Archive for the ‘ Rants & Raves ’ Category
Teenage MC Kitty Pryde is what happens when you give Ellen Paige’s Juno the mic. A brilliant mix of self-awareness wrapped in a protective blanket of pop-culture name-dropping and self-obsession. This song reveals more about teenage girls in 2012 than any social network, vampire novel or magazine article.
Given the recent reunion of Kingston via Halifax duo, the Inbreds, now seems as good a time as any to mention lo-fi indie pair Hermetic.
Like the Inbreds, and Winnipeg’s Duotang, Hermetic rock the high-end of the low-end, delivering some melodic bass lines along with their fuzzed up indie pop a la the mid-90s Halifax pop explosion spearheaded by Murder Records.
Made up of bassist- singer Eric Axen and drummer-singer Bart Newman, the pair have been playing together since 2007. Civilized City is their debut.
In case it hasn’t been made clear through some of my recent posts, I’ve been really digging the resurgence in interest in distorted, heavy guitars in underground circles. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that I grew up a riff-obsessed teenager in the 90s post-grunge distortion-a-thon.
But bands like the Men and now Amherst, MA’s California X harken back to the 80s American indie underground, as glorified by Michael Azzerad’s influential book, Our Band Could Be Your Life.
Their debut single “Sucker” an epic riff fest, was recorded by Justin Pizzoferrato, who worked on both of Dinosaur Jr.’s post reunion albums Beyond and Farm and Sonic Youth’s The Eternal as well as Thurston Moore and J. Mascis’s recent solo albums. It’s out now on the Sounds of Sweet Nothing.
Check out “Sucker” and its B-side “Mummy” below.
“Sucker”
“Mummy”
I’ve written about my love for Grimes in the past, so I’ve been easing off a little with the release of her latest, most excellent album Visions. However I felt compelled to post this latest video for the track “Oblivion” because it’s the first time we get to see Grimes, aka Claire Boucher acting playful and more or less being herself in a sense.
In previous vids, Boucher comes across as aloof and mysterious, which is part of what has made her so appealing – we don’t just want more of her music, we want more of her. With “Oblivion” she gives it to us, but just enough to satiate our appetites. The scenes in the sports stadiums are the most off-the-cuff, while the staged scenes with the buffed up body-builders and the jarhead football fans reinforce her mysteriousness and power.
Boucher and director Emily Kai Bock sat down with Pitchfork to discuss the clip for P4K’s Director’s Cut. Check out “Oblivion” below.
Brooklyn’s The Men (not to be confused with Le Tigre-related band MEN) hit my radar sometime last year with their excellent sophomore release Leave Home, a record that blended the best bits of hardcore, psychedelia and general noise. So its no surprise that I’ve been eagerly anticipating their next album Open Your Heart.
The title track hit the internet at the end of last month and revealed that the band had turned themselves into an SST loving punk act without losing their core identity. Now “Ex-Dreams” ups the anti further, wrapping the band in the swirling noise and catchy hooks of Hükser Dü’s Zen Arcade.
Open Your Heart drops March 6 on Sacred Bones.
Chattanooga, TN (yes, that’s a real place) crew Moonlight Bride have found a nice middle ground in the indie world walking a thin line between the slinky post-punk of Joy Division and the swirling shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine.
“Lemonade” is the first song released off the band’s forthcoming EP Twin Lake. On top of perfectly showcasing the band’s musical dichotomy it’s got a nice anthemic quality to it, and kind of feels like the soundtrack to a deleted One Tree Hill Scene (in my world, this is a compliment).
Twin Lake is out Feb. 28.
Who’d have thought that West Coast psychedelia and European dance would go together so well?
San Francisco’s Wooden Shjips managed to score famed British DJ Andrew Weatherall – he of Primal Scream’s “Loaded” fame – to turn the buzzy swirl of last year’s “Crossing” from their West LP into a slinky, dubby bass driven anthem. Wooden Shjips drop Remixes 12″, also featuring a selection reworked by Spaceman 3′s Sonic Boom, on February 21 on Thrill Jockey.
Check out “Crossing Remix (Andrew Weatherall)” on Soundcloud below.
“My First Hardcore Song” by 8yr Old Juliet
This reveiw originally appeared at Exclaim.ca
For anyone who fell in love with Said the Whale’s sophomore record, Islands Disappear, first spins of their new four-track EP will come as a bit of a shock. While that album’s specificity of place is what drew many in, New Brighton refuses to saddle any of its songs with a set location. But if the novelty of hearing the changing landscape of Vancouver’s False Creek set music was all Islands Disappear had going for it, the record would never have been the slow burning sensation it was.
New Brighton sticks with the rest of Said the Whale’s hallmarks – the savvy mix of indie and folk rock, soaring harmonies and quirky, observational lyrics – seeming to indicate that their third effort won’t veer too far from the formula that brought them national acclaim. Their songwriting, which was already top-notch, has improved, creating a tight quartet of indie pop gems. The sprightly pace and sunny demeanour of “Lines” is the clear highlight, while the start-stop rhythm of “Sandy Bay Fishing Song” shows that the group aren’t afraid to venture into relatively foreign sonic territory while retaining their innate tunefulness.
New Brighton comes across as lightweight at first, but repeated listens reveal these songs’ nostalgic depths.
“Lines”
This interview originally appeared at The Grid TO
1. Yes, he’s heard all those Joy Division imitators.
What do you do when your highly influential band splits up? If you’re Peter Hook, former bass player for English electro-pop pioneers New Order, you turn your attention back to your previous, even more influential group. Since last year, Hook and his band The Light have been performing Unknown Pleasures—the debut album from Joy Division, the band whose career was cut short by lead singer Ian Curtis’ suicide in 1980. New Order rose out of the ashes a couple of months later. “We locked Joy Division in a box and put it away in the attic,” he says. “It was wonderful to open that box and find how fresh everything sounded and felt.” As New Order forged ahead, Joy Division’s legend grew. By the turn of the century, the number of bands using Joy Division’s brooding minimalism as a template had exploded. “You do have to take it as a compliment,” he says. “It’s all about inspiration. I was inspired by the Sex Pistols to create Joy Division. And then you inspire other people. It’s perpetuating that circle of life, really.”
2. Nothing ruins a good thing like grumpy old men.
The other members of New Order recently announced they were getting back together—without Hook. This was just the latest in a long line of public spats between Hook and the rest of the band since New Order’s dissolution in 2007; Hook maintains the group split up altogether, while lead singer Bernard Sumner says Hook left. “They may reform and call themselves New Order, but in my heart they’re not New Order,” he says. “They’re as much New Order as I am Joy Division.” For his part, Hook just wishes things could have gone down in a more civilized manner. “As you get older you get very set in your ways,” he says. “Men get very stubborn, very cranky, very obstreperous. And when you’ve got a load of them together you’re gonna have trouble. Groups act like children all the time.”
3. You will always be remembered for your most gimmicky song.
New Order had staggering success, especially in the late 1980s. Yet their biggest chart hit in England was “World in Motion,” commissioned as the theme song for England’s 1990 World Cup soccer team. “The guy who was working at the Football Association said to [Factory Records head] Tony Wilson one day, ‘I’d love to get a great band to do the football song instead of these rubbish ones.’ And Tony said, ‘Well, who’s your favourite band?’ And, funnily enough, he said, ‘New Order.’ That’s one of the great things about being in a group like New Order, who always do things in a really wacky way. You get to do some really wacky shit. And that was one of them.”
4. It’s not so weird to see your life story in a movie.
Fictionalized versions of Hook have appeared on screen twice: in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People—where he was played by Ralf Little—and in Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic Control (Hook was depicted by Joe Anderson). Watching someone else pretending to be you should be an unnerving experience, but Hook took it in stride. “Life has been quite surreal,” he says. “So watching the film and watching someone play you fit in quite well, really. With 24 Hour Party People, Michael did it very much as a comedy. When I saw it I didn’t recognize myself in it.” Control was a different story. “Anton Corbijn is such a perfectionist,” says Hook. “I knew that the guy playing me would reflect me and I was a little bit worried about that. When I saw the film it was like looking into the mirror.”
New Order – “Ceremony”
Stalk me!