Record Review: Little Boots – “Illuminations EP”

Little Boots, a.k.a. Victoria Hesketh, already scored a pair of hits in the U.K. But despite her debut album Hands already getting a release across the pond, her label, Warner, in all their infinite wisdom, have decided not to release it in North America until 2010. Because everyone loves waiting to pay for an album they can get for free (albeit illegally) on the internet now. Whatever.

In lieu of deciding to pursue one of those two actions, the curious can sink their teeth into this five-track EP. “Stuck On Repeat,” the debut single from the former Dead Disco singer and the smash “New In Town” (both co-written by Lily Allen collaborator Greg Kurstin) are included, as are three non-LP tunes, including a cover of Freddie Mercury’s “Love Kills.”

Unfortunately, the latter songs just don’t live up to the promise of Little Boots’ singles. Where the singles sound like euphoric club smashes, the rest ride on the coattails established by her hits.

This review originally appeared at Chartattack.com

“New In Town”

Eels Show Growth

After four years away, all it took to get Eels main man Mark Oliver Everett back into the mode of making new music was some facial hair. Well, okay — a lot of facial hair. “You’ve got to get inspiration wherever you can get it,” he says.

Everett, better known simply as E, found his muse in the mirror one day while brushing his teeth. “I saw the beard and I thought about the last time I had grown a substantial beard, which was probably only half as good as the one I have now,” he says. “That was when I did the ‘Dog Faced Boy’ song.”

“Dog Faced Boy” was the lead track on Eels 2001 album Souljacker. It introduced us to a hairy-faced kid living in a town that can’t accept his lupine tendencies — Teen Wolf this ain’t. “I thought, ‘well it’s all these years later, he’s older now. What is he now?’ I figured the best he could hope to be was a werewolf.”

The resulting album, Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire is a sparse guitar, bass and drums record that flips between skuzzy, 21st century blues and sad bastard ballads exploring the many sides of desire from the character’s perspective. “His life is still driven by the same kind of frustrations from when he was young. He’s really driven by his passions and he’s got nowhere to put [them].”

It’s tempting to draw comparisons between the character and E himself. After all E has written entire albums about his personal tragedies. He says there’s no immediate correlation between himself and the character. Yet “there’s gotta be something for you to identify with in order to make it work,” he explains. “If I look back on these things years later… I suddenly realize in hindsight that it had a lot more to do with me personally than I was aware of at the time.”

He says he’s not entirely sure why he decided to ditch the razor, but he feels strongly about staking his hirsute territory. “You’re really disrespecting your rights as a rock star if you don’t grow an enormous beard every once in a while,” he says. “To disrespect that is a sin. If I can’t do it who can? I was born with a lot of testosterone and I gotta use it.”

Despite the gap, E kept himself busy in the four years since Eels last record, the double album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. He penned his autobiography, took part in a BBC documentary about his physicist father and oversaw the release of an Eels greatest hits and rarities compilations. Though the length was unintentional, he says the break was necessary. “I felt like I had kind of painted myself into a bit of a corner with the Blinking Lights album,” he says. “I figured I needed to create some space and give some time so everybody can get over that before I move on and say ‘hey, by the way I’m still alive.’”

Though he’s not ruling out the possibility of a tour, for now he’s content to just lay low. “The fun part’s making the baby,” he says. “Now that we’ve squeezed the baby out, I’ve just got to let my artistic vagina heal.”

This feature originally appeared in the July 2009 issue of Exclaim!

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Record Review: Eels – “Hombre Lobo”

Record Review: The Evaporators/Andrew W.K. – “A Wild Pear”

A Wild Pear is the new split seven-inch single by Nardwuar-fronted garage rockers The Evaporators and hard-partying motivational speaker Andrew W.K.

The EP is littered with references to the obscure past. The title is a play on A Wild Pair, the title of the 1968 split album between The Guess Who and The Staccatos (who eventually became the Five Man Electrical Band).

The Evaporators side features an original cut and a cover of The Hou-Lops “Oh Non.” Meanwhile, W.K. pays tribute to our country by knocking off covers of The Leather Uppers “Don’t Sell Hot Dogs Tonight” and Subhumans classic “Oh Canaduh.”

Like much of The Evaporators output, the circus around the music is more interesting than the actual music. But the band are always improving and this release is no different.

W.K.’s half, on the other hand, reveals a new, stripped down sound from his over-the-top albums. It better suits the source material and acts as the perfect foil to The Evaporators’ sound.

This review originally appeared at Chartattack.com

Live Reviews: NXNE 2009

Blood Ceremony @ Reverb

Saying that Blood Ceremony sound like Black Sabbath is like saying Ozzy was fucked up on drugs for most of the 70s. Led by Alia O’Brien on vocals and the occasional flute jam, the quartet pummeled their way through their 40-minute set to a very receptive crowd that included a fair share of banging heads, proving that it’s better to acknowledge your influences than ignore them.

The Juan Maclean @ Tattoo Rock Parlour

Seeing The Juan Maclean at Tattoo Rock Parlour is a bit of a surreal experience. The faux-rockstar décor complete with in house tattoo shop just doesn’t jive with the New York dance duo’s vibe. But from the crack of the first beat, all was forgotten as Maclean and vocalist Nancy Whang delivered one of the most consistently awesome sets of the fest. Augmented by an extra keyboard player and a live drummer, the quartet sounded pristine, despite a visibly frustrated Maclean’s issues with the in-house soundman.

The British Columbians @ The El Mocambo

Playing at the ungodly hour of eight for their Toronto debut, The British Columbians managed to draw a fairly large crowd, which they proceeded to pummel with a steady dose of bottom end heavy blues-rock. The band soldiered through some awkward technical problems with ease, even as lead singer/guitarist Girard Dixon’s amp blow up threatened to cut short their debut to three tunes. Their live show lacks the subtly of their album but more than makes up for it with guitar histrionics.

The Black Lips @ Yonge and Dundas Square

The Black Lips live reputation precedes the band wherever they go. After all, how many bands are banned from India? So it was a little disconcerting to hear the group were playing the decidedly family-friendly Yonge and Dundas Square. And while they kept it in their pants, they did have half a dozen fans dancing on stage with them before the night was out, much to the chagrin of security. Oh yeah, they actually sounded great as well, even having King Khan & BBQ Show join them onstage, hopefully a sign of things to come from their new LP together.

No Age @ Lee’s Palace

No Age have significantly upped their live game since last gracing the stage at Lee’s Palace. The duo were far more confident and displayed more showmanship, with guitarist Randy Randall playing art-punk guitar god to the crowd’s rapturous approval. The pair also offered up a new track called “Fever Dreamin’” that live comes off like a more muscular, fully formed song than their previous work. But who knows what kind of reverb drenched effects they’ll use in the studio.

King Khan & BBQ Show @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern

As was expected, King Khan and partner in crime, BBQ Show put on what was one of the most theatrical and fun shows of NXNE. Donning their onstage costumes, the pair looked like cheap knockoffs of Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent character. The duo blasted through garage rock and punk-rock doo-wop tunes and had Black Lips’ Cole Alexander return the favour from earlier in the night and join them onstage. Never one to simply show up, play and leave, this was one of several shows the band played over the weekend.

The Sonics @ Yonge and Dundas Square

Watching the Sonics walk onstage was like sitting in the showroom of a casino – a group of 60 year-old men sauntering on stage, sporting over-sized black blazers and leather jackets over t-shirts to cover up their aging guts. But by the time guitarist Larry Parypa finished his first sludgy riff, the Tacoma, WA proto-punk Gods basically rendered Mudhoney and every other grunge era band irrelevant. They delivered one of the loudest sets of the festival and had everyone, young and old shouting along to classic covers like Little Richard’s “Lucille” and timeless originals like “The Witch.”

So So Glos @ Bovine Sex Club

Brooklyn’s So So Glos (they were all actually born there) kicked off Thursday night with the first of three performances that evening – they played Sneaky Dees and Rancho Relaxo afterwards. Though they appeared more interested in drinking/ flirting with girls prior to taking the stage, the quartet belied their hometown’s reputation as a haven for art-school hipsters and delivered a great set of punk tunes with a pop sensibility mixed in for good nature.

Teen Anger @ Silver Dollar Room

Toronto group Teen Anger throw down old school punk riffs with a bit of twang on the side. The quartet played a solid set in the horribly laid out Silver Dollar Room. The lead singer did his best Ian Curtis moves while the female bass player rocked out in a leopard print leotard. The crowd was game but didn’t seem visibly interested until the singer wandered down into the crowd to try and coax some animation out of them, They quit just as the crowd was peaking in either a brilliant reading of their audience or a lack of more material.

These reviews and more originally appeared at Exclaim.ca

Andrew WK: Parties hard, blows up harder

It’s been three years since professional party starter Andrew W.K. dropped his last record. But don’t think the New York-based rocker has been sitting around nursing a hangover. W.K. is busier than ever, and is dabbling in a litany of new genres and media including classical music, television and business entrepreneurship.

He says the 180-degree turn from his hard rocking past is exactly the point.

“Sometimes doing the opposite of what you’ve done is really exciting.”

First up is a brand new split seven-inch EP with Narwuar The Human Serviette’s band, The Evaporators. W.K. has been a huge Nardwuar fan for years and calls the EP a dream come true.

“I was really worked up to meet him, just to get my chance to do a Nardwuar interview,” he says of their first meeting. “I had never had an experience like that because I had never been star-struck by an interviewer before.”

The two have since become friends, which led to the EP that finds W.K. covering two Canadian punk classics: “Oh Canaduh” by Subhumans and “Don’t Sell Hot Dogs Tonight” by the Leather Uppers.

A new solo piano improvisational record titled ‘55 Cadillac is also in the can and  the first week of September. Continuing his desire to flip the script, W.K. says the album was created as a reaction to the laborious writing and recording methods he used on his first three records.

“The records I made before each took two years to make. This took two hours,” he says.

If that’s not enough AWK to keep you satiated, he’s also making a move to television. Destroyt, Build, Destroy is a new Cartoon Network program where groups of kids creatively destroy something like a car, use the scrap parts to build something new and then creatively destroy that object as well.

“It involved all the things I wanted to do, hosting, a high energy atmosphere… it involved something I’d never even seen before — which is kids and 500 foot explosions in a competition show. So it just seemed perfect.”

The first episode aired down in the states on June 20. No word yet on when it might air here in Canada.

Finally, W.K. has founded his own record label, Skyscraper Music Maker, and signed three new artists: Aleister X, Bad Brilliance and Cherie Lily.

“Me getting to contribute to what they’re doing is just the best,” he says. “It’s my favourite music in the world and I get to work on it.”

All three artists have EPs in the works but their first material for the label can be found on the promotional release Damn! The Mixtape, Volume 1. A second edition is due later this year.

Though he’s firing on all media cylinders at the moment, W.K. stresses that he’s not trying to promote cross-promotional synergies for the Andrew W.K. brand.

“It’s not like the TV is to get the music out there and the music is to get the TV. It’s all to get this energy out there,” he says. “There’s many ways to do it. I used to think that music was the only way. But it turns out music is just an extremely good way. There’s a lot of other really good ways, too. Really powerful ways to create this feeling of possibility, to remind people that they’re free.”

This story originally appeared on Chartattack.com

Record Review: The British Columbians – “The British Columbians”

This three-piece, who hail from disparate suburbs of Vancouver, rock hard in grand Can-rock traditions — think Big Sugar or that first Big Wreck album.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Girard Knox adopts twang to his voice that perfectly suits the band’s country-blues rock that’s heavy on the slide guitar and the bottom end. 

Live, the band operates as a quartet that emphasizes the bar band rock elements of their sound like second cut “Hoodoo.” But this sells them short. As capable as they are of throwing themselves into a wall of guitar wails, it’s tracks like opener “Bye Bye Marie” and the stunning “In The Leaves” that show the band’s full breadth of songwriting.

That Knox and drummer Dave Moran produced this debut themselves hints that this is barely the tip of the band’s ambitions. 

This review originally appeared at Chartattack.com

Incoming: Great Bloomers – “This Ain’t You (Live @ TARA)”

Via Exclaim’s Click Hear

A great song from a great album by a great band gets that much greater thanks to this live version from the second instalment of the Audio Recording Academy’s Secret Sessions.

Great Bloomers debut is a stark contrast to the EP they released two years ago. Where that was a visceral, ramshackle affair, Speak of Trouble asks listeners to look inward lyrically and sonically. “This Ain’t You” is a prime example of this approach, showing through two characters that no matter how deep you might bury your feelings, they’ll always rise to the top for all to see. The slightly more laid back nature of this semi-acoustic live take is well suited to the beautifully effortless voice of main Bloomer Lowell Sostomi. His pitch perfect rendition is just as emotionally fuelled as its studio counterpart.

Listen to the track here.

Related Post:

Record Review: Great Bloomers – “Speak of Trouble”

Record Review: God Help the Girl – “God Help the Girl”

God Help the Girl is a movie Belle & Sebastian head honcho Stuart Murdoch has written and hopes to make sometime next year. But since he is after all a musician first, he’s offering up the soundtrack a year or so early.

Made up of songs that date back as far as Dear Catastrophe Waitress period B&S, Murdoch says he always imagined these tracks sung by girls backed by strings, recruiting Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, Smoosh’s Aysa and members of B&S to help bring the project to fruition.

“Funny Little Frog” and “Act of the Apostle,” both from The Life Pursuit, get re-imagined here via newcomers Catherine Ireton, who appeared on the cover of B&S’s “White Collar Boy” single, and Brittany Stallings, discovered via an open call for female singers. These fresh takes are indicative of the rest of the album, which mines Sandie Shaw and ’60s girl-group harmonies and at times, sounds more like the Pipettes than any Belle & Sebastian record. God Help the Girl may be a soundtrack but it more than holds up on its own, standing side by side with pretty much anything Murdoch has put over in the last decade.

This review originally appeared at Exclaim.ca

Old tech gadgets are good for nothing

 

 

 

On the 30th Anniversary of the first portable music device (they’re excluding the transistor radio) the BBC convinced a thirteen year old kid to turn in his iPod for a week in exchange for a Sony Walkman. Hilarity ensues. Read all about it here.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson

The King of Pop died after going into cardiac arrest. He was 50 years old.