Canadian Music/Bands

[.francesca]

i moved to halifax from san francisco almost 2 years ago and since i've been here i've learned so much more about good canadian music (everyone knows about godspeed you black emperor! and the arcade fire, but what about final fantasy? or destroyer?). we have a lot of threads on individual bands who happen to be from canada, but here we can talk about local bands that are popular in our necks of the woods and general talk about bands and music from canada.

halifax is relatively secluded and many times touring bands don't want to come here due to the fact that it's like a 12+ hour drive from montreal and at least that from new york or toronto. for that reason halifax has spawned MANY good bands (north of america, buck 65, joel plaskett, wintersleep) and the music scene here is thriving! what are music scenes like where you live?

 

[strawberry daiquiri]

i final fantasy is all i can think to say at the moment!
going to see him next month

 

[.francesca]

that's so exciting! i'd love to see ff

tell us about the show and take pictures!

 

[Boluda]

montreals where its at.

 

[.francesca]

how so, boluda? maybe you could explain why you think so, maybe others are interested in knowing more about it (of course, both gybe! and af are from montreal )

 

[jennifer~]

Leonard Cohen <- Montreal.

Who knew there was so much more to be had; I might take these as suggestions, fran, and keep them all in mind - in case I ever do want something new

 

[Boluda]

arcadefire, wolfparade, godspeed, unicorns, pop montreal...nuff said.

 

[Mary-Anne]

^^ hehehe yess!!
don't forget the Dears

I also want to mention Broken Social Scene, Stars & Metric
(not necessarily from Montreal, but all Canadian and All good )

 

[.francesca]

just to clarify - montreal isn't the only city in canada

i went to pop montreal last year and it was awesome...halifax also has a really good festival, held in the fall: http://popexplosion.com/hpx06/

i really like a broken social scene solo-side project - apostle of hustle

the organ - an all girl band from vancouver
also from vancouver - gang bang, 2 girls and a drum machine = awesome (don't try searching for it on soulseek )
also from vancouver - black mountain - a very retro/60s garage-y sounding band (one of the girls from the organ left the organ and is now a member of black mountain)
a black mountain side project - pink mountain tops (one of the guys' solo project)

some vancouver love

 

[.francesca]

final fantasy has a new record out called he poos clouds. here is a review from pitchfork:

Final Fantasy
He Poos Clouds
[Blocks/Tomlab; 2006]
Rating: 8.0





Around this time last year, Owen Pallett-- a touring sideman and string arranger for the Arcade Fire and Hidden Cameras-- released Has a Good Home, his first record as Final Fantasy. For an album assembled in approximately six days, it contained a surprising amount of good material: elegant, sophisticated, and generally winsome pop songs constructed from violin and loop pedals. A year later, Squaresoft has yet to send a cease-and-desist order, and Pallett's emerged with something far grander than his modest debut.
He Poos Clouds. The title is meant as a compliment (cf. sh*t that don't stink), and maybe also as a way of cutting through the seriousness of the thing itself-- 10 compositions for a chamber ensemble including strings, piano, harpsichord, percussion, and voice. Work through Pallett's lyrics and there's the more serious possibility that this album is about suicide. These songs are populated by characters both fantastical and hopeless: frigid young professionals, an impotent real-estate broker, Lazarus, a Japan-obsessed suicidal, "the Pooka," a lost teenage daughter, and Jenna, who "dreams of being physically able/ To behead herself at the dining room table." They talk to themselves (and occasionally one another) in arch, pithy exclamations, which Pallett, in print, riddles with explanation points. What's dating? "Tell lies, tell dirty lies, tell diggory lies/ Until you're lying in his bed!"
There are grand gestures in the music, too, starting with the unbearably tense sequence of rising notes that closes the first song, irritating you to the point of emotional sensitivity. Some are full of good feeling, like the opening of "Song Song Song"-- a clatter of vigorous stick-on-wood percussion that only gradually steps its way up into pizzicato harmonies. Others are packed with something more anguished, like when the broker in "This Lamb Sells Condos" bickers with his spouse: Pallett does spiteful crosstalk ("I feed you every morning and ask so little") under what sounds like a children's choir urgently singing designer labels ("Hedi Slimane and Agnes B/ I'm not content"). Still more urgency in "Many Lives -> 49 MP", as Pallett sings around an insistent violin lead and others shout violently from the back of the room.
Pallett's combination of pop idiom and classical practice is fluid and natural; he sounds perfectly at home here, miles from the self-conscious "conceptual" way indie acts usually take up string quartets. But this may or may not be an album for classicists. Pallett's arrangements are terrific in their rhythmic tangles of strings, pushing and weaving in odd spots, but they're also-- intentionally or unintentionally-- the tiniest bit monochrome, heavy in staccato undertows and the same arch feeling as the album's title. (Arch in tone and arched in eyebrows, especially when the pizzicato comes out.) Pallett's voice can also lag behind his writing, and its recording here is naggingly lacking in crispness; right when you want a strong voice swelling over the strings, it can go muddied and dull and get dragged underneath. But where Has a Good Home was promising, He Poos Clouds seems like the real thing: No matter the title, there's an ambition here, and a dedication to Pallett's own mission, that's a joy to hear. This is, in a word, fierce-- it can engage you on a level most albums can't, and digging through the lyrics seems to reveal...well, something. Which isn't as common a situation as we might hope.
Nitsuh Abebe, May 2, 2006

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/staff/

 

[.francesca]

also from vancouver - black mountain - a very retro/60s garage-y sounding band (one of the girls from the organ left the organ and is now a member of black mountain)

here is a black mountain review from pitchfork - it's over a year old, but this record is AMAZING!

Black Mountain
Black Mountain
[Jagjaguwar; 2005]
Rating: 8.3





Prolificacy can be a death knell for a less-than epochal rock band, so Stephen McBean decided to diversify. The fruitful Vancouver singer/songwriter has, over the past few years, spread his yield among no less than three bands-- Pink Mountaintops, Black Mountain, and Jerk With a Bomb-- each exploring slight but intriguing variations on reference-happy rock'n'roll. His latest undertaking is Black Mountain, whose self-titled debut full-length is a rollicking, wildly adventurous reconfiguring of 1960s and 70s nostalgia that's as duty-bound to the present as it is sympathetic to the past.
Black Mountain hits somewhere between Jerk With a Bomb's stellar but more straightforward Pyrokinesis and Pink Mountaintops' smarmy, sex-laden brand of vespertine blues-- only jacked up a good 20 decibels. McBean's voice is pleasant and instantly recognizable; having such an established songwriter behind a freshman outing is a tremendous advantage, and Black Mountain seem to know it. When the band aren't venturing on plush, static jams, his coy bluesy vocals tether the songs in familiar melodic space.
Svelte and upbeat, opener "Modern Music" stands apart from the rest of the album. Over jellybone saxophone and scattershot drumming, McBean and sidekick Amber Webber take jabs at "another pop explosion" and claim they "can't stand all your modern music." It's a trite argument, but nevertheless one for which Black Mountain makes a compelling case. Ironically, "Modern Music" is the album's least anachronistic and, almost as if to spite itself, catchiest number. "Druganaut" fits better into the retro regalia the band revere, weaving a loose-limbed vamp that, besides a few simple chord changes, seldom varies but is gradually added to. The vocals don't drop until nearly two minutes in, but the gap is barely noticeable. After the vocals arrive, it's into a series of haymaker guitar stabs and beefy drum fills, followed by a beautiful guitar feature-- spotted with ran-backward licks-- that exemplifies Black Mountain's penchant for texture and sameness within traditionally peripatetic verse-chorus-verse structures.
When Black Mountain evoke glue-sniffing shredders of yesteryear such Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin, their technique falls nearer to Galaxie 500 and the Velvet Underground, who forsook showmanship and dug deep in search of music's fundamental soul. "No Satisfaction"-- with its chunky strumming, honky-tonk piano, radiant plucked guitar and cheap-o sax-- most directly channels those aloof, technically slovenly forebears and, not surprisingly, is this album's best song. But there's nothing overtly sloppy about Black Mountain: Although it often wades in droning, repetitive passages, the album is impressively tight.
Some may hear these shopworn melodies and clamor "bar band." But if Black Mountain ever tried to make a night-to-night living in blues cover haunts, they'd do it by torching the stage and leaving patrons agog in WTF stares. The Vancouver quintet aren't some cabal of slack beer-bellied crooners; they can play their instruments, they have multi-chord vocabularies and, perhaps most importantly, they know how to give their songs proper recorded treatment. Black Mountain has that golden must-be-analog sound, with the perfect amount of tarnish to make the songs feel lived-in without burying them in fry grease.
Interestingly, Black Mountain are least effective at their most unpredictable. "Heart of Snow" resists structure, feeling out a plaintive acoustic strum before meeting up with a frail guitar and piano line, which meanders to a tense climax before erupting into a simplistic but captivating odd-time stomp. Unfortunately, the tension is drawn out as the band acquiesces back into a lugubrious Webber vocal passage, quashing the swelling momentum and rendering the eventual resolution less cathartic. "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" is the antithesis: the track is mercurial but calculated; its stilted operatic grandeur is a welcome bit of certainty. Orbiting the album's most generic and derivative riff, "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" starts with a clarion call-- a booming full-band hit or five-- then settles into a lurching unison guitar figure. The song seesaws for a bit, then has a mood swing and dives into a forlorn interlude, before picking up right where it left off and riding its central riff raw.
Black Mountain are about as referential as they come. But despite the obvious touchstones-- which, incidentally, f*cking rule-- the band are affable and idiosyncratic enough to win over those who passed on recent retrofits like Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral or My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves, and make those records' admirers practically cream themselves. Stephen McBean may be playing it safe by partitioning his rep, but the consistency and breadth of his work is staggering amid so many once-and-dones.
Sam Ubl, January 17, 2005

 

[.francesca]

a black mountain side project - pink mountaintops (one of the guys' solo project)

and a pink mountaintops review:

Pink Mountaintops
Axis of Evol
[Jagjaguwar; 2006]
Rating: 8.1





Pink Mountaintops is of course the summer home of Steve McBean, who helms the lite-psychedelic-sludge outfit Black Mountain and who oozed Francophilic dread throughout late-90s Canada atop the stark Jerk With a Bomb. Initially, the seven tracks on his new record seem to play like fugitives from disparate orphanages, each with its own ambitions and sense of style. But they are linked by, of all things, an evangelical urgency: McBean self-consciously blends Satan-fearing Louvin Brothers sentiments with the Velvet Underground's narco-messianism and heavy doses of the 1970s California Jesus Movement's rhetoric/vibe.
The bible-fondling is a feint, though (I think), an allusive backdrop against which McBean worries about contemporary political turmoil. Take "Comas", for example: McBean's catalog is on a pace to out-reference Dan Bejar's, and here he rejects AC/DC's mantra outright: "No, I'm not headed down a highway to hell." War-and-peace imagery follows, but the chorus surrenders to la-la scatting. Some message is being telegraphed: the horny first Pink Mountaintops EP never sat around strumming Banhart's guitar, engineering the fingertip-slides as loudly as the vocals. Either we have a new babysitter, or the old one has been mellowed by 24-hour news and feels guilty about his sl*tty past.
During "Cold Criminals", a beep, like the ones on old storybook-record combos that signaled a page-turn, re-begins the riff. The bass is Black Mountain funk, and the guitar is VU-slop, but an effect sounds like planes taking off. Is this more than the requisite Smog shout-out (see Callahan's "Ex-Con", and note how the last Pink Mountaintops' "Tourist In Your Town" seemed to wink at "I Was A Stranger")? Is Halliburton or Enron in McBean's sights? Is the refrain, "Devil got us in his plans," a rebuff to fundamentalist conservative broadcaster/prognosticators such as the Van Impes, who cast us (North Americans) as the heroes in an apocalyptic fantasia?
"New Drug Queens": Okay, the chorus is "Tell your Mama don't stay out late tonight," which seems to be shushing the Scissor Sisters, or appropriating Glenn Danzig's famous maternal taunt. "Slaves" follows, and McBean sounds like he's trying to talk PJ Harvey out of hanging out in the desert with that Stone Age guy. It's nine minutes of hurdy-gurdy spiral-tribal hokey-pokey propulsion, maybe the redawn of threat-gospel. "Plastic Man, You're The Devil": As if cast in an indie-tastic homage to Trading Places, Mr. Lif the agitprop rapper has recently dropped a nasty sex rhyme, and the formerly smutty Pink Mountaintops have recorded a progressive ballad? McBean is either inserting a comic book character into the Freudian drama between God, Mary, and Jesus, or if he's using plasticity the way Devo did, as shorthand for the high-and-tight corporate/government un-man. By the end of the tune, the speaker's pacifism has waned into vigilante pragmatism.
"Lord Let Us Shine" is a choir number, but it drops fuzzed-out bar-anthem guitar over minimalist drum-machinery; imagine a Polyphonic Spree clown-carjacked by Andrew WK. Things get all Jason Spaceman by the end (remember that he went stoner-churchy too), and the lyrics cop the Stones for the zillionth time, typecasting them again as the arbiters of the 60s demonic majesty. "How We Can Get Free" asks Jesus if he even believes anymore, begging him for a liberating "holy rage." Blood spills, and McBean repeats more lines from jukebox classics, but the acoustic plod is undercut by an icy Xiu Xiu synth hit. Listening to the song is not unlike having your neck shaved by a The Deer Hunter-era Christopher Walken in a priest outfit.
I surrender: I want to type about Axis of Evol until Armageddon, but my flesh is weak. This EP contains more interesting complications than I am capable of harnessing by deadline; I feel like McBean is going to show up at the Pitchfork office as a reaping angel, and I won't be ready, and there won't be time to repent. What are these songs about partying, warfare, and holiness trying to do? Is McBean envisioning a neu-hippie version of Left Behind? Is he speaking in tongues with his tongue in his cheek? Most importantly, how and why is this piledrivingly unsubtle delivery of bleak Dylanesque cosmology so hott? In his book American Jesus, Stephen Prothero details how one of the "dangerous directions" of the Jesus Movement was toward "Flirty Fishing," or using "sex as a recruiting technique" for the Lord. Consider me seduced.
William Bowers, March 17, 2006
[/quote/

 

[chaneladdict]

Kathleen Edwards is Canadian and I love her