sleeping, Hi Lonely Oak, Adam & the Amethysts, and more....

PopCast #45B Part 2 [We're Not Here, aka the Matt Shane episode]

2008-03-03T15:43:00.002-05:00

It's finally here, I can finally get Jack Dylan off my case and say a proper goodbye to 2007...in March. I'll spare you the details of how it came to be that we've not gone live with this until now, but this episode was finished in January, and caps off the Top Ten International Albums countdown we began on Episode 45B Part 1.

PopCast #45B - Part 2 [We're Not Here]

Lots of Jack Dylan rambling, some amazing songs, and attitude advice.

As always, it's anybody's guess as to what happens from here, but I'm sure Jack will be on my case when he returns from Japan...

PopCast #45C [I Want You to Know - 2007 Covers, Reissues, Soundtracks, and Oversights]

2008-02-13T12:45:00.005-05:00

The glowing blind spot of 2007, featuring everything not packed into the more conventional countdowns and wrap-ups of the year gone by (ie. episode 45, Sides A and B ...). In this episode I take advantage of Jack Dylan's overseas incompetence (ie. Part 2 of Side B is coming soon) to deliver a kind of outtakes intermission ... touching on some late discoveries / oversights from 2007, some reissues, some covers, and some soundtrack samplings. Maybe my favourite of the 2007-in-review-bunch. Anyway, by some calendars, we're only a couple of days in the new year. We'll dedicate this one to Heath Ledger; may it carry him through the afterlife.

PopCast #45C [I Want You to Know - 2007 Covers, Reissues, Soundtracks, and Oversights]

Featuring: Ólöf Arnalds, Sandro Perri, Elfin Saddle, Wilco, Nelson Angelo e Joyce, Stephen Malkmus, Peter Sarstedt, Jonny Greenwood, Sunset Rubdown, Andrew Bird, CSS.

45B Part 1 [the mass we left behind]

2008-02-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

and so the mass comes to eat itself.

this is the end, my friends!

it's also episode 45-b (part 1, no less), and one step closer to closing this chapter

as this second side to the 2007 year end comes around (in time for 2008's second month), we listen to the first half of some of the best songs off the best albums to be released in 2007. Side A having been a canada/montreal episode; this one beginning with a song about the man we left behind.

So Jack Dylan and I present episode 45b of Pop Montreal's PopCast. Part 2, to come (as soon as I undo the damage done by Dylan through his insistence on helping 'produce'), rounds out this top ten (non-canada) 2007 countdown, and rounds out the whole chapter of this blog, I think. Maybe an no-talking side C will carry us through its afterlife to somewhere else...a silent and redemptive 2007 footnote that starts the whole mess over again.

Both podcasts and entries will continue, at a soon to be announced and refocused (and renamed?) location. In the meantime, check out JackDylan.ca (Jack who is off to Japan and Thailand for two months, in five hours, if these strange invisible sleet-pebbles let up enough).

PopMontreal rattles on as ever, with rumours of another pod-show bubbling and young prospects eyeing ice-time all over. (Did I mention I picked up Mike Komisarek in my pool today? Go Habs.)

SecretCityRecords.com is soon to be relaunched, and this band about to put out an album that has occupied my ears and life for the last 6 months.

Stay tuned.

PopCast #45 (Side A): Emotional Rescue (Canada 07)

2007-12-14T07:01:00.001-05:00

PopCast #45 (Side A): Emotional Rescue (Canada 07)

The PopCast commences it's end of year wrap up with a look at the best Canadian albums of the year, and welcomes Jack Dylan as official co-host alongside Andrew Rose....leave your cats at home; this one gets heavy.

With: Griffintown, Magic Weapon, Feist, Handsome Furs, the Luyas, the Besnard Lakes, Sister Suvi, Plants and Animals, Arcade Fire, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes

PopCast #44: Entire Sun Cycles (with Taxes)

2007-10-06T17:53:00.001-04:00

PopCast #44: Entire Sun Cycles (and Taxes)(m4a)

SUNSET RUBDOWN, ENTIRE CITIES, THINK ABOUT LIFE (NEW GVP REMIX!), FRED WESLEY (WTIH MORT SAHL!)

The home-stretch does the full round for Saturday night, with Jack Dylan's Griffintown Spider-working-Man our hero. If the sun isn't up by the time you get home, ya blew it.

PopCast #43: Wonder Women and Glowing Orbs

2007-10-05T15:51:00.000-04:00

PopCast #43: Wonder Women and Glowing Orbs

A Pop Montreal preview for FRIDAY OCTOBER 5th. Featuring a guest appearance by Said the Gramophone's Sean Michaels, and more Jack Dylan...

PLANTS AND ANIMALS, BUCK 65, YEASAYER, BOCCE, PATTI SMITH

The weekend craziness kicks in. Hold onto your pants. Or don't!

PopCast #42: Big Men on Campus in Leather

2007-10-04T15:44:00.000-04:00

PopCast #42: Big Men on Campus in Leather (with more Jack Dylan!)

MAN MAN, MAGIC WEAPON, THE LUYAS, THESE HANDS, MARK BERUBE, CODY CHESTNUTT, MAN MAN.

Whoah, been a while since episodes appeared back to back one day to the next. Setting a difficult precendent here, but there are just too many good shows happening every night. Episode 42 is dedicated to Thursday October 4th! With a brief cameo by festival director, Dan mother-fuckin'-Seligman. Come on, people!

PopCast #41: Heroes & Blasphemies (with Jack Dylan!)

2007-10-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

Pop Montreal 2007 is underway, with episode 41 highlighting some artists performing Wednesday, October 3rd:

PopCast #41: Heroes & Blasphemies (with Jack Dylan!)

CARIBOU, TORNGAT, OLA PODRIDA, THUNDERHEIST, FUCKED UP, MIRACLE FORTRESS

Co-hosted by Andrew Rose and famous-artist, Jack Dylan...who will be giving a run-down of the third installment of his (in?)famous superheroes poster series and appearing on episodes throughout the festival. If all goes well have one of these episodes for everyday of the festival to help you make your excruciating decisions. But don't get the impression that this is even scratching the surface...plow through that program, or abandon it entirely and go wandering. The best adventures are accidents that feel like magic because you went at them with an open heart. And open Pop 2007 she is!

The PopCast returns!

2007-09-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

For how long is anyone's guess, but for now the PopCast is back, just in time for the sixth edition of Pop Montreal.

PopCast #40: The Sexennial! (m4a)

In this episode: Patrick Wolf, Radio Radio, Basia Bulat, Hot Panda, Beasts & Superbeasts, Devendra Banhart.

I'll be trying to deliver a bunch of episodes in the spirit of those first 5 or six or so back in 2005, when a whole bunch of festival content was crammed into a few episodes leading up to the actual festival. An aural tip-sheet for festival go-ers, if you will. Enjoy.

To live in a house that is haunted...

2007-08-07T23:26:00.001-04:00

It's funny how meaningful meaningless moments can become. I suppose that's precisely what makes them so potent, kind of like how only something as small as an atom can possess the greatest of bombs. I saw Leonard Cohen yesterday, where one might expect to find him, and to no great dramatic end. He wasn't even dressed in particularly fancy clothes, or flanked by some equally elegant creature.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who's read this blog (and after four months absence does anyone still?), that Cohen is a hero of mine. And so what, big deal, get in line, right? I guess that's part of it, realizing the absurdity of thinking that one's admiration for anyone or anything in the world goes beyond anyone else's. Still, for a boy to grow up a stone's throw away from Murray Hill and to idolize the man and his work from an early age, hell to use his words to name your blog...it's hard not to possess a vague sense of entitlement, however misplaced. Mostly in recent years it was just how often friends of mine had come across him randomly on the street, and then seen him again, while I never did. Leonard Cohen: the twentieth century's greatest poet, or my own personal polkaroo?

In the end there wasn't even an encounter, just the most superficial of sightings...but how else? I sat, about to eat, looking through a window while he prepared to cross the street. Unmistakable of course. A young girl was jogging past him, and must have made some kind of gesture of recognition because he nodded casually before crossing. As he walked up the street after crossing and out of my view, another woman, came walking towards where I sat in the opposite direction. She saw me lean over to catch the last glimpse I could and we caught each other smiling in the moment, she obviously also aware of the little lovely nothing that had transpired, as if to say, 'there he went'.

I've wondered sometimes, what I would say if I ever came upon him in a context that called for words. But I think I like this version best. A relay of knowing silent nods with a couple women on the Main seems best. Much better that it be wordless, and as close to meaningless as possible.

PopCast #36: Turduckens! (SXSW 2007)

2007-03-27T16:09:00.001-04:00

In this episode: Miracle Fortress, Frog Eyes, Andrew Bird, Dan Deacon, Ponytail, Amon Tobin, and an old-school legend.

PopCast #36: Turduckens! (SXSW 2007)

Spring, spring, spring; bring it on. Had a brief little taste of downright summer in Austin, Texas during SXSW last week, from which I'm now only recovering. So here's a dose of some of the best stuff I caught while in Texas.

I'll be playing some of this stuff and lots more at the Green Room this Thursday, as the second installment of my new monthly event, Vintage Violence. Y'all should come and check it out. It's also the venue's third anniversary, and things will be starting early, including a vernissage displaying tons of photos, posters and flyers from the past 3 years...

Heaven is only in your head: The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

2007-03-07T14:07:00.000-05:00

During the finale of their five night run in Montreal in the hundred candle-lit basement of the Ukrainian Federation and an all acoustic version of “the Well and the Lighthouse”, Win Butler walked into the crowd that had followed the band down the stairs after the first encore. The song was ending, the band yelling ‘the lambs and the sheep ain’t sleeping yet’ and a camera followed him into the mass of people parting. He emerged around the other side a minute or so later with the camera in his own hands, pointing it back at the audience before turning it on himself and disappearing backwards into the crowd.

It doesn’t get more grand or dramatic than the Arcade Fire’s sophomore release, Neon Bible, in terms of the ambition of imagery and the breadth of the gestures. Mirrors and bombs, casting of stones and soldiers and the Church, a golden calf, good Christian men, lambs, the flood, a key. If the Arcade Fire are vulnerable anywhere (though they seem a pretty sudden and stern institution around here) it’s in the question, ‘can they really pull that off?’ Are they really standing up there singing “Neon Bible”, and about the big and obvious but almost embarrassing touchstones of our recent age? You know, like war, religion, the public forum and its spotlight? Who do they think they are anyway?

If you took a picture of the band with a flash during one of their recent shows, you’d see bands of light where electrical tape had until then decorated their costuming more or less benignly. The colours and shapes were not accidentally analogous to the giant fluorescent neon bible that has hung behind them during shows. Carefully executed spectacle, right?

It’s just that right when you think it’s all a bit much, you realize you’re looking at yourself. Maybe you made that beam of light with your flash, with your own expectation of the moment. (And I mean, come on, let’s face it, if any record has had the burden of expectation, it’s this one.) Anyone who’s come to preface their take on Neon Bible with a banal defamation of ‘the hype’ (and I can think of a few, I woke up to one this morning on the radio) should take a long look at themselves in the mirror. We’re all implicated as accomplices to the current projected image of this band.

The entire spectacle of their shows mirrors the narrative arc of Neon Bible, which is as much a piece of literature as it is a record—not so much as poetry as storytelling, of mirroring a few basic rhythms that people go through, and how they translates to actions in the world, into belief in places like Heaven and Hell, and the experience of those states of mind and body in the world.

Of course the Arcade Fire came out with this kind of record. People forget sometimes that artists don’t live in a vacuum, and their output isn’t pre-determined. How could a band that was so quickly vaulted into such a bright spotlight not be singing about security cameras, about projected images on television, and salesmen? How could it not be almost absurdly bright in its spectacle? What’s more absurdly bright than a Neon Bible?

What’s really great about Neon Bible as a narrative arc, though, isn’t it’s reflection of the age—polticial or religious or otherwise. It’s how it’s able to stand up and still make it personal, about what you put into it; what you shine on it yourself.

The title track is one of its strongest moments, with ‘take the poison of your age / don’t lick your fingers when you turn the page’ conjuring up images of Eco’s In the Name of the Rose, and great hopeful books being poisoned (and poisoning others) by men of fear, doubt and desire. It’s definitely a dark world you enter into on this record; slightly haunting, but it also has an inviting element. It may have both classically dark and light moments, but where Funeral had a sense of joy in the wake of pain, Neon Bible has a sense of moral trauma in the wake of the world of choice or its illusion. Definitely a more subtle piece of work, but densely rewarding on different levels.

It’s hard not to think of “the Well and the Lighthouse” as the album’s centerpiece, (quite literally when you visit the lyrics page on neonbible.com) given the young girl who has joined the band on stage to recite the fable on which it is based, Jean de Lafontaine’s the Wolf and the Fox, in French. When they played that first show at the end of January in a church basement in Montreal, Win Butler explained the song’s inspiration and qualified Lafontaine’s work by saying, ‘it’s nice ‘cause at the end he always tells you the moral, and the moral is: that you fucked everything up’.

“Black Mirror” gets things rolling, but I’d suggest the album’s ultimate entry point is the moral crisis of its middle section, and thinking of the record as a cycle that needs to be heard a few times and can then be approached from any point. Take the greyness of a song like “(AntiChrist Television Blues)”. On the surface and in its musical incarnation it’s a grand Springsteen homage epic, as earnest and true as any good Christian man could be. But if the hero of this song who sees his daughters as lanterns and the Lord as the light is a misguided Anti Christ, we’re all implicated in his plight by the way Win Butler sings in the first person with desperation. You don’t know whether to condemn him or feel for him.

“The Well and the Lighthouse” and Lafontaine’s fable both possess this imagery of going down a well, of levers and reflections above. Whether it’s a trapped fox or a fallen angel or a man who’s made a choice and felt very real consequences of it, the crux of Neon Bible is in that image of being able to go either way after the fact. To be trapped in a cage or to lift yourself up out of it becomes a matter of how well you absorb the reflection of your own decisions, and project something positive back.

One of the album’s most haunting (and beautiful) sequences comes during “Ocean of Noise” and the line ‘who here among us, still believes in choice…not I’. That moment of crisis is an important point on the record, and permeates much of that early sense of expansive oceans of darkness, the black waves and bad vibrations of an existential abyss…but it’s not the final moment.

On the surface, Neon Bible’s finale, “My Body is a Cage”, almost comes off as its darkest moment. Trapped in the shackles of choice or tricked by mirrors, an age that calls darkness light, a dead language, isolation from the one you love. In some ways the album returns to the point from which is came, keeping with the cyclical motif. But where Lafontaine’s fable ends with the moral that you’ll always fall for what you desire or what you fear, Neon Bible ends with this:

My body is a cage that
keeps me from dancing
with the one I love,
but my mind holds the key.

Your standing next to me,
my mind holds the key.

When the Arcade Fire sing ‘Heaven is only in my head,’ I don’t think it’s something anyone should take negatively. It’s not so bad, to go to ‘the same place animals go when they die’, if you’re able to conjur Heaven in your head. That might mean that Hell lives there too, but at least we have the keys to live with our choices.

The Gospel of Thomas isn’t part of what people conventionally think of as the Bible these days, but it was just a legitimate an account of some things Jesus said during his time on the planet, dug up much later than the rest of the New Testament. It ends with a great moral of its own that I think is fitting here:

“His disciples said to him: On what day will the kingdom come? Jesus said, the kingdom of the Father will not come by expectation. They will not say: Lo, here! or: Lo, there! But the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

After their acoustic version of the Well and the Lighthouse in the basement of the Ukranian Federation, the band made their way back upstairs to do one of their mid-crowd versions of “Wake Up”. Most of the people that had made it down to the basement were now trapped somewhere in the middle of the staircase on the way back up. It was hard in that moment, not to identify with Lafontaine’s fox lured down by the cheese, or the hero of “the Well and the Lighthouse”….and it was that realization that made missing the final encore one of the most enjoyable and poignant moments of their shows, for me.

Of course this is all a projection of my own. But ‘I chose my crime, and now it’s mine all mine.’ I imagine anyone looking for some kind egoless journalistic impartiality here stopped reading long ago. But the real joke is on anyone who thinks they can say something about this record, about the expectation and hype and attention around this band, and not realize that we’re all implicated as soon as we open our mouths, or put letters to a page. That’s just it. We’re in this together, you know? You know, if you want to be.

PopCast #35: Lovers Pinned to the Sky in World Devastation)

2007-03-02T23:59:00.001-05:00

PopCast #35: Lovers Pinned to the Sky in World Devastation (m4a) .....

In this episode: Volume 3! X Y Lover->Forest City Lovers, Handsome Furs, Zoobombs->the Besnard Lakes

There's something warm and comforting in being blanketed by 40 centimetres of snow in a day, in early March, knowing that it's just a temporary skin that will be shed, before the thaw and the invetibale spring. So much musical activity bubbling that it was time Vol. 3 of the PopCast kicked into gear to address this weekend's bounty, and get the ball rolling again. Much to be done before Pop Montreal 2007, it starts now, as always.

Pop My Cast - Lickety Split meets the PopCast (for adults...and a launch party)

2007-02-23T07:39:00.002-05:00

Pop My Cast: Lickety Split Zine #4 (aural companion) with Andrew Rose, Amber Goodwyn, and boys and girls of all kinds. (m4a)

Naked in a bubble over the city with Trancelvania, Lil Pip, party plans, Flames!, Begging the Question with Love in Ruins, Annie Sprinkle, a new love song by Miracle Fortress, and tons of orgasms.

Though I'm sure Ghostface has technically rendered podcasts I have done in the past explicit, this is the first that should probably carry the explicit tag explicitly. That said, it's about time the PopCast/the Mass... presented something properly profane and holy. Pansexual sex-positive Montreal smut zine Lickety Split sets the agenda here (for the first proper collaborative crossover episode of any kind), as editor Amber Goodwyn and I discuss sex, music, the launch party for number 4 of Lickety Split (tonight, Friday the 23rd at Club Lambi!), and play some music from said accompanying party. It also features numerous contributors via Amber, her radio show, and Lickety Split, and is a pretty funny, sexy, and honest document. Ultimately, for all of-age constitutions, should you wish to join us. And why not?

Resurrected, Living in a Lighthouse. Five Nights of the Arcade Fire in Montreal

2007-02-11T03:05:00.000-05:00

Whatever the Neon Bible is, the Arcade Fire certainly did their best to give us a sense of their sophomore album of this week, with a five-night stand in their home-town. With the exception of an intimate secret warm-up gig at the end of January prior to their London shows, these were first official appearances the band had made since opening for U2 in 2005, and their first headlining shows since their three-night run at the Corona theatre in April of that year .

If they were a newly minted household name then, even Heaven and Hades know them by now. They probably could have sold out the Bell Centre without U2 this time around, and these five shows at the 600-capacity Ukrainian Federation were about as sold out as you can get.

But that’s what makes this band great. It’s not just that they’ve managed to keep their feet on the ground in the wake of Funeral. It’s that they’ve managed to roll out an album and a spectacle that’s grounded but still grand. Where most bands would explode or dissolve under the pressure of this kind of spotlight, the Arcade Fire manage to reflect it back. (In some cases literally thanks to rather ingenious costuming...)

Sure, the band played from more or less the same setlist each night, running through most of the Neon Bible material and sprinkling it with versions of Haiti, Power Out, Rebellion, and the occasional Tunnels or Laika, but there was plenty of rewarding variety to be found in details of other kinds. And this is true of both their performances and the Neon Bible itself.

Take (Anti-Christ Television Blues), a song about a “good Christian man” ready to essentially sell his daughter to the masses. Forget for a moment that this may or may not be inspired by a real person, whose name I’ll omit. There’s a kind of honest sadness to it, as it’s sung in the first person, and the man ends by saying ‘Lord, am I the Anti-Christ?’ It comes off as if he really does believe himself to be a good Christian man, really does want the best for his children, and doesn’t want them working downtown for minimum wage. You can see all of America in it; a kind of otherwise honest faith gone awry. And if you paid attention, you could hear Win Butler introducing the song with a different lyrical prologue each time, even going so far as to write it out on the setlist in place of the song’s name.

And maybe that’s the moral that Neon Bible brings to the table. (And don’t tell me it doesn’t have one, when one of it’s centerpieces, The Well and the Lighthouse, is inspired by “Le Loup et Le Renard” by Jean de La Fontaine’s, whose touchstone was a moral at the end of each fable.) Dig after “the Devil is in the details” and you’ll find that it probably originates with “Le bon Dieu est dans le detail”. Little things can make a difference.

The Arcade Fire put a little girl of their own “up on that stage”, but I don’t think Win Butler is the Anti-Christ. On Wednesday night she began the show by reading La Fontaine’s fable, in French, aloud to the crowd. Last night she read it on the stage in the venue’s basement (candles and all), where the band had snuck to finish their encore for those lucky or cunning enough to make it down behind them. (You can also find her in the lyrics section of neonbible.com ). It was details like this—like the acoustic Wake Up opener on Friday night, in the middle of the crowd—that made the shows special. And if the biggest band in the world can turn the spectacle of their performance on its head…hey, maybe America can lift its faith up out that well of desire and fear…

PopCast #31.5: The Same Castle (Best of 2006 pt 2)

2007-02-02T10:06:00.001-05:00

PopCast# 31: The Same Castle (celebrating the rest of 2006 now, because we can)

Vetiver, TV on the Radio, Man Man, Kelley Stoltz, Final Fantasy, Joanna Newsom, Sunset Rubdown.

Wherein Fate has a way of setting history ablaze; learns how to speak a defeated language; the sun comes through and concerns itself with the invisible, appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering waves take, and buries it's head in the side of the world when the day is done.

Neon Bible is opened in a church basement

2007-01-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Or plugged in, I guess. Friday night the Arcade Fire debuted a chunk of material from the forthcoming Neon Bible at Canterbury High School in Ottawa, (the alma mater of band member Richard Parry). But it wasn't until Saturday that the big fluorescent bible itself hung above the band as they belted out new songs--this time in the basement of the big Polish Catholic church that hovers over Mile End in Montreal.

Originally planned for Thursday night, the Montreal show was packed with about 400 friends and folks from the neighbourhood (including the perogie guy!), with the band running through 12 songs. They were:

Black Mirror, Keep the Car Running, No Cars Go, Black Wave/Bad Vibrations, My Body Is a Cage, Ocean of Noise->Rebellion, Intervention, Joe Simpson, The Well & the Lighthouse, encore: Haiti, Power Out.

The room felt surreal at times, it having been so long since the band had graced any nearby stages (save of course Thursday's high-school only affair), with no one quite knowing how to react, wondering if it was real. It seemed almost like Funeral could have never happened; that they were another local band hoping that this might be the show to take them to that next level. It's not easy to come back from the dead...from Hades (one would assume that's where they've been, right?) Everyone expects you to have brought something back with you. Isn't that the question on everyone's lips? Just how will this band follow-up one of the most well-received debuts, um, ever?

Well yes and no. In some ways, it just seemed nice to have them back. Old live staples in the set were sparse but of course welcome, and "No Cars Go" (which I'm asuming was entirely re-recorded for Neon Bible) definitely had a handful of interesting tweaks. No one would have complained had they come out and played a short set of crowd-pleasers and one or two new songs, but there's nothing I like more than seeing a band stick its neck out for new songs and new ideas (and there were plenty of both).

I'm sure there are a thousand people who can't wait to compare Neon Bible to Funeral, but I won't be one of them. Funeral was a perfect storm and everyone knows it's story by now. Tonight marks the first time I've heard any of the new songs save "Intervention" and "Black Mirror", but I can say this: Neon Bible will definitely make for lots of good reading.

"My Body is a Cage" was a beautiful slowly building piece with smart subtle lyrics and maybe my highlight of the set. The sound in the room wasn't perfect, but both "Keep the Car Running" and "The Well & the Lighthouse" (a waltz-like epic apparently based the Fontaine's fable "the Wolf and the Fox") showed plenty of potential, both as studio gems and big room triumphs. My other peak of the night was a song more than one person suggested was a Bruce Springsteen cover, but which I can't for the life of me place in his ouevre (anyone?). The band seemed to refer to it as "Joe Simpson" (Win muttered a barely audible line about 'Joseph Simpson' as it began), and while it certainly echoed the Boss in its rambling-man grandeur and lines about working 'in a building downtown', it also had lines about planes coming two by two and a little girl being a bird in a cage, singing to get her daddy a diamond ring. Maybe Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about Joe Simpson the famous mountaineer and I've never heard it, but I kind of suspect Win Butler wrote a song about Jessica Simpson's uber-creepy father Joe. And maybe this is your "(AntiChrist Television Blues)". Maybe I'm wrong. Either way, it was as big and beautiful and sad as any song I've heard. A working American man's anthem, in the basement of Polish catholic church in Montreal, with a big neon bible at the back of the stage...

PopCast #33: Anthems and Interventions

2007-01-12T17:17:00.001-05:00

In this episode: Welcome to 2007 (w/ Simon Angell), Thunderheist, Think About Life, brown frequencies, Arcade Fire, Johnny and the Moon, Plants and Animals.

PopCast #33: Anthems & Interventions - m4a

Oh, the year turned on me sooner than I had expected. That New Year's Eve party episode ended up being the PopCast's sign-off to 2006, but fear not, fear not, the wrap-up will be completed, if in a slightly less conventional (read: exciting) manner. So here's the first PopCast of 2007, part preview, part wrap-up, all local take-no-prisoners awesomeness. There are some great shows happening this weekend previewed herein, so don't miss 'em.

PopCast #32: 2006 Wrap-Up Part 1 - Get Up! (LOVE) m4a

2006-12-31T06:14:00.000-05:00

PopCast #32: 2006 Wrap-Up Part 1 - Get Up! (LOVE)
2006 comes roaring to a sudden hault, and with it another end-of-year three-part PopCast (LOVE POWER PEACE), highlighting some of the best releases of the past 12 months. As with the 2005 episodes, part 1 here focuses on the more dance-friendly of numbers. A soundtrack for your own little personal New Year's Eve party. There was no one in music more dance-friendly than James Brown, so this episode goes out to him, who I'm sure is busy telling everyone in the afterlife to Get Up!

In this episode: The Godfather of Soul, Ghostface Killah (is back), Fujiya & Miyagi, Peter Bjorn & John, Hot Chip, The Whitest Boy Alive, Junior Boys, The Knife, Tiga/DFA, ...the hardest working man in show business...

I'll no doubt be borrowing from this tonight at the Green Room, where I'll be playing a midnight->2 set for an intimate New Year's celebration. Cover is a meager $5. No frills, no pressure; just lovely people, and lots of drinking and dancing.

PopCast #31: Town Finishes Painting / These Are the Soul (post-Pop pt.4) m4a version

2006-12-03T02:45:00.000-05:00

Episode 31 of the PopCast would have been here yesterday, but the planet decided to smack my block with a layer of dripping ice, like God frosting a cake. But all the more fitting it arrives on a Sunday, the last of the PopMontreal 06 wrap-up episodes, 40 minutes of stuff recorded during the festival itself (save the home-made prologue, and salute to the season).

PopCast #31: Town Finishes Painting/These Are the Soul (post-Pop pt. 4) (m4a )

Appearing in this episode: Patrick Watson, Jesse Jackson, Gary Lucas, Jace Lasek, Joe Grass, Mishka Stein, Robbie Kuster, Simon Angell, 'I'm Peter Tosh' and other random guy outside the Casa del Popolo, and friends and statesmen. Montreal Oct 6th-7th, 2006.

If you like this episode, you'll want to come to Pop's holiday season shows on the 15th and 16th at the Ukranian Federation. Patrick Watson and Plants & Animals play December 15th, and a growing group of local artists will be doing a 'Save Frosty the Snowman' benefit on the 16th. More will follow about the latter, it's shaping up to be quite a lineup.

This is assuming the neighbourhood doesn't get frosted itself, again. I don't know who all these people are who think symbolically renaming streets (or provinces) is a good use of time, but I'm glad this Dion guy's central message seems to revolve around the words 'environment' and 'sustainable'. Whatever they mean.

Now that the four-part post-festival episodes are done, we'll be moving swiftly back into festival application/upcoming shows content for the Podcast. I'll also being doing some kind of year-end wrap up much like last year. The podcast is starting to tale a bit more shape seasonally (and content wise), and in the coming week the whole back catalog of episodes will be archived here and available on iTunes. So get in your applications and mp3s, and send us your show listings. We're also looking for a couple unique contributors for the website, now that the next season is underway, so get in touch if you have ideas for the future. Or the past...

PopCast #30: Three Meteors (post-Pop pt. 3) - m4a version

2006-11-14T11:36:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Joanna Newsom & Sunset Rubdown.
Part three of the post-Pop episodes.

PopCast #30: Three Meteors (post-Pop pt. 3) - m4a version

A couple epics for Episode 30. Two of this year's big highlights from Pop Montreal are featured, including Joanna Newsom, whose Ys is out today.

For the textually inclined, I've also got a new piece at Rightround about religion, America, and Ms. Newsom (among others)...

Alden Penner Reborn

2006-11-13T14:12:00.000-05:00

Don't quote me on this. For all I know this could have been a one-off event, but Alden Penner was definitely rock n' roll reborn at the Friendship Cove on Saturday. I've always been a fan of Alden's, from his days in the Unicorns to his (until now) softer intrumental solo material. And I've always made an attempt to catch him play whenever the opportunity arose, but I hadn't seen him actually sing since I last saw him with the Unicorns.

Actually, that's not true. I vaguely remember him singing the first time I saw him perform solo material post-Unicorns in April 2005. But I hadn't seen him sing the way he did on Saturday since his days in the Unicorns. And more importantly, I hadn't seen him play songs like these since, either. It was a three piece band that consisted of Brendan Reed (on drums and occasionally bass), and a girl with an accordian who also aided Alden (who played electric guitar mostly) with the various marimba/glockenspiel/vibraphone setup on stage.

It was basically everything you'd expect Alden to contribute to a second Unicorns album, had the band stayed together; pop-y rock n roll with brilliant song-structure, sometimes soft and sometimes crunchy. Vocals delivered with both sweetness and deseperation. And I swear they played 'the Clap' for about 30 seconds.

I've got no idea whether this band will be playing more shows, or whether Alden plans to record and release any of this material, but it was definitely fun to see him in that role again. Here's hoping there's more to come.

PopCast #29: LilDishPipWasher Pieta for the Apocalypse (post-Pop pt. 2) - m4a

2006-11-10T12:07:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Moments from Pop Montreal 2006. Jack Dylan's "Anti-Depressants for the Coming Apocalypse" exhibit featuring Dishwasher, the PopCast showcase featuring Lil 'Pip.

Both of these acts were supposed to be at the 'Cove tonight (see Wednesday's PopPicks ) though last I heard there was possibility of a Dishwasher cancellation. Jack Dylan is also taking his show to Toronto next week, though minus the (now purchased) Pieta.

Regardless, here's a mini episode with just a tiny offering of all the month-old tales still waiting to be told. Episode 30 should arrive by Monday, too.

PopCast #29: LilDishPipWasher Pieta for the Apocalypse (post-Pop pt. 2) - m4a

Rumsfeld resigns; the PopPicks resume!

2006-11-08T15:52:00.000-05:00

The PopPicks are a weekly offering meant to highlight some of the potentially better shows happening in Montreal from each Wednesday to Tuesday following. They're syndicated here from PopMontreal.com.

Can you hear that? That's a sea change. Shit's going down! America might yet survive! Yeah, it started sometime around Oct 5th, I'd say, around the same time Joanna Newsom was blowing everyone's minds here in Montreal with her festival highlight performance. Her own little Leaves of Grass, Ys, will be out next week, and it couldn't be better timed. Time to get behind those grandiose epics and believe again, people! The PopPicks are back!

We needed a bit of time to recover from Pop 06, but rest assured the wheels of 06-07 are comfortably in motion. Some final wrap-up episodes of the PopCast are on the way (as well as a very special IcePopCast all the way from the Iceland Airwaves Festival), but being that Bob Dylan is in town at the Bell Centre tonight, I figured what better time that to get back on the wagon. I already saw Ramblin' Jack Elliott perform Don't Think Twice this year, but I have to say, all those creepy 1986 interviews with Dylan I've been watching on YouTube lately make the Bell Centre a strangely tempting destination. But there's also a great Ontario-offering at La Sala Rossa tonight, with the Hidden Cameras headlining a bill that includes Spiral Beach and the inimitable Laura Barrett.

My pick of the week, though, goes to the loaded Friday Friendship Cove lineup. Bookend-ing the show are a couple artists that put on what I think were two of Pop Montreal's more underrated performances, namely Dishwasher, and the latest local hip hop phenom, Lil Pip. That's enough on its own, but you've also got Parenthetical Girls, Alden Penner performing with Noh Cars Go, and Mixalodian in there. So go early. It's apparently a benefit for planet earth.

There's lots of Canadian hip hop of all kinds to be had on Saturday night, from Cadence Weapon opening for the legendary Jurassic 5 at the Spectrum, to Ninja High School and Giselle # 1 at the Main Hall (along with the World Provider).

And you've got no excuse missing the Bell Orchestre and Final Fantasy show at Le National on Tuesday the 14th next week. This one's indoors, so rain or snow or shine your shivers should be of the desirable variety.

He Poos Premature Polls: I Heart Music's Hottest Bands In Canada, um, drops. (It's actually not bad)

2006-10-31T12:51:00.000-05:00

So it's basically November, which means it's ... time to get those end of year lists going? Yeah, yeah, every year we get dangerously closer to what Frank Zappa called "Death by Nostalgia", but I still think global warming is going to get us first (especially with Rona Ambrose in charge in Canada; has anyone actually heard this woman speak, she's like the worst of those obnoxious high school debaters!). Right, so, yeah, time for I Heart Music's Hottest Bands in Canada v.2006.

I weighed in this time around. It's not a bad final list, by any means. Anyone clueless about Canadian music (if they're still out there) probably has a good chance of hearing something good should they close they eyes and pick at random. It's somewhat predictable, and modestly frustrating at times (how Broken Social Scene made #6 this year is beyond me...), but it's nice to see what everyone else is thinking. Ohbijou seems to me the most glaring omission, but I'm sure they'll be on it next year (where was Helen Spitzer?). As much as I love Final Fantasy, I'll state for the record that Sunset Rubdown had my number 1 vote, and by a mile. But it's a dubious poll at best; Matt let some guy who works with Patrick Watson's record label vote...

Before You Wake Up: Iceland Airwaves with Patrick Watson and more...

2006-10-26T13:18:00.000-04:00

Back to reality. This past month hasn't felt very real. It's hard to believe that in the span of 30 days we released the Patrick Watson album, plunged into Pop Montreal, and then took off for Iceland Airwaves in Reykjavik, from whence I've just returned. Iceland in particular felt like something out of a dream, in part because it has been one for a long time.
I've known Patrick Watson since early years in high school together. I knew then he'd be doing something interesting at some point down the line (my yearbook note to him says something like "tuck in your shirt when you're famous"), but if you had told me about Airwaves even 3 years ago I probably would have wet myself. I reconnected with him sometime in 2002, right around the time he was working on Just Another Ordinary Day. A show at Cafe Sarajevo which featured the full band lineup as it stands today sold me on the band's potential and I didn't really miss many shows after that. What's funny is that I associate this period with a turning point of my own in terms of a love for music and a sense of what was possible. While I was obssessed with Radiohead like everyone else through the turn of the century, Sigur Ros's ( ) was the first post-millenial album that really resonated with me a in big way. I've always loved music, but it really blossomed into a centerpiece in my life around then. Watson's music at that time was hugely influenced by the Icelandic sound, and I was obsessed with Iceland, having met Sigur Ros and the Amina girls after a show of theirs in Boston on a tour. We spent a couple days with them and I resolved then and there to get to Iceland at some point. And I swear I fantasized about working with Patrick and the band and getting them to Iceland, as well.Do you ever have dreams that resonate in some kind of visionary way and then find yourself in a situation weeks later that evoke the imagery? Whether or not this the result of us projecting our dreams onto reality (maybe with the help of a coincidence here and there), it's hard to not feel floored when it actually happens.

Iceland Airwaves was an incredible experience. Not only did we get the band there, but between their instore at 12 Tonar, their official showcase at the National Theatre Basement, and their surprise gig on the Sunday to close the fest (even bringing up some guests from Islands), they were the toast of the event. I did a write up on the first two days of Airwaves for Rightround from Reykjavik, which is worth reading for a musical sense of the early goings of the festival. There's also a ton of pictures from the event on my Flickr. Islands and Wolf Parade were also on board for the event, which made it that much more exciting. Watson an co. have always been on the periphery on Montreal's indie scene, for better or worse, and to get to share my love of the band with two other Montreal acts I've loved for a long time was pretty special. And they both kicked ass, too, as usual.
There were signs from our first few hours in the country that things were going to get nuts. Picture this: we've just arrived after an over-night flight. The previous days was spent driving to New York and flying out, and little sleep was had on the plane. We're cracked out enough as it is, and the place feels like a different planet. So we wander into the dining room for our free breakfast, and Harrison Ford is sitting next to us. Han Solo on a stop-over to ice planet Hoth? Crazy. Apparently he flies his plane in once and while. Wouldn't you?
On no sleep we rented a car and drove out into the country side, taking advantage of one of our only opportunities to see the supposedly desolate and treeless landscape. I don't think I've ever been more astounded by a place's geography. There's a stillness to Iceland that impossible to ignore, and it's an inspiring one. But there's also these amazingly violent elements to it, the tectonic plates and the giant waterfall in particular. Calling it majestic doesn't really do it justice.

Somehow a lot of this impression translated to the music. I've seen Patrick Watson play a hundred times, and while I'm never bored at one of their shows, they really turned a corner on this trip. I really don't think there's a band in Canada right now that rivals them in a live setting, in terms of a sense of play and improvisation built around solid songs and tight execution. Sure there are amazing bands that will come out and floor you if you've never seen them before. But if you have to pick any band to see three nights running, I'd pick this one in a heartbeat.There were only two sets of music I saw at Airwaves that rivaled Watson and co. The first was an afternoon gig on Saturday at a church, where Johann Johannsson performed material from his new album IBM 1401, A User's Manual (get it), complete with string quartet. It was an off festival event, and a little out of the way (as much as anything in Reykjavik could possibly be out of the way; 'it's around the corner' became a punchline pretty quickly on this trip), but as soon as I wandered in it was apparent I was in the right place. I starting recognizing a lot of faces after this show; the festival's real music lovers tended to end up in the same place night after night. The show was all the more impressive considered Johannsson had led-up the blistering Apparat Organ Quartet set the night previous, and would go on to play a role in the experimental noise of Evil Madness later that night at the Kitchen Motors showcase.
But if it wasn't this godfather of the Icelandic music scene that rivaled Watson's performance at Airwaves, it was a group a teenaged Icelandic kids (really, they were all between 16 and 19) that seemed ready to take on the whole fucking planet. Ultra Mega Technobandið Stefán might be the best party band in the world right now. I don't think anyone else could followed up the last set that Watson played on Sunday night. They brought up Islands' Patrick Gregoire and Patrice Agbokou for their Erik Satie cover, and new Islands drummer Aaron Harris on a blistering version of "Luscious Life", and quite literally brought the house down.It was apparently this venue's last night in existence, and the venue manager proceeded to inform everyone that was the best show he had ever seen there. We were consequently all invited to help finish off the booze in the bar, but not before Ultra Mega ... ripped the place apart with their heart-pumping Sex Pistolized electro. Rumour has it that their drummer is the brains behind the music (which in a year or two could be carrying the Daft Punk torch), but it's their front man that puts them over the top. A 16 year old Icelandic Iggy Pop. Watch out for these guys. They had Patrick Watson tecnho-moshing.Now I never could have dreamt I see that.

PopCast #28: Anything Can Happen When You're Walking Down the Street (post-Pop pt.1, m4a version)

2006-10-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

Well here we are again. It's only been a week since Pop Montreal wrapped-up in terms of the actual physical geographical event, but the seeds it planted have only just begun to sprout. If haven't already done so, make sure you investigate some of the great coverage of the festival that was done this year. Prefix Mag, Chromewaves, Zoilus and Midnight Poutine all have great coverage. Even David Byrne has a few things to say about his trip up...

PopCast #28: Anything Can Happen When You're Walking Down the Street (post-Pop pt. 1) (m4a version)

What I'll be doing starting with this episode is a series of enhances podcasts meant to captures bits and pieces of the festival as I experienced it. There was no better place to start than with Jesse Jackson and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. I ran into Jesse on the steps outside the big church on Rachel where the big Gonzales organ show was going on. I had already been down to the Jack Dylan vernissage by this point and seen great sets by Miracle Fortress and Dishwasher, and heard about the warm and heartening presence of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, whom we'd meet up with...later in the evening. (Elliott, incidently, was a good friend of Jesse's father, a painter named Harry Jackson who you can probably look up in the liner notes to Freewheelin'...).

A special thanks to Emily Gan for all the amazing pictures she took of Jesse during that ride he took with us in the trunk of a packed car on the way to see Ramblin' Jack. If you're not getting the enhanced version of the podcast here, you're missing out....And yes, most of this episode was recorded via the small trunk of a car.

There's just way too much of this kind of material here to blast through it in one urgent news-of-the-moment go, so I'll be rolling them out as regularly as I can until all of a sudden Pop Montreal 07 is upon us (accepting submissions November 1st!).

Some Pop Montreal advice. Make like plants and animals...

2006-10-04T12:07:00.000-04:00

So Pop Montreal is about to begin. I'm going to try and document as much of the festival as possible, whether via podcast or blogging or whathaveyou. We'll see how that goes; I've got a ton of things I'm working on for it that will tax my time (the Meet the Mini-Me-dia panel on Thursday and PopCast showcase on Friday for one). But here's a bit of advice and the first in what I hope will a series of festival darkhorse Pop Picks. I'll syndicate these from Pop Montreal.com (which is over taxed with traffic anyway...podcast listners will be sad to hear that due to crazy bandwidth all but the most recent episodes will be taken down for a bit. Unless someone wants to host them...? Also, out-of-towners might want to check out the big Montreal profile I recently did on RightRound (just make sure you read my disclaimer column about profiling places first, if you do). Have a great Pop!

So the festival is about to start, and i'm definitely not prepared. There's no way to be prepared, of course; there's no right way or wrong way to go about anything, but still, it's hard to not feel overwhelmed by all there is to do and see. And not do and see because it's the thing you're SUPPOSED to see. But ACTUALLY do and see and experience. If there's one thing I've come to learn and love about Pop Montreal it's that it really is a playground for you to choose your own adventure and craft some amazing experiences. The centerpiece is music, yes, but the bigger ineffable picture extends into whichever creative or debacherous or educational avenue you want to pursue. if I have any advice to festival goers it's to take chances, forget about expectations and just go and have fun. I promise you'll come out the other end richer.

It's in this spirit (and the spirit of hockey pool season; go Habs...) that I'm going to try and pull out a few dark horse Pop Picks (remember those?) as the festival unfolds. It's an impossible task to complete, (and if anyone has similar picks they want to make, by all means send them), but also a fun way to convey just how much magic is going to happen in tiny (and some not so tiny) rooms all over this awesome city in the next five days. I'm actually guessing the awesomeness has already begun somewhere. At any rate, here's the first of some of my under the radar picks for squeezing goodness out of Pop 06'.

PLANTS and ANIMALS

@ Les Minots on Thursday, October 5th
starting around 12:30
(just after the Joanna Newsom show)

w/ Seattle's Yo Yo Contingency
and Pennsylvania's Peasant.

If you've heard Plants and Animals you probably already like them. Their first record from a couple years ago is one of my favourite instrumental offerings of recent years. Slick folkified... post-rock in the 90s Chicago vein, organic epic songs, but also modest and smart. Divine earth rock, if you will. Whether or not you know them you're going to like them a lot more once you hear what they've turned into. Warren Spicer is one of the best guitarists in Montreal (and if you like guitarists, make sure you see Joe Grass and Mike O'Brien as well), if not for his shredding skill (which is ample), then for his flat out soul. Plants and Animals have always had a ton of beautiful drunken soul and that's as on diplay as ever in their current incarnation. But between Spicer, the Woodman on drums, and Nicolas Basque carrying the other guitar, the trio has turned into a songwriting machine that appears to crafting something big. Warren is now singing (and spectacularly well), and the rough mixes of a few tracks from an album long in waiting indicate that shit here has really gone next level. Anyone who digs the expansive takenoprisoners crunch of Akron/Family or the acoustic thunder of Tapes n' Tapes (both playing the fest...) will smile wide at the new Plants & Animals. There's still a touch of the great Sam Prekop-like sound, and a healthy dose of the drunken 70 rock ala Dire Straights, suspenders and all. Expect the organic electricity karma levels to be very high.

PopCast #27: Men That Aren't There (m4a version)

2006-10-02T15:35:00.000-04:00

In this episode: flash and flame...new Miracle Fortress, Akron/Family, Miracle Weapon/Magic Fortress doing John Cale, Magic Weapon, Sunset Rubdown.

PopCast #27: Men That Aren't There (m4a version)

At Pop:

Miracle Fortess: Oct. 4th @ 7pm - L'Autre Gallerie & Oct. 6th @ 10pm - Les Saints
Akron/Family: Oct. 7th @ 11pm - Le National
Sunset Rubdown: Oct. 8th @ 11pm - Ukranian Federation

Missing voices, the man who wasn't there, music, music, music, thank god. Something had to give, something had to get done, and I'm glad it came out like this. Damned if I was going to sit around and not let new episodes roll out in heavy numbers with the festival basically underway in less than two days. So to quicken the pace of both the production and consumption of the PopCast (so that as many artists can make it onto episodes prior to the fest as possible) I DO NOT APPEAR on this episode. I also think it's one of the best PopCasts yet. There's still special stuff happening within, and the m4a format yields more extra goodies, so plug it into your iTunes/pod.

I'll probably pop back onto the next few episodes here and there, but they will continue to be these condensed bursts of music, either linked thematically or by event.

This one centers around Graham Van Pelt (Miracle Fortress) and Jordon Robson Cramer (of Magic Weapon and Sunset Rubdown) stuff, as promised last episode. Includes their collaborative cover of John Cale's Hanky Panky Nohow. Also features two of the most exciting acts appearing at Pop: Akron/Family and Sunset Rubdown.

PopCast #26: Don't Make Choices Based on Lies (m4a version)

2006-09-30T20:17:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Patrick Watson, Lil Pip, Vincat, Percy Farm, GVP Tupac Remix, a little Mandolin solo....

PopCast 26: Don't Make Choices Based on Lies

The festival begins in something like 4 days, there's not much time to say much of anything, but much trying to be said, all the same. Pop is happening very soon; I recommend curling up with with the program and some podcasts and getting some rest for a few days, because the only thing that will be lacking this year is sleep.....

The PopCasts keep rolling, stay tuned.

Close to Pop Paradise and more. (I am, so far, still alive)

2006-09-26T14:17:00.000-04:00

You're going to have to take the lack of content around here as an indication that there's tons going on, and not the opposite.

Secret City Records is officially launched tonight with the release party for Patrick's Watson's Close to Paradise, which dropped today in Canada. We'll be at the Lion D'Or tonight celebrating along along with Pop Montreal, who are co-presenting the show as a kind of pre-festival party. We're in Toronton at the Drake tomorrow night. Patrick Watson's official artist site is also finally up as of today. It's pretty amazing.

Pop itself is going to be as insane as ever. I'm really excited to be presenting a double-venue PopCast showcase (the first annual!) at the Main Hall and Green Room. It innocently enough with my wanting to present a handful of some of Montreal's best up-and-coming and under-exposed talent, but will the application process to Pop Montreal and the PopCast's success (and range) quickly turned into a bigger project. I'll be posting a more thorough account of the spirit behind the PopCast showcase at the revamped PopMontreal.com soon. In the meantime, mark your calendars (it's on Friday October 6th) and check out the snazzy poster by famous artist, Jack Dylan:
As if that weren't enough, I'm also hosting a panel during the Future of Music Coalition's Policy Summit (taking place in association with Pop Montreal). It's called "Meet the Mini-Me-dia", and is going to be focusing on how independent music journalism (via DIY media) is shifting the balance of power. Joining me will be an all-star cast of panelists, all of whom I'm really excited to have on board: Zoilus's Carl Wilson, cleverLazy's Helen Spitzer, Daniel Beirne from Said the Gramophone, Matt Perpetua of Fluxblog, and Vu D'Ici's Marie-Chantale Turgeon.

I expect the conversation to get interesting, and will definitely be prodding Mr. Wilson and Ms. Spitzer about the recently awarded Polaris Prize, and how it was that the Sunset Rubdown album (not even on the list of finalists) didn't win. (Or at least the Wolf Parade one...). That's on October 5th from 4:30-6pm (after the special talk by David Byrne.

PopCast #25 (Side B): Acts of God (Help Me Somebody) (m4a version)

2006-09-17T04:30:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Brian Eno & David Byrne remixed, David Byrne and the FMC, the Museum Pieces and the PopCast showcase, the Christa Min, Beirut, Special Events, Pop Levi, hi di hi di hi dee ho...

PopCast #25 (Side B): Acts of God (Help Me Somebody) (Enhanced m4a version)

Pheew, ok, it's September 16th, Side B took a little longer to come around than first expected, but episode 26 should only be a couple days away. That wraps up the two part (or three if you count the other one year anniversary episode I did at the beginning of the month) 25th episode. We're still adding content to the website, but you'll notice the schedule is up, and downloadable in pdf. If you're in Montreal you should see the paper manual lying around sometime next week.

More more more to come ... don't be scared.

PopCast #25 (Side A): What the Future Tapes Might Be (m4a)

2006-09-05T10:38:00.000-04:00

IN THIS EPISODE: Pop Montreal.com relaunched, Think About Life, Professor Murder, Plants & Animals, Krapp, Tapes n' Tapes

PopCast #25 (Side A): What the Future Tapes Might Be (enhanced)

PopMontreal.com has mostly emerged from its facelift, there's exactly one month until the festival, and episode 25 (a two parter) kicks things off for Pop 06 in earnest.

Everything at once

2006-09-02T15:54:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday afternoon and I haven't slept since Thursday night. The new Pop Montreal.com is just about ready to launch; Secret City is putting the finishing touches on some really special festival events; I'm knee deep into the special double 25th episode of the PopCast; the panel I'm organizing for the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit has come together and is shaping up to be really exciting; I've managed to clean things up a bit here and update sidebar access to recent podcasts, feeds, and music reviews; and the new Patrick Watson video for Drifters is ready. That's really what I'm posting about for the moment, enjoy.

Come by the Pop Montreal stage at Osheaga tomorrow if it's not pissing rain...

One Year Podcast Anniversary Special (enhanced m4a version)

2006-08-25T15:50:00.000-04:00

A special one year anniversary, non-Pop, Andrew Rose companion-piece to episode 25.

In this episode, Outkast, TV on the Radio, Fujiya & Miyagi, Ghostface Killah, Sy Barrett.

Andrew Rose: Year One (m4a version)

So it's been about a year since I started podcasting, and an interesting road it's been...

I was all of one episode into Dig a Pony when the mandate changed and suddenly it made more sense to be creating and producing Pop Montreal's PopCast. I figure that given the anniversary and the coinciding 25th of episode of the PopCast, that I would do something a little different. So what you've got here is something non-Pop to tide you over until the 25th episode of the PopCast. It's just little a snapshot of some amazing songs to have come along this year. Good for road trips to Montreal in the fall....

Mainly Madness. State of this union and some picks for August 23rd-29th

2006-08-23T22:56:00.000-04:00

Pop picks! Who knew?! Yeah, bear with me people, it's the crunchiest of crunch times at Pop HQ, a giant jigsaw puzzle that has everyone at various levels of eat your own hair stress.

Pop Montreal happenings for me this year will be extending further than ever. For one, the policy summit that the Future of Music Coalition is putting together should be really exciting. I'm working on a panel right now for it which should be pretty fun. I'm also pysched to go hear what David Byrne has to say. I'm going to celebrate the 25th episode of the PopCast 25 and it's one year anniversary (kinda) at the same time, starting as soon as Friday with another multi-episode thing (like I did at the end of 2005). You may have also already noticed that we've made some announcements at Pop Montreal concerning some of the lineup, which we're quite excited about. There are still finishing touches to be put on programming, and tons of logistics to sort.

For other reading I might also direct you to my column at RightRound, which is turning out to be quite fun. Externally imposed deadlines can do wonders for productivity sometimes.

We're also transferring a whole whack of shit to a brand new Pop Montreal website and database to make everything work a lot smoother and be that much more fun and interactive. Programmed bands will be given some logins, soon and all questions will be answered...eventually. Soon.

Until then go see some damn shows! Pop Picks!Chinese Stars, Think About Life and Foreign Islands rock the party at La Sala Rossa tomorrow night, the 24th of this month of August. Thank goodness it's cooled off a bit lately...

Hopefully by now you've seen our post earlier this week about the Main Madness shows going on at the good ol' Parc Des Ameriques where have Fringe Pop. Well the Main is shutting down again for a weekend party as it always does (once at the beginning of the summer to celebrate, once at the end to mourn, is that the idea?) and we're programming a bunch of stages, starting with a party Thursday that will culminate with URockaoke! Make sure you catch the Slip Friday evening. Our friends at Unpop are doing Saturday's stage, and everything gets nice and kickass country for Sunday, with performances by Lil Andy, Katie Moore and Yonder Hill, and one of my new favourite folk song writers in the freakin world, Jesse Jackson. He and Katie will be sharing the opening slots on the Ramblin' Jack Elliot bill during Pop.

It doesn't stop there. The Junior Boys will be stopping in at Sala Rossa on Friday night and will be having the Unireverse join them. They Shoot Horses Don't They make a return to Montreal as well, and will doing a Saturday thing with Telefauna at Le Divan Orange.If you're in a party mood after you might considering heading up to Zoobizarre for the fourth installment of Baile Funk. You know, so you can be sure you're ready for the Edu K show at Pop Montreal on October 7th...Lots more announcements on the way.

PopCast #24: Pump In Someone Else's Blood (enhanced m4a version)

2006-08-14T10:43:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Regina Spektor, The 1900s, Ok Jeff Ok, Davy Levkovich, Nethers.

Episode 24 (enhanced m4a version)

The sprint starts here, I think. While we're still finalizing programming, you can expect the PopCast to start focusing a little bit more on previewing artists that we'll be welcoming to the festival, and giving general updates in terms of special events, etc. Lots, lots more to come.

You'll also notice that our podcast feed is, um, feeding smoothly. Pure XMLers can use the good ol' orange button to subscribe, or you can always get us on iTunes, too, where all the back episodes are now available. Stay tuned for our September 1st site relaunch!

fake news vs. fake comedy

2006-08-09T23:22:00.000-04:00

Brian Williams has to be the smarmiest dude ever. He was on Jon Stewart last night and had mustered up the courage to say “fake news” to Jon, but slipped up the first time and said “fake comedy”, which was as beautiful a moment as you’ll find American television, at its last gasp. The irony being that the real news is only deliverable as satire of what parades and gloats as the big authority—as it's really the one feeding off scraps and exploiting them. Without any redemptive moment of vulnerability, that is storytelling, that is the root of comedy. There's nothing funnny about any of them. The major network news: fake comedy.

Fake news, on the other hand. “Single handling saving your democracy on a daily basis.”

Working the Red Eyes: Picks for August 3rd-8th

2006-08-03T11:28:00.000-04:00

I’m sprinting towards a brief holiday. We started the second round of the Pop Montreal 2006 listening sessions yesterday. Getting down to the desperate wire. Actually, we’re on time, it just feels like that at around 9pm every night after three hours of listening, when the rain and lightning starts getting all apocalyptic; welcome to the weather of the 21st century.

At any rate, here are some quick Pop picks a day late but better than never. There are two must-sees tonight. Patrick Watson (solo) and Lhasa are getting together to put on a Red Cross Middle East benefit show at the SAT, which should be interesting. The way media will be latching onto this event aside, it’s always a treat to see these two artists perform together.Also tonight is Frog Eyes’s proper make-up show for the cancelled one back in May. Both Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown did end up playing that great last minute Friendship Cove show, but let’s put it this way: as good as that show was, Sunset Rubdown’s proper make-up at Sala Rossa a couple weeks back was a monstrously big performance. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Expect a good one from Frog Eyes tonight, as well. Wolf Parade starts their August tour in Ottawa tomorrow, so hopefully Spencer Krug will get up on stage with Carey Mercer and co. tonight. Portland's the Blow are also on the bill; a two-piece act I’m surprised haven’t received more attention in the past couple years. Jona Bechtolt produces the beat-based belly of the band, but it’s Khaela Maricich’s quirky love songs and vocal deliveries that really sell the performance.

This weekend sees about a million happenings revolving around the new open source community-based boutique blog project, Indyish.com. They appear to have the Main Hall booked for two solid days, with everything from “consistent variable” art kit projects to 24 hour music video-making to a clothing swap (it’s interactive, yo), all culminating with a show on Sunday night featuring Shoot the Moon and Sara Johnston. The music videos that end up being created will also end up being featured at Film Pop, Pop Montreal’s kickass little mini film festival that’s going to fill the inexplicable shortage of film festivals in this town.If you’re not knee deep in a ball of twine at the Main Hall on Saturday night (or busy buying me a birthday drink somewhere else…) there’s also the Danielson / Oneida show at La Sala Rossa. I’m not quite sure I’ve penetrated Danielson’s 2006 Ships yet, but Oneida is worth catching on their own.

Gary Numan is also apparently at Le National on Saturday. That’s cool and everything, but not as cool as this Gary, who’s confirmed for Pop Montreal 2006.

Note for podcast listners/subscribers: we finally got our shit together and fixed up our little podcast feed so that all of the episodes to date are accessible via xml. Of course you can always download them directly off the podcast page. But if you're a Mac iTunes user you'll notice a difference when you click here. And basically you can use this button for whatever machine you like to pump your podcast feeds through:

PopCast #23: Next Chapter (m4a version)

2006-07-31T08:20:00.000-04:00

M4A version. (See popmontreal.com if you're an iTunes subscriber and still don't see the enhanced chapters)

In this episode: Enhancement. Dengue Fever, The Dandybeards, Dishwasher, Denitia Odigie, Basia Bulat.

Episode #23: Next Chapter (mp4 - enhanced)

A little late, I know. The PopCast had to go through puberty. Or something like that. One day I dream of a PopCast that's cutting edge in terms of compatibility and functionality in addition to its obvious cutting edge content status. Content will always be paramount in my books, but that doesn't mean the formatting nerds shouldn't be given a nod now and then. While there are bound to be glitches, we get one step closer to respectability in this episode with an m4a version and click-throughable chapters. iTunes and iPod users will notice a difference. Kinda. We're still resolving some actual feed issues with m4a, so if you're a subscriber on iTunes, you may still just be getting the mp3. Be bold and download the m4a directly from popmontreal.com until we sort it out, yeah?

The rest of you archaic or anti-iTunes souls (and I feel you, I do) should of course have no problem still sampling the mp3.

There's also a ton of good music. Lots more to come, and back on schedule.

Bite the Bulat: Picks for July 26th-August 2nd

2006-07-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

The town sure is sleepy right now. I don’t blame it; it’s hot, we’re approaching apocalypse (as always), and the construction workers are on holiday, so hey, why not lay low? I’ve not been on holiday, far from it (though I’m counting down the days). Pop Montreal is as busy right now as it’s been since October 2, 2005 but we’re almost through with the first round. There are some unofficial announcements lurking about in terms of the 2006 line-up, but things are coming together nicely. All of the listening sessions and the website makeover are one of the things that have been holding back episode 23 of the PopCast, but rest assured it’s coming this week. I’ll be doing a format upgrade, too, if all goes well, to make it that much more interactive.

If you missed the Sunset Rubdown show last week you’re a fool; it was one of the top five shows I’ve ever seen. If you missed the Fatlip show last week, you weren’t the only one. While it was a little bittersweet seeing Fatlip bust out the Pharcyde classics to such a small audience, I still had a blast, and refuse to believe he’s washed-up.

At any rate, don’t be a sucker this week. A newly recorded track by a very impressive up and coming local vocalist, Basia Bulat, will be appearing on the next episode of the PopCast. In the meantime you can catch her tonight with Orillia Opry opening for Vetiver at La Sala Rossa for my pick of the week.It is a quiet one, though. On Sunday the 30th you may want to bounce back and forth between Sala and Casa del Popolo; The Hold Steady and Secretly Canadian’s Catfish Haven are at the former, while JF Robitaille hits the latter in his return to Montreal.

I was looking forward to catching the Black Heart Procession when I originally saw them on the Suoni Per Il Popolo program. I suppose their tour shaped up a little differently, as they’re only now making it back to town. They’re at Sala Rossa on August 2nd. I’m not sold on their latest record, but their last show here a couple years back was solid, saw and all. I hope they bring the accordion this time.

Today's Your Day (WhatchaGoneSee?): Picks for July 19th-25th

2006-07-19T13:23:00.000-04:00

The streets may be quiet right now, but you be foolish to go on holiday this week. Why? Well no, it's not because Pop Montreal has entered it's 4 month-long busy season and I'm just jealous (though getting to spend at least one day outside this week would be nice). You've got at least two must-see shows in the next seven days amidst a bunch of other parties.

There's a big ticket tonight with Peaches partying at Metropolis with Eagles of Death Metal. I think hearing The Teaches of Peaches as the house music before Radiohead last month was enough for me (seriously, how often do you get to hear "Fuck the Pain Away" at Place des Arts?), but I'm sure tonight will be fun. Check out the new Coconutz night at Lola Lounge for the after party.

My pick of the week (and a complete no-brainer) is the Sunset Rubdown show on Thursday at La Sala Rossa with Ladyhawk. Turns out the previous show-cancellation and border troubles with Frog Eyes in May was a blessing in disguise. Not only did we get the intimate Friendship Cove performance (to-date maybe the best show of the year), but now this more official one, as well. Make sure you show up early to catch Think About Life's Graham Van Pelt as Miracle Fortress. He's doing some seriously amazing stuff.Thursday is a big party night, too. MSTRKFRT are still around, and will be performing at Les Saints (formerly Le Showcase) with the Juan Maclean doing DJ set duties. They'll be competing with some other big Toronto names for the party crowd, as What Else? (K-Os, Justin Peroff and Lil Jazz as DJs) hits the Academy Club.

The other must-see show this week is Sunday's appearance by Fatlip at the Main Hall. For those of you that don't know, Fatlip was an original member of the Pharcyde, from those golden early 90s years of jazzy and intelligent hip hop. Do yourself a favour and check out the Spike Jones documentary "What's Up Fatlip?" (which he made while filming the video of the same name). I'll wager anyone who's seen it, old school hip hop fan or no, will be at the Main Hall Sunday. No excuse for missing this one, either.If you are on holiday and wanna check something out on Monday the 24th, I'd swing by Zoobizarre for the Human Television / Final Flash show.

The One Canadians should turn away from.

2006-07-18T22:16:00.000-04:00

Did I miss the announcement about the privitization of the CBC? I tune in at 10pm tonight hoping to relax and catch a little bit of news (considering how close we are to global conflict and how typically right wing and Bush-lackey-like our Prime Minister is behaving) and instead I'm subjected to a (embrassingly blatant) Canadian Idol imitation called The One. On CBC. With the kind of mainstream formulaic talentless garbage you would expect from, say, CTV. Or any other network frantically trying to cash in on a profitable (and artistically repulsive) idea. That the CBC would air something like this is bad enough. That they would cut short and push back the news for the sake of airing it—during the G8 summit, with a very serious conflict escalating in the Middle East and a Canadian leader sticking to his guns like a Republican—is infuriating. Someone should be big time fired.

Silly Pitchfork, Think About Life aren't just for kids.

2006-07-17T09:47:00.000-04:00

Pitchfork finally got around to reviewing the Think About Life record (released on May 2nd...) today, and missed the boat entirely on what this band is about. There's no question that the debut is sonically unique and a messy offering, and can't possibly be to everyone's tastes. I won't go into details here about how the band chose to engineer (or un-engineer) the record given limited resources, if for no other than it's moot if someone doesn't get the more important point:

Think About Life are a serious band.

Though he does indicate that the band might have huge potential (they do), Rob Mitchum ends his review with this shortsighted remark: "For all I know, Think About Life's inability to remain serious may be a refreshing breath of fresh air amongst their visionary citymates, but catching a little more of their contagious pomposity would sharpen their approach." I don't know where to begin re-applying "contagious pomposity" here.

The band is getting started working on a follow-up EP to the May release, which will feature more recent songs, and even real guitar solos. There's little doubt in my mind that the newer material will be stronger. But to dismiss the first sign of what their future might be, so to speak, especially when it displays that potential so readily (whether the deliberately distorted production is to your tastes or not), is just silly.

Last night's Handsome Furs performance was phenomenal. With Spencer Krug having been so active following the Wolf Parade debut, it's been far too easy for some to dimiss Dan Boeckner as a songwriter, which is a huge mistake. Dan and his fiance Alexei Perry have taken all that's great about his songs in Wolf Parade, all the drive and soul, and put it up against some really neat beats, pedal work, and all around electronic flourishes. Dan shares an ability, like Spencer, to take old songs when they might be tired and re-work them into even grander pieces. Anyone who saw Wolf Parade on their most recent tour probably noticed that "Modern World" is in at least it's third incarnation. It's gone from a distored and cold synth (on the first self-released EP), to a melancholy acoustic number on Apologies..., to a kick drum march in the live setting. (Interestingly enough, the Handsome Furs sound is now more akin to a refined and fleshed-out take on the machine-beats from that first version of Modern World.) Some may have also heard a version of a new song of Dan's on the Wolf Parade tour called "Dumb Animals"—a drony and Springsteen-esque number that has him sing "uh-huh" in increasingly urgent moans as the song's centerpiece. It was one of my highlights of the recent two-night stand at Le National, being new and fresh. Well "Dumb Animals" has been re-worked in Handsome Furs and taken to a whole other level, as well. Faster, beats behind the moans, louder, sharper. Don't be surprised if the Handsome Furs record ends up being way better than you expected.

Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon: Recording season in Montreal...

2006-07-16T17:03:00.000-04:00

The original billing for tonight's Film Pop and Fantasia party at Club Lambi included Handsome Furs (Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner) and a DJ set by Sixtoo. (A genius poster, I know.) Have no fear, no one has been dropped from the bill. I did however run into Hadji Bakara this afternoon who proceeded to inform me that tonight's Sixtoo performance has actually blossomed into an appearance by Megazoid (if I'm recalling correctly). He proceeded to inform me that Megazoid is a collaborative live effort between himself and Sixtoo; a rather fitting match given Hadji's expertise in Wolf Parade with bleepy gadgets and sonic experimentation, and Sixtoo's all around gear fetishism and engineering skills. I'm told the performance is based around cutting, sampling and rebuilding live analog signals. Or something like that. At any rate it should prove interesting. Sixtoo, as previously reported, has been helping the band build their new studio, which is almost complete. In other words they'll be starting to record the follow-up to Apologies to the Queen Mary rather soon.

They're not the only big Montreal band currently in their own studio recording a sophmore effort. The Arcade Fire will be recording in August, as well. There's talk of a some very interesting local guests appearing on the new record. If the collaboration works out, you can expect part of the idiosyncratic appeal of Funeral to really be taken to the next level on the new release. That's all I'll say for now, other than it's probably not who you think it is.

Starting tomorrow, I'll have a column appearing every couple of weeks at San Fransisco-based RightRound. It's music column, but it will be less news and show oriented and more speculative (hopefully in the good sense).

I'm still planning on re-injecting the mass with some political diatribes, but in truth I don't know where to begin. It was so easy when the question was about domestic social politics. Now that the Western world is almost unilaterally mobilized in terms of their anti-terror rhetoric (Stephen Harper had this to say on Friday: "this war on terror will not be easy, nor will it be short, but it must be won") the exercise seems almost futile. Terrorists are not grown in a field in Afghanistan. They don't infiltrate borders by force. Young people are the only true natural resource, and in so far as they neglected, they will be corrupted—no matter what "regime" they grow up under. So in some ways the question for me is always domestic and social, and I fear our current leaders might be turning Canada into one of those houses full of wealth, and devoid of love.

You Don't Know What King We Serve, Boy: Picks for July 12th-18th

2006-07-12T15:33:00.000-04:00

I spent most of the weekend watching No Direction Home in its entirety for the second time, after reading an article about Dylan and the film in the most recent issue of The Believer (the music issue, which, by the way has a compilation CD that leads off with an unreleased version of Think About Life's "The Blue Sun"). I don't know if it made me more excited about all the good music here, or more afraid of it. I recommend watching it a second time if you haven't already. At any rate, I plan to actually venture out this week and catch some of the Devil's music in action. Starting with Flames! who are at the Green Room tonight along with Abigail Lapell and Cozmos Quazar.PopCast listener's are probably familiar with Flames!, Ali Rahman's fragile and cheeky new band. Definitely worth checking out, as I'm told tonight's show "will be good". Alternatively, you could also catch the two-song debut of Montreal's very own fabulous all-gay boy-band, Tropicana, as they appear at Thomas Von Party's new night at Lola Lounge, Coconutz. Von Party is supposedly their "manager and tour DJ".

Friday night is Lil' Andy and Karaoke Cowboy's CD launch party for Home in Landfill Acres, which is happening at La Sala Rossa. Andy may carry this town's country heart and carry it proud, but he takes care of the little things, too. Like vinyl! Lil' Andy vinyl? Sweet! Timber is supporting, should be plenty fun.

My pick of the week goes to Sunday's Handsome Furs show at Club Lambi. Wolf Parade are all back in town working on a new album, which beyond the good news that it is in itself, also means these nice associate project shows are popping up. Word is that Dan Boeckner will be backed by the rest of the band that will be playing on the Sub Pop release. And don't miss Sunset Rubdown with Ladyhawk and Miracle Fortress next week.

PopCast #22: Fabulous Concrete Castles for Breakfast

2006-07-07T10:54:00.000-04:00

In this episode: These Hands, Habitat, Benn Ross and the Fabulous Band, Forest City Lovers, Brave Radar, Lil' Andy & Karaoke Cowboy.

Episode # 22: Fabulous Concrete Castles for Breakfast

In which the first round of applications actually yield a few diamonds in the rough.

"i see people marrying snakes"

2006-07-06T00:41:00.000-04:00

otherwise it's just unatural.

at least according to Steven Colbert, who between you and me and everybody else, is one of the great newsmen in America. and America lives! beyond tragedy and tragedy plus time, along with Jon Stewart, the laughter is still there, the punchline at the root and the belly of the joke that is America, that is the west, that aspires to be Canada and also fails, that aspires nonetheless, like Whitman's hope...

is natural!

we don't know when our dna mutates to become either flaw or advantange...but know it comes and mutates none the less.

"i give you;

snakes on a plane!

i am in love with this mother fucking snake!"

Dance, jazz magic, dance.

2006-06-28T23:32:00.000-04:00

Ahh! Jazz! Yeah yeah, so I've complained in the past about the Jazz Fest stealing all of Pop Montreal's thunder what with all their indie rockers populating the big shows this year, but let me take this moment to digress and say that there's also a lot of great actual jazz going on this week in addition to all the sold out Cat Powers happening. One show that isn't sold out but should be is the Brad Mehdau Trio performance tonight at Theatre Maisonneuve. Ok, the tickets are pricey, but it doesn't get much better in terms of jazz right now. If you really want to get freaky, there's also John Zorn's Acoustic Masada happening early tomorrow night at the same spot.

And thanks There's no shortage of big ticket shows leading up to long-weekend numero deux (aka Canada day weekend). The Dears headline at Metropolis tomorrow night (whoah...) with the Besnard Lakes and Jason Collett. Time things right on Sunday the 2nd and you might be able to catch Cat Power (if you’ve got a ticket) at the Spectrum and Andrew Bird, who’s opening for the lovely Martha Wainwright at Metropolis later in the evening. Buck 65 is also on this year’s late-night series, with a midnight show on July 1st at Club Soda.

Club Lambi is busy as hell the next seven days, from the Hilotrons and Kill the Lights on Thursday to the High Hopes comedy medicinal marijuana thing on Saturday. Friday has a nifty Canadian glitchy-electronic-pop gem of a bill with Montag, Vitamins For You, and I Am Robot and Proud.

As far as I know the Seu Jorge and Elvis Costello shows on the 3rd are also sold out. As far as I can tell, Costello is doing Meters songs with Allan Toussaignt, and half of Seu Jorge’s crowd will be expecting him to do Bowie covers. Why didn’t they just combine these shows and do the score for Labyrinth or something?

PopCast #21: Ghosts and Kings vs. Saints and Rainbows

2006-06-23T03:41:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Flames! wish your children luck in the new world, The Racket deliver bite!, Oh Bijou let their robes show, Hexes an Ohs assert that you're a hologram, and Joey Cobden has new plans for an old meal.

Episode #21: Ghost and Kings vs. Saints and Rainbows

In which damnation and salvation both come with emoticons. Enthusiastically.

Sexing the Solstice: June 21st-27th

2006-06-21T12:52:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I caught a two second clip of 6 o'oclock news preview that promised footage of Madonna's SUV on the higway from the airport to the hotel. I can't compete with that. Nor can I compete with Daybreak's Brendan Kelly who stunned Montreal this morning by letting his "I just don't get the big deal" colours show. Bronstetter leaves and their entertainment guru goes rebel!!! Brendan Kelly: ear to Montreal's musical underground. I will say this, though. If you're going to freak out over middle-aged blondes, why not save yourself a few grand and go see Blondie at Metropolis on Friday?

Weird stars have aligned for the solstice. No one save Madonna (where did this ego of hers come from all of a sudden?) seems to want to compete with the longest day of the year, which means there are about a billion worthwhile shows all happening on Thursday. Incidentally, I'll be previewing a few of them on Episode 21 of the PopCast tomorrow. My first Thursday pick (and pick of the week) goes to the Oh Bijou, Kat Burns, Snailhouse show at the Green Room. It's starting nice and early, so you can probably catch this one and still move on to one of the others. A Vertical Mosaic reunites for the Vinyl Republik launch at Club Lambi, which should be pretty neat. Actually, I don't know how much of a reunion it'll be, but I do know that Flames! and Hexes & Ohs are both performing, which is close enough. Oh yeah and there's also the Streets / Lady Sovereign show at the Spectrum, and the Liars thing happening at Cabaret. You know, the usual.

Saturday has a couple cool ones as well. Mint Records' Immaculate Machine bring the Grates with them to the Main Hall, while Montreal's Montag bursts some bleeps at Zoobizzare.

Jose Gonzalez is also in town next Tuesday at Le National. Go easy on drunken Heartbeats requests, ok? And no, I don't know when the Knife are coming.

Young people take note: THAT's how you Fringe Pop

2006-06-19T17:18:00.000-04:00

Yeah yeah, so there was supposed to be a podcast today. It's coming, it's coming...But the smashing success that was the 2006 edition of Fringe Pop is as good as excuse as any for delivering the PopCast a day or two late, to which anyone who was attendance this weekend can no doubt testify. I managed to handle Friday through Sunday's shows, and there was something spectacular about each and every day. We were also blessed with the most hard-core show-goer ever to grace Montreal's streets. I don't know where she came from, but she was pushing 80 or 90 (hell she coulda been 100), she was toothless, tiny, and was more than Dan Seligman and Patrick Watson and most Think About Life dancers could handle. I'm serious, this lady danced vigorouly to every damn set! In fact, she set the tone for the entire affair, which benefitted from picture perfect weather for the entire weekend, and seemed to get better with each day.

In fact, Fringe Pop was in many ways a snapshot of a handful of Montreal bands (and a couple out-of-towners) who have all recently turned their own individual corners. BC's Paper Cranes seemed a little nervous, which was acceptable it being their first show in Montreal, and to such an out-of-the-ordinary crowd. I dig the EP, but they should probably drop whatever song that is they've got that rips off Take Me Out. Still, lots of potential there if they can come into their own sound a little more. A band firmly at home, on the other hand, were the Besnard Lakes, who sound bigger and more confident every time I see them, sound difficulties or no. You can tell they're a band that's about to sign to a very cool label, and that they're ok with this, and are ready to go out on the road and kick some ass.

Islands put on one their better shows in recent memory, with a strikingly new lineup. Chalk up the great performance to Nick Diamonds being relaxed and happy again now that there's a new drummer in place. So much of Islands's appeal has to do with Nick being enthusiastic about his music, because it shows in every note he plays, and filters down through the rest of the band. Swans was gorgeous.Pictures for the Miracle Fortress / Think About Life performances have sadly been lost, but the good news is that we used this day to start experimenting with shooting video and recording shows. We'll be fine-tuning this project up to and through the 2006 edition of the Festival proper, and will hopefully be able to deliver a whole lot more than YouTube snippets in the future. But in the meantime, how about a YouTube snippet! The following is from Miracle Fortress's all-out brilliant performance (and, no this isn't the camera or audio we used to properly record the affair). As Dan Seligman put it the following day, "Graham Van Pelt: future franchise player". The future is now! Dig it:

The Think About Life performance was equally inspirational, as they've gone from being a wacky and engaging indie/dance band of soul to being an engaging indie/dance band of soul that can win anyone over. We should have moved the chairs out of the way, but Fringe Pop's age'd inspiration eventually got things going. It was her, and about 15 18-20 year olds, and I almost cried. Martin was standing on a microwave.

Sunday's show was as perfect as it gets, from Harmony Trowbridge's challenge to Feist's throne, to Land of Talk's crowd-pleasing rock and roll afternooner (damn, they sold those EPs quickly, huh?), to the couldn't-have-been-better-scripted Patrick Watson set that finally saw La Capitaine actually on stage for most of the performance. (Having Bell Orchestre's Stef Schneider join Robbie Kuster on drums during 'Luscious Life' was pretty amazing, too). The love was going around. Ladies like Patrick Watson, especially old ones with no teeth that love to dance. Ok, so it was a bit distracting during the 'Drifters' finale, but having him croon 'Slip Into Your Skin' with her in his arms the whole time was something rather special. Even if it was kind of dirty when you consider the song's subject matter ... but hey, man, Fringe Pop. That's what it's about.
Tons more pictures on the Pop Montreal Flickr page, and more YouTube coming, as well...

Flaming Lips added to Fringe Pop bill! June 14th-20th

2006-06-14T16:50:00.000-04:00

Pop picking is a no brainer this week, with Fringe Pop praying for sun and shows starting back up again starting Thursday. As always, you can check the Fringe Pop Page for details. What the page won't tell you, though, is that Islands have been added to Friday's already packed bill. This will also be the first time the band plays without the departing Jaime Tambeur. So keep an eye out for a new drummer, and at least one another addition... Try on 5:30,6:30, 7:30, and bam, 8:30, as the new set start times. It's all free (except, sadly, for the beer).

Suoni is still running strong for another week, and Constellation's current touchstone, A Silver Mount Zion, plays Sala Rossa tonight. Someone I don't think you'll see them at the Osheaga festival, so grab your chance now. Worth noting that the show is sold out, though...You wouldn't know it from reading this column, but the Francofolies festival is also running. If you're looking for a post Fringe-Pop show on Thursday, I highly recommend checking out Emilie Simon at Club Soda, if you can find someone to foot the bill...

I've thankfully heard little about the Arctic Monkey's second swing through town. They're at the Medley with We Are Scientists on Friday, which is one of those 'something for everyone' evenings. Check it, you've also got AIDS Wolf headlining at La Sala Rossa with USAISAMONSTER, the Sainte Catherines at Le Showcase, and my personal pick for the evening, Eels at Le National, who has Smoosh starting things off. Is it just me or does that new Smoosh record sound like Phoenix (who now apparently sound like sthe Strokes, only slightly sexier...)?

If it's raining during any of the Fringe Pop set times (like Saturday and Sunday's big shows, for example), note that we'll be moving things up the block to the Academy Club. Telefauna are skipping the trouble altogether and playing there Saturday night (a free show, too). So after Think About Life, grab a slice of pizza, conceal your beer, and pop up nto the Academy Club.

Another neat event goes down early next week when Brookl--I mean, Montreal's Tam hosts her CD launch at—damn straight—Barfly. Man, I hope Thurston Moore is the special guest, 'cause I ain't braving the outdoor festival morons to see Sonic Youth...

A History of Resurrections: June 7th-13th

2006-06-07T21:36:00.000-04:00

I quite frankly don't know where to begin. Actually, scratch that. Pick of the week. Radiohead play to two crowds of less than 3000 on Saturday and Sunday night at Place Des Arts. Radiohead are still cool, right? People still like Radiohead unapologetically, right? Are they still backlashproof? The Black Keys play supporting roles, who should be a huge draw in their own right with their fuzzed out neo-blues crunch. Always stays simple, but never seems to get old. Maybe it's the devil's music.

Suoni keeps the hits coming (Man Man last Saturday night, though slightly underattended, whooped some serious ass), starting with Swedish psych-retro-rockers Dungen tonight at La Sala Rossa. Other great upcoming Suoni picks include Pink Mountaintops, who take over Sala on Friday night, and Think About Life, who will no doubt do some damage to Casa del Popolo's fragile walls on Sunday the 10th. Is this sold out, yet?

Fringe Pop has its inaugural show on the 10th as well (timed as the perfect early evening warmup before the Think About Life show, should you be so inclined...), before we pick it back up again next week. Boo Hoo and the Adam Brown get things started before the Hot Springs go on. They'll be with us in Toronto the night before for our NXNE showcase, so wish 'em luck on their speedy and rushed return. Make sure and check out the Fringe Pop page for further details.

Plenty of great non-festival fare, too, of course. Cabaret hosts a few good ones this week, starting tonight with The Spinto Band, who'll have the Lovely Feathers and PopCast originals Tokyo Police Club with them. Amy Milan and the Fembots bring a little Arts & Crafts / PaperBag love to the room on Thursday, and Scotland's the Boy Least Likely To hold down the fort there on Sunday the 11th. If you like the Boy...'s record but wonder if they're a bit too twee to swallow live, fear not. In show they've got way bigger balls, and they know how to show them. Metaphorically, of course. Scots don't have a history of streaking, do they?

I have to admit I'm a bit curious to see bizarro teenaged yeahyeahyeahers Be Your Own Pet at Petit Campus on Thursday night, but my darkhorse for the week is the performance Shoot the Moon will be giving early at the Green Room that night supporting Faces on Film. Shoot the Moon (this will likely be the last show the band plays under that moniker) are going through some lineup changes that could prove very interesting if it means more singing and direction from lead man Dan Schachter. Watch out for whatever emerges from those ashes ....

PopCast #20: Giver (with notes)

2006-06-05T10:29:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Patrick Watson, Giselle Numba One, Balun, Caledonia, intereference...

PopCast #20: Giver

In which Pop Montreal's NXNE showcase in previewed, Secret City Records is revelealed, and Andrew risks compromising his journalistic integrity only to realize that a transparent and disclosed subjective position serves everyone that much better.

Here are some further this-blog-only details:

So I've mentioned before that I've been working on and with a new record label based here in Montreal, called Secret City Records. We've got a lot of fun stuff planned for the website, but in the meantime, you can check us out on myspace. Patrick Watson is the first band signed to the label, and we'll be releasing their record in September right before Pop Montreal.

I'll do my best to curb my enthusiasm (not one of my known strengths) in this case, but suffice it so say that I'm really excited about this album. Between Patrick as singer-songwriter / pianist / producer, and Simon Angell (guitar), Mishka Stein (bass) and Robbie Kuster (fresh off a tour as stand-in drummer for Holy Fuck) filling out the classic quartet, these guys have been one of my favourite bands for some time. You can group them in with part of the next wave of cinematic post-rock (hello, Bell Orchestre), but Patrick's Jonsi meets Buckley-esque voice, electronic sensibilities, and recent forays into Sufjan Stevens-like orchestration lately has them delivering something that's both really unique but also immediately appealing and accessible. They're also the only band I know right now that wear both Pink Floyd and Beatles influences on their sleeves with no shame, and to no fault. They're some of the best technical musicians in the city, dwelling somewhere between the indie bubble, the euro-sensible francophone scene, and the skill-and-execution above all else crowd. It comes together for a pretty amazing live show; segues and improv abound, but this ain't no jam band. If you haven't seen the band yet, come out to the Comfort Zone on June 9th in Toronto for midnight, or check them out on the 18th at Fringe Pop in Montreal.

As I mention in this episode of the PopCast, feel free to take this all with a grain of salt given my proximity to the band...but if you like music, I recommend paying attention. The record was produced in part by Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes at Breakglass Studio, but also by Jean Masicotte (who recently did that little Pierre Lapointe record), with some touches by Ninja Tune's Amon Tobin, as well. (Incidentally, Patrick will be appearing on Ninja Tune's next Cinematic Orchestra offering). It's also got great guests in the form of my two favourite female Montreal vocalists: country-sweeheart Katie Moore and Land of Talk's Liz Powell. We'll be releasing the song on this episode, "Giver", on a limited edition 7" later this summer as Secret City's first release, along with "Interference" as a B-Side (which ends the episode). There will be lotsmore fun Secret City stuff to announce in the coming weeks... and now I'll shut up.

Sounds For All the People: May 31st-June 6th

2006-05-31T11:24:00.000-04:00

No matter how demanding it might be on the ears, I have a hunch that the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival (which kicks off tomorrow and runs through until the 24th of June) is going to be rather easy on the lungs. What better way to celebrate the indoor smoking ban than with some experimental avant improv noise? Actually, like every other damn music festival in this city (Pop Montreal is sensing a little envy from the Jazz Fest given their lineup this year...), the mandate is only a rough guideline. Suoni boasts something for everyone with one of their strongest lineups ever. Between it and Pop Montreal's outdoor collaboration with the Fringe Festival (we'll have the final Fringe Pop schedule up here on Friday...), June is bursting at the sweaty seams with good shows to catch. A Silver Mount Zion, Dungen, Think About Life and Pink Mountaintops top my must see Suoni shows in the coming weeks, but make sure you check out their full program to choose your own adventure.

In the meantime there's lots to check out this week, too. Heaviest local act, Priestess, will be rocking an early show at Cafe Campus on the first evening in June. On Friday, the Unireverse headlines one of many intimate Suoni fest affairs to come at the Casa del Popolo. It's also arguably the deal of the week, with Eastern Stars, the Perfect Dancers, and Natacha's Recordings Soundsystem all also on the bill, and $6 getting you entry.

My pick of the week goes to the Wharton Tiers Ensemble show at La Sala Rossa on Saturday night. The Creeping Nobodies will be supporting and launching a CD, as well, but it's the addition of Philadelphia's Man Man to the bill that has me most excited. If you didn't catch these guys when they were in town for Pop Montreal last year, and/or haven't heard their new record, Six Demon Bag, you're in for a treat. Actually, if you go, you're probably in for a treat either way.Don't giv'r too hard on Saturday, though; Sunday night is the big rock-a-soul affair at Le National with King Khan & His Shrines, The Adam Brown, and Bloodshot Bill.

Early next week, Suoni has the perfect come-down solution with great back-to-back shows at La Sala Rossa on Monday and Tuesday. Monday night catch local instrumental giants, Torngat, with Rat Drifting Record's Drumheller. Tuesday join the Arkestra as they channel Saturn and their departed band leader, Sun Ra.

And Then There Was One

2006-05-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

In case you start hearing elsewhere about Jaime Tambeur leaving Islands, getting married, and moving to Australia, and you don't know what to make of it all, given the already cryptic manner in which former Unicorns members have presented their endeavours to the newshungry blogosphere, I'm here to tell you that yeah, it's true. Hopefully this will save a whole lot of snarky pontification from Pitchfork and the like, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe Nick Diamonds can persuade Architecture in Helsinki's frontman, Cameron Bird, to collaborate in Jaime's stead? He's making the reverse trip, and moving from Australia to Montreal. European fans should not fear too much, their tour overseas is still on, but it won't feature Jaime. A temporary replacement is already being trained in the ways of the Islands...

Shame on anyone who missed last night's Frog Eyes / Sunset Rubdown show at the Friendship Cove. Best show I've seen this year.

Snake-Eyed Epidemics: May 24th-31st

2006-05-24T13:51:00.000-04:00

We're in the middle of an epidemic. And no, I'm not talking about the widespread suicidal depression that's been going around as a result of 10 days without sun (let's pray it continues to lift, today). I'm talking about CD release shows ...

You could easily spend most of your week trucking from release function to release function, with no less than four of them going down in the next seven days. On Thursday Tony Ezzy bears his new baby with DJ Static and Scott C at the Main Hall for a sure-fire dance party. Friday night the World Provider unleash a double CD beast with Republic of Safety and Famulous at Club Lambi. Lambi hosts another release function on Saturday night, as well, with the Sunday Sinners (featured on Episode 19 of the PopCast) as the proud mommies (and dad) in this instance. Phew, had enough yet? Call Me Poupée round out the lovely motley crew with a show celebrating their Semiprini release, Western Shanghai, on Monday the 29th at La Sala Rossa.

There are plenty of non-release party shows, as well, of course. Mandatory Moustache have brought the locals series to a close (for now...), but are still programming tons of great smaller shows, including a bunch at the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival, which we'll be previewing next week. Tonight sees them bring K Records' Old Time Relijun to Zoobizarre with the American Devices and "UNGH!". I'm going to try and get to Balattou briefly tonight to finally catch There Were Valleys (also featured on the most recent PopCast). Creature and Expo 67 round out that bill. The real darkness hits on Tuesday the 30th, though, with Wolfmother and Psychic Ills conjuring all those evil rocking spritis at Le National.

The weekend boasts tons of alternatives for all tastes. Country-lovers should head to La Sala Rossa on Friday night considering this is the line-up: Little Birdie, Katie Moore, Lee Mellor & The Mudhounds, The United Steel Workers of Montreal, Li'l Andy & Karaoke Cowboy. Everyone on stage at once?

East-coast singer/songwriter extraordinaire Joel Plaskett checks into this town on Saturday at the Main Hall. My money, however, is on, wait for it .. the Frog Eyes / Sunset Rubdown show. I know, I know, snake eyes last week, right? Big payoff, though. Friendship Cove this time. Show up early....

PopCast #19: Dark Horses with Copper Wings

2006-05-22T17:49:00.000-04:00

In this episode: There Were Valleys, The Besnard Lakes, King Khan and His Shrines, Tokyo Police Club, The Sunday Sinners, Vitamins for You.

PopCast #19: Dark Horses with Copper Wings

Lots of local new releases pepper this episode, as well as a preview pf Pop Montreal's NeXT showcase at NXNE, an exploration of the Besnard Lakes (as geographical location), and the return of PopCast success story, Tokyo Police Club. And in honour of that first PopCast (on which Tokyo Police Club appeared back in September 05 with Telefauna, Man Man, and Timber, among others...) Episodes 1 and 2 are finally available again for download.

Get Wet Getting There: May 17th-22nd

2006-05-17T12:24:00.000-04:00

Apparently it's going to rain until next Monday. That's ok, though, do you know why? Ok, well, firstly because if it's inevitable, the best way to approach the situation is to treat it as "ok", otherwise you're just doing yourself a disservice. But second of all, there's plenty of reason to spend a significant number of evenings indoors this week.

It's the 10th anniversary of the MIMIs this year (who also appear to be redoing their website), and to celebrate there are events happening all year before the big gala in December. Other than Dan Webster's bizarre but strangely inspiring New Orleans style press release party a couple months back, it all gets going tonight at the Main Hall with the Alex Soria Fountain Award for Most Promising Local Songwriter. There will be performances by the Adam Brown, Land of Talk, Yonder Hill and Philippe B. I think you have to show up to vote.

Thursday night, Matt Mays and El Torpedo are at La Sala Rossa with Wintersleep. Alden Penner also headlines another St. Henri session that same night, at 189 Rose-de-Lima.

The big guns come out on the weekend. Around this time last year I was bugging our Creative Director, Dan Seligman, to make an attempt to get Australia's Architecture in Helsinki to town for Pop Montreal. Needless to say I was pysched when I found out they'd be playing the festival on a bill with Patrick Watson—and accordingly crushed when I found out their van broke down in Chicago, and that they wouldn't be making it. Well barring other catastrophic acts of God, the indie-pop orchestra will finally make it to town for a show La Sala Rossa on Friday.

Architecture in Helsinki would be my pick of the week if Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown weren't sharing a bill on Saturday night. A venue was thankfully found for this affair: a place called Centro Gallego at 4602 St-Laurent. I have no idea what kind of spot it is, but if you've been paying attention you know that anytime Spencer Krug is involved it's a do-not-miss affair. If for some reason you haven't picked up a copy of the new Sunset Rubdown record, by all means do so; it's one of the best albums I've heard in some time. Add the fact that Carey Mercer's Frog Eyes are headlining (and likely to solicit Krug's services during at least part of their set), and you've got a bill worth getting soaked for.

It's a (somewhat unfortunately) busy evening on Saturday, with Islands also returning home (and bringing Busdriver and Cadence Weapon with them) towards the end of their North American tour. They're at Le National. Shame these shows couldn't be combined ala the Toronto performance. Maybe there'll be some big late-night jam session somewhere. That's not a rumour, it's wishful thinking, but hey ...

As if that all wasn't enough, The Besnard Lakes will be doing a CD release on Sunday night at La Sala Rossa. Jace & Olga and friends (last seen singing a little Fleetwood Mac with Wolf Parade at Le National..barring rumours of private debaucherous karaoke sessions, that is...) will also be part of Pop Montreal's NeXT showcase at NXNE in June with the Hot Springs and Patrick Watson. Last year's off-NXNE show featured intimate performances by Wolf Parade and the Adam Brown, so if you're in Toronto, keep your, um, ear to the ground.

Have No Fear, Losers (Where we go from here)

2006-05-12T00:10:00.000-04:00

First of all, thank you to all those who voted for this blog in the Montreal Mirror's annual "Best of Montreal" poll. If you're visiting after having seen it listed therein, let me be the first to tell you that there's nothing to fear, that the mass is in fact obsessed and not afraid of nipple dream. You'd think the Mirror would get the Beautiful Losers reference right, considering Leonard Cohen is their Montrealer 2nd in line for sainthood (funny timing, with at least two friends telling me they've spotted him back in town...), but I'm not fretting much. Somehow I think I'd be getting more traffic from a link in Regret the Error than from the Mirror's printed local poll. Still, thanks to the Mirror and to those who voted. I'm totally going after Zeke's third place finish next year.

I'm actually going to be making an effort to give more time to this publication, and do weekly non-Montreal-centric, non-music entries, beyond the Wednesday pickings and bi-monthly podcasts that have been dominating the posts lately. All the music content will be continuing as well, of course, including some divulgences about Secret City Records, with which I'm involved, and the new Patrick Watson album. Look out for stuff in early June. Watson and his band will be one of the many awesome local artists appearing at the annual outdoor Pop Montreal-meets-the-Fringe Festival-in-a-beer-tent-on-St. Laurent event (June 12th-18th). They'll also be part of the NeXT/Pop Montreal showcase at NXNE in Toronto at the Comfort Zone on June 9th with the Besnard Lakes and the Hot Springs.

In the meantime, I've officially put the Friday nights at the Green Room to rest. Lots of thanks to all the people and DJs, bands and staff there for the fun times. I spent what seems in retrospect like a long time playing every weekend at both Korova and the Green Room, and it was time to focus on some other things. Again, fear not; I'm not laying off the DJing entirely. I will be starting to do a show+party every couple months at rotating venues to get the record-playing-in-person out of my system. And that all starts tonight at Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent at Mont-Royal) with Bob Wiseman and the Museum Pieces, as per Wednesday's PopPicks. It's only $5. I'll buy you a shot if you voted for this blog and can adequately convince me of the fact ...

Who's Got My Extra (Venue)? Picks for May 10th-16th

2006-05-10T12:41:00.000-04:00

It smells like summer. I don't know about you but I usually identify the arrival of seasons via smell. Fall has that crisp and refreshing dead-leaf crunch to it, Winter has the sharp blanketed hush, Spring is all moisture and dripping mud, and Summer has that heavy humid cut grass and blossoms thing going on. Spring was brief, summer is here.

We're being eased into it this week, thankfully. It's a bit of a slow one, show-wise, but with a few thankful gems scattered across those late sangria-soliticing afternoons.

I'm celebrating my retirement from bi-monthly DJ drudgery (ok, maybe not drudgery, but it was time to move on) with a show at Club Lambi on Friday night featuring Youth Club's Museum Pieces, and living legend Bob Wiseman. Both are featured on the latest episode of the PopCast, to which the Museum Pieces are no strangers. Their cross-border classic, Philadelphia, topped my 2005 end of year lists and still gets tons of play after countless listens. Bob Wiseman, formerly of the Hidden Cameras and Blue Rodeo (how's that for a dynamic resume?), currently hangs out with Toronto's Blocks Recording Club, and will be accompanying his projected films, videos and cartoons on accordion, guitar and casio. I'll be DJing between sets and after the show.Lambi is a busy spot lately, all the more so given El Salon's closing (please tell me someone will find a spot for the Frog Eyes / Sunset Rubdown show). Pony Up will be there on Thursday the 11th, showcasing their new sound and album, Make Love to the Judge With Your Eyes, with Bold Saber. Other El Salon spillover notables in the next 7 days include Rainer Maria (also at Lambi) on the 16th, and Heavy Trash (Jon Spencer with members of the Sadies) at the Green Room tomorrow night.

The Spectrum is also host to a couple good ones in the coming days. The Stills have a homecoming affair for their Without Feathers tour on Saturday. Make sure you're there early to catch the Royal Mountain Band rock the place. Mogwai checks in with their annual ear-buster on Monday.

Anyone have extra Radiohead tickets?

PopCast #18: Lucky Lambi

2006-05-09T12:54:00.000-04:00

In this episode: The Museum Pieces, The Fiery Furnaces, Pony Up, Bob Wiseman, Tiga.

PopCast #18: Lucky Lambi.

Homing Pidgeons and Homecoming: Picks for May 3rd-9th

2006-05-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

First off, today's PopPicks coincide with the first day of Pop Montreal's Pop Off tour. The Lovely Feathers and Duchess Says will be making nine stops between Halifax and Toronto, starting with a show in Ottawa tonight. We Are Wolves and We're Marching On will also be hopping on board for shows here and there, so make you you check out the PopOff page for details.

If you're back at the homestead tonight and not too depressed by the rain and the Habs elimination (what a difference a week makes, eh?) to go out, you can go check out the Books at La Sala Rossa with Greg Davis.

Thursday is a homecoming for Pop Montreal's very own Dan Seligman, who's been on tour with Socalled in Europe. So it's only fitting he make a little appearance in this week's picks and made a selection of his own. Sayeth Dan:

"So, I´m in Barcelona after a little over a week on the road and stops in Paris, London, Stockholm and Bourges, I find myself dropped in on one the most beautiful and inspiring cities I think I've ever been to. Things are a bit hazy right now but some special moments have included: Arthur H representing at the first Socalled show in Paris; hangin with Ufi, Feadz and the Ed Banger Crew, meeting the minister of culture in Sweden; a hot as hell, completely off the chain Socalled cosmic jam at Le Point Ephémère, which featured latin bongos and keys, a Morrocan toaster, A Balabasta Yiddisha Mama dancing and rapping, master saxophonist Julien Lourau and of course Josh and Katie Moore. Hmmm, what else, oh yeah, Vashti Bunyan at Bourges...Afu Ra who killed it...Caribou—easily the best performance of the festival ... and how can I forget an overwhelming amount of kebabs.

But back to Barcelona, it reminds me of Montreal if Montreal was 500 years older and on the Meditaranean. According to a very trust-worthy source:

It's the Montreal of Europe, capital of Catalonia, out of place in Spain, the Catalonian language is a sorta equal mix of French and Spanish, and the spiritual maniac king Arthur of the Catalonians is Dali,who could have just as easily been from Quebec with all his flamboyance and ego, Mister Barcelona that Dali, and it would have been something to see him strolling the historic quarter, the Barrio Gotico (Gothic), a perfectly continuous grim grey backdrop to emphasize a rainbow burst of a dandy human, yes, very grey the Barrio Gotico, like the old quarters of Montreal, I thought, and the air in Barcelona is full of sex, just like Montreal, a lot of wild action on: Las Ramblas, and they've even got a crazy, over-reaching architectural monument like our Olympic Stadium, which was a daring and spectacular castle in its time, a time of spectular mistakes, unfortunately, and one that had cranes hanging over it for years before they finished it, but if Barcelona ever finishes Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's LSD-trip of a cathedral, it will stand as anything but a mistake. I wonder if Guadi and Dali hungout together?

So yeah, that's where I am and if that doesn't give me enough insight into what show is worth seeing this week, you should trust me only because it's the only show I'm going too. I mean come on people it's fuckin BBQ. He's an actual real life freakin' superstar and he is a Montrealer and he represents worldwide and he's comin' home for the good vibes at Lambi. Woooohhhhoooo,,.,,"

Yeah, so BBQ are at Lambi Thursday night with Honey & Lies and the Suppressors.

There's a lot of cool stuff quietly going down on Friday night. There's a CKUT Benefit / Phonozine launch happening in St. Henri that should be pretty interesting, which includes a screening of musical dumpster-diving documentary Swallowing Shit, and a set by Dub Intefadah (Alden Penner, Nimalan Yoganathan, Jennifer Osborne). More info here.

If St. Henri jam sessions aren't your thing, The Concretes are also in town on Friday at Petit Campus touring in support of their new record. Last I heard they had nine people on stage churning out that tasty Swedish pop twang. I could be wrong about this, but there's one easy way to find out.

If you caught yesterday's post about the Think About Life and Sunset Rubdown records, you can probably gather that my pick of the week is going to the Club Lambi show on Saturday night, where Think About Life will be having a launch party for their new album. Japanther joins in the fun, too. If you've still got some energy post-show, you can always head down to the SAT for I Love Neon, where Tiga will doing a release party of his own for his non-DJ debut, Sexor.

There's fine fare on Sunday the 7th, too. Apparently the Strokes are playing CEPSUM. But why not check out Ris Paul Ric at Zoobizarre, instead?

Tuesday the 9th the Pop Off tour will be landing at home briefly for a party at Club Lambi. Dounia will have missed you, so come say hi.

Think About Sunset: Two Montreal bands drop big records

2006-05-02T23:41:00.000-04:00

If you've got a bit of a tax-break coming your way, two Montreal bands made a very strong case for your extra cash today. Think About Life released their self-titled debut, and Spencer Krug's Sunset Rubdown put forth a third release (but their first proper full length in this incarnation). So before I get to tomorrow's PopPicks, I figured I'd give a brief rundown on these two don't miss items.

Think About Life are just beginning to really come into their own, but if you've been paying attention, you know that this trio is one of the most innovative and high-octane acts in the city right now. Their debut is not for the faint of heart or the sullen; it's an entirely unique and ambitious release. The art work on this album (a team effort on the part of local poster-man/cartoonist/super-man Jack Dylan and the band's drummer, Matt Shane) features a whole bunch of basketball imagery, and I can't think of a better way to describe Think About Life than as a bunch of kickass ringers. They're the kind of band that will bring you into a song and make you really uncertain whether or not they're for real. Then before you know it they pull off some kind of crazy move out of left-field and you're on your ass and three steps behind. There are at least three party-riffs on this record that make you wonder how it's possible no one came up with them sooner. But enjoy these songs now, because they're really only getting started, and new ones are already starting to dominate their setlists. Get the record from Alien8.

If you're reading this, I'm likely preaching to converted when I say that anything Spencer Krug touches these days seems to turn to gold. The EP he put out under Sunset Rubdown earlier this year had yet to be topped in my books in terms of releases. Until this new full length. I don't quite know how people are going to react given that Sunset Rubdown is casually and easily referred to as a Wolf Parade side-project, but as far as I'm concerned, Shut Up I Am Dreaming stands up quite confidently next to Apologies to the Queen Mary. With a solid band behind him and what I assume is carte-blanche in terms of where to go with songs, this album makes an amazing case for Krug as one of the best songwriters working right now, anywhere. I said it back when I first heard the song and I'll say it again, but the title track, "Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Place Where Lovers Have Wings" is one of those instant-classic epics in the vein of "Over the Hills and Far Away" or "Station to Station". What's amazing is that there are ten tracks that precede it that are all equally flooring. There's not an ounce of bullshit or wasted space on this album, and whether with it's slightly out of tune honky-tonk shanties or wailing prog-like guitar lines, you can't help the feeling that there's something really old, haunting, brutally real, and redemptive being channelled here. Listen to the almost violent lyrics on "Us Ones in Between" and try and deny the fact that life feeds on life. And then try and hide from it when the cheerful piano and bells close it out. You can't. There's nothing hidden here. It might make some feel uncomfortable, but I promise if you let it in it feels a whole lot better. I doubt I'll hear a better album this year. You can get it from Absolutely Kosher in the U.S. and from Global Symphonic in Canada.

You can also hear tracks from both of the above records on Episode 16 of the PopCast.

Catch Think About Life at Club Lambi on May 6th, and Sunset Rubdown on May 20th at El Salon.

I hears the Habs are playing at Lambi: Picks for April 26th-May 2nd

2006-04-26T14:22:00.000-04:00

Huge act at the Bell Centre tonight, if you really want to know the must-see this week. The Habs, currently touring in support of their latest release, Carolina Hurricane Sweep, are back in town on Friday, too. There may be a few more shows in May if we're lucky.
Of course, once those shows are over (by, say, 10 pm) there's still plenty of fun to be had. For starters, the Dears aren't playing tonight at Club Lambi with Laura Barrett and JF Robitaille. Or are they? Actually, you want to know the truth? I have no fucking clue. Carefully orchestrated promotional gimmick? Ha. Sometimes it's just a question of—to take a page out of Wolf Parade's book—"not having a fucking clue what we are doing". I still don't know who the hell Myspace's Thx For the Add Claudia was. Bottom line is, there are no insiders. The center is everywhere.

Now where were we? Oh yes, well if tonight's Lambi offering isn't to your taste, you can always try the Isis show at Le National. My pick of the week, though, goes to Thursday's Friendship Cove affair. Wolf Parade's Dante DeCaro will be presenting his band Johnny & the Moon (that's Dante, Arlen and Hadji from Wolf Parade, if you're keeping score). You can hear an exclusive track from the Johnny & the Moon album on the latest episode of the PopCast. The record is a pretty engaging collection of mountain-song sing alongs that have been given interesting percussive twists with occasional bells and chains. It's traditional but contemporary, rural but urban, and a fantastic listen. Dante's currently working on releasing it himself on a new label. In addition to Johnny and the Moon, Les Angles Mort's Brendan Reed will be performing (with others, presumably...) as Noh Cars Go. A former member of the Arcade Fire, Reed certainly has some claim to the spin-off name, whether tongue-in-cheek or no. And that seems to be the trend on this night, as Graham Van Pelt also appears, not as Miracle Fortress, but as Fort Miracle. Maybe he'll be playing the songs backwards? Show up early for Matt Shane's vernissage...

You'll also want to be at the Friendship Cove on Saturday night, as We're Marching On are in town and will be playing with Pop Offers The Lovely Feathers, and a special surprise act. Don't worry, if you miss the surprise, you'll still be able to catch them the following week. Here's a hint: it's not the Dears.

Friday is a big night, and not because the Habs are in town again. The Hot Springs play Le Va et Vient, Sub Pop's Chad Van Gaalen is at Club Lambi with Holy Fuck's Brian Borcherdt, and Shoot the Moon are at the Main Hall. Take your pick.

If anyone else is in Section 121 tonight, come say hi.

PopCast #17: Condos and Killer Vegetation

2006-04-24T09:49:00.001-04:00

In this episode: Johnny and the Moon, Magic Weapon, Orillia Opry, The Yo Yo Contingency, Final Fantasy.

Episode 17: Condos and Killer Vegetation

Lots of really great new music on this episode, including a debut from Dante DeCaro's Johnny and the Moon, and cuts from the new Orillia Opry and Final Fantasy records. Lots more will be happening in the coming weeks in the Pop Montreal department. Make sure you check out the Pop Off Tour, which kicks off May 3rd in Ottawa. And keep an eye out for a review of last week's back-to-back Wolf Parade shows..

It's Always Never Ending: April 19th-25th

2006-04-19T15:36:00.000-04:00

I probably don't have to tell anyone to go see Wolf Parade tonight, who are wrapping up their spring tour with a two-night stand back home. The Besnard Lakes and Holy Fuck kick things off this evening, and Sixtoo opens on Thursday. If their opening acts are any sign as to whether Wolf Parade have their sights on the studio, consider that the Besnard Lakes's Jace Lasek played a big production role on Apologies to the Queen Mary, and that Sixtoo is working with Arlen Thompson on the new studio space in which the band will be working on their follow-up this summer.

It was about a year ago that the Arcade Fire were getting geared up for their own multiple night homecoming, and Wolf Parade were the ones in a supporting role. Incidentally, the former have also been testing out recording waters at their new church-turned-studio space outside Montreal. I haven't heard any new songs, but I hear there are some, and that they sound really good. Shocking. I certainly hope Owen Pallett will be involved on that sophmore release, and I can't imagine him not making an equally interesting contribution this time around, given what I saw on Monday—the second of two Final Fantasy shows that went down over Easter at Club Lambi. (Quoth Dounia from part 2 of her Wolf Parade / Holy Fuck travels: "only disappointing part of this whole thing is that i missed owen and his final fantasy shows. sad sad.") Wrapping up a tour with Wyrd Visions and Grizzly Bear in anticipation of his latest release, He Poos Clouds, Owen put on the most visual and dramatic performance I've ever seen him do as Final Fantasy. I'm not entirely sure who was responsible for the stencils and slides and projections, but combined with the music it was an all-out assault on the senses—a cleansing of them, even, in the spirit of William Blake.

Between the Final Fantasy show and the Patrick Watson performance at Cafe Sarajevo's swan song last Thursday (can someone get these two to work together, please?), I don't know if I can handle back-to-back Wolf Parade performances. In case you missed it, Watson put Cafe Sarajevo to rest last with one of the best sets I've ever seen him play. The two solo sets he did early in the night were plenty charming, and I've yet to see him not win over a crowd, with or without band. But something really special happened when drummer Robbie Kuster and bassist Mishka Stein showed up at about 1am after other gigs (guitarist Simon Angell was out of town). No setlist in place, they weaved in and out of a handful of new songs, including a couple that just erupted on the spot. A fitting finale for all the ghosts at Sarajevo.

If you're not beat from two Wolf Parade shows or getting ready for the NHL playoffs (go habs go), you might want to check out Tricky Woo at Petit Campus on Friday the 21st. Otherwise make sure you go see Orillia Opry's CD launch for their debut Pandion Haliaetus at La Sala Rossa on Sunday, with fellow Ships at Nighters Plants & Animals.

Deaths and Resurrection: Picks for April 12th-18th

2006-04-12T18:27:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if I haven't really sorted out whether to go to the Code Pie show at Lambi, or the Voxtrot show at La Sala Rossa tonight; the Montreal Canadiens are busy locking down their playoff spot, and well, I'm more concerned about the Buffalo Sabres right now.

I can tell you that Patrick Watson is playing a solo show at Cafe Sarajevo on Thursday. The quaint little Clark St. spot where Rufus Wainwright got started is about to be sold by its long-time owner, and the future is uncertain. Watson and his band have packed the place for special two set performances on a number of memorable occasions since Wainwright moved on to bigger things, and Patrick will be saying goodbye with an improvised solo performance on Thursday night.

If you're looking for a bouncy party instead on Thursday, you can probably expect a fun time at the Spank Rock, Delvin & Darko and Ghislain Poirier show at the Main Hall. Bounce le spank sounds pretty hot, eh?

Jajaguwar's Wilderness (ooh, that one sounds feral...) at La Sala Rossa are my pick for Friday night, but if you're crying baby-seal tears over the fact that Morrissey ain't ever coming to town again, you might want to head down the Friendship Cove for their second Bootleg Night. They'll be featuring screenings of old Smiths shows, and I'm told there will be also be Morrissey album give-aways and stuff. When did addVice get all over the 'Cove?! Oh, wait, addVice isn't doing the Morrissey record...

Have fun at the Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab For Cutie show at CEPSUM on Saturday the 15th. Might I suggest you skip it and save your breath for the other alliterative double-F of the week, Final Fantasy? Owen Pallett plays two shows at Club Lambi on the 16th and 17th, with new Warp signee Grizzly Bear, and Wyrd Vision. Final Fantasy, at Club Lambi, on Easter Sunday and Monday? You know it's gonna get resurrectional in there, right?

Think About Life's Martin Cesar (aka Dishwasher) will be at Le Divan Orange on Tuesday the 18th. There's a Toots & the Maytalls show at Spectrum that night too. Forget the Islands / Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown shows on May 20th—anyway we could get these performances combined? I'd like to see a jam session with Toots and Martin. That'd be rad.

PopCast #16: Shut Up I Am Dreaming Everybody Needs a Song

2006-04-10T10:08:00.000-04:00

In this episode: Think About Life, Sunset Rubdown, Kelley Stoltz, Flames!, and Matt Shane...

PopCast #16: Shut Up I Am Dreaming Everybody Needs a Song

Lots of big Montreal albums drop in May, and I preview of a couple of them here, among other things. Also includes a rant on the lack of "best podcast" category in the annual Best of Montreal poll. PopCast listeners are encouraged to vote for it in the "best radio show" category... (Best blog and festival are no-brainers, of course.)

Traces of Civilization: Islands - Return to the Sea Review

2006-04-08T17:04:00.000-04:00

It couldn't have been better scripted, could it? The Unicorns were all but self-professedly doomed from the beginning. Their 2003 debut, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone, is a perfect little pop musing on the mortality of bands as much as the mortality of a couple boys. Take a look at the vinyl pressing of WWCOHWWG and side one is labelled "Side Not Ready", side two "Side Ready", obviously in reference to the album's bookends, "I Don't Wanna Die" and "Ready to Die". When the Unicorns broke up at the end of 2004 it was almost too Oedipal to be true, as if the band was just the setup for turning all those Unicorns R.I.P. buttons into tragic punchlines.

But the Unicorns weren't a joke, and the breakup was no gimmick. And if anyone wants proof, for better or worse, it's on display on Return to the Sea, the debut of Nick Diamonds and J'aime Tambeur's follow-up project, Islands. At first glance, The Unicorns script spills over just as seamlessly into "Swans (Life after Death)". Consider that "Ready to Die" on WWCOHWWG opens with the line "I woke up thirsty on an island in the sea", and "Swans" (the "life after death" sub-title title itself an obvious giveaway) hears Diamonds proclaim "I woke up thirsty the day I died / and the tide was swirling / my mouth is so dry / and all I see is sea / two shining seas" ... Perhaps even more significant though is the fact that "Swans", as a song, is built out the foundations of an early Unicorns song, "Thunder and Lightning", in which the sole departed Unicorn, Alden Penner, had a significant writing role. Other moments on the album feature revisted Unicorns moments—the single "Rough Gem" being the most significant of these—but "Swans", which starts soft, and then builds and sprawls through over 9 desperate minutes, is the real exorcism of Penner's ghost. It's also one of the album's best moments.

Musically Return to the Sea is far from the self-contained package that WWCOHWWG was. There's a significant difference, for example, between the circumstances under which the album was created, and the group of musicians presently touring and writing new songs. Return to the Sea was recorded in the summer of 2005, and was very much the product of Nick and Jaime trying to create something new, and enlisting the help of some great musicians, from Montreal and otherwise. You won't see the Arcade Fire's Richard Parry and Sarah Neufeld, Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner, or Torngat's Pietro Amato performing at an Islands show, but it's hard to imagine any of them could have been passive in their roles on the album. From the musical perspective then, it's hard to take Unicorns comparisons any further, and there's not much reason to. Return to the Sea is a hodge-podge of sounds beyond the indie-pop craft, from slick jazzy ballads to Carribean jaunts and not only Graceland but also even full-on Simon & Garfunkel moments. To that extent most listeners will probably have rather drastically differing takes on the record's highs and lows.

"Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone" is definitely one of the record's bench-marks, a unique song that echoes the other post-Unicorns project Th' Cornn Gang as it moves from weighty slow jam into up-tempo MC appearances by Subtitle and Busdriver (who if you're lucky you will catch, among other possibilities, at an Islands show). My personal favourite might actually be the instrumental "Tsuxiit", ironically maybe Return the Sea's most visual (and hopeful) moment, despite it's lack of lyrics.

But lyrically and conceptually is where I think this album really shines. If musically Islands is a band in transition, lyrically Diamonds has made a seamless move from his quirky musings as a Unicorn to more mature and developed themes as an Island, as it were. There are layers to the album's sound, to be sure, and that's definitely one of the reasons I think Return to the Sea is a strong record. If you don't like a particular track, go back and listen to it again, and then again. There are interesting things happening all over. But when you're doing that make sure you pay attention to the lyrics as well. If lyrically Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone was charmingly self-indulgent and almost facetious in its deathly musings, Return to the Sea extends the mortality to everyone. This album is about all life on earth, evolution, disaster, freedom, love. "Humans" and "Volcanoes" in particular come from that rare breed of song whose imagery is able to be immersed in both the present and the classically universal. Sure you might get lost in a little labyrinth, but there's a lot of subtle, intertwined stuff in there, and the deeper you dig, the more it resonates on a gut level. How many songs do you think there are about whales on this record?

The Unicorns were, in many ways, the first of an important wave of Montreal bands to emerge with this sense of mythology and desperation built into their music. And in the wake of albums like Funeral and Apologies to the Queen Mary, Return to the Sea is a welcome check-point, a kind of calm after (before?) the storm, personal and public alike. It will be interesting to see where Diamonds and Tambeur take Islands from here. With Jim Guthrie, Patrice Agbokou, Patrick Gregoire and Alex and Sebastian Chow now full-time members, the new challenge will be moving past the original Islands material and turning the band into something of a more cohesive unit for the follow-up effort. The foundation and the vision is obviously intact, but now it's also...free. So once you're back in the sea, Nick, where do you go?

In and Of Montreal

2006-04-07T15:55:00.000-04:00

First of all, I'm blowing some dust off my records (and polishing some shiny new ones...) and returning to the Green Room (5386 St. Laurent) tonight so we can have a party. Thomas Von Party will be joining me, and if you're in Montreal, you should come; I probably haven't seen you in a while.
And whether you're in Montreal or not, might I invite you to vote in the Montreal Mirror's annual Best of Montreal poll? Ok, ok, I know, print publications are so very archaic, right—how backwards of a blog to suggest one pay any attention ... but at least the Mirror has recently employed the services of Goldkixx's Jay Watts III to do a print column on...mp3 blogs? Ok, a little strange as well, but at least Watts can write! At any rate, there are a few nifty categories on this here ballot in which I have an entirely vain and superficial interest—two of them being "best blog" and "best festival". Might I recommend this modest publication for the former category and the not-so-modest Pop Montreal Festival (The Best Party In the World!) for the latter? I have no idea why they don't have a "best podcast" category. Feel free to protest by entering the PopCast (Episode 16 coming on Monday!) in the best radio show category, and yours truly as radio host.

Finally, Islands's Return to the Sea officially dropped this week. Keep an eye out this weekend for an in-murky-depths review...

Shame How the Rain...

2006-04-05T13:54:00.000-04:00

Well I don't know where you all were last week, but shame on those that skipped out on the Kelley Stoltz show (last week's top pop pick). About 15 people came out to see the San Fransisco songwriter and his band at Club Lambi, and about half of those were made up by the members of the Ten Commandments (who opened the show), and Wolf Parade (Stoltz's fellow Sub Pop artists). In fairness, I hadn't heard of Stoltz either until last Tuesday night during Dan Boeckner's Handsome Furs performance at the Green Room. I'm glad I did though. Not only was Stoltz's performance at Lambi one of the best things I've seen all year (keep an ear out for some samplings on the next PopCast), but every one of his recordings that I got my hands on are also stellar. Stoltz is one of those rare songwriters that can actually make happy, intelligent music and make it believable. He channels a lot of Brian Wilson's appeal but think of those Beach Boys piano melodies pumped through the Beta Band at their most convincing, with just a hint of early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd. I don't know why Sub Pop hasn't been pushing Below the Branches (released in February) more, but I recommend picking it up.

And I recommend the following picks!

I swear there are about 8 great shows happening on Saturday the 8th, so do yourself a favour and make sure you check out the full events listing for a more thorough account. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs show is the big ticket that night at Metropolis. I don't really find their new album that exciting, but good on ya if you're going to check out Blood on the Wall, who are opening. Out of Saturday's smorgasborg, though, I recommend checking out the Regina Spektor show at Cabaret. She's another one of those unique piano-playing songwriter types. Maybe less accessible than Kelley Stoltz, but oozing with original ideas, a literary sensibility and tons of charisma.

La Tulipe hosts a couple big shows in the next seven days. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Monday the 10th is sold out, but you can probably get into the Arab Strap show tonight (that's April 5th). Tonight also marks the debut of improv sextet Hhaka at Casa del Popolo. Hhaka is head up by Patrick Watson guitarist Simon Angell, for my money one of the most interesting guitarists in Montreal.

A version of this post also appears as the Pop Picks on PopMontreal.com

We've Got a Bike, We've Got a Bike! Picks for March 28th-April 4th

2006-03-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

Time to get those bicycles off the balcony, folks. Getting to shows suddenly got a hell of a lot easier with the lift in weather, and good thing, too. Any chance I can see Ray Davies at the Olympia Theatre, then Black Moth Super Rainbow at the Casa, then Katie Moore at Club Lambi, all tonight? It's logistically possible, but sure as hell wouldn't be very likely were it the dead of winter, or were I bikeless, or both. That's Ray Davies from the Kinks. That's the Kinks from Lola. Yeah, you know him, you just don't know that you do. (Unless of course you're a card carrying member of the Village Green Preservation Society, in which case you've probably already got a ticket.) For the rest of you, in terms of the British Invasion it's kind of like if Paul McCartney were here, only I don't imagine there's going to be any mention of baby seals. (Hey, anyone know when Morrissey is coming to town?)

For something smaller and less pricey though, Black Moth Super Rainbow is a great organic-electronic band from Pittsburgh (feature on episodes 5 and 13 of the PopCast) who last rolled through town during Pop Montreal '05. They'll be opening for Dreamend this evening at the Casa del Popolo. Country lovers should be at Lambi, though, with Lil Andy and Jesse Jackson and the Dead Flowers warming things up for Katie Moore.

My pick of the week is going to go to Sub Pop's Kelley Stoltz, who quietly released an excellent record called "Below the Branches" back in February. He's at Club Lambi tomorrow night, March 30th. Down the street at La Divan Orange you've also got Plants and Animals and Land of Talk riling up the local Thursday crowd. Both of these bands are prepping big things in 06, so should be a solid show down there, as well.

If you miss Land of Talk on Thursday, you can always catch them with Kickers and the Field Register at the Mouse House on Van Horne the following night. If you haven't heard by now, the Serena Maneesh show scheduled for Friday has unfortunately been cancelled. Lederhosen Lucil, however, is still hosting "A Night Aquatic" for everyone on the 31st, featuring Famulous, the Lollipop People and Dandi Wind, amongst other shenanigans I'm sure.

Doesn't seem like there are many bands risking April Fools shows, but resting up on Saturday is probably a good thing if you're planning on catching Art Brut at La Sala Rossa on Sunday the 2nd. I just saw these fellows in Austin a couple weeks ago, and while I don't quite see them as critically enduring geniuses, they do put on quite a lively and charming rock and roll experience. Go look at them!

If you're planning a more quiet (but equally charming, if somewhat less sweaty) Sunday however, I recommend checking out the Run Chico Run, Chet, Say it Stranger show down at Le Divan Orange.

The second wave of New part-time Pornographers rolls into town on early next week with Neko Case (following hot on the heels of Dan 'Destroyer' Bejar) at Club Soda on Tuesday the 4th.

For off the beaten-path folk, Alden Penner is also playing an earlyish show with Ramona Cordova and David Fenech on Tuesday, but you'll have to do a little digging to find that one ...

PopCast #15 - SXSW Edition Part 1: Anything That's Anything Becomes Nothing

2006-03-27T01:11:00.000-05:00

In this episode:

SXSW madness, VietNam, Page France, the Stills live from the eerie Myspace Bus and otherwise, Horns of Happiness, Man Man, and more more.

PopCast #15 - SXSW Edition Part 1: Anything that's Anything Becomes Nothing.

So it took me about a week to get things together and sort through the audio that I didn't manage to lose/record over/never actually record in the first place (note to self: never stop to check what you've already captured and then plug the mic back into the headphone jack...). What you've got here is therefore the PopCast partially transplanted to Austin, Texas. Incomplete and unprofessional in all its glory, but still fun. It's really meant as a companion piece to parts 1 and 2 of the text report, as well as the video episode that's on the way...

SXSW Report Part 2: Anything that's Anything becomes Nothing, and that's Everything

2006-03-22T00:34:00.000-05:00

I must have exorcised something late last Friday night when I wrote Part 1 of my SXSW report, because (with the exception of a few mishaps) my Saturday in Austin was arguably the most gratifying day of the bunch.

Let's track back to late Wednesday night. Art Brut are at the Parrish following a dark session by the Ponys, raging through their admittedly charming set (hard not to be somewhat charmed when set opener "Formed a Band" is bookended by "Enter Sandman" and "Roadrunner" teases...) and I'm only moderately interested. Some people are losing their shit, but after one or two songs I realize it's just not my thing. And that that's ok. I enjoy it, enjoy the spectacle, the comedy, the confidence. But when I compare it to musical moments in my memory that really mean something to me, well there is no comparison.

For me SXSW was, ironically, a way to get the hyper-hype of the music industry out of my system. To let it go. Because let's face it, the way people communicate and promote and hyperbolize in this world is probably the only element of it actually deserving of the hyperbole. It's out of control. It's enough to make you never want anyone to form a band ever again.

But once you realize that, there's a little bit of liberation. You can get back to what you actually care about. So I spent most of Saturday in a bar way up town near campus called The Hole in the Wall with the promise of seeing additional sets by Vietnam (my highlight to this point, scheduled for next door at Cream Vintage) and the Horns of Happiness (who I had only seen for only five excellent minutes the day before). Vietnam didn't end up playing, but the Horns of Happiness kicked off an intimate afternoon at the Hole in the Wall that culminated in the jumbled jeremiad that is, apparently, a live Man Man set. My highlight of the week.

Awesome Cool Dudes made it pretty easy for me to stay the extra hour after the Horns of Happiness (who are about as unique and charming a band as you're likely to find). The former fellows are definitely a different kind of band (think Devo meets the Harlem Globetrotters), but both suggest to me that Bloomington, Indiana (also the home of the label Secretly Canadian) is a pretty cool place.

I'll tell you one thing: the Hole in the Wall during Man Man's set on Saturday afternoon was a pretty cool place. To me there's nothing more exciting than watching a band take a step down that ladder to the deep and desperate. You can see it in their eyes when they've committed themselves to it and there's no turning back. You know because their glare demands that you give them your blessing. That's what music is to me at it's best. It's just not just a band refusing to be a big glowing head. It's the man behind the curtain turning to you and saying 'look, I'm going down here, I'm going down this road for all of us and it's a dirty one. And I need you to have my back.' That's where the interesting stuff happens.

It's why I went to see a second Page France set as well, early in the evening. Yeah, seeing Gang of Four at a rooftop party with the free tequilla later that night was fun. But it didn't do much for my soul. I had a A&R fellow ask me if I thought Page France was a Christian band, and quoted a line from a song off of their record Hello, Dear Wind: "Jesus came up from the ground so dirty, worms in his hair and his hands so sturdy". The line reminded me of all the skulls and lights and everyday objects turned instruments in the Man Man set...and about those mythological motifs of bringing gold back from the brink only to have it turn to dust in the public realm. So you leave it there, you know?

And yes, SXSW PopCast is coming. PopPicks next, and then the double-format 15th episode sometime shortly thereafter.

SXSW Report Part 1 (Text): The Price is Right, but Only for the Man Behind the Curtain

2006-03-18T06:37:00.000-05:00

So here we go. I wasn't going to start posting anything until I had it all put together when I got home, but I was inspired to start rolling out the content now in waves. Text first, then images, then sound, then moving images with sound. Keep an eye on this piece (and a cap-off) for added pictures, and for a special double-format SXSW 15th episode of the PopCast.

As far as I can tell, South By South West is an exercise in dues. It's Friday night, about 3am, and CBC Radio3 podcast host Grant Lawrence just called me to find out how the hell I managed to get home. I walked, you see. Those looking for cabs are, on occasion, shit out of luck. Sometimes you've got to walk. I think that's probably the central lesson and experience I've taken from this festival/conference/beast thus far—if you're not desperate to get to one place, you just might stumble onto something great.

On the surface and in many ways, SXSW is actually a marketing festival. Austin may be flooded with music, sure—some of it great, even— but don't for a second think that it's not also drowing in humanity at its most crass, vain and wasteful. Everything is amplified (some elements significantly so; my ears they are ringing, zee earplugs zey do nahting!). And so for every good moment there are a thousand empty ones. For every band with some soul and something to say there are a thousand people trying to get you to take their tripe (wrapped in plastic, probably) and swallow it.

This doesn't mean it's a good event or a bad event. It means it's an event, cranked to 11, and everyone is left to their own devices, their own filters, their own choices and attitudes. Islands's Nick Diamonds is passed out on my hotel room floor, the second of two consecutive and sensible early nights for him, seemingly unable to withstand the layer of bullshit that permeates so much of the industry we call music. And Nick usually likes a party. I can't say I blame him, but on the flip side, I'm not willing to indulge in the pessimism, either. Most of my life is motivated by music because I see it as one of the few alternatives to pessimism—one of those moments that lets you acknowledge that even though nothing means anything, there's a lot of freedom inherent in that predicament; that if you dig deep enough, or let go enough—or both—you can still get get to the blissful empty root of it all.

The excess, expectation, and consequent disappointment has reached almost comic proportions at times, both on a personal and public level. The taxi rides you thought you had booked, right? Imagine my surprise and frustration on having lost my documented cross-podcast discourse with Grant Lawrence (arguably Canada's most recognized and listened-to podcast host), not once, but twice! A misplaced minidisc was the culprit in the first instance, and a misplaced mic jack the second. Someone, somewhere, does not want the CBC Radio3 Podcast and the PopCast to meet. (A credit to Mr. Lawrence, though—it certainly isn't him; it seems the man will take any opportunity to make a good joke out of a failed one, even after four consecutive hours of live interviews and rapidfires. But you'll just have to take my (written) word for it for now, and Grant will have to remain the PopCast's own personal Polkaroo.)

It's like the Hot Springs playing a really great (if underattended) set on Wednesday, only to have their attention mediated by the 20 men drooling over Giselle and giving her business cards that have nothing to do with music, but everything to do with the industry.

Or how about the Stills and their reluctant stint on the Myspace bus? Shiny on the outside, full of clueless marketing companies and aspiring 'journalists' on the inside; no one in charge, no sense of procedure, no sense of anything meaningful at all (save their new record, which I think is going to surprise a lot of people...). I have to hand it to the lot of them for accepting their predicament, calling out its accomplices, and bearing it.

The funny and tragic thing about SXSW is that in bringing so many supposed 'stars' together you get to see that every big glowing head has a little meek man behind the curtain you're not supposed to pay to pay attention to.

But every once in a while, you come across an act brave enough to bill itself as the man behind the curtain in the first place; either because no one has built them a giant glowing head to ciphen money from, or because they know they'll ultimately be safer and happier that way. And that's why I'm happy I'm here. Animal Collective put on an fantastic show tonight, a stripped down and vulnerable laying of the soul on the table kind of performance that couldn't possibly have stood in greater contrast to the excessive spectacle that was St. Patrick's Day on 6th Street. I was ready to call it a night until I finally reached the Fox and the Hound (where the Flaming Lips pulled off a similar feat two nights earlier; Bohemian Rhapsody in all it's glory, anyone?), and was suddenly faced with a crowd of bright, pretty, happy faces—honest and true music lovers the lot of them.

Horns of Happiness were among that crowd, a band on Secretly Canadian I happily stumbled across and befriended earlier in the day. A real band playing an accessible afternoon set, minus crowds and expectation and full of charm and insight and honesty. And this is where I think Wayne Coyne may have been right when he asserted on Wednesay night that SXSW isn't all hype, that good things do happen tucked away in unexpected places. I've been here three days and each has yielded an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Take Baltimore's young Page France on Wednesday, or New York's Vietnam (before Montreal's We Are Wolves / Islands punch on Thursday), or Bloomington Indiana's aformentioned Horns of Happiness.

Frog Eyes stood up this afternoon and said, no, no, no, we will be not be a glowing head we will be a band, and they beat out any of the booming beats coming from any of the Pitchfork/Insound tents. Scotland's The Boy Least Likely To also (unexpectedly) impressed me last night. Dainty twee they were not, ballsy scottish rock not afraid to cry they were.

And Edmonton's Cadence Weapon may have been one of the youngest people at the big Canadian mansion party this afternoon, but damned if he doesn't walk around with his heart on his chest. He'll be joining Islands on their next tour, and fit in nicely with Subtitle and Guelph's uber talented Noah23 on "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone" Thursday night. Keep an ear out for his stint on the CBC Radio3 RapidFire. The Price is Right!

There's at least another full day left, and pictures and podcasts (audio and video versions) on the way...

Boy and Girl Matters: Weekly picks for March 8th-14th

2006-03-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

The show listings look to me like a breeze to sort through right now, not because there's a shortage of good shows (on the contrary, it's March now and that means the show quotient in the city is getting ready to triple...), but because I've got the SXSW line-up to compare it to. What's the point, really, in having every single band on the planet play a festival, not once but five times each? Ok, ok, I'm not going to complain that I have at three opportunities to catch Sweden's Dungen, but really, it's nice when your options are at least manageable. So onto the Pop Picks!

First off, if you haven't already noticed, it's currently Concordia's Art Matters week, so make sure you check out their program for everything art-related that, um, matters this week.

If you're into intelligent electronic or classical music check out the Blink Blinkblink performance tonight at the Lion D'or. I first met the mastermind behind this unique project ("reconciling contemporary classical music with dancefloor eletronica"), Ben Shemie, when I was about three years old. I have vague recollections of playing with Star Wars toys at his house, and then a huge void that basically ends with my bumping into him at a Brad Mehldau show. Obviously he's managed to stay on an interesting path; check it out.

Thursday the 9th you've got boys and you've got girls. Tam, Norway's Cleaning Women, and Ladies Luncheon light-up Club Lambi, while Demon's Claws and Sailor White featuring Motorboat (which includes a bunch of them Adam Brown boys) tear Zoobizzare apart. If you need a dose of the ladylike but really have to be at Zoobizarre, fear not: just show up early for Lederhosen Lucil's book launch.

Friday night The Captains and Boo Hoo will be at the Green Room complementing the Flights of Fancy Art Matters vernissage going on. There's a ton of vernissages happening on Friday (Friendship Cove will be hosting the Void vernissage, for example), make sure you check out at least one of them... Either way, it's an early show at the Green Room (over by 10:30), and I'll be DJing with Thomas Von Party immediately after for those interested. Le Kop Shop also hosts a big party on Friday, with Disco D in town on the decks. Finally, Cabaret has an (all too?) inoffensive indie-pop-a-thon lined up with Nada Surf and Rogue Wave performing.

Montreal's Montag is back performing and will be at Zoobizarre on Saturday the 11th doing his electro-pop thing. Meanwhile, if anyone is curious what the Warlocks are sounding like lately, you're going to have to dish out for tickets, as they're opening for the Sisters of Mercy at Metropolis.

It's a shame the Hot Chip, Cadence Weapon show is on a Tuesday (the night before some folks are boarding early planes for Texas, too—d'oh!), because this is my real pick of the week. Come to Club Lambi for the beats and rhymes, stay for the full-on party? Should be a solid send-off.

PopCast #14: The Soul's Intact (VidPopCast!)

2006-03-06T00:15:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Dishwasher at Friendship Cove (the PopCast's clumsy video debut).

So I worked myself into a bit of a corner boasting the bi-monthly PopCast, but I wanted to try and stick to my guns as much as possible. The result this week is just as much of a next step as it is a cop-out, however, as we're featuring our first little video clip. And although the moment is short (and cut-off) and the quality is shoddy, I hope you'll agree that it's full of as much soul as anything I've ever put on the PopCast. The minute or so captured here is from Dishwasher's set at the Friendship Cove this past Saturday. It was as much of a performance piece as it was a set of music; complete with projections and pre-recorded comedic interludes, Martin started simple and messy and ended in a kind of evangelical frenzy. He's a pleasure and inspiration to watch, and I think you can see it on display here.

The show at the Friendship Cove also had performances from Martin's fellow Think About Life-r, Graham Van Pelt, (showing up as Miracle Fortress as well as half of Magnus), and rousing sets from Socalled and Kali, with guest spots by Katie Moore, Giselle Numba One, and Magnus's other half, J-E Z, who hitched a ride back from Toronto and CMW. Performances and nights like this are the real foundation of the PopCast, and as we move forward with the channel—offering video, live recordings, etc.—I really hope these kinds of moments can be captured more.

If you're partial to the audio-only, fear not. I'll either have Episode 15 next week or serve it up some time on the 20th. Either way, the latter date will be a special SXSW edition of the PopCast, as I'll be down in Austin from the 15th-19th, hopefully capturing some of the action to keep things interesting and international.

In the meantime, go and ahead and get your hopes up for the Sunset Rubdown full length, Shut Up I Am Dreaming, which lands on May 2nd and is far and away the best thing I've heard this year. I doubt the (partial) title track, "Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings", will be topped in 2006 in terms of great songs. And I'm tempted to say that it stands up to epic tracks like Led Zeppelin's "Over the Hills and Far Away" and Bowie's "Station to Station" ...

Blast from all Directions: A rant and some picks for March 1st-7th

2006-03-01T11:47:00.000-05:00

Stop the presses, the musical zeitgeist has moved...again! I have to admit I almost thought it was a joke this morning when I opened the Arts section of the Globe and Mail to the lead story by Robert Everett-Green bearing the following subheading: "Plenty of raw talent plus lots of organizational smarts could soon transform Edmonton into the next Seattle or Montreal of music." A joke, not because Edmonton doesn't have a thriving music scene, but because I couldn't believe the publication was going this silly reductionist route, again. Didn't we go over this two months ago when the Globe.. proclaimed that Portland was suddenly the new Montreal? Oh, but wait, it gets better: when the wind in your hyperbole is waning, you can always just anticipate it: "People said the same thing about Seattle in the eighties. Maybe in the next few years Edmonton will get the benefit of the doubt and then some, and we'll all be wondering why we didn't see it coming."

Wouldn't it just be easier to do a regular profile on a different music scene every month, minus the reductionism and the trite, repetitive "the music scene here right now is incredible" quotes? But again, stop the presses, because the presses apparently need this kind formulaic way of presenting the news. Art-focused communities are a fascinating phenomenon in the 21st century, and it's a shame that mainstream media are continually falling short of describing them. If you want some real insight (or at least critical thinking) on the matter, I suggest you check out the recent discussion on Carl Wilson's Zoilus concerning his imagined "Torontopia". For those of you that don't know, Mr. Wilson is the other music columnist at the Globe and Mail who should be the one getting all that print space...

I was going to do some picks this week, but according to Everett-Green, apparently there's not much need: "Unlike Montreal, last year's city of indie-rock renown, Edmonton's scene is a mosaic based on no single patented sound."

What's that you say? There are other good bands in from out of town? Ok, fine.

Yeah, Metric is town at Metropolis tonight, with Islands and Holy Fuck both holding opening spots. The show is sold out, and Live it Out has sold more than three times as much as Apologies to the Queen Mary in Canada, so they probably don't need a plug here. So instead I pose the question: why has Live it Out sold more than three times as much as Apologies to the Queen Mary? That said, they've got two fantastic bands opening, and put on a solid live show themselves. I'm sure it will be everything you ever dreamed or hoped it would be. If for some reason you're left wanting more, however, I hear there's a pretty rad afterparty happening somewhere ...

Tomorrow night there's a great one-two punch happening at the Green Room / Main Hall. Toronto's Diableros are downstairs at the Green Room with Ladies and Gentleman and Uncut, touring in support of their debut release, You Can't Break the Strings in Our Olympic Hearts. Upstairs at the Main Hall, the Slip are headlining a show that will supposedly also feature Patrick Watson's Simon Angell for a brief guest spot with the band. Them's some solid musicians.

Not much doing on Friday, which is unfortunate, because Saturday the 4th is the most overbooked night I've seen for some time. Fans of the intelligent, classically inspired, and carefully executed ought not to miss Torngat at La Sala Rossa with Toronto's Laura Barrett. Then you've got Germany's the Robocop Kraus at Jupiter Room on a bill that includes Malajube side-project, Les Nonnes Flinguées, and BC's The Paper Cranes (featured on Episode 11 of the PopCast), who have just released their debut EP, Veins.

But most of all I'd like to personally challenge Robert Everett-Green to come down to the Friendship Cove on Saturday and see how far into his mouth he can get his foot while saying "single patented sound". Socalled, Miracle Fortess (and Magnus), Giselle Numba One, Dishwasher, and Kali will be serving up a serious mishmash of friendly tastyness starting early.

Tuesday March 7th is the other really busy night in town in the next seven days. Mandatory Moustache does their local series at Le Divan Orange with Shoot the Moon, Code Pie, and Hasimoto; Wolf Eyes and Whitehouse satisfy the noise-hungry at La Sala Rossa; and Lesbians on Ecstasy support Of Montreal at La Tulipe.

Who knows, maybe next week there will be more shows, and we'll all be wondering why we didn't see it coming!

Porn Collectives (They exist!): Weekly picks for February 22nd-28th

2006-02-22T19:55:00.000-05:00

A weekly set of picks for upcoming shows in Montreal, also syndicated at PopMontreal.com.

This week is capped off at either end with two highly anticipated shows, starting with tonight's Animal Collective performance. This show sold out rather quickly when it was originally set for La Sala Rossa, and since moving to the larger La Tulipe, has sold out a second (and one would imagine final) time. So if you've got a ticket, um, go.

On Thursday the 23rd show some support for a second round of Parc Ave. fire benefit shows at La Sala Rossa, this time featuring Creature and the Lovely Feathers, as well as performances by local comedy troupe Kidnapper Films.

Friday night has Shoot the Moon filling in for the ear-drum ruptured and BC-stranded Lagoons at Club Lambi, with Telefauna and DJ-duo Ivory Temple handling post-show party duties. That same night, you've also got Toronto's Truth Magazine doing their Montreal launch party at the Main Hall with Cuff the Duke, the Old Soul, and Now Yr Taken—complete with its own afterparty courtesy of local musicians turned DJs George D'Onoso III (of the Dears, whom I hear just wrapped up recording a new record) and Oliver Crowe (of the Stills, who are releasing their sophmore effort in March).

On Saturday the 25th the Main Hall sees another Toronto-Montreal collaboration, with Kill the Lights and the Hot Springs teaming up for a double rock bill.

The other big-ticket show this week is on Sunday with Belle & Sebastian and the New Pornographers at Metropolis. That's a lot of earnest joy to dish out, but I'm sure the reception will eat it up accordingly, and rightfully so. B & S's latest record is a pretty strong return to form; I hope Metropolis gets to hear some of those guitar solos.

And go check out Beaver on Monday the 27th at Barfly!

PopCast #13: Burning Chariots and Trains to Pennsylvania

2006-02-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Miracle Fortress, Lagoons, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Schooner, Bishop Allen, Man Man.

Episode #13 - Burning Chariots and Trains to Pennsylvania.

The PopCast goes bi-monthly! Ok, so no hard and fast promises here, but it's been two weeks to the day since Episode 12, and we're going to do our best to keep things going at this pace, so stay tuned.

We go south of the border for the bulk of this episode's content, and look ahead to the 2006 edition of the Festival by getting back to those Sonic Bids submissions, among other things. But our story begins with an ambitious young charioteer and some of this week's local gems...

Take Care of Your Purple Groin: Weekly pics for February 15th-21st

2006-02-15T16:14:00.000-05:00

A weekly set of picks for upcoming shows in Montreal, also syndicated at PopMontreal.com.

Is it just me or have the Olympics turned into a 'let's see who can get the worst injury first' competition? Exciting stuff, seeing people rip their ligaments and things, hmm? When was the last time you saw someone destroy their ACL playing a show? Ok, granted, I haven't been hitting the hard rock shows much these days; I should probably get out to a few more Bionic performances before I start comparing career hazards of this sort.

For those of you not glued to the carnage (and I'm assuming that's most of you) there are lots of good shows this week to test the limits of your groin ...

Your best first bet for injury is at the Theatre National on Thursday night, where gypsy punks Gogol Bordello will be doing their balkan cabaret dance party thing. Pop Montreal will also be throwing an afterparty at Club Lambi where Gogol frontman Eugene Hutz will be DJing, assumingly in purple.

If you're looking for something a little more low-key on Thursday, the Green Room has Shoot the Moon's Dan Schachter performing some solo material with the Ideal Lovers serving as backup band. Dan is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated songwriters and performers in the city, and it should be interesting to see him with a folkier backing band. Interestingly enough, Dan is also into purple.

If you're hitting up the Gogol afterparty at Club Lambi on Thursday, you you might as well stay there, because that's where the big Islands CD release party is going down on Friday night. Those of you just tuning in are encouraged to check out Episode's 4 and 11 of the PopCast. Pre-sale tickets are long gone, but there will be some available at the door. So show up by 8pm if you don't have one and want to get in.

If you're looking to injure yourself and go for the triple lutz (what the hell is a lutz, anyway?) I suggest you spend Saturday night with the Sunday Sinners, who are at Le Divan Orange with Honey & Lies. If, on the other hand, you've already pulled your groin and are looking for a nice warm compress, head down to the Friendhsip Cove, where Snailhouse is headlining.

Le Divan Orange also boasts a strong Monday-night bill, when they play host to Code Pie and Harvee on the 20th.

Do you see another colour is it red red red red red? Sunset Rubdown EP Valentine's Day Review

2006-02-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

By now most of you will have, at the very least, heard "A Day in the Graveyard Pt II", from the Sunset Rubdown EP—the latest release from Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug. It first popped up on Pop Sheep a couple weeks back and Spencer and the good folks at Global Symphonic, who released the record, were kind enough to let me play in on Episode 12 of the PopCast.

But after it arrived in the mail late last week, and having digested all 5 tracks over the weekend, I had to write something about it because—surprise surprise—it's very good. And oddly enough, I can't imagine a more fitting Valentine's Day subject.

So everyone in pairs. For now.

The five song EP is comprised of three songs, really, two of which each appear in two parts ("Three Colours", and "A Day in the Graveyard") and a third ("Jason Believes Me, You Can't Trust Your Dreams") that's left to stand on its own. You can almost capture what's so great about Spencer's music in this simple scheme. He lets ideas bounce back and forth in dichotomies and echoes, but then leaves one little element unsaid, or phrases it just a little bit differently, a little bit off-kilter, and you're drawn in completely. Break down the instrumental elements, too, and you can hear this: the EP sounds like acoustic guitars and keyboards singing loves songs back and forth, only to have the whole thing thrown off and somehow redeemed by a tambourine here and there ...

No surprise then, that "Three Colours" begins with Spencer singing:

Do you believe that you belong to something?
I can't believe that I belong to nothing.
Do you believe that you belong to someone?
I can't believe that I belong to no one.

What may come as a surprise though, is just how acoustic and classic-sounding this opening track is. When he lands in those first few vocals you could swear you were listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash or something. But there's also no mistaking that this is Spencer. I reminded here of the effect one of the newer Wolf Parade songs (a bluesy tune I refer to as "Things I Don't Know") had on me when I first heard it back in October at the Theatre Plaza. At the time I wrote:

I swear when I heard Spencer belt out "I sing you in ways / that you'll never hear…" that it sounded so good and so familiar (even though I had never heard it before) that I thought it must be some classic cover. Only when I realized it must be an original ("our new direction", Boeckner later told me) did it occur to me that sometimes those classic moments happen for the first time. And why not?

And that still stands here. My favourite track might actually be the instrumental piece and first part of "A Day in the Graveyard". As amazing as Spencer's vocals are, it's this short light piece that's really the centerpiece of the EP. By the time we get to the paired resignations of a "Day in the Graveyard Part II" ("I won't I won't blame you blame you") or worse, the appearance of "another colour; is it red?" in the Syd Barrett-like "Three Colours Pt II", the love songs are long over.

And maybe that's why so many people love Spencer's music. He paints the full picture. We need the classic setting of the stage, we need the wordless redemption at its source, and we need the chaotic crumble for the rest of it to mean anything at all.

You want a Valentine's Day present? Doesn't get better than this.

Buy it from Global Symphonic. It's $6 Canadian.

Hurlding towards Bethlehem: Grammy shame, killer cartoons, and the work of Montreal artist Jack Dylan

2006-02-09T10:05:00.000-05:00

Let's hear it for the Grammy Awards. No one should have any illusions by now that the award show is anything more than shameless spectacle and commercial ass-kiss. As long as U2 is still kicking, so too will the predictability of the planet's most pathetic Awards show. But what really impresses me is that given the opportunity to make even the most insignificant of nods to music at its most earnest and uplifting, the Grammys still opted to go the cowardly route. I'm speaking, of course, of the Arcade Fire's defeat to the White Stripes in the Best Alternative Album category. Would it have been so hard? The award presentation wasn't even part of the telecast ... The only people that should be more embarassed than the Grammy's voters and producers (I've never seen a tackier spectacle), is Coldplay's Chris Martin, seen lunging around the stage like a hobbit, with a look in his eyes like he just knows he's the second coming. News flash Mr. Martin: when you're all formulaic clones, there's no such thing as a Second Coming. The solace here is that the masses who swallow up this tripe do so because their short and lazy attention spans make them easily appeased. But it also means that as soon as your time is up in the Grammy spotlight, poof, you're gone, and no one is going to remember you or care. By contrast, I'm sure people will be listening to the Arcade Fire for a long time to come. Still, it would be nice to have some actually good music served up on the public pedestal once in a while, tacky as that pedestal is; the masses could use the nourishment.

Speaking of nourishing the masses, am I the only one that sees World War III around the corner? Go back and do some digging: the real global catastrophes always seem to triggered by the most ephemeral of acts. Does it get any better than a cartoon strip? I'd like to say that reasonable voices will prevail here, that the violence will stop , but I honestly think things are going to get worse before they get better. The fact of the matter is that the George W. Bush administration, with its reckless imperialism, made it possible for a sensitive sliver of the world's population to see an enemy in the whole of Western civilization. And with every insensitive move (in the name of Christian fundamentalism, corporate greed, or even, yes, journalistic entitlement), impressionable and vulnerable youth are sent into the arms of a violent cause. How thick is the irony? George Bush needed to create a fake enemy to further his own greedy agenda, and soon will have a real enemy on his hands as a result. Scary.

I won't be publishing any cartoons here. I do think people are getting upset for the sake of being upset about something—we all need something to project our frustrations onto, and something to feel righteous and entitled about (see my above comments about the Grammys, for example...)—but there's no point in exercising a freedom when the only purpose it serves is to incite the hatred of others. Publish a reasonable story first, get the people on your side, and laugh together over the cartoon aftewards.

If people want cartoons, I recommend they check out Montreal artist Jack Dylan, and his new website. I've been a fan of Jack's since he started doing show posters for local promoters Mandatory Moustache. Readers of this blog or PopMontreal.com will probably recognize his work, as we often put up his images when plugging shows. Here's a recent favourite of mine:

He's got a show on at Le Divan Orange this month, and is also the featured artist in this month's edition of Concordia's Void. You'll find his latest attempts at an actual comic therein, and the results are exciting. Jack has started capturing something very ineffable and yes—comic—about being a young artist/musician living in Montreal, and his stuff is well worth checking out. I'm trying to get him to get an online graphic novel going. If the world doesn't end first, that is...

Alternatives to Alternative: Weekly Picks for February 8th-14th

2006-02-08T16:19:00.000-05:00

A weekly set of picks for upcoming shows in Montreal, also syndicated at PopMontreal.com.

Well, it's Wednesday February 8th, which means not only is it time for this week Pop Picks, but it's also time for the Grammys to make their picks, as well. Yes, if you're struggling band or freezing fan heading out to a show this week, keep in mind that it could always be worse; you could be in California being fed through the spin-machine as an afterthought to Mariah Carey's brilliant comeback this year. That said, I wish the Arcade Fire the best of luck tonight, and look forward to a time when the term "alternative" is replaced in the commercial industry lexicon by "actually good".

Speaking of good: Montreal's Boo Hoo (recently featured on Episode 12 of the PopCast) play their third ever show tonight at the Casa del Popolo. There's something immediately familiar about their songs, but they still manage to surprise and impress. A promising sign for a band in such germinal stages.

Thursday the 9th is Pop Montreal's big Devin the Dude love-in sequel at Le Kop Shop. The Dude will also be joined by an arsenal of guests: Rapid Ric, Giselle Number One, Abra and X-wam, DJ’s Dave 1 and Jaime Tambeur. Basically Houston and Montreal will be having crunked hip hop indie sex all night, with Peer Pressure doing after party duties, as well.

On Friday, if you're not coming out to the Green Room for my return to the DJ booth (yes, there's an actual booth now!), Electric Six are at Petit Campus. I don't think Jack White will be there, though. Medium voltage? One way to find out, I guess...

Make sure you head out to Entreprise (5403B St. Laurent) early on Saturday the 11th, Adam and Alden will be performing at a fundraiser for the People's Potato. Music starts at 8:30. You can check out some of Alden's recent work over at Said the Gramophone. If you're still hungry later that evening, the rest of the night is made for is apparently for lovers, with Pony Up! headlining at the Main Hall along with Spiral Beach and Telefauna, and the LABProjects series boasting an impressive lineup of couples for their monthly improv set at O Patro Vys: Jace Lasek & Olga Goreas (Besnard Lakes), Robbie Kuster (Patrick Watson band) & Elizabeth Powell (Land of Talk), Simon Angell (Patrick Watson band) & Sarah Pagé (Hhaka), and Moondata's own Ryhna Thompson and Vid Cousins.

The MIMI's 2005 Rising Star award winners, Malajube, play La Tulipe on Valentine's Day in support of their new album. If for some reason you can't get tickets, have no fear; they're at the CEPSUM on the Friday following, too.

Speaking of, the MIMI's 2005 Rising Star runners up, Wolf Parade, will be at Le National on April 19th with Holy Fuck. Better get those tickets now.

PopCast #12: Graveyard Dedications

2006-02-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Magic Weapon, Sunset Rubdown, Boo Hoo, Dishwasher, Devin the Dude.

Episode #12: Graveyard Dedications

And so the first even dozen of PopCasts is fittingly rounded out by four Montreal artists and Houston's Devin the Dude. I've taken the time to do a dedication for each song featured, partly to recognize that fickle older sibling of the podcast—the mp3 blog (which you'll notice, thanks to Jay Watts III, PopMontreal.com has now added to its list of functions)—but mostly for novelty's sake. Still, there's plenty that's novel in a lot of these tracks, and all are worth checking out as the late Winter show season moves into high gear (that was fast, hmm?). Enjoy.

Green Room in good hands tonight

2006-02-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have been wondering: "Where is Andrew Rose?" Some of you may not have been wondering this, and if that's the case, there are no hard feelings; I probably have not been wondering where you've been, either. If you're of the former, however, you're possibly accustomed to seeing me DJ at the Green Room most Fridays. Well I wasn't there last week, and a last minute decision has me sitting out this week, as well. Fear not, however. I'll be back next week, and if you haven't noticed, we've been mixing up the lineup lately and generally making things that much more awesome. What the hell is going on? The Pop Montreal blog has dated entries and RSS feeds, and the Green Room has an actual DJ booth?!

Yeah, so I'm a bit under the weather, and I really don't feel much like prolonging my illness. But Pop Montreal comrades Jay Watts III and Guillaume de Couflet Le Second [aka Ivory Temple] have you covered.

Stay out the rain, but don't keep too dry; we'll party next week, I promise.

A Kilo is a Thousand Grams: Weekly (guest!) picks for February 1st-7th

2006-02-01T18:58:00.000-05:00

So it's with great pleasure (and some trepidation) that I'm able to have my first guest blogger bring you this week's Pop Picks. Lots of stuff to check out this week, and much of it is up the alley of Goldkixxer and fellow Pop Montrealer, Jay Watts III. So remember, if any of these shows suck, or something about the way they are presented pisses you off, blame Watts. That's usually what I do, anyway. Enjoy!

In those years in the desert between The Osmonds and The Arcade Fire, there was another group of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Church connected folks in the music world... Low, spiritual heads of N. American IV drip indie rock, are in Montreal at La Sala Rossa tonight, with Michigan's alt-pop synthesists His Name is Alive and post-rockers Death Vessel. If you ain't into that, baroque-popsters Code Pie are up with Harvee and Maia Davies at Le Divan Orange. Doors at 9pm, $5, the usual.

Ok Go and controller.controller are at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire on Thursday the 2nd. Speaking of laughs, which of the post-pop-punk bands on this bill met the business ends (yessir!) of the pummeling fists of some of the Main's finest bouncers the last time they graced our city with their presence after a disastrous post-gig booze-up?

Okay, you're really curious, where'd all these pushing 30/advancing to 40 post-punk hipsters in Toronto pop-up from? Do they have trustfunds like some of Montreal's finest? Well, no, they have jobs. Well-paying jobs spending FACTOR bucks and pushing CanCon disasters on the eager youths of the suburbs, and with that hefty workload comes a bad conscience, ethical questions, a certain amount of discomfort. Which is where the no-waving alter-ego comes in. All-night sweaty dance parties, photocopied cutnpaste posters and semiotic diatribes set to scronky 45 second long songs can go a long way in filling the emptiness of a soul (believe me, I know)... We Are Wolves seem, thankfully, not to be cursed by such a burden, and they're all the better for it. They've been touring a lot, bringing the lupid dogma to the faithful, so let's give them a good homecoming, shall we? They're at the Sala on Saturday the 4th with Creeping Nobodies and No Dynamics.

Meanwhile, Montreal's finest sovereignist sandwich shop (Cafe Depanneur, 206 Bernard West) hosts an early triple-bill that night, the highlight being (in my mind) the Orillia Opry duo. Daniel and Emily weave beautiful folk-rock tapestry together with 60s pop sensibilities that deftly avoid the overly dour trap that so many songwriters of a more advanced age fall into.

Some background on The Juan Maclean, in case you've been hanging with the Unabomber lately: Juan McLean is a former member of neu!-wave rockers 6 Finger Satellite (who were basically my favourite band ever) who now . If you've been hustling your ass on some dance floor in the past year (and, given the amount of booze consumed in this city, it's a good bet), you've probably at least bumped it once to Give Me Every Little Thing. Tim Sweeney is a music supervisor at Rockstar Games, so even you shut-ins who've been smoking up and killing innocent bystanders on your playstation got something to jam with. He also does the fucking spectacular Beats In Space, on NYC's EVR Radio (the propaganda arm of Cornerstone Promotions?). And if you know me, you know I love Duchess Says, who're one of the most exciting and amazing bands in this country right now, natch. Will they play their 6 Finger Satellite cover? Buy your tickets, show up at the door, don't sleep on this and embarass Montreal with poor attendance. If you've been to a ILUVNEON event in the past year (you decandent disco bunny, you), you're morally obligated to show up at Club Lambi on Sunday night to catch all three of these acts.

The Lovely Feathers, indie-popsters who fuck with the usual order o' things by having a member who's, get this, not an art-school drop out, but rather a med-school dropout, will be headlining another wonderful Tuesday night in the Mandatory Moustache All-Local-Series. Masters of on-stage banter Land of Talk and Tfauna side-project Dorian Hatchet are opening. This'll be at Le Divan Orange.

If, however, you like your British bands criminally under-rated, rather than overhyped and frozen simian-styled (hello Arctic Monkeys!), Supergrass head to La Tulipe on Tuesday night. Last year's Road to Rouen showed a band in top-form - trading the sugar sweet 70s glam melodies of the previous album for a more atmospheric trip through the minor chords and studio wizardry, while still advancing that modish beat aesthetic that's served them so well.

So, all in all, that's a pretty busy week lined up - between all this, recovering from hangovers, school, work or however it is you spend your time (drinking coffee on the plateau?), you're only going to have a couple of hours to dream about how perfect the upcoming Ghostface Killah album Fishscale will be, and I have to say, from the first couple of tracks I've heard, it's going to be a monument to the post-humous supremacy of the Wu Tang.

Now if you can't get enough, you just gotta go out, and say, you have Friday night all empty, why don't you assaude those lonely thoughts and go scope a sweetheart for February 14th (it's like Xmas shopping, you're getting it done a bit late, aren't you?) at the Green Room? Your regular guide Andrew Rose and I (I can now book myself as 1/2 of IVORYTEMPLE) will be dropping all manner of pop hits, hip-hop tips and rock bits from about 10 till just past 3 in the morning. Two bloggers for the price of none, people - no cover! Was that shameless? Yes, yes, but a boy's gotta eat.

Full Disclosure: Weekly picks for January 25th-31st

2006-01-25T11:07:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it's out of a fear of the Canada Council well running dry, but all of a sudden there's a plethora of shows popping up all over town. There's no excuse to stay in this week, especially considering that's it's still, what, like 10 degrees outside?

Before we dive into this week's Pop Picks, I'm excited to announce that the PopMontreal.com is finally growing out of its akward adolescent phase and starting to look like an honest-to-goodness blog. Dated entries! Comment URLs! And don't hold your breath, but I'm told we'll be getting respective feeds for our main entries, event listings and PopCasts very soon. And speaking of the event listings from whence these pics are created, you'll notice that channel has shed some baby fat of its own. If you're a real news nut and can't be bothered to wait for this weekly Wednesday summary, feel free to check it out on a daily basis. We've been aggregating all the amazing show posters that often get made for these events, and also endeavouring to provide a little more insight in word form, as well. A dainty uninspired listings section it ain't.

But I've said enough, onto this week's picks! I should provide full disclosure here when I say that you should all catch Patrick Watson and his band at the Green Room tonight, and point out that I'm involved with a new label that will be releasing their official debut this year. Whether or not you want to trust my judgement here me based on that information up to you. The fact is I wouldn't be involved if I didn't think Patrick Watson and his band we're a really exciting act, both live and now finally on record. They just did a big recording session at Breakglass Studios, and are playing a last minute intimate show tonight to loosen up before doing a short studio session to finish the recording next week. I'll have a lot more to say about Secret City Records at a later time.
Thursday the 26th I'm going be at La Sala Rossa for a 4 act bill that includes the Ideal Lovers (featured on Episode 11 of the PopCast), and Toronto's Ghost is Dancing. The latter sound an awful lot like the Arcade Fire to me, but I figure it's worth checking to see if we are all, finally, under attack of the clones (it was bound to happen), or if they've got something unique to offer. Timber and Shoot the Moon round out the bill.
Friday is a big night in town, with The Walkmen showing up at La Tulipe. They're currently on a short tour testing out material for a new record that will be released later this year. It's an early show, so afterwards you'll easily be able to head down to the nouveau Le Kop Shop (where the Roy St. Collective used to be located) for a fundraiser to get local urban canvas painter Other down to Peru. Beyond the obivous party, there will be a live set of music by Take Five, and DJ sets by Sixtoo, Hatchmatik, and Who-See.
Exhausted yet? Saturday boasts arguably the most appealing lineup of the week, with Snail House headlining an early Sala Rossa performance that also includes locals Dorian Hatchet, There Were Valleys, and Dishwasher (aka Martin from Think About Life). Be there by 8 if you want to catch everyone's performance.
If you're not entirely wiped after the weekend, Brooklyn's Say Hi To Your Mom are at Zoobizarre on Tuesday the 31st with Bad Flirt.

What this means for Canada, and what this means for the rest of world, and then Canada again.

2006-01-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

Well, there it is. Canada has elected it's first Conservative government in over a decade. This isn't quite the catastrophe it could have been, or the catastrophe that some friends south of the border (hello Michael Moore, Jon Stewart) will likely make it out to be. That's not to say I'm happy about the damn thing, but here are two big (and hopeful) outcomes of this election:

1) Canada is still overwhelmingly a progressive country. Yes, the Conservatives will form the government. But it's a very weak minority. Consider that the Liberals were in power since 1993, were plagued by scandal and couldn't for the life of them deliver one constructive campaign message, and still held onto over 100 seats in parliament. The most left-wing party in the country, the NDP, gained seats. The Bloc has become an increasingly progressive party. Combined, these three parties vastly out-number the Conservative government, and there's no way Harper will get away with anything radically right-wing.

2) Sovereignty is dead. Again. Quebec voters, pissed at the Liberals because of the sponsorship scandal (and because hey, after 12 years everyone gets bored, right?), chose to elect 10 Conservatives rather than boost Bloc seats (who actually dipped). The Bloc's popular vote in Quebec is down, too. Consider also how many people out there vote for the Bloc but would never vote for sovereignty in a referendum (and I suspect that number is bigger than many people realize). If the separatist movement had any real tangible momentum, this would have been the time to show it.

It's time for the progessive element in this country to regroup. What I'd really love to see is Duceppe take some real leadership and admit that Quebec's interests can be served within Canada. Get past the righteous war of emotions and think about what's really important. Talk to the Liberals and the NDP and plan for the future.

I feel badly for Paul Martin because I really did think he was an honest leader with an earnest and excited vision for the future. That's why I voted Liberal. I like the NDP but I never saw that honesty in Jack Layton. Maybe I'm in the minority, but it was Martin's bumbling vulnerability that made me trust him. He finally sounded like a genuine leader when he renounced his leadership role yesterday. It may be a tough blow for him now, but I think his real victory will come in time, with the kindness of history books. I actually think that same-sex marriage will be Martin's legacy, and that it was no small feat, given his minority government, to get it through when he did.

I also think that the Liberals left this country in fairly decent shape. I don't pretend to be a policy expert, and I judge parties based on my personal experiences in the country and the world, not on how well I think their platform looks. I don't think our country was broke, nor do I think it needed fixing. But I can you one thing: everyone in this country who either didn't vote or run as a Conservative will let the Harper government know if things start getting broken.

But I'm not so much worried about how things are going to go inside our borders. Rhetoric aside, there are checks and balances, and again, with a minority this small, they're not going to get away with much.

What I am worried about? Harper ended his speech last night with "God bless Canada". Not the first time he's said that. Now I imagine there are millions of Canadians like me that can happily roll their eyes at that and forget about it. Ok, fine, God bless Canada. I'd prefer if our leaders were blessing Canada, because frankly, I don't trust God (have you seen was he's been doing to this planet lately?!), but that's besides the point. It's the rest of world I'm worried about. Harper may not be the Republican right-wing poster boy those Liberal attack ads make him out to be, but that doesn't mean the hyperbole-chasing media and masses beyond our borders won't eat up that idea. And I don't like that. The world is a very unstable place right now. The last thing Canada needs is a leader who's going to implicate us (superficially or no; sometimes that's the worst kind of association) with a superpower that's dangerously close to all kinds of collapse.

So if you're reading this outside Canada's borders, spread the word: We've just got our big beautiful benevolent peaceful progressive machine in the shed for re-tuning, ok?

PopCast #11: More Songs About Buildings and Food (Don't Worry About the Government)

2006-01-22T22:57:00.000-05:00

In this episode: Magnus, Islands, Ideal Lovers, The Paper Cranes, Harkness.

Episode 11: More Songs About Buildings and Food (Don't Worry About the Government)

Behold PopCast 2006! An exciting episode for a lot of reasons ... it marks the first time since the end of the 05 edition of Pop Montreal that we're programming new submissions. Tons of applications have started rolling in for the 2006 edition of the festival, so if you're a band who's submitted or is planning to submit, get the word out that we'll be putting the best of what we hear on the episodes to come. Get them in through Sonic Bids on in the good old snail mail.

This episode also features a new track from Islands and their debut release, Return to the Sea. We'll be doing a launch party for the record at Club Lambi on February 17th.

Keep the e-mails coming; it's nice to know there are so many people listening and enjoying.

And if you're in Canada, go vote!

Gimme Shelter: Weekly pics for January 18th-24th

2006-01-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

As usual, my syndicated Pop Picks for the next seven days.

Not a whole lot of shows happening in the next week. I don't know how promoters got the tip-off on the shit-wet-storm weather, but no matter. What possible reason could the heavens have to piss on Canada right now? Oh, right ... Well, take shelter:

Thursday night, The Cramps will be in Montreal! Well, kinda. Pavilion Projects' Robin Simpson is taking a page out of the File Under Sacred Music project, and providing the material for Friendship Cove's first ever Bootleg Night. Bootleg night will involve projections of taped performances of now defunct bands. It's a special meta-bootleg affair for the debut, then, with a screening of both the 1978 Napa Mental State Institution, and Iain Forsythe and Jane Pollard's reconstruction of said show. Got it? No? You might have to head down to the 'Cove.

Bootleg haters can check out Chicago's Sybris at the Main Hall, with support from Anathallo, and Montreal's Boo Hoo.

It's a quiet weekend until Sunday night, when the Barmitzvah Brothers return! They'll be at the Casa del Popolo with whiskey rabbi, Geoff Berner. I don't know whether Matzoh will be served, but I'm guessing Pop Montreal's Daniel Seligman will be in attendance.

There is, however, exciting news for early next week, when Mandatory Moustache returns with their Tuesday night local's series at Le Divan Orange. The 2006 inaugural installment will feature the Donkeys and the wildly underrated Royal Mountain Band (featured on Episode 10.2 of the PopCast!).

If you absolutely need to go out on the weekend proper, I will be DJing at the Green Room on Friday night, where we'll be re-launching the night and setting the stage for a bunch of new guests in the weeks to come.

Stay tuned for Episode 11 of the PopCast!

Islands initiates Pop Montreal off-season show-series, and then goes on tour with Metric. Then their album comes out.

2006-01-16T16:37:00.000-05:00

I'm excited to announced that Pop Montreal will be putting on an intimate Islands show in Montreal on February 17th at Club Lambi—the first in an off-season series for 2006. (You might recall that last April, Pop Montreal was responsible for the Arcade Fire's three-night charity run with Wolf Parade and Final Fantasy at the Corona Theatre...) Shortly thereafter, Islands will ditch winter's homestretch in Montreal and join Metric on a huge North American tour, which will include at least one showcase and probably a few party performances at South by Southwest in Austin, TX.

As previously reported, Islands' debut "Return to the Sea" will be released on March 21st in North America, by Equator Records. And while, yes, Diamonds and co. have—like many of their musical heroes before them (hello Paul Simon, Brian Eno)—explored some African sounds for this record, it's not this Equator Records. It's a new label out of Montreal. Rough Trade will be releasing the album on April 3rd in the UK.

Show Whores and Lovely Ladies: Weekly pics for January 11th-17th

2006-01-11T17:46:00.000-05:00

As promised last week, my syndicated Pop Picks for the coming 7 days ...

So it looks like we might have a Conservative government on our hands. But think about how much fun we'll all have if Stephen Harper is as much of an imbecile as he seems! Righteousness in earnest! Musicians get your grants now, because lord knows how long they'll be around. Anyway, yeah, go vote you lazy ass.

It's an Arts & Crafts overload this week, with Jason Collett hitting the Main Hall on Saturday the 14th, and Feist in town on Tuesday the 17th. Note the venue for Feist has been upgraded from the Spectrum to Metropolis. People just can't enough of this lady, can they? And while I can't really blame them, will someone please pick a song she actually wrote to churn through the crass commerical radio CanCon machine?

Akron/Family is in town on Thursday, with support from Timber, who get my January prize for show-whoring—way to go boys and girl! Akron/Family are a perfect band for the Sala Rossa at this time of year with their particular breed of Brooklyn psych-folk. (Speaking of, get your Animal Collective tickets now, people.) Those among you that need something grittier to warm you up on Thursday (though it's damn mild outside, isn't it?) are encouraged to check out 2006 Noisemakers The Besnard Lakes, with Land of Talk at Petit Campus.

If you're venturing out in the wild this Friday the 13th, Code Pie (runner-up for January's show-whoring contest) are at the Main Hall Friday night supporting Heroes & Villains. Alternatively, if music is just too risky a venture, check out the opening-night vernissage for the "mass mania" art of Derrick Hodgson at Madame Edgar.

Local lovely Martha Wainwright plays the Spectrum tonight. Moufette supports, and while I've never seen them, you've got to imagine they're a pretty versatile band; the last act they opened for in Montreal was Interpol ...

Ceremony of the old skin. Where are the leaders?

2006-01-10T09:42:00.000-05:00

Ok, enough already. It's been a while since I posted anything political. And you know when Wolf Parade's Arlen Thompson says "why haven't you written anything about the [Canadian] election?" that it's time to get your act together.

Long-time readers (if a week is a lifetime in politics, a day is a millenia in the blogosphere) will recall that I was fairly politically vocal through the spring and summer of 2005, particularly with regards to the same-sex marriage debate. There are a number of reasons for my silence since, not the least of which is an increasing personal and professional investment in the local music community/industry.

Though the title of this blog (a bane for all you gracious hyperlinkers, I know) was originally lifted from Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers on a whim, it has since become more appropriate than I ever could have hoped. Self-fulfilling prophecy perhaps. The emphasis (in this case, anyway) isn't so much on the nipple dream as it is on the mass, a word that invokes not only religious ceremony but the inertia of large communities and herd thinking. Regardless of what I write about here, I always try and avoid contempt for the masses, and see how they might be swayed into thinking in fuller, richer, more fulfilling terms. This often amounts to simply articulating my love for music (as the great nipple dream for the masses, perhaps). My contempt is usually saved for those individuals who seek to put cages of convention around us.

Having seen last night's political debates, can anyone blame me for focusing on music, as opposed to politics, when considering and praying for the masses? Part of the problem may be that the game of politics has so trumped the role of leadership, that it's impossible for politicians to actually connect with the public.

Is it just me, or was Gilles Duceppe the only politician in last night's debate that was frank and forthcoming? A shame that his political party is ultimately focused on a goal that I think would be a detriment to Quebeckers, otherwise he'd have my vote. Stephen Harper smiled a lot more, yes. He was calm and collected. But there's nothing he or his party can do to convince me that they're not backwards thinking after their display in the same-sex marriage debate. Neither he nor his party seem to understand that "values" should be fluid, that the only Canadian value I identify with is the ability to change with the times, as we become increasingly aware—and less afraid—of each other. Duceppe was the only one who articulated this point (broken English or no). It certainly wasn't Jack Layton, who was the greatest disappointment of all with his "working families" rhetoric. Something happens to this man under the debate cameras, where he ceases to be a progressive leader and comes off as flat-out fake. He may well not be, but a leader who can't take the opportunity to speak to the whole country with a little bit of cut-through-the-bullshit honesty is not a leader. Paul Martin is the only one who combines an enthusiastic progressive vision with some kind of authenticity, and that's the reason the Liberals still have my vote. But I don't say that with excitement. My heros aren't politicians; they're musicians and poets, mostly.

Islands set (legitimate) release for Return to the Sea

2006-01-06T14:21:00.000-05:00

Hard to know when an album has been released these days, isn't it? While it was mostly fodder for friendly ribbing when Goldkixx's Jay Watts III summed up his top 5 records of 2005 in Midnight Poutine with three as yet "unreleased" (but entirely or partially leaked) albums, in retrospect I can't help thinking of it as a perfectly appropriate and timely gesture.

One of his picks was Islands - Return to the Sea. Islands, as many of you probably know by now, is a new band from Montreal that's floating on the backs of Nick Diamonds and Jaime Tambeur, formerly of The Unicorns. I reviewed their first ever performance back in September, and also did a feature on them in Episode 4 of the PopCast, which we released right before the band was set to open for Beck at the Pop Montreal Festival this year. They've since gone on to open more shows for Beck, headline and sell out some intimate affairs in the North East, and rock Paul Simon's "Graceland" with half of Wolf Parade at one of their most recent Montreal performances. I'm pleased to announce that a North American release date has been set for their album, Return to the Sea, and that that date is March 21st. The record will be released about a week later in the UK on Rough Trade, who will also be putting out "Rough Gem" as a single (incidentally, also the track we debuted on the PopCast) sometime in February.

But let's backtrack for a second. Isn't Return to the Sea already out? Well, yes, like so many other hotly anticipated records, the album leaked prior to release. This kind of thing has been going on for a long time, but never to the extent that it is today, with the swiftness—and critical digestion—that it does now with the proliferation of mp3 blogs, yousendit links, and the like. And for music lovers, people who devour records and pour over them and have them soundtrack periods in their lives, there's maybe nothing more important than those first few encounters with a record. Maybe, if everyone is lucky, that honeymoon lasts months, with the album revealing layers, growing, sinking into the listeners consciousness and associating itself with all the other events with which it coincides.

Sure, Return to the Sea will be released in 2006, and many more people will discover Islands in 2006. But like Mr. Watts, I was lucky enough to have the Islands record constitute a huge chunk of my listening time in late 2005; it will forever be associated with that time in my life. And no, neither of us was responsible for the album leaking. But once an album does leak, it exists in a critical history, for better or worse.

I'll save my proper review for the actual release, if only to support the band at a time when it's most useful to them. My opinions about leaked albums aside, there's a small comfort in knowing that the critical consensus can be made before the commercial one. Now if only the former could really inform the latter. But that's a whole other story.

Also, I think the Cat Power record that comes out at the end of the month is excellent. Her best album yet.

Launches everywhere! Weekly Wednesday picks for January 4th-10th.

2006-01-04T12:13:00.000-05:00

I had this dream last night, kind of post-apocalyptic (a recurring variation on a theme), where masses and masses of people were crowding their way to the top of some building or mountain. Anticipation was high, as if everyone was waiting for the end of the world in earnest, or an alien landing, or something. The dream ended when about six people in the bunch produced the faintest, most half-hearted, staggered "...happy new year" you can imagine. Picture tumbleweeds and a distant cough ala The Simpsons circa '95.

I myself avoided the anxious anti-climax by getting out of town this year, thinking a country environment would leave me more invigorated and ready to start things fresh. The relative good deed I did to my body was not reciprocated however, and I'm currently recovering from a nasty winter cold/flu. How's that for a shitty deal?! No drinking and I still get sick?!

Point is, the epiphany doesn't come, people. Responsibility and habits roll day-to-day. We can, however, rely on the artificial date change as a symbolic crutch to support our renewed good intentions. I won't bore you with the details of my own steadfast resolution, but I will promise you this: you'll be able to get my weekly Pop Picks here every Wednesday. I've decided, given that we'll hopefully be getting a few voices to chime in at Pop Montreal, that posting them here as well could do little harm, and oh so much good.

In the meantime, yes, it's Wednesday! My Friday is booked as I'll be welcoming Gillileo back to the Green Room for our bi-weekly parties, but Saturday has a nice spectrum of choice for showgoers. You can check out Hexes and Ohs and Code Pie as the former debut their first video (and a drummer!) at the Main Hall, or head to La Sala Rossa, where AIDS Wolf are doing a launch for their debut full length LP, Lovvers.

Monday the 9th make sure you're at the Green Room for a Blocks love-in, where Ninja High School and SS Cardiacs will be joined by Telefauna and Baby Eagle (whom I'm told is a Constantines solo-side-project kinda thing). I don't know how they're going to fit everyone in there, but it should be wacky and wild, to say the least.

Oh yeah, and on Tuesday the 10th you can catch The Rolling Stones at the Bell Centre. That is, if you've got about a gazillion dollars and don't mind that they appear to rip-off "Johnny B. Goode" note-for-note on their new album. I recommend staying home and listening to Between the Buttons, instead.