Try to save money. Icona Pop announces tour. Fuck. Sept. 3 at the Commodore Ballroom.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Quoth Liz Lemon: "What the WHAT?"
Yeeeaaahhh .......... Click here for more images of a cultural trend I don't understand.
Johnny de Courcy - "Andrea's Song"
How great is Johnny de Courcy? "Andrea's Song" pops in predictable places, and the lyrics are pretty standard love when it comes to love, but I just love the way he sings here. So glad JDC lives in Vancouver.
Johnny de Courcy plays with hazy psych-rockers Tough Age and soul/R&B octet the Chantrelles this Friday at the Electric Owl for a measly $5. Early show: doors at 8, ends by 10:30 (so they say).
Labels:
johnny de courcy,
the chantrelles,
tough age
JDCxCCC
I saw Johnny de Courcy outside the Carnegie Community Centre a few days
ago. He was leaning stock-still against a sign post and had the most spaced-out, far-away
look in his eyes ever. I wonder where he was and how he got there. The lyrics to "Cherry Lane" never seemed so fitting:
Let me be in the clouds
I just wanna be okay
I know I won’t bother you
So just give me my drugs
Let me be in the clouds
I just wanna be okay
I know I won’t bother you
So just give me my drugs
Labels:
johnny de courcy
Thursday, July 18, 2013
The Courtneys Interview with the Grey Estates
The Courtneys give lyrical insight into some of their songs, an update
on future plans and, of course, discuss Keanu Reeves. The Courtneys play
the Chinatown Night Market on July 27 and this year's Victory Square
Block Party (Labour Day Weekend, TBA). Both shows will be FREE! Click here to read the interview.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
New White Poppy Track: "Wear Me Away"
White Poppy's new track "Wear Me Away" premiered
on SPIN yesterday. The song comes from her self-titled debut album due in September. No word on
when writers will stop feeling the need to emphasize that acts are
"one-woman shows" and the like, however.
Check out the song and her new album's track list below:
White Poppy:
1. "Darkness Turns to Light"
2. "Wear Me Away"
3. "Joyride"
4. "Today Tomorrow"
5. "Dead Night"
6. "Emotional Intelligence"
7. "Without Answers"
8. "Dizzy"
9. "Skygaze"
10. "Existential Angst"
Check out the song and her new album's track list below:
White Poppy:
1. "Darkness Turns to Light"
2. "Wear Me Away"
3. "Joyride"
4. "Today Tomorrow"
5. "Dead Night"
6. "Emotional Intelligence"
7. "Without Answers"
8. "Dizzy"
9. "Skygaze"
10. "Existential Angst"
Labels:
spin magazine,
white poppy
"The Simpsons Graffiti in the Downtown Eastside"
Finally, some good graffiti in Vancouver. Vancity Buzz has the story plus a load more photos.
Labels:
downtown eastside,
DTES,
graffiti,
murals,
the simpsons,
vancouver,
visual art
Friday, July 12, 2013
Vancouver Weekly's Best Albums of 2013: Mid-Year Round-up - Run-Offs
Since my pitches for Thee Oh Sees' Floating Coffin and Waxahatchee's Cerulean Salt didn't make Vancouver Weekly's mid-year round-up of the Best Albums of 2013, I'm posting my mini-reviews here. At least my vote for the Courtneys self-titled debut album passed. Click here for the full list, and read on for my blurbs:
Waxahachee - Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni Records, March 7)
Stand-out track: "You're Damaged"
Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (Castle Face Records, April 16)
San Fran's
hyper-prolific garage outfit Thee Oh Sees returned this year with Floating
Coffin. It's meaty - a thick, bubbling stew of bloody psychedelia,
cavernous claustrophobia and hypnotic, mangled riffs that burst like
stressed sutures. Though it's one of the band's rare releases primarily
written as a group, it still creeps and crawls the way only Thee Oh
Sees can before tearing your flesh from bone.
Stand-out track: "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster"
Waxahachee - Cerulean Salt (Don Giovanni Records, March 7)
Bedroom pop songs
sung with enough obliqueness as to never quite feel confessional. A
single guitar is mostly all Katie Crutchfield needs on her doleful second
album Cerulean Salt, but bassist Kyle Gilbridge and drummer Keith
Spencer make little rock gems like "Coast To Coast" possible, even lifting the album's spirits
a bit, at least musically.
Stand-out track: "You're Damaged"
Labels:
best of 2013,
the courtneys,
thee oh sees,
vancouver weekly,
waxahatchee
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Math-Rock Vancouver (FULL STREAMS)
I'm discovering that Vancouver has a pretty good math-rock scene. My favourite was the string-laden Barcelona Chair (R.I.P.). Check 'em out posthumously at their Bandcamp page.
And this Friday at Simply Delicious - yeah, the sushi restaurant on Main Street - Man Your Horse play their debut release show, for their Marrel of Bonkeys cassette, along with the straight Nirvana-ripping War Baby, tinny, jolty garage-rockers Tri 5 and lo-fi, sing-their-hearts-out pop-punkerz Jelly Boyz. They're all great - check 'em all out at their Bandcamps too - but the point of this post is Man Your Horse. So buckle up, and stream Marrel of Bonkeys in full below:
And this Friday at Simply Delicious - yeah, the sushi restaurant on Main Street - Man Your Horse play their debut release show, for their Marrel of Bonkeys cassette, along with the straight Nirvana-ripping War Baby, tinny, jolty garage-rockers Tri 5 and lo-fi, sing-their-hearts-out pop-punkerz Jelly Boyz. They're all great - check 'em all out at their Bandcamps too - but the point of this post is Man Your Horse. So buckle up, and stream Marrel of Bonkeys in full below:
Labels:
jelly boyz,
man your horse,
math-rock,
the barcelona chair,
tri 5,
vancouver,
war baby
Monday, July 8, 2013
Today, I Watched the Sun Change Colours in My Bedroom
All images and sounds by Crystal Dorval/White Poppy.
Today, I took a homeopathic pill of advice from Crystal Dorval, a Vancouver-based multimedia artist whom I primarily know as the ambient/psych sound-collagist White Poppy.
I often feel as though life is a race against time that I'm desperately losing. We're all bound to lose, but I mean trailing - languishing in the dust, even: there's too much music to listen to, too much work I have to do in order to get where I want to be, too much work in general; I don't make enough time for my important relationships or myself. I feel I should be proactive on my rare days off, as Dorval says: force myself to take advantage of the sun - force myself to see people. As time only seems to accelerate, why waste what little we have (left)?
Yet I can't seem to pull myself away from work even when, like today, I make a conscious decision to not think about it. I slept in, yes, and I did make great headway with a book I’m genuinely enjoying, but I still spent all morning writing and sending e-mails and punctuated my reading by scribbling notes in preparation for a book review. And currently, I'm disentangling my thoughts for this post.
I used to think going out and seeing people were the solutions to the innervating effects of isolation and boredom. But then, why did the Best Coast lyrics "And when I go out, I don't feel anything / I just keep on spending my money / One day, it will be gone / And then I'll have to write another song" ("Last Year") keep sticking out?
Dorval has taught me that yes, there is value in taking a day to yourself - to lounge about and do whatever you want, even if all you want to do is nothing. Like her, lounging around the apartment, not doing anything, usually makes me feel "lazy" and even guilty about wasting precious time. But everyone should give themselves permission to lounge and do nothing with their day. Try it just once, and maybe you too will realize that, as Crystal assures, "It's okay. in fact, it might be one of the most productive things you can do for your mental health."
Labels:
anxiety,
best coast,
crystal dorval,
mental health,
sanity soap,
white poppy
Zach Hill Is an ANIMAL
Watch Zach Hill perform a ten-minute drum-solo while handcuffed during a Death Grips rehearsal:
Labels:
death grips,
zach hill
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Shad a Light on Me (+ Free Shows All Summer Long Courtesy of CBC)
Like probably most fans of 90s
alternative music, I love the Breeders' "Cannonball." Shad samples it on
"Out Here," and it's quite great:
I
saw Shad play a free hour-long set at CBC Plaza yesterday. It was the
kick-off show for CBC's "Musical Nooners," free hour-long shows prefixed
with brief interviews running every weekday until
August 23. That's one show down, thirty-four more to go. Visit CBC's event page for the schedule thus far with more to be announced soon.
And how about "The Old Prince"'s dead-on parody of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?:
Labels:
cbc,
free concert,
musical nooners,
shad,
the breeders
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
The White Stripes - "Everywhere I Go, I'm Jack": Shades of the Mountain Goats
I never realized how much this recording of "Everywhere I Go, I'm Jack" by the White Stripes sounded like a Mountain Goats song at the Goat’s most lo-fi, or how Jack's slow, light tremolo recalls one of those droning "tacked-on" closers (can they be considered bonus or hidden tracks?) on many Brian Jonestown Massacre albums; I'm thinking the "Sound of Confusion" version of "Fire Song" specifically.
New Beck Track: "I Won't Be Long"
All-star full album improv cover-jams, interviews with celebrities, a play-it-yourself album of sheet music, a cover of Bowie's "Sound and Vision" with a 160-piece band - how did Beck become so interesting again over the past five years? From a 12" single due July 8:
Labels:
beck,
david bowie
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