Results tagged “soundadvice”

An impressive eleven releases (that's excluding a live album, a trick live album, and greatest hits compilation) into their career, Sloan remains a mainstay on both fairweather-popular and bafflingly loyal message-board radar in Canada, and as is evident on their new digital-only Hit & Run EP, available now through their own Murderecords label, they're still pretty comfortable there for now.

...Or the end of an era as Hostage Life return and then quickly and mysteriously disband while on top of their game.

Somewhere in the first half of this decade there was a handful of female artists and bands churned out into mainstream Canadian music and steered towards an edgy look and sound—for example, Avril Lavigne became an international Top 40 star, while Vancouver then-teens Live On Release and their single "I'm Afraid of Britney Spears" were banished to the one-hit-wonder subconsciousness of regular Muchmusic viewers. Based mostly on timing (oh, and uh, total gender association), innocent bystanders Magneta Lane got lumped into a similar rundown of names, and even after releasing their excellent third album, Gambling with God (while also jumping from indie powerhouse Paper Bag to powerhousier Last Gang Records), they might still be suffering from the initial wrong-place-wrong-time impression.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We're cheating this week; The Wooden Sky's sophomore effort, If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone, isn't out via Black Box Recordings until August 25, but we're excited about it, and there are lots of great upcoming releases to plan around. Throughout the vagrant Montreal-to-Toronto creation of this dense record of guilt, innocence, and wonders both abstract (God) and tangible (life), The Wooden Sky have bloomed into a resolute musical force who stand poised to carry the weight of much indie-rock respect.

If you read only one album review this summer (where's your attention span?), make it this one, because if there's one local band you should listen to this year, it's Horses. There's no gimmick, no trend, no all-star roster here (how's that attention span holding up?)—just four dudes with heart, substance, stories, and balls. Their new EP, Brotherly Love, is available now through Juicebox Recording Co., and its roots-tinged, working-class earnestness is as authentic as it gets.

There's an intriguing quality to the reflective and often eccentric scope of experimental bedroom pop. It's a romance perhaps born from the mythology-making years that Brian Wilson spent sequestered in his literal bedroom, or the similar (rumoured) window-blocking, beard-growing isolation of this generation's very own once-genius strangeboy Rivers Cuomo. While not exactly taking a page out of the lush, inextricable layers of the classic Beach Boys songbook (aside from some impeccable harmonies), Guelph's weirdo troubadour Gregory Pepper assembled his band of Problems to help him bring his self-realized musical smorgasbord to light on With Trumpets Flaring, available now through Fake Four Records.

The Junction have always been lumped into a scene that their radio-friendly rock-tinged indie pop didn't necessarily "fit"; rarely are 905 emo mainstays such as Moneen or the defunct Cain and Abel (reincarnated as the wonderfully riff-heavy Ulysses and the Siren) mentioned without also dropping the Brampton trio's familiar name. Another Link In the Chain, released independently today, is an aptly named album that may lack in songwriting innovation, but makes up for it in an audible forward momentum and maturity. It's a fitting addition to a catalogue that documents the band's old-fashioned, hard-earned place in the city's—and the country's—independent music consciousness.

We're the first to admit when we're slow to catch onto something, and especially if it's something this good. Now that we've taken a second to swallow our new-release flavoured pride, we'll get back to listening to Zeus's already-month-old EP, Sounds Like Zeus, the next sure-to-be success story for Arts&Crafts. Lucky for us, they're not going anywhere.

Anyone who follows this sort of thing probably remembers the oohs and aahs that followed after The Most Serene Republic signed to Arts&Crafts; they were the first non-Broken Social Scene-affiliated band to do so, but their inclusion was a natural fit. The Milton, Ontario, septet drew both praise and criticism for their proggy art-pop likeness to their label daddies, and on their new release, ...And the Ever Expanding Universe, they don't seem to be in a hurry to change many minds ("Phi 2").

Although it isn't technically a brand-new release, we would be negligent parents to ignore today's long-overdue official release of Hometowns, the debut album from relative scene babies The Rural Alberta Advantage. It's noteworthy not only for the fact that the re-release happens to be courtesy of Omaha, NE's indie-mecca Saddle Creek Records (where the RAA find themselves among other friendly CanCon faces such as Sebastien Grainger, Land of Talk, and Tokyo Police Club), but because of the gradual grassroots buzz that Hometowns managed to accumulate based solely on the strength of the minimal and urgent indie ballads in disguise.

Few things are better suited to the sleepy, sun-soaked air of summer than acoustic folk-pop songs about girls and nature. Toronto singer-songwriter Nick Rose sure knows how to nurture the big ol' sentimental sap that lurks inside all (okay, most) of us, and Oxbow Lake—released independently and available for purchase through Indiepool—is a sweetly sung and gently played testament to simplicity and wistful reflection. How seasonally appropriate.

When Three Gut Records ceased operations in 2005, it left a gaping hole in the larger Toronto-area music community. The Guelph-originated label was short lived but prolific and hugely significant, not unlike one of its primary acts and raisons d’être, Royal City. The promise of a once-planned posthumous Royal City rarities compilation has been lingering unfulfilled since the Three Gut demise, but earlier this year Sufjan Stevens' (a long-time friend and supporter) Asthmatic Kitty Records picked it up for release, and today is the day we can hold it in our eager little hands (it's distributed in Canada by Outside Music). A wise woman once said that you don't know what you've got till it's gone; awful clichés and Counting Crows covers aside, in the case of Royal City, she couldn't be more right.

A new release from mega indie(ish) entity Arts & Crafts can either elicit a dedicated excitement or a slightly more jaded (and healthy) skepticism. On one hand, there is an undisputed affinity for the little homegrown label that could—and did, and still is—and, on the other, there's the poisonous burn-out factor, the feeling that our reigning DIY community kings have grown too comfortable, too inclusive, too safe.

Even a marginal indie pop fan should have a soft spot for Ohbijou—three years ago, their darling sounds and community contributions (both musical and social) helped define a new sector of Toronto's indie scene and made them an instant focus. After a recent signing with Last Gang Records, Ohbijou release their second album, Beacons, today (digitally, with a physical release on June 16), and it's a perfect reminder why their orch-pop left such a lasting impression.

Throughout his fifteen-year career, Hayden has been travelling a leisurely path from gravelly grunge-folkie to a more refined folk-pop sound. It's a transition still in progress, and on The Place Where We Lived, out today on Hardwood Records, Hayden gets a little help from his friends on a fitting next chapter in his ever-expanding sad-boy saga.

.

This music stuff sure can be serious business sometimes. When Bon Iver's Justin Vernon secluded himself in an isolated cabin for a winter to deal with the break-up of a band and a relationship, he produced one of the most (rightfully) lauded releases of 2008. For Emma, Forever Ago was an aching, almost desperate catharsis—a much-needed exorcism of love and self lost. With her group The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman makes a similar attempt at hiding and healing on the new debut full-length, The Line.

There was a time—a brief, glorious time—in the late nineties and early two thousands when the word "emo" had become somewhat interchangeable with indie and was not yet a default joke about eye-obscuring black hair and all of the awful, angled mirror shots showcasing it. When some of the best of these nu-emo American pop artists (Death Cab for Cutie, anyone?) showed up in Seth Cohen's bedroom and then a barrage of commercials, the underground found its way up and into the charts, and fans were left with an empty (and very popular and profitable) shell of the worst parts of the genre; shiny young bands riding the re-brand all the way into Hot Topic and weird Livejournal role-playing communities.

When a band gets their start not by releasing their own material, but by remixing Toronto favourites such as The D'Urbervilles, Gentlemen Reg, and the Rural Alberta Advantage, the weight of expectation can be heavy. Borders, out today on Pheromone Recordings, is the debut full-length for Toronto/Guelph spaz quintet Green Go where indie rock meets electronica in the dark, and fight (dance?) to the death.