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Montreal’s Wind Up Radio Sessions comes to town Matthew Frose LANCE WRITER home town show is a great way to give a band a morale boost. Lucky for pop-folker’s Wind Up Radio Sessions, they have more than one home town. “We’re a four-piece based out of Montreal. Three of the band are originally from Hamilton, Ont. and I’m from the UK, so we’re all kind of Montreal transplants”, said multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Matt Lazenby. “We try to have as many home bases as possible.” Wind Up Radio Sessions is releasing their second full-length album Birds Eyes on May 24. The...
Sam Roberts Band plays Caesars’ first all-ages gig H.G. Watson ARTS EDITOR o you remember your first concert? Sam Roberts does. “It was Paul Simon at the Montreal Forum,” he tells me over the phone. It was the first ticket he had ever bought for a live show. “I was impressed by the scale of the crowd more than I was the actual music coming off the stage. It pushed me towards wanting to play in front of a crowd.” On May 25, Sam Roberts Band rolls into the Colesseum at Caesars Windsor for the first all-ages show presented at...
Josh Kolm Editor Emeritus t’s been a long time since people have called Tom Gabel brave. The guitarist, songwriter and lead singer for seminal punk rock band Against Me! was once lauded as a punk rock hero for his DIY ethic and attacks on the music industry, but was subsequently labelled as sellout by a small but vocal group of fans after signing with Fat Wreck Chords in 2003. The sentiment has only intensified once the band released their 2007 album, New Wave, on Sire Records, a major label owned by Warner. Last Tuesday, Gabel came out as transgendered in...
Josh Kolm EDITOR EMERITUS SANTIGOLD – Master of My Make Believe (Atlantic) There is a fine line between a song that is catchy and club-friendly and one that is pandering and hacky. On the follow-up to her breakthrough debut Santogold, Santigold shows that she is aware of that line and how to stay on the right side of it. In the four years preceding Master of My Make Believe, the trends in pop music have changed, seemingly in favour of the dashes of reggae, dub and electronic music Santigold’s first album was noted for. Song titles like “Look at These...
Micaela Muldoon Lance Writer PS I LOVE YOU – Death Dreams (Paper Bag Records) ingston duo P.S. I Love You packs a wallop of a record with their latest, Death Dreams. The album begins with the title track: a lovely, melancholy and wholly instrumental song that should be part of a movie soundtrack. But despite the intro, the album is far from doom and gloom— it pulsates energy. The buzzy, yet crystalline guitars electrify the entire album. The instrumental work shows the compellingly beautiful edge, soul and depth that rock music can have. It brings to mind imagery of sunrise,...
H.G. Watson ARTS EDITOR anitoban singer-songwriter Demetra Penner is no stranger to solitude. Now on tour across eastern Canada, she spends her winters living amongst polar bears and beluga whales in Churchill, Man. It’s also where she honed her skill as a musician. H.G. Watson sat down with Penner over a pint to discuss encounters with bears, Dan Ackroyd and her album Lone Migration after her May 9 show at Phog Lounge. HGW: Any interesting polar bear encounters in the far north? DP: I worked up in Churchill for the past six years, seasonally. The first year I was there...
* indicates Canadian artist 1 PS I LOVE YOU* – Death Dreams (Paper Bag) 2 THE JOEL PLASKETT EMERGENCY* – Scrappy Happiness (MapleMusic) 3 THE DEADLY HEARTS* – The Deadly Hearts (Transistor 66) 4 YUKON BLONDE* – Tiger Talk (Dine Alone) 5 GRIMES* – Visions (Arbutus) 6 EIGHT AND A HALF* – Eight And A Half (Arts & Crafts) 7 BOXER THE HORSE – French Residency (Self-Released) 8 PATRICK WATSON* – Adventures In Your Own Backyard (Domino) 9 BRAZILIAN MONEY* – Doug Nasty (Gipper Tore) 10 DIESEL JUNKIES* – 2012 (Self-Released) 11 CEU – Caravana Sereia Bloom (Six Degrees) 12...
Jason Rankin LANCE WRITER WOODS OF YPRES Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light (Earache Records) Woods of Ypres offers an enriching melodic musical experience with its new doom metal album, Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light. The album picks up with “Lightning & Snow,” starting with light, rhythmic guitar and then picking up. The guitar gets faster. The drums kick in, going from a steady beat to lightning double-kick. The vocals are a long held scream. It’s not like other metal bands where the screaming is unintelligible and sounds like Chewbacca. These are real words, complemented by a...
Lindy Vopnfjörð brings his folk roots to Phog Matthew Frose LANCE WRITER indsor will be invaded by an Icelandic giant this week. Lindy Vopnfjörð, at six-foot eight-inches, is on his way to becoming a giant in the Canadian folk scene as well. Born in Manitoba to a family of Icelandic-Canadians, Vopnfjörð was literally raised with music. “My parents are folk-singers, so when I was growing up we toured as a family in a yellow school bus.” But the traveling family band didn’t last forever because, as Vopnfjörð puts it, “It wasn’t cool anymore when my brother and I got older....
Sleigh Bells at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit, April 25, 2012 H.G. Watson Arts Editor ou know that slightly worrisome moment when a concert is making the floor of the venue shake so hard you worry the walls might collapse around you? The Sleigh Bells show Wednesday night at St. Andrew’s Hall in Detroit was one long worrisome moment. Sleigh Bells’ brand of electric glam punk rock have made them an indie favourite in recent years. While it would be easy to dismiss them as a buzz band, the crowd at St. Andrews certainly suggested otherwise. A diverse mix, ranging...