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What’s with all the bands out there with the word “Wolf” in their name? From Montreal alone there are at least three prominent examples: Wolf Parade, We Are Wolves and AIDS Wolf, all arriving on the heels of Michigan’s Wolf Eyes. Is it just that rock n’ roll to be associated with the top carnivore of the Canadian North (polar bear excepted)? Or just those “Who’s Who of the Hinterland”-type shirts so widely available at thrift stores ?
Friday, November 18:
LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean
Kool Haus
I totally thought this show was just going to be a series of DJ sets by members of the DFA roster. It was being held as one of the Return to New York events that I sometimes see advertised around town for the old-school partiers. Whatever I had expected, it certainly wasn’t four dudes in hoods playing drum pads, keyboard guitars and synths and making epic, rocked-out techno jams, which is what The Juan Maclean did with its opening slot.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a The Darkness fan. So it’s with some amusement that this report showed up on The Register.
To summarize, Justin Hawkins, singer of The Darkness, found an advance industry copy on eBay of their upcoming CD (due out at the end of November) that some industry slimeball had put up for auction. Hawkins paid £350 to reclaim it, stating the move was to stop the CD from being leaked prematurely.
To quote, “I’ve bought our own album back off this character who’s selling it on eBay,” he told the BBC. “It cost me £350 and it’s going to be a tenner when it’s in the shops - with artwork.”
The best part of this quote is the “with artwork” bit. For a taste of what passes for The Darkness artwork, open wide and click on the image below for more
Much ado about famed BBC DJ John Peel and his beloved wooden box full of 7″ singles (MetaFilter, BoingBoing). Only the ILoveMusic discussion group has been trying to gather the tracks together and finally somebody has posted a torrent.
It’s a work in progress apparently. I’m guessing the sheer scattered, eclectic nature of a collector like Peel means that the average muso has never even heard of most of these artists, nevermind rip them from their collection. For sure, some great tracks and then some tracks that only a mother could love (or an archivist like John Peel).
While this year’s Pop Montreal new-music extravagnza may have been an indie-rock music nerd’s wet dream, those of us too overworked or underfunded to take in a week of club-hopping in la belle province could take solace in the fact that Toronto, while unlikely to ever become as much of a hipster hotspot as its erstwhile cultural rival, at least gets a good selection of touring acts coming through on a regular basis. So in the spirit of enterprise, and thanks to a coincidental confluence of interesting shows passing through town at the same time, I decided to have a little festival of my own. My plan was to see five bands on four different nights, dragging my tired self out to some overloud dank watering hole each night and overwhelming myself with a gradual blurring of one faceless indie band after another - just like at a real festival!
Herewith, a summary of my very own Pop Toronto, which, while lacking in hype, depth, buzz and wrist bands, was still full of scenesters, cheap beer and hangovers at the office the next day.
An article over at Washington City Paper tries to address that question. The answer, in short, is that literary eggheads are ruining the art of music criticism with their nostalgia. The author, Jason Cherkis, then points to a surprising place for good criticism.
I was introduced to Odd Nosdam and Anticon by virtue of last night’s Brave New Waves feature on the former, which sent me to the Anticon site. On pulling up the Artists page, I was struck by the photos of the Anticon members. Their bios confirmed that these are the rapper dorks I made fun of in high school. Talk about revenge of the nerds. I’m still downloading the mp3’s off the site.
As with most cool things on Brave New Waves, you seem to catch them when your attention has given up for the day: lying in bed while the show plays by virtue of the radio’s sleep function (it was 1:30am afterall). I struggled in this state to hear last night’s Out Hud interview. Their concert was great, the tracks I hear from the latest release make me wonder why I haven’t bought the album yet, but the interview was hard to listen to. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got lots of love for Phyllis and Molly, but damn, if they didn’t sound like a parody of Moon Unit Zappa. How many ‘like’s’ does a sentence need? Is it a Berkeley thing?
I was trolling through some old Torontoist mix-tapes and found this doozy (right next to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Sussudio” [!]). It made me giggle. I found myself saying, “No! Are they really that well matched?” I swear it’s like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. Use headphones for full effect and so that no one hears you listening to Nickelback.
I have this nasty habit of missing opening acts, which is annoying when the opener is Ulrich Schnauss (for some odd reason, I feel his name wants an umlaut). For this show, I also missed my pot connection, which really does enhance this type of music. In rock venues like Lee’s Palace, the subtleties in tunes by Schnauss or M83 get washed out by the bass. The weed seems to manage the bass blunting.
