THE HOLIDAY CROWDOVER THE BLUFFS(New Romantic / Shelflife 2012)
The Holiday Crowd is formed by 4 boys from Toronto. Their debut album, Over the Bluffs, is out via New Romantic and Shelflife.
Their music is a combination of 80's new wave with C86 and Morrissey-esque vocals. The Smiths is actually the first thing that came into my mind but it also reminds me of danish band The Northern Portrait: catchy melodies, melancholic imagery. While the danish band uses a lot of distorted guitars, The Holiday Crowd keeps things more crystalline, jangly and clean.
For languid summer afternoons, strolls in parks of green, english streets trapped in the 80's and plaid/striped shirts.
'Never Speak Of It Again' is the song Morrissey forgot to write in 1988.
The video for 'Pennies Found' was directed by Matthew Sitler and filmed on his iPhone.
Code Pie is from Montreal and started back in the year 2000 when Enzo started to record songs on his own. Two years later, Sal started to collaborate with him and from that point, didn't took much to the other members start to join the duo. Today, Code Pie is a sextet with 3 albums released (including Love Meets Rage, released this year via their own Flagless Records and Indiecater).
Their music is a mixture of lush bedroom pop with layers of noisy melodies, horns and soaked guitars. All mashed up perfectly, which is pretty astonishing once you get to know that their latest album comes from a 2 years period of jam sessions.
Atmospheric, moody, pop, rock, intensely aggressive and seemingly delicate. The beauty is all there beneath the reverbs for you to hear.
Little Jungles is a one man project from Canada and in 2011 released Wuts Goin Thru Yer Head. As I mentioned earlier this year, the music is lyrically disarming, filled with electronics, distortions and shoegaze. With a very witty -and upbeat - point of view on love, agony and youth yearnings.
A new single will be released in January, 1st and later in 2012 a new album will be out.
You can get the album on bandcamp.
Listen to 'Drive Yerself Crazy', one of the greatest songs released this year.
JOHN MAUSBELIEVER
Awesome song. You gotta listen to the version in the video though. Its slightly sped up. Makes it sound even more triumphant. Wonder why they sped it up just for the video.
CHAD VAN GAALENREPLACE ME
Love the guitar in this one. Whole albums great.
J MASCISNOT ENOUGH
Check out the video for this one too, animated by Chad Van Gaalen
EMAMARKED
Most emotionally affecting song I've heard all year.
KURT VILEGHOST TOWN
His lyrics seem so off the cuff. "Christ was born I was there, you know me, I'm around". My favourite album this year.
NICKI MINAJDID IT ON 'EM
The dirtiest sounding song I've ever heard. I don't even know why I like it.
BRAZILIAN MONEYPARTY TIL I'M DEAD
Wish it was as long as sister ray.
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRAHOW CAN YOU LUV ME
So groovy.
Can I share a song with you not from 2011?
Hands down the most amazing thing I heard this year was "The Garden" by Cut Chemist. It rocked my world, sent me on an instrumental hip hop downloading rampage and got me thinking a lot about production. To me, it simply sounds perfect.
Teen Daze is the electronic project of Jamison, a Vancouver based artist that you might know from a number of other projects like The Tremulance where he exercises a more (electro)pop-ish vibe and Cultus Vibes - an online label with free releases created to "share some of my incredibly talented friends' music" (you can read an interview I made with him a few days before the label was officially launched, back in February).
LITTLE JUNGLES. WUTS GOING THRU YER HEAD (independent, 2011)
"You're always telling me all the negative things that I know I could change but it takes a long time to change". When you get a line like that on the opening track of an album from an artist that you've never heard before you simply know you're listening to something -at least - promising.
Little Jungles is lyrically disarming and filled with an honest take on modern angst and agony.
An upbeat mix of shoegaze, reverbs, distortions and electronics only makes the package more shiny and dreamy and sugary and bubbly.
Ok, the 9-track release has its down moments (why's Please Put the Knife Away among such a strong collection of songs?) but the overall feeling is just so involving and addictive... Alongside the sensational opening track Drive Yerself Crazy - did I hear someone say 'song of the first half of 2011'? - the last 4 tracks create a strong tour de force on noise, psychedelia and richness of sound. Old Love Fading is the most accessible with its pop catchiness squirting from the distorted guitars. Blue Heron goes deeper into reverberations and noisepop, delivering a complex construction of sounds, strong bass drums and echoey vocals. New Girl is a beautiful "acoustic" song formed by claps, strummed guitars and Matthew Niemann's voice echoing praising his new girl.
Drilling, affecting and addictive. Matthew, I want more.
(Little Jungles' new album will be called I Would Kill for Some Sunlight and it'll be released on January 1, 2012.)
Whenever I listen to bands like Code Pie, I get myself thinking about what it takes for a band to reach massive success... I'm aware that some bands don't have this goal - and I simply adore that - but really, what does it take?
Code Pie completes a decade in 2012 having released three absolutely stunning albums and you, indie lover, probably don't know that. I'll focus my words on their latest album 'Love Meets Rage', released last April on their own label, Flagless Records.
This album was built during a period of two years and it's a complex, profound and intricate combination of (love and rage) layers of crafting and feelings, going from C86 sappy pop and reaching powerful ballads (but not before passing through some shoegaze and reverberations). All put together, in one song, managing to give you a feeling that everything's in its right place, tempo and rhythm. Beneath the noise of reverberations or distorted guitars, there's a beautiful and delicate piano. When the noise is gone, there's this dreamy and dense horn/trumpet carrying a song like a cloud over the city. Just like that: without any visible (or listenable) effort.
Take 'North Side City View', for instance: a 4 minute song that starts very pop-ish and suddenly turns into an instrumental-almost-ambient song that slowly builds up into a crescendo and takes you along, you wanting or not... the same happens in 'Morning After'.
What makes Code Pie stand out from other bands from the (amazing) Canadian scene, is their ability to keep an aesthetic unity and, at the same time, not holding back when building the tension for their musical combinations (again, love and rage).
Here's to you your new favourite Canadian band.
Before the interview, check an awesome video and cover for 'Baby', a song from fellow Canadian singer Justin Bieber.
Little Chords ~ Little Chords EP (Independent, 2011)
Here's a little gem in form of 4 tracks filled with reverbs, laid back melancholic melodies and pure lo-fi bliss. This seems to be a side project from prolific canadian electronic act Teen Daze. Here, electronics give space to strummed guitars and shoegazy elements.
The last track is a beautiful take on Yuck's Shook Down.
Great for a balcony with a warm breeze and a sunset. And a heart.
(I hope there's more...)
01. in the guest room
02. summertime
03. valentine's day
04. today
05. shook down (yuck cover)
arbutus is one of my latest findings in terms of labels...it’s based in montreal and was born from an art and show space called lab synthèse.
it has a short but extremely strong catalogue with artists ready to gain more visibility any day now (most notably blue hawaii, already causing some buzz on the blogosphere).
but today we’ll talk about grimes, the musical project of claire boucher. on her myspace, she describes her sound as “post-human liturgical majesty”. it is a mixture of electronics and lots of vocal layers that sounds corky, weird, spacey, lo-fi… the first time i heard the album, my overall impression was that if the world went into a decadent state (let’s not even get into our current situation as a planet) this music would be used for some sort of cult near a river with black water in the year 2130.
but don’t get me wrong, it’s not dark music. actually it’s quite elevating and floats in a very peculiar way evoking - in an original way - traditional songs from around the globe.
weird canada have the best description i could find in terms of placing her music in the universe, saying that is a “strange hybrid of björk, the cure, micachu, and other avant seamstresses, leaving a footprint in every decade and thankfully landing in ours. chord progressions and samples are pulled from any source imaginable and the aggregation results in a kate bushian trail of decadence.”
here you can download a song (one of my favorites) from the album: zoal, face dancer
clicking on the album artwork, you'll be taking to arbutus website where you can download her album... you should definitely get it.
below, you'll find a short documentary directed by emily kai bock called 'human heart' that shows a bit more about the artist (and her fascination on planets, milky way and space).
the langley schools music project ~ innocence and despair ( bar/none records, 2001)
imagine that you're a young kid in school. it's 1976 in a small town in canada and you have a music teacher called hans fenger that could be (was) a hippie. and that instead of those silly children songs he exposes you to classic rock songs... well, that happened and in my opinion the kids that were there are damn lucky. the recordings were made in 1976-77 and only 200 copies were made to be given to the students. 23 years later an independent radio dj found the album on a flea market and was very intrigued when saw the tracklisting. songs from david bowie, the beach boys, the beatles, barry manilow, the carpenters and others are beautifully sang by 60 children inside a school gymnasium. but the mood of the album is not at all childish... there's this feeling that sometimes makes you think that is an album put up together by some sort of cult formed by youngsters with a fine taste in music. the version of bowie's 'space oddity' is mind blowing... bowie himself, when asked if he had heard the version, said that 'the backing arrangement is astounding. coupled with the earnest if lugubrious vocal performance you have a piece of art that i couldn't have conceived...' even manilow's cheesy 'mandy' sounds fantastic in the kids version. the washington post had one of the prettiest descriptions for the album: "an album that seems to capture nothing less than the sound of falling in love with music". simply beautiful. here's what hans fenger, the teacher, said about that time:
"I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn't know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children's music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal -- they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional 'children's music,' which is condescending and ignores the reality of children's lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated 'cute.' They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness."
have to say that when i heard the album and found out how it was created i had tears in my eyes... this may not be the best rock album ever recorded but it sure has the best story behind it. awesome! full of energy! and wonderful! (be prepared to cry and smile at the same time)
01.venus and mars / rock show (wings) 02. good vibrations (the beach boys) 03. god only knows (the beach boys) 04. space oddity (david bowie) 05. the long and winding road (the beatles) 06. band on the run (wings) 07. i'm into something good (herman's hermits) 08. in my room (the beach boys) 09. saturday night (bay city rollers) 10. i get around (the beach boys) 11. mandy (barry manilow) 12. help me, rhonda (the beach boys) 13. desperado (eagles) 14. you're so good to me (the beach boys) 15. sweet caroline (neil diamond) 16. to know him is to love him (teddy bears) 17. rhiannon (fleetwood mac) 18. wildfire (michael martin murphy) 19. calling occupant of interplanetary craft (the recognized anthem of world contact day) (the carpenters)
with the release of the album in 2001 and its success (he made into a lot of lists as one of the best albums released that year), vh1 produced a short documentary about the album with interviews with the teacher, the kids (today in their 35-40s)... really worth to see it just to get to know who was this guy that put together such an incredible project with no expectations or ambitions.
the tremulance is jamison who lives and studies in chilliwack, canada. 'polaroids' is his debut album and contains (awesome) electropop tunes that he's been working over the past years. in the beginning there was only sound but after some time he decide to add some voice. throughout the album it's possible to hear electro, idm, indie rock, folk and shoegaze coming and going... beautiful and original tunes with (sometimes) beats and blips and (sometimes) instrumental interludes. as jamison says: "i like to make electronic songs; some are meant to make you dance, but some are meant to make you feel a little sleepy." 15 songs talking about "nights spent dancing with friends, heartbreaks, missing loved ones, missing the ocean and the now infamous dance trap which actually occurred". a great balance between experimentalisms and emotional dance floor melodies.
01. we'll settle this on the dance floor 02. i will show you rain 03. smash your keyboards 04. you got the girl (feat. lights) 05. synthesizers make kids dance, right 06. the frustrations of dealing with the socially inept 07. i thought i'd forget you... 08. ...but i overthought it 09. dance trap 10. the sounds i missed out on 11. the smaller things 12. trackless (feat. the emerson letters) 13. where are we now? 14. song for tom fox 15. it still gets dark here far too early
la patère rose ~ la patere rose (grosse boîte/dare to care records, 2009)
coming from the vibrant quebec scene, la patere rose makes kaleidoscopic music; to give you a hint of what they sound like put stereolab and camera obscura on a drink mixer and you'll have la patere rose. sometimes serious and melancholic pianos, sometimes upbeat electronic beats, sometimes melancholic pianos and upbeat electronics together! a wide range of atmospheres and moods throughout each song. when you think you're going to listen to a piano concert suddenly turns to be an upbeat song. the vocals have that fuzzy recording, similar to the radio dept. fresh and extremely original. catchy is a word that also should be mentioned. great for those experiencing the first summer feelings! (duet tacet is a highlight and one of the cutest songs e-ver)
