So last month, I saw the Murder Plans at the Horseshoe. I will always remember it as one of the last days I felt good before this god-forsaken cold set in and ruined my life.
First I got a regular wicked cold and flu, then bronchitis, now… who knows? Another nasty illness. This time with phlegm! It’s been three weeks and change since I’ve felt good. But today is a little less awful and I’m hopeful that by this evening, I’ll be feeling fine enough to bookend my illness with Murder Plans shows as they’re playing at Bread + Circus tonight for Toronto Indie Week. They go on at 10:45, plenty of time to get out to Kensington.
Image by Sarai Strikefoot
They’ve drawn comparisons to Wilco and The Constantines, but I also hear some Waits and Cohen influences. The songs are well-crafted, moody and deliberate. The songwriting is pretty stellar, too. They’re channeling Jarvis Cocker on Hurt Somebody, and the imagery on Hour Hands is nothing short of brilliant. They’ve captured a certain mood that I’ve been in for months now. Sort of malaise meets optimism. Like, I hope things get better, but I doubt they will. Sorry, Conan. Too late for me not to be cynical. I’m a jaded lady and sometimes, I just need a soundtrack for that.
Normally, when I go to a show for a band I’ve never heard of before, I pick up the album, give it a listen or two and forget about it. But Good Omens, the debut full-length from this Ottawa foursome, has been playing steadily on my iPod since their Horseshoe CD release show. High compliment in a world where very little music I hear holds my interest for very long.
Buy their album at their store or maple music or iTunes and definitely check them out live if you can.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the Internets lately, then I’m sorry that you haven’t been able to hear Cee-Lo Green’s caustic, catchy kiss-off song, plainly titled “Fuck You.”
According to Wikipedia, “Fuck You!” was a viral hit. It registered over two million plays on youtube in less than a week. There’s no barometer for stuff like this, but I think we can safely consider that “a hit.”
To make a song that is easily the jam of the summer that cannot, by its very nature, be played on commercial radio or television because the chorus is made up of what society deems one of the most taboo four letter words you can say takes a huge set of balls. Thankfully, Cee-Lo appears to have dem nutz to spare.
I always love it when people I’ve put in certain categories defy expectations. Watching Cee-Lo step into the role of weirdness required by Gnarls Barkley was interesting, and watching him subvert pop music with a straight-up paen to swearing is pretty sweet, too.
Everybody takes it to be a joke, but I think “Fuck You” is the real deal. There are elements of Motown, funk, soul, R&B, hell, even some gospel! All that’s missing is maybe a few handclaps. Imagine if Al Green had been a little less preacher, a little more oh no you didn’t! It’s the male’s answer to Blu Cantrell’s “Hit Em Up Style” except way, way better. It is sweet revenge for anybody who was ever thrown over for somebody richer, prettier, younger, smarter, whateverer.
There’s nothing more cathartic than swearing when the situation absolutely calls for it. For what it’s worth, this reporter swears like a sailor on shore leave and operates on the friendly advice of one Mark Twain: When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.
There’s a new video for the song featuring girls in matching dresses crooning his catchy chorus, an animated segment, three different “younger versions” of Cee-Lo, a retro diner and choreographed dancing.
I’ve been busy this summer, moving to Toronto, starting a new job, hanging out with friends, doing some freelance writing, running on the beach, roller skating on the boardwalk, going to ToRD bouts, running around Kitchener/Waterloo in my draws and listening to new music at local shows.
But really, I live right by the beach and most of my summer has been spent there, getting sand in uncomfortable places. So far, there are no computers there. Yay! It has been one, long, beach party! Surf surf surf!!!
I’m sure you can understand why I haven’t found time to write about any of this. I’ve just been letting emails from promoters pile up in my inbox and having intense twitter arguments with Pat about the musical worth/artistic merit of Lady Gaga. Stay tuned for an epic post of epicness resulting from said twitter fight. That fight also sort of jump started me into remembering that I have two blogs that I am ignoring and that I need to pay attention to them.
I also tend to wait too long and write too much. Well no more! I am turning over a new leaf!
Please enjoy these songs from five artists I have been digging this summer:
The Canned Goods, my favourite little Guelph group that is growing up splendidly, played the main stage at Hillside Festival this year, and will be performing at Pop Montreal in September!
Toro Y Moi, whose beats are not necessarily phat, but blissfully curvy in all the right places. Check him out. You’ll like it. I promise.
M.I.A., who seems to hate the Internet that loves her so, but who makes up for it with interesting music.
Rah Rah, who can apparently be compared to Christian rock group Hillsong United and also “learned to write songs” according to two music reviewers in their home city of Regina. To this I can only shake my head and say: Nope. No. They are miles above Jesus rock, and they’ve ALWAYS demonstrated an ability to write songs. So yeah. Take that, dudes who get paid to do what I am giving away for free! Forget killing the music industry. I hope the blogosphere kills the shitty excuse for “arts journalism” that is currently on offer.
And San Francisco beach pop enthusiasts Sonny and the Sunsets, a project from musician/artist/novelist Sonny Smith, whose 100 Records project (where he wrote and recorded 200 different songs by 100 different fictional bands with 100 different album covers, all loaded into one jukebox and available for visitors to listen to) is currently available for you to see at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn.
I’ve been packing my life up for the last two days in anticipation of moving to Toronto for good. I’ve been in the city off and on for the last two weeks, working at a new job and trying to find an apartment.
I spent one week on the couch of a friend whose phone signal and Internet connection were being blocked or scrambled because she lived so near the site of the G20 summit fence. Early one morning last week, there were shots fired in her normally touristy neighbourhood in the theatre district. When I walked home from my office on King Street, I encountered police patrolling in pairs on every block. They were friendly and calm, but their presence was still unnerving. In the end, her apartment on Wellington and John became completely inaccessible and she escaped back to Saskatchewan for a week, desperate to avoid whatever was about to happen.
The weekend before that, it felt like the city was primed and humming. AT NXNE concerts, people talked about the fences, the barricade, the police and what exactly was going to happen. There was a free Iggy Pop concert at Yonge and Dundas Square that Saturday. Punks, cops, large crowds and free entrance to see righteous music. A surefire recipe for chaos. But everything went off without a hitch. Then there were the Much Music Video Awards. I doubt two more different worlds exist than a street walkin’ cheetah preaching raw power with a heart full of napalm and loyal Justin Bieber fans sleeping on the sidewalk to get tickets to see their fave-o-rite teen heartthrob. But those worlds did co-exist and the fans who spilled out into the street at the corner of Queen and John for the MMVAs had no idea that in a few days, the Starbucks across from Much Music headquarters would be boarding up smashed windows.
For the next week, I surfed the couch of a friend living near Bathurst and Bloor. Sitting at my firend’s kitchen table, combing craigslist for an apartment, I felt the ground shake, looked out the window and saw the building next door swaying. Within minutes, facebook and twitter were buzzing with information about the earthquake that had gently rumbled southern Ontario and Quebec. Relief flooded through me. Because for one brief second I thought “Oh hell. Somebody blew something up.”
I spent the last week in Toronto criss-crossing the city on public transit looking for an apartment. It was hot and I’d been living out of a backpack working a new shift for two weeks, so barricades and transit delays because of security checks (or something equally vague) made me extra irritable. I had no luck and Thursday, I headed back to Guelph.
The last few days have been a blur of packing tape, newspaper and boxes. But in between, I’ve taken periodic breaks to find that the Black Bloc was in town Saturday, flipping and burning police cars, smashing the windows of businesses and generally being a-holes. And the police stood there in their riot gear and let it happen. Cameras rolled to catch the action and it was all over the news: ‘Thugs’ justify the $1-billion price tag for G20 security.
Now, I am not pro-smashing and burning things, however, it should be noted that police cars and storefronts are things. They are not human beings.
And I hate to say it, but it’s hard to not want to smash something when you see a video like this:
Meghann Millard is a friend. She works at Unspace, a programming company with offices on Queen Street West. She took this video earlier today and posted a shorter version of it on youtube. Within minutes, I saw it on twitter and facebook feeds of several friends of mine who don’t know Meghann.
A few hours later, no less an Internet celebrity and arbiter of that which is worthy to tweet about than Roger Ebert retweeted Meghann’s video to the world. His tweet was short and to the point: “Sometimes one video can summarize the whole story.”
The official response to this video and other reports at the scene on Queen and Spadina from the police was that they charged the crowd because they suspected members of the Black Bloc were in it. I know I’m supposed to be impartial and everything, but what a load of shit.
It strikes me as overwhelmingly sad that people can’t even get together and sing the stupid national anthem. We’re so lame that we don’t even rally around a protest song. We just sing the anthem because come on! We’re in Canada! We don’t have riot police who will charge you when you finish singing a song about how strong and free your country is!
But apparently we do. Apparently, we’re not as free as we think we are.
Reports from the Toronto Star’s G20 Blog indicate that most protesters who were arrested had no idea what they were being charged with, weren’t allowed to use the bathroom, couldn’t make phone calls and weren’t given access to a lawyer. Some claimed they weren’t even part of the protest and got caught up in the crowd while walking down the street. Then, as quickly as they had been arrested, they were let go and told all charges had been dropped. Your rights mean nothing. NOTHING.
Somewhere in all this, the word anarchist somehow came to mean criminal. The vandalism and violence were ascribed to all protesters. And people I formerly respected wondered aloud why protesters who got on the news didn’t spend their precious few seconds of airtime condemning violence and vandalism. Is it their job to condemn that? Some of them did anyway and good for them. But the security fence was up long before protesters took to the streets, so that’s just chicken and egg semantics and I have to ask: If the government knew this was going to happen, (To the tune of putting up a fence and hiring a billion dollars worth of extra police and actually changing my rights) why would they host this summit in Toronto at all? Especially if, as Rick Salutin put it, they had already decided to do nothing. Can’t you do nothing somewhere else? No? Really? You have to have dinner and glad-hand world leaders on top of the CN Tower? There’s a penis joke in there somewhere.
The Globe recently published another Salutin column entitled “The Man Who Came To Dinner” in which he writes:
“What is the sign of the breakdown in the relationship? Police everywhere, to protect the governors from the people. That’s how it looks. I’m not saying that’s what it is, yet. But it’s amazing that they don’t even react to the optics of the situation: i.e. a temporary police state. To us onlookers, it’s the experience of being disenfranchised. You don’t count, you suddenly have no rights. You can’t park in your spot or take your kids to school. No one asked us, at most they gathered us and told us. It’s what you feel when you’re arrested: that it’s a free country until they decide it’s not.”
I guess what frustrates me the most about this is how are you supposed to obey the law and have a peaceful protest when SURPRISE! We gave the police extra powers we didn’t tell anybody about and you’re breaking the new law we made up for the occasion, so you’re arrested! Oh yeah. That’s the Public Works Protection Act. I ask you, how can protesters be expected to follow a law that they don’t know exists? There is a real feeling of “If only everyone who do what they’re told! Act the right way and don’t make a scene and maybe then we can have our rights back!” Except that’s not how rights work.
All this coupled with the astounding revelations by some friends and colleagues that they think protesters should just get jobs and take showers (or worse, be shot on site by police) has left me extremely angry.
Without protesters, I would not be able to vote. Without protesters, Barack Obama would have spent his life in segregation, not on the road to the White House. There are countless other examples, but who cares? Sorry Martin Luther King. I know you had a dream and everything, but too bad. GET A JOB, DOUCHEBAG!
You can disagree with their methods and you can dislike their politics, but nobody can ever say that protest isn’t a valid for of expression that occasionally serves an incredibly important role in society. If you don’t believe that, then I guess I feel sorry for you. You must lead a very ignorant life.
I’m heading back to Toronto in a few short hours to find a place to live once and for all.
I have a feeling that the city will look like nothing much happened over the weekend. A few broken windows. Some scorch marks here and there. But it’s not like something more important was damaged. It’s not like the best part of the city was held hostage for almost a week with barricades and fences. It’s not like I won’t be able to look at a cop without wondering “Were you one of the ones who raised a baton to a protester?” It’s not like I’m moving to a city where people can’t gather on a public street and sing about true patriot love without being charged by riot police.
But you can’t spell patriot without riot, so I guess we’re out of luck.
Ola, amigos! I’m feeling festive cuz it’s so nice out here! I can finally run outside again, the arena isn’t freezing cold during derby practice and my cats are done shedding. Another sign of impending summer: Hillside tickets went on sale this past weekend.
Weekend passes sold out in record time, as usual. It’s been my experience that you can find some on craigslist or kijiji or some extremely last-minute options (like, day of, people putting signs up) at the Stone Health Store on Commercial St. You can also still gain entry via volunteerism.
Site favourites performing at Guelph’s big/little music festival include Basia Bulat, Calexico, Corb Lund, Shad, Stars, Sarah Harmer and local teens The Canned Goods — I’m super excited to see them score a spot because I know it was a big goal for this group. Don’t miss them!
As always, it’s a good, solid lineup worth the hassle of festival-going. If there’s one festival that might change your mind about festivals, this would be it. I’ve seen a lot of these acts before and they will inevitably put on a great show. Gord Downie is performing with his backing band and I know for a fact that Hillside organizer Sam Baijal is super excited about scoring Los Lobos. I’d love to see those performers play with Sarah Harmer and Calexico, respectively.
There are a host of other performers that you can check out on the official Hillside site. Hope to see you there!
Isn’t that a great title? I mean, you’re probably like “What the hell?” Well I’ll tell you what: Bocce is a band and Kazoo is a festival.
More specifically, Bocce is a band I have written about before here. I’ve never been a huge fan of synthesizers, but I’m coming around. Because this Waterloo quartet rocks harder than any band with three keyboards has any right to. Especially live.
And that’s why I’m giving you a heads up about their upcoming performance at Guelph’s Kazoo Festival, which is currently going on in the Royal City. A boatload of fantastic Canadian bands and musicians are taking part and if you can manage to get out to see at least some of them, you should.
I love Guelph’s continual reinvention of the indie music scene. Hillside Festival is famous because despite its size, organizers still manage to make it feel intimate and neighbourly. But let’s face it, it can still be slightly unwieldy. Often, you have to pick between two or three artists you want to see. And for the bands, getting a spot on that roster is tough. At Kazoo, you can catch smaller groups who might be overlooked at Hillside and watch them find an audience in the city at a variety of venues. (Check out Bruce Peninsula at Dublin St. United Church tonight!)
The Bocce CD release show at the Albion Saturday is my personal pick for best show of Kazoo. They’re set to perform with Guelph rapper Noah 23, Toronto rapper Miles Jones and Guelph’s Green Go.
I’ve been listening to the new album for the last couple of weeks. I’m charmed. Charmed and a little bit in love. This is a group I’ve been listening to for a few years now via local shows and various EPs and singles and they’ve really come into their own.
This is one of my favourite new Canadian albums of the year thus far. From the rollicking groove of “Wheel of Fortune Cookie (Before and After)” (and its fantastic trumpet solo) to the bombastic, wild rumpus of “Louis Sojo (Baseball Player)”, this album is Bocce fully realized. Standout tracks include “Bachelor (Satisfied Fool)”, which reminds me of the best of The Go! Team, and “Highlighter (Reverse Video)”, which combines the best of their keyboard triumvirate with some percussive brilliance.
You can download Disambiguation at Bocce’s website for free or pay-what-you-can. OR, you can buy a physical disc at the CD release show Saturday! Win-win!
Green Go will have some new material to showcase at Saturday’s show, too. They recently released the second volume of their famed remix project, where they give their take on songs by their favourite artists. This time they remixed Gregory Pepper and His Problems, Diamond Rings (D’Urbervilles frontman John O’Regan’s side project), Montreal’s Think About Life, Woodhands and themselves. Yep. Sometimes, you just want a second chance with your own songs.
I have to go to Montreal this weekend to hit some girls on roller skates. Not a lot of things could make me want to miss that. This concert is one of them. Hit. It. Up.
They have never put out an album I have disliked. But it’s unlikely they’ll ever produce an album that so perfectly captured the mood of the times like 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. It was a high water mark in their career of being awesome, and this year’s Transference is much the same, if more of a grower.
There were songs on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga that I immediately took to and loved and they’re now some of my favourite songs of all time. I’m really trying not to sound like a super fan, but I think I’m failing. Anyway, I like this new album. I’ve listened to it non-stop since I got it. But I’m having a hard time writing about it. I’m not sure why.
As a whole, Transference sounds a lot like their last album. And every Spoon album, really. There are moments of brilliance. Sheer genius. Jangly, discordant notes that somehow, in Spoon’s hands, sound right together. Jarring sounds — including Britt Daniel’s craggy, lonely voice — come together to make beautiful music. There are a lot of songs on Transference that remind me of other Spoon songs. And that’s not a bad thing, because they’re good. But they’re kinda interchangeable. So I picked one, “Trouble Comes Running” to play for you here.
Last time out, the listening experience felt extremely intimate and personal, but Transference feels slightly removed and chilly. It’s surprising, but beautiful in its own way. Like going to bed on a steamy, hot summer evening and waking up to frozen streets and trees covered in prickly hoarfrost.
And another thing I’ve noticed that seems different here is the percussion. It seems a little samey, a little drone-y. And it carries over on almost every song. There are things that break it up, but it can be a little much.
“Got Nuffin” is one of those songs where the drums just overwhelm you, but the scratchy, fuzzy guitar cuts through that drumming cleanly. Britt Daniel does his gravel-voiced falsetto to perfection and, in fact, on a few songs, like the slow, simple, quiet rightness of “Goodnight Laura” I think he sounds remarkably clear and smooth. Like he’s been taking vocal lessons or something. I can’t decide which version of his voice I like better, but I like that he made an effort to try something slightly different.
Really, this is a fantastic album and another fine addition to Spoon’s ever-expanding catalogue of fantastic albums. It’s going to be tough to beat Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and ultimately, I’m not sure they’ve done that with Transference. But I can’t wait to see them tonight in Toronto at Sound Academy.
So I’m gonna maybe possibly perhaps go see Elliott Brood tonight at The Vinyl.
It’s cold and dreary and I feel the pressure of make-believe deadlines and no money beating down on me. I’d like to remedy that with a little heat, a little booze, a little power, a little rock and roll. I want to feel that kick drum through the fuckin’ floor and with Elliott Brood taking the stage, I know I will. It’s been two years since they released their Polaris-nominated and me-declared brilliant album, Mountain Meadows, so maybe they’ll be playing some new stuff. Who knows?
I just think it would be a shame for you to miss a chance to see this band live. Because I think they’re one of the best little touring acts in the country right now and they play with an intensity I’ve rarely seen duplicated.
Come see them live! Doors at the Vinyl open at 7:30 p.m. (early show).
Can’t see ‘em in Guelph?
Mar. 26 - Montreal House (MOHO) in Peterborough, ON
Mar. 27 - Avening Community Centre in Creemore, ON
April 15 - Call the Office in London, ON
July 16-18 - Dawson City Music Festival in Dawson City, Yukon
Like Pat said, sometimes, we get distracted by life. That doesn’t mean we stop listening to music. It just means we have less time to write about it.
I’ve been incredibly busy not cleaning my apartment and not doing my laundry so that I might watch reruns of CSI. But then I realized I have two mix CD projects to work on, so here I am at 1 a.m., considering which songs to include on a disc of my favourite songs of all time.
Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer - Morphine
The only song I really like from The Night, “Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer” reminds me of summer in the downtown of a city. It’s every house party you weren’t cool enough to be invited to and then some.
Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
I love the seething anger and intensity of this song. I like to listen to this on the bus and imagine that I’m a total badass. I totally am. Underneath my H&M cardigan. Jack White understands my frustration.
Don’t Worry Baby - The Beach Boys
I liked the sweet simplicity of the Beach Boys before they got all heavy, but even then, Brian Wilson’s neuroses were showing. He worried about nothing and everything and it all came out in this harmonious beauty.
The Underdog - Spoon
The top-played song on my iTunes by a long shot. I just love the wordplay here: Cut out the middle man, get free from the middle, man. This is just about perfect, as far as songs go. It supplies all my favourite pop song staples including handclaps, trumpets, tambourines, a swelling middle section that builds and breaks open like a wave and a guy singing la-la-las in a raspy voice.
Life Is Still Sweet - White Hassle
I owe my knowledge of White Hassle to Emmet, of Bulldozer With A Wrecking Ball Attached. He reviewed this album when we both worked for the daily newspaper in Regina and highlighted this song. I sought out White Hassle and fell in love. They are no more, but you can read his review on the band’s website here, that’s how good it is.
I’m not agoraphobic or claustrophobic or any kind of phobic, really. Wait. What’s clowns? I’m that kind of phobic. I just don’t like standing real close in huge groups of people. So a few months ago, I might have said something like “You couldn’t PAY ME to be in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics!”
But, uh… it turns out, you CAN pay me to be in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics. And here I am. The local broadsheet is paying me to edit things and design things and tell people that while bobsleigh is correct, bobsleighers is not. It’s bobsledders. Because. It just is. Don’t argue.
I miss newsrooms. I miss the immediacy and the rush and the late nights where I’m up for a reason. I miss the wire photos (FYI, if you think the video of the luge death was bad…consider yourself lucky that’s all you saw. The photos that DIDN’T run were pretty gruesome). I don’t miss the jawline acne and the unpleasant gutrot that comes from drinking four to six cups of coffee a day. I especially missed all of this happening around some big event where people with black hearts and quick wits push themselves to their limits and put together a newspaper. It feels nice to have this back because I’m pretty sure that soon it’s going to be gone altogether. The newspaper as you know it won’t exist. The job I’m doing now will be obsolete and I’ll have to stop giving it away for free online. But until then: Wheeeee!
Where was I? The Olympics. Yes. Stephen Harper invited himself to address the B.C. legislature Thursday. In his speech, he wanted us to know that it’s OK to be patriotic. That we can be just as loud and proud as our American counterparts. Sure. We COULD do that. But why would we? Stephen Harper can’t even be bothered to govern this country, so I’d really appreciate it if he stopped telling me how to be proud of it.
Fuck that guy.
this guy (gal?) knows what I'm talking about
I’m proud of my country on my terms. Like, how great is it that I live in a place where the best moments out our Olympics ceremony are k.d. lang rocking the shit out of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and Penticton’s Shane Koyczan performing a rousing spoken word piece? Pretty great.
Of course, I DID see a lot of people literally draped in flags on the SkyTrain when I was going in to work this afternoon. They’re allowed to do that. And I’m allowed to be kind of weirded out by it. Seriously guys. Save your head painting antics for when it matters. Like when football is on and the supermarket is out of watermelons. Or something.
To me, being Canadian means I don’t have to drape myself in a flag and paint my face and sing the anthem in my outdoor voice to prove that I love my country. Canada’s awesome. The end.
So thanks for stopping by to light the cauldron, Wayne. Don’t hurt yourself scurrying back to the states and your losing hockey team.
You guys to the south can keep Gretzky. We’ll throw in Bryan Adams, too. I don’t even know what to say about his shitty performance. So I won’t talk about it. Accentuate the positive. Let’s celebrate something nice. Something meaningful. I am super-pumped that Shane Koyczan got such a huge stage for his poetry.
He and his band, the Short Story Long, performed at Hillside Festival in Guelph last year and they lit the place up. In fact, I wrote about them right here! The song they performed then was this awesome version of their spoem (Song/poem — you can’t make this shit up, people! That’s what they calls these things!) Skin:
During the otherwise predictably lame opening ceremonies, he performed his piece We Are More. You could buy it from iTunes, but, um, you could also watch it on youtube:
You can find out more about Shane Koyczan and the Short Story Long at their website. You may also buy their stuff on iTunes. And buy k.d. lang albums on her website.
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The Murder Plans - Hour Hands: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
