Vancouver’s top 50 bands of the decade (according to Discorder)

CITR’s monthly magazine Discorder (the first place that ever let me write about music!) just dropped their latest issue which lays out what they believe are the 50 best bands to come out of Vancouver this decade. And I’ve got to say, this is a pretty comprehensive and accurate list. Some are obvious picks (New Pornos, Black Mountain), others are local phenoms not very well known outside the city (the Red Light Sting,Channels 3&4), but all are awesome. Check out the picks along with justifications below.

Best of the Decade 50-31

Best of the Decade 30-11

Best of the Decade 10-1

Live Review: Phoenix & Holy Fuck 12/05/2009 @ Sound Academy, Toronto

Saturday night’s gig at Sound Academy offered one of the oddest musical pairings Toronto has seen for sometime.

Phoenix and Holy Fuck’s fanbases do overlap, but Phoenix’s recent ascent into the North American mainstream would no doubt bring out a whole new segment of fans who had never heard of Holy Fuck. The question, then, was would fans of the French headliner’s smoothed over pop-rock accept naughty-named purveyors of lo-fi electronic rock?

By the time Holy Fuck hit the stage, the Sound Academy already looked as packed as it could get. The quartet set up in a tight circle with lead knob tweakers Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh facing one another amongst a mess of chords protruding from the array of keyboards and effects pedals.

A quick hello and the band were off, delivering a tight set of lo-fi dance instrumentals. The heart of their live show lies in the hands of bass player Matt McQuaid and drummer Matt Schulz; they held the band together while Walsh and Borcherdt created all manner of electronic noises.

Holy Fuck are a surprisingly energetic band considering their cerebral music, with both Walsh and Borcherdt leaping around the stage while still hitting their marks throughout the set. The warm, though somewhat cursory reception the crowd gave the band made it clear that while Holy Fuck’s set had gone over well, people made the trek down to the once-was-The Docks for one reason.

Amazingly, more people managed to make their way into the bar in between sets, adding to the anticipation for the night’s headliner. Phoenix emerged 15 minutes late to a recorded track that wouldn’t have been out of place at the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, before launching into “Lisztomania.” Frontman Thomas Mars got the crowd, which was already singing along, clapping as well.

The Parisian group focused heavily on their breakthrough, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. The seven-minute epic “Love Like A Sunset” was unsurprisingly a set highlight. But they weren’t afraid to drop hits from their previous records Alphabetical and It’s Never Been Like That into the set.

Phoenix really came alive during older tracks like “Run Run Run” and “Napoleon Says.” Their ability to recreate Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’s slick sounds live — with the help of two ancillary musicians — is admirable, but the tracks came off as a little stale at times.

The night’s version of “Fences” was a particular letdown. But the older tunes showed a much rawer version of the band. It didn’t really make a difference to most in the audience, who sang along with almost every word and treated the sextet to rapturous rounds of applause after every song.

Phoenix retired for a brief respite after playing for over an hour before Mars and one of the band’s two guitarists returned to the stage for a stripped down version of “Everything Is Everything.” They finished the night with spritely hit “1901,” which the group stretched into an epic closer.

After working through the standard album length version of the track, Mars waded into the crowd, making his way halfway to the back of the venue, then standing up on the bar and leading the surging crowd through another round of the song’s “Falling, falling, falling” chorus. He then crowd surfed his way back to the stage where he invited the crowd to join him before the band finished the song.

It was a fitting end to a night where Phoenix more than proved themselves worthy of their newfound fame.

Film Review: Michael Jackson’s “This Is It”

It’s ironic that the final creative project from a performer who spent his entire career striving for polished perfection would be something this raw.

Originally intended as filler for a 3-D concert film of Michael Jackson’s UK comeback shows, This is It was pieced together by director and longtime Jackson collaborator Kenny Ortega from footage shot during the four months of rehearsals leading up to Jackson’s death in June.

It tracks the star from the press conference announcing the shows, through dancer tryouts, band rehearsals and video shoots, interspersed with rehearsal performances of Jackson’s biggest hits.

As the film opens with Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, it’s almost shocking to see Jackson doing what he does best: Singing and dancing. Having not played a show in a decade, the King of Pop has offered up nothing to balance out his tabloid lifestyle.

Even more shocking is seeing how fierce a dancer he remained to the end, frequently upstaging dancers half his age. The film’s best segments come from scenes using split screens to contrast a song’s evolution over the course of rehearsals, particularly on Human Nature and The Way You Make Me Feel.

While the film’s first 45 minutes are thrilling, giving a rare glimpse of Jackson’s creative process, it loses steam two-thirds of the way through.

What comes across is Jackson’s active participation in the creation of these shows. The film’s best moments capture him directing the band or dancers to meet his high expectations And based on the footage, the London shows would have been spectacular. But This Is It feels more like the greatest DVD bonus feature than a feature film.

This review originally appeared at Metronews.ca

Record Review & Interview: Julian Casablancas – “Phrazes for the Young”

Given that the Strokes haven’t released a record in almost four years, Julian Casablancas’s debut as a solo artist is oddly timed. Band-mates Albert Hammond Jr., Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti have all struck out on their own during the group’s hiatus (twice, in Hammond’s case) and word is that the Strokes will be back in the studio come January. Fittingly, Phrazes for the Young is the most Strokes-esque of the group’s solo outings, thanks in no small part to Casablancas’s signature half-spoken croon. Thankfully, he puts a twist to song structures and chord patterns that rarely stray outside of the Is This It realm, employing drum machines and keyboards in place of guitars to great effect. Even his vocals get pushed to their limits on “Left & Right in the Dark.” Lyrically, Casablancas makes fun of his image, with lines like, “Yes, I know I’m going to hell in a leather jacket/At least I’ll be in another world while you’re pissing on my casket” on lead track “Out of the Blue.” Although the album does fall off after midpoint highlight “4 Chords of the Apocalypse,” Casablancas has proven himself an adept pop songsmith without the help of his usual friends.

When you started writing and recording, did you have an idea of what you wanted the overall sound to be?
I had some ideas. I think it landed somewhere in between what I was planning and what it ended up being.

What did you originally want?
An album of super-songs [laughs]. It started with drumbeats; I had this idea of polyrhythmic stuff. I was trying to do something different. I had these specific, quirky, modern drumbeats and I wanted to figure out a way to make them interlock so that it sounded rhythmically complex, but in a slightly original way. Without being busy, just feel groovin’. But also enhance the melody because sometimes rhythmic or melodic, to get both is a tough thing. I felt really confident about the melodic side, but I had to work on the rhythmic side.

You seem to be poking fun at your image with some of the lyrics. I’m thinking of the “I’m going to hell in a leather jacket” line.
I don’t know. Different people have different interpretations of things. I don’t know. I didn’t choose it; it chose me.

Do you see the way you approached this record influencing the next Strokes album?
I don’t know. I won’t push it but maybe other people will.

Are you frustrated by people asking you questions about the Strokes while you’re trying to promote your record?
No. No I don’t. I understand why people ask, of course. But, yeah, I just don’t feel that I should talk about it.

This review originally appeared at Exclaim.ca

The Lytics put Winnipeg hip-hop on my map

I don’t know why I haven’t mentioned them in these hallowed halls before (probably because I’ve been rather lax on the posts of late) but the Lytics debut album has been one of my favourites this year. The quartet are based in Winnipeg of all places, which I never really thought of as a place to be from if you’re a hip-hop group, but these guys, along with Grand Analog have certainly proved me wrong.

What striking about the Lytics is their ability to inject a throwback 90s vibe and swinging beats into their tunes, while presenting such a wide sonic palette that’s as based in 2009 as it is in 1989. They’re both positive and incredibly fun without ever feeling like they’re trying to hard. Start with dancefloor banger “Checkin’ Out My Pumas” and go from there.

There’s a good review of their record, along with a short interview here.

“Big City Sound Girl”

Brand New explain the noise

After several years of avoiding the prying eyes of the music media, particularly here in North America, Long Island, N.Y. emo-heroes Brand New decided to open up about their new record, Daisy, on a brief stop-over in Toronto.

Here’s what lead vocalist/guitarist Jesse Lacey and guitarist Vinnie Accardi had to say.

When you head into the studio do you have an idea of what you want the general vibe of the record to be?
Jesse Lacey: At the beginning, it’s us trying to find out what the vibe is going to be. It takes us a little while to feel each other out as far as, “What kind of sounds are you interested in?” Then, as time goes on, a pattern kind of emerges and you can grab onto that and follow it a little bit further and say, “Well alright, let’s write a little more like this,” or “O.K., we have enough of that. Let’s see what other avenue we can experiment with.”

But, for the most part we’re just kind of like, “How does this fit together at all?” because some of the time some of [the songs] don’t even sound like they’re from the same people. You look at a song you wrote and one you wrote six months later, not only do they sound different, but they’re from such different parts of your brain or from different parts of what was going on in your life. But that’s what albums have become for us. They’ve become weird sections of our lives that all just end up on this one thing.

Vinnie Accardi: There’s always like that song or two that’s a turning point for everybody. Someone will bring something new into the studio that everybody’s either shocked or impressed by, which is a great thing to still be shocked and impressed by your band. And you realize that you might not have been thinking that the record could possibly go there, but now you’re so excited by what somebody else did.

JL: Or someone brings a better version of the thing that you did already and you realize that your thing is trash and they succeeded at what you attempted. It’s a relief and a failure at the same time. Like, “Oh, I sucked at that but you did it so well. I’m so happy that you’re in my band.”

Was there a song on the new record like that?
JL: When Vinnie showed me “You Stole,” I just thought that was the coolest thing I ever heard. Even some songs that didn’t make it on the record, like this song that Brian [Lane, drums] wrote we call “Lazy.” When he brought that, at the time I was like, “This has to go on the album.” And there’s days that I think it should have been there and there’s days that I don’t think it would have worked the right way. But I just remember hearing it and thinking I never would have though to write that.

Your early records, particularly Your Favourite Weapon, seem much more straightforward sonically than the layered guitar textures on The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me and Daisy. What inspired you to move in that direction?
VA: I have a feeling that even when we were recording and writing Your Favourite Weapon we might have been thinking that we were doing what we’re doing now. When people ask me what prompts the change in sound or the production, if I really think about it, I can remember standing in Mike’s [Sapone, the group's long-time producer] mom’s basement at 17 years old and thinking that I was making something that sounds way more like Daisy. So I guess we’ve been lucky to work with a lot of great producers and engineers over the last few years.

JL: There’s a level of danger to it. If you listen to a song like [Nirvana's] “Come As You Are” and you listen to the chorus on the guitar, it’s actually a very extreme chorus. It’s very wobbly and under-watery. And when I listened to it as a kid I thought, “Oh, that’s a great sound.”

But when you go to play something like and you go to set that effect, you have to be brazen to make it that bold. Because in your head you think “it’s too much.” But it’s not too much. And that’s how things become homogenized.

Some of our favourite bands growing up didn’t care. They did things that were just so absurd with their music that they set a precedent for what is good. If you listen to a band like Sonic Youth or My Bloody Valentine, they didn’t even play their guitars. They hit them and bent them and stuff like that.

VA: Mike has an uncanny ability to hear something you’re doing and immediately track it to any song in his library that he stores in his brain. He’ll go to it, show it to you and tell you that that’s what needs to happen. Here’s the better version of it. This is what you’re trying to do and you don’t even realize it.

JL: Some of the bass sounds we just took directly from Jesus Lizard and Husker Du records. You hear the strings rattling so much. We just kind of fell in love with that sound. There’s a couple of thing like that that we just went after intentionally and there’s other things that we’ve come up with on our own over the years that we just decided to take that to whatever new level.

I’ve read that this record was written primarily on acoustic guitar.
JL: Most of our songs are. Vinnie brought that up like two weeks ago. He just thought that was hilarious that he’s never written a song on electric guitar. I don’t think I really have, either.

VA: We own a storage space where all of our gear stays, but we don’t own a practice space. The only way that I play music at home is on a guitar that I got through a special at Sam Ash because I got a trumpet. I’m too lazy to go and set up my gear at home so everything just winds up being written on acoustic guitar. It’s funny to hear the song be finished and it’s this loud, obnoxious squealing thing and it’s like, where did the song go? What happened? Because on my couch in my living room it sounded way nicer and prettier.

So where do these noisy songs come from then?
JL: It’s always written on acoustic guitar but it’s never thought that it’s going to be like that. When I’m playing it I’m thinking, “I can’t wait to play this on electric guitar when I get it out of storage.”

Imagine a sculpture that sculpted out of crumpled up paper thinking, “I can’t wait to get my clay.” It’s my job. Like, why wouldn’t I have my tools with me all the time? But living in the suburbs, there’s just not room for some guitar amps and drum kit. The neighbours just aren’t going to have that.

This interview originally appeared at Chartattack.com

CFCF: The Man Behind the Mask

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Montreal wunder DJ/lap top producer CFCF about his new album Continent for Urb.com. You can check out the story here.

Paul Weller vs. Kevin Shields

Ever wonder what a collabo between Modfather Paul Weller and shoegazing feedback God Kevin Shields would sound like? Wonder no more…

Word is “7 & 3 Is the Striker’s Name” is the first single off of  a new Weller solo disc. Download it here if you feel so inclined…

Sonic Avenues are tops in my book…

At the radio station I work at, we get new records in everyday, most of them boring to terrible. So one that’s pretty damn aswesome is a rare find, and worthy of a minor celebration. Montreal’s Sonic Avenues self-titled debut album is such a record. I wrote about them over at Exclaim.ca, praising their Jam/Buzzcocks inspired powerpop  sound that bares more than a passing resemblance to one of my favourite bands, the Exploding Hearts. A few of their tracks are posted over at their myspace page.

 

 

Photo credit: Gordon Ball

Little Girls didn’t see it coming…

Sitting in a Toronto coffee shop the week before the release of Little Girls‘ debut album, 20-year-old Josh McIntyre is a little worried. After an opening slot for crazed Israeli rockers Monotonix the previous night, the band’s guitarist had his guitar amp repossessed. “He had it for a little longer than he was supposed to have it,” he says dryly. A replacement needs to be wrangled before the band set out for their gig in Hamilton tonight.

Despite the setback, McIntyre appears relaxed, undeterred by the small hiccup in a banner year for what was originally intended as a side project from his regular gig in Pirate/Rock. “We’d practice here and there and then I’d just go home and start recording things on my own,” he explains. He uploaded those home recordings to a cryptic looking MySpace page under the name Little Girls and things quickly snowballed. Before 2009 is out McIntyre will have racked up a pair of EPs, opening slots for bands like Wavves and Japandroids and a full-length album called Concepts, out on Paper Bag Records. Even the touring band McIntyre initially assembled was caught off guard by the success and the group had to split ways after it became apparent that the gig would require a much bigger commitment than they originally anticipated.

“I had almost no preconceived notions of what I wanted to do,” he says of his earliest recordings. “It was just… I don’t want to say I was free but I had no idea. I put them up and had no expectations of ever playing them live. So when I put the band together I had to almost look back and try and figure out what I was playing ― most of it was one take and/or made up on the spot.”

Upon first listen, it’s easy to dismiss Little Girls as the latest instalment in the ever-crowding field of lo-fi Joy Division sound-alikes. “I do like that lo-fi stuff,” he admits, “but I feel like there’s been an abundance of it in the past year.” He sometimes wonders if some of the bands even bothered trying to write actual songs. “It’s become more just about ‘Look at how I recorded this.’”

While many of the bands Little Girls are compared to have their feet firmly rooted in the rock world, McIntyre traces his musical lineage back to sneaking listens to his older family members’ copies of Nas’s Illmatic and Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) when he was in grade four. “I wasn’t really allowed to listen to them. It added this mystique.” His more guitar-driven influences didn’t materialize until a few years later when he started listening to punk and metal. He attributes his diverse taste in music to his eclectic ethnic background. “My mom’s from Trinidad and my dad is Scottish. I had a whole smorgasbord of music lying around the house.”

Despite the array of influences, McIntyre says hip-hop was always his passion. “J. Dilla’s probably my biggest musical influence,” he says. He learned the bedroom recording techniques he used to make Concepts from years of crafting hip-hop beats and self-releasing records under names like J. Mac Productions (“my ode to Boogie Down Productions and J. Dilla”) and Gold School. “It’s sort of a strange evolution from what I was doing then to now,” he says, “but there is a correlation to the way I’m recording it. I recorded the whole record the way I’d record a hip-hop record.”

Concepts starts with the earliest Little Girls recordings and ends with tracks recorded in July. “It’s sort of like a timeline from the very beginning of Little Girls to now. It gives you an idea of where the band is going.” Despite the title, and described by his record label as exploring themes of “growing up,” McIntyre says it’s not a concept album. “It’s not necessarily about me being young,” McIntyre explains. “It’s just about youth in general.” Of course, any discrepancy over Little Girls lyrical content is moot since McIntyre’s vocals are completely inaudible in all 11 of Concepts tracks. “I spent a lot of time mixing [the lyrics] down,” he says. All the lyrics and most of the drumming on the album were recorded through the mic on his MacBook. “I do that for a reason. I don’t like talking about the lyrics and I don’t want the vocals to be a guy singing on top of a record. I want them to be layered.”

Little Girls lyrics aren’t the only thing McIntyre has purposefully obscured. He’s also gone out of his way to hide his own participation in the project. In one of the few press photos where he’s not lurking in the shadows, McIntyre obscures his own face with Gil Scott Heron’s Pieces of a Man LP cover. Even the band’s name itself was an effort to distance himself from his work. “I wanted it to be more of about them music than just putting a face to a band,” he says. “I just wanted to make songs, put them out there and see what people thought about them. For a while even my friends didn’t know. They’d say ‘have you heard this Little Girls band?’ And I’d be like, ‘no, I don’t know who you’re talking about.’”

He admits that as Little Girls profile rises and more people come out to see the band that anonymity is becoming harder to maintain. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. “It’s just funny to look back a year ago, I was just working and playing music. We used to put out our own music, we’d make them ourselves, make the artwork and put them out. Now people are investing money into it.”

This sory originally appeared in the November 2009 issue of Exclaim.