Icona Pop Announces Vancouver Date

Try to save money. Icona Pop announces tour. Fuck. Sept. 3 at the Commodore Ballroom.

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).

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

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.

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"

"The Simpsons Graffiti in the Downtown Eastside"

Finally, some good graffiti in Vancouver. Vancity Buzz has the story plus a load more photos.

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:

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"

Lost My Copy of Summerteeth

And I

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:

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."

Zach Hill Is an ANIMAL

Watch Zach Hill perform a ten-minute drum-solo while handcuffed during a Death Grips rehearsal:

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.

Shad is most lauded for his intellectual lyrics which concern politics and social justice issues, but I just like the sound of his rapping. He also plays with a live band (and some guitar himself); that's nothing new for rappers, but it's always better than seeing them just rap alongside DJs. It was also good to see a sizable crowd of actual Shad fans show up to this free show amongst the legions of curious passersby. People in the crowd were up and dancing and rapping along. One guy even got the honour of rapping a full verse to "The Old Prince Still Lives at Home." 

And how about "The Old Prince"'s dead-on parody of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?:

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: