Results tagged “music”

"I probably don't even need this microphone, to be honest!" Frontman Odario Williams and the rest of his genre-bending hip-hop group Grand Analog launched the Toronto Public Library's current Make Some Noise series straight from the kids' section of the College/Shaw branch last night, and the alternative venue proved a somehow very fitting setting for an affair that's typically relegated to dark clubs at late hours that no adorable two-year-old would ever be able to attend.

Why is Jonas Bonnetta so damn disarming? His debut full length as Evening Hymns—essentially a fleshed-out version of his real-monikered earlier release—oozes a level of granola that could cause discomfort for hyper-aware, self-conscious indie rock fans; the album is called Spirit Guides and much of the lyrical content is about the forest and there's a full track just of a rain storm and have you seen that eerie, foggy mountain on the cover? Somehow, though, there isn't a pretentious note on this record.

Believe it or not, music videos still exist. Sound Tracks trolls the internet to find the best and the worst of local artists' new singles and the good, bad, or otherwise noteworthy visuals that accompany them.

Toronto’s finest gathered at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Monday to see and hear 250 teenagers from Venezuela. The world-renowned Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (the Mick Jagger of orchestral music), awed the packed house for more than two and a half hours.

The buzz around local dreamy folk group the Wilderness of Manitoba continues to build in some pretty likely places, and it's easy to see why: their debut EP, Hymns of Love and Spirits, is an ethereal, reverb-soaked finger-picking slumber party with lush harmonies and sad overtones. It sounds exactly like the name suggests, playing almost like a paint-by-numbers indie folk guide, and its overly precious repetition is actually easier to roll your eyes at than it is to love. But there's an unnerving quality to it too—it's more than just starkness (calculated) or nature noises (really?), and if you do a little digging, the hidden loss and hurt give it a raw edge that the campfire quality never could.

Melanie Doane wants to teach us all a lesson in ambidexterity. And she's not the only one.

Like a ray of pop-nostalgia sunshine, the new self-released, self-titled EP from Everything All The Time finds its way into our sad-bastard acoustic hearts this week. It's a committed pop record that is technically pretty removed from a lot of the easy indie rock cop-outs that get thrown at the messy-haired, bespectacled sextet, but don't be afraid—they keep the conventions and the company (oh, and live drums), so no one will ever know.

A few nerdy dudes, two couches in an otherwise barren basement, and a video camera. With MuchMusic turned over to Leah Miller's minions and whomever wins the all-pervasive VJ Search 2.0, this simple format stands as a striking alternative to the glamorous folk with the obnoxiously loud in-studio audience on Queen West. But with the launch of AUXtv, with an impressive 285,000 viewers in its first week, the channel's new late-night spot—Talk Show Night at Juicebox Manor—may look more like the future of cool music programming for the coveted 18–34 set.

"It basically started as a way to hopefully get free CDs." In what seems like a dream to those of us yet to turn our internet noise into an escape from day jobs and a licence to sleep in, Dan Wolovick has, in a few short years, turned his reviews-based music blog Two Way Monologues into a full-time job. "I became inspired [to put on live shows] by a friend from a band who challenged me for never doing anything [besides] criticizing bands in reviews, and I've never looked back."

The Diableros have always had the unusual ability to both show and grow; their jumpy beats and awkward vocals are way too in-your-face before you have the chance to actually hear what's going on, let alone absorb it, but eventually the structures unravel. The band's new EP on Outside Records, Old Story, Fresh Road, sticks close to this mandate, but a fresh lineup and streamlined recording process have also added a new focus and a clear direction.

Guess who's back! Toronto's favourite post-everything fuzz boys, Little Girls. Concepts is their first, proper full-length, and it's out on Paper Bag Records next Tuesday. If you hate reflective youthful whimsy fuelling no-wave nostalgia, you should probably reassess your life and then go come clean about your shortcomings to super-real baby-faced Little Girls mastermind Josh McIntyre. There is no way Torontoist is doing that for you. For shame.

This year was Busking for Change's second: the event, which sees big-name (and other) musicians playing on city streets collecting donations for War Child ,started last year, and was born a little earlier, after Our Lady Peace's Raine Maida busked for War Child all around downtown for twelve hours back in 2007.

Lady singer-songwriters get an historically raw deal (thanks for nothing, Lilith Fair). But when you're lumped in, first and foremost, with company as incestuous—and hugely successful—as the Arts&Crafts crew, you've got not only the means but the insular support to create and release, unafraid. Amy Millan, luckily, has nothing to be afraid of anyway. The Toronto-born-and-raised, now-Montreal-moonlighting chanteuse released her sophomore solo album, Masters of the Burial, earlier this month, and through laments of her own and some choice covers, she paints another dusty, unabashedly pained-artiste portrait of romantic solitariness.

When AUX TV launched online on November 24, 2008, it had an honest, simple mandate to support Canada's exploding music scene, inclusive of genre and level of exposure. Right out of the gates, their programming included brand new music videos, exclusive interviews and performances, and full-length programs featuring some of new music and media's foremost aficionados and figureheads. Most of it was produced on modest budgets with the resources, hard work, and the tapped-in creativity of a young group of brains and bodies who were either already part of the scene they were documenting or who were just as eager as AUX to jump headfirst into the momentum. In one week, on October 1, AUX TV will emerge from its nerd cave inside the internet and expand onto basic digital cable, where it will make instant Canadian TV history by being the first network to make a web-to-air transition and where it will deepen its still incalculable—but already promising—impact as it strikes while our country's music-community iron is so very shit-hot.

It's hard not to feel a bit of affection towards Spiral Beach; they've always unabashedly embraced their youth and the restlessness (and awkward fashion) that goes with it, and in their element they've carved a genuine place into both the brains of moody music critics and the headphones of young Canadian music fans. The Only Really Thing, the band's second full-length (out today on Sparks Music), has a few hints of an experimental maturation, but mostly stays a little too close to the retro-beat pop that defined them.

"Did they say Joel Plaskett?" Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham giggled, half-delirious with genuine shock and excitement minutes after he and the rest of the band (drummer Jonah Falco, guitarist Mike Haliechuk, bassist Sandy Miranda, guitarist Josh Zucker, and guitarist Ben Cook) accepted the 2009 Polaris Music Prize for their acclaimed, soaring hardcore epic, The Chemistry of Common Life. The press conference immediately following last night's performance gala and award presentation was full of journalists, but it was oddly silent, maybe because, for the infinite snide opining on the awards' predictability and who really deserved it, no one actually thought Fucked Up would win. Maybe we truly were, as Abraham mocked, all still in shock.

For the unacquainted, the Polaris Music Prize was established in 2006 to recognize and celebrate Canadian musical talent. With money! Each year, the winning artist is awarded twenty thousand dollars, likely doubling their income for the year and making their mom super proud. Every single Canadian album released in the Polaris Year (June 1 to May 31) is eligible, and a jury of assorted impartial cool folks and journalists (this author included!) from across the country vote to form a Long List of nominated albums. From here, that same jury votes to create a Short List, and then there's a big party in Toronto (tonight!) where an eleven-member Grand Jury that changes yearly picks a final winner while everyone else gets blasted and eats free cheese in another room.

Damian Abraham sings in your mom's favourite Toronto-based hardcore band, Fucked Up. Both highly dysfunctional and internationally acclaimed (not many bands can have a feature review in The New York Times that doesn't mention their band name once), Fucked Up gained word-of-mouth notoriety through their batshit insane live shows, their prolific output of limited-run 7" records (many of which now sell on eBay for hundreds of dollars), and bizarro collaborations. Their Polaris nomination for The Chemistry of Common Life—a record that has seen almost universal critical acclaim—comes at the end of a year that saw the band open for the Stooges at Massey Hall, get banned from MTV, play a twelve-hour set in NYC (with bonkers guests including Moby on a cover of "Blitzkrieg Bop"), and saw Damian become both a dad and a Fox News correspondent. When he's not crushing pint glasses into his head (or being a super sweet dude that your mom would actually love), Damian is telling Torontoist about the strangeness of being nominated for a major music prize in a country that has always kinda sorta ignored them.

                  

The eleventh edition of the Steam Whistle Unsigned Indie Music Series took place Friday night, and the brewery's Roundhouse was full of smiles, music, and, well, yeah. Beer.

Breaking news: bands are bands because of their love for other bands. It's true. While it's often easy (and so fun and we're sure it results in opinions totally agreed upon all the time, by everyone) to pick out an artist's musical influences or identify a sound of an album, it might be more time and cost (and safety) effective to just let the band tell us of whom, exactly, they are not worthy.

Chris Goddard really likes his job. As the marketing manager for Steam Whistle Brewing, he, along with Events Administrator Matt Weed, decided that instead of competing with mega-brewers' money for sponsorship at the city's best music festivals or shows, they'd throw their own party. "[Steam Whistle] had been partnering up with various festivals over the years, but it was hard to set ourselves apart from the rest of the logos on the poster. One of the bigger breweries would decide that they wanted to sponsor indie music, and once their cheque book came out, we were history. It made us evaluate what we really wanted to do with indie bands and how we could get that done without having to worry about getting bumped, and that's when we came up with Unsigned."

If you haven't bothered to familiarize yourself with the overly precocious sounds of Toronto's revered Hidden Cameras, their fifth (already?) full-length might be a good place to start. Out next Tuesday on what seems like a long-lost perfect home for the Cameras' strange and wonderful indie-rock orchestra, Arts&Crafts, Origin:Orphan has tons of fan-ready appeal but burns slower than past releases, revealing a start-to-finish long-play that might appeal to a fresh crop of attention spans.

September 9, 2009 (09/09/09) was going to be a huge day for Toronto emcee Ian Kamau. Besides the fact that he was turning thirty on that day, the artist (better known simply as "Kamau" from guest appearances on k-os albums) was going to release his first full-length solo album in over a decade of active participation in the Toronto hip-hop scene.

Oshawa's Cuff the Duke find themselves in position for a great lurch forward with their fourth album, Way Down Here—the album was recorded and produced by one of Canada's most successful demographic-crossover roots-rock artists, Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor, and they're self-releasing it with distribution through Universal Canada on their newly formed Noble Recording Co.—but instead they find themselves at a near standstill.

"When you see eight large columns and three heads of Zeus, you will know you have arrived in the correct spot."

Earlier this week, Lula Lounge was converted into a world in which hip-hop reigned supreme. As part of Manifesto's One City Series, hip-hop heads and curious media-types came out to support Toronto author Dalton Higgins at the launch his latest book. Hip Hop World —his newest contribution—is a thorough examination of hip-hop culture from a global perspective.

While it's no secret that we've got a wimpy soft spot for lush, melodic indie rock with banjos and acoustic guitars, we're tough enough (swear!) to dig melodies with a bit of balls, too. Few do it as well as local husband-and-wife thrash duo Lullabye Arkestra, and Threats/Worship is a stripped-down, fast, and heavy tag-team triumph whose genre at times masks just how angry and eerie it can get. Also, A+ on the title.

       

Torontoist stopped by the Gladstone Hotel last Tuesday for the launch party of two exciting new documentaries airing on the CBC starting this Thursday night. This Beat Goes On and Rise Up chronicle Canadian music's growth in the '70s and '80s, respectively. The films were made by the two key players responsible for 2006's Shakin' All Over, which dealt with the '60s: director Gary McGroarty and writer/researcher Nicholas Jennings. Jian Ghomeshi narrates. Viewers are treated to an impressive collection of clips: concert footage, television appearances, and music videos, as well as interviews with classic and contemporary Canadian pop stars (think rock royalty like Burton Cummings sandwiched between Hot Hot Heat and k-os).

What started as a way to compile the prolific creative output of a west-end group of musician friends turned into not only a scene-defining snapshot, but a charitable project that has so far yielded more than eleven thousand dollars for the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. Friends in Bellwoods II, out today on Out of This Spark, is a second showcase of what Ohbijou sisters Casey and Jennifer Mecija's house can produce for a good cause.