Previously posted about this artist twice in 2019 on this site.
Vancouver musician Mike Bertini released his EP Thing Called Life on January 28, 2020.
It is five tracks filled with indie pop and blues rock with some added syrupy ballad schmaltz.
Something that would be played on mainstream radio or listen to while doing some errands.
If you like heartbreak, relationships and life in general, this something you should listen to.
Dutch trio The Homesick released their second album The Big Exercise on February 7, 2020 via Sub Pop.
The Big Exercise brings them to more grounded, tangible pastures.
With its title ripped from a passage in the Scott Walker-biography Deep Shade Of Blue, the record is a concentrated effort by Jaap van der Velde, Erik Woudwijk and Elias Elgersma to explore the physicality of their music in fresh ways.
I really this album not because they are the awesome label but it mixes post-punk and indie pop music into an unique linear album.
Loving crept up last year and finally in 2020 they finally released their long awaited debut album called If I Am Only My Thoughts via Last Gang Records.
Think of the song by Gilbert O’Sullivan called Alone Again (Naturally) with its soft folk and pop rock music vibe on the whole which has that style but more lo-fi of a genre.
Montreal’s RED MASS dropped their album A HOPELESS NOISE today.
A huge amount of work was put into this epic garage punk ensemble of an album with collabs including Mac Demarco, Mike Watt (Minutemen, Dos, Firehose), Rick Froberg (Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu), King Khan, Hugo Mudie (The Sainte Catherines) and members of Black Lips, Duchess Says, Human Eye, Fly Pan Am & Godspeedyoublackemperor.
Created by Roy Vucino as part of the ‘Free Creative Enterprise’ TA DA arts collective, Red Mass has become a gathering of musicians, agent provocateurs and artists from around the globe. Punk music incorporating techniques of automatic creation and elements of chaos magic. The present core of ‘Red Mass’ is comprised of Roy Vucino and partner Hannah Lewis. The band has amassed more than 100 participating artists and musicians in its ranks. Collaborations with some of our idols, our friends, our family members and with strangers who simply wanna create something subversive.
Today Wolf Parade dropped their fifth studio album called Thin Mind via Sub Pop and Royal Mountain.
“Thin Mind refers to the way that being around too much tech has made our focus thin,” says keyboardist Spencer Krug.
“It’s opening one more page, scrolling one more thing,” adds guitarist Dan Boeckner, “and the weird, sort-of hollow automaton feeling that you get from it.”
“This record is very personal, but at the same time, we’re all coming from the same place of a general sense of anxiety,” says drummer Arlen Thompson. “How do you deal with the constant barrage of having your opinions swayed by all these different actors when you don’t know who they are or what their purpose is? There is no normal anymore.”
Thin Mind marks a return to the original power trio of Dan, Spencer, and Arlen, following multi-instrumentalist Dante DeCaro’s amicable departure from the group in 2018, after the conclusion of their world tour supporting Cry Cry Cry.
One month later, the trio got together at Risqué Disque, an old stone barn-turned-studio in the woods of Vancouver Island, to begin writing Thin Mind—emerging with an album about making sense of the present while reckoning with visions of the future.
“It’s the first record where we did the whole thing in one place from start to end,” says Arlen. “It was just the three of us until John came in, woodshedding in this moss-covered, rotting building.”
Paradoxically, the band’s decision to forge a future-forward sound using a myriad of synthesizers—from ‘80s synths and ‘90s MiDi to more modern, kitchen sink instruments—recalls the sonics of Wolf Parade’s earliest EPs.
Album highlights include “Julia, Take Your Man Home,” “Forest Green” and “Against the Day”, with lyrics split evenly between Dan and Spencer.
On “Julia, Take Your Man Home,” Spencer imagines the worst version of himself over a deep groove and an exaggerated, fictitious caricature.
“It’s not literally me,” he says. “I’ve never carved shapes that look like dicks into a bar, but it is the toxic male version of myself.”
“Forest Green” gallops along to a synthetic clip of Arlen’s electronic drum kit while Dan’s lyrics encapsulate the profound beauty, and ugliness, of Vancouver Island—not only where Thin Mind was recorded, but where Arlen and Spencer now live, and Dan grew up.
“The island has a really weird, pervasive darkness to it,” explains Arlen. “It’s got amazing nature, and there’s an inescapable spiritual vibe to the place. But it’s held with this tension between real estate money and nature now constantly being logged and developed. It’s a process that’s been happening for maybe 150 years—you’re watching this beautiful place just kind of melt.”
“Against the Day,” which features shared verses from Spencer and Dan, similarly constructs a synthetic shell to examine what’s natural and what is not.
“Dan told me it was about two vampires exploring the human world,” says Spencer, who assumed the role of one vampire in his verses.
“I wanted to tell a story about Lovecraftian, geological love passing in a place,” says Dan. “And two souls that were connected to each other. Every era that they go through, they are always on the outside of culture, always outsiders.”
Ultimately, the band was only able to subvert the “thin mind” phenomenon by jumping right back into its creative process after Cry Cry Cry’s tour, with each member bringing their anxieties out of the modern world and re-examining them on an elemental level.
“There’s this positive element to Thin Mind, too,” explains Dan, “if you’re in that liminal, very modern psychological state in nature. At best, you become an incredibly powerful being for interpreting and processing information at a speed that our parents and grandparents couldn’t possibly comprehend. In the cognitive dissonance where we made this record, there was no escape.”
While an artist can’t replicate what they did in their last album.
Case in point for Andy Shauf in The Neon Skyline which is the follow-up for the massively successful The Party that came out in 2016.
The album where he sets a familiar scene of inviting a friend for beers on the opening title track:
“I said, ‘Come to the Skyline, I’ll be washing my sins away.‘ He just laughed, said ‘I’ll be late, you know how I can be.'”
The LP’s 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. While its overarching narrative is riveting, the real thrill of the album comes from how Shauf finds the humanity and humor in a typical night out and the ashes of a past relationship.
For The Neon Skyline, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of his usual piano. He says, “I wanted to be able to sit down and play each song with just a guitar without having to rely on some sort of a clever arrangement to make it whole.”
The resulting album finds its immediacy in simplicity.
While the arrangements on folksy “The Moon” are unfussy and song-centered like the best Gordon Lightfoot offerings, his drive to experiment is still obvious.
This is especially so on the unmoored relationship autopsy “Thirteen Hours,” which boasts an arrangement that’s both jazzy and adventurous.
This album has more of an upbeat guitar and mellow drum feel and vibe.
Miss the intimate and moody vibes from the Party from the songs like Quite Like You and Twist Your Ankles.
This is what makes Andy so unique and take on risks.
Third Man Records, as a record label that makes a specialty of 7″ pressings and live recordings from its famous Blue Room in Nashville, TN, is excited to release Broken Social Scene: Live At Third Man Records
Third Man Records had the pleasure of hosting the inimitable Broken Social Scene, carefully absorbing and recording their magnetic and unforgettable live set on the Blue Room stage. Epic, panoramic, and intimate all at the same time, the legendary Toronto collective Broken Social Scene began as an ebbing and flowing collective of artists in the late 90s, collaborating to create a distinct strand of indie rock that is both perplexingly maximal and straight-up catchy.
The band kicked off the set with emotive fan favorite “Cause = Time”, then transitioning into “Stay Happy,” the lead track from 2017’s Hug of Thunder, in all it’s hypnotic, horn-driven grandeur.
Then, on the flip side, the album’s 2-song B-side wraps with the slow-build anthem “It’s All Gonna Break,” a song once described as “Bob Seger on acid.” Really, how else would you want a show to close?
Their live set was captured, mixed and mastered in real time via the world’s only live venue and direct-to-acetate lathe cutting studio. With the release of this live album, Third Man is very excited to invite all to be a part of this special experience, Broken Social Scene’s first commercially available live album, in the only venue in the world where performance, art and tactile transcription methodologies converge.
Really like the debut album by O70 Shake called Modus Vivendi.
Mix of emo rap, Alternative hip hop and ambient pop
Modus Vivendi opens the next phase of 070 Shake’s journey.
The album brings her reflective style to the spotlight with boundary-pushing creativity and pure emotional honesty as her compass.
“I just really go with how I feel in the moment, and then that’s where the writing comes from.
It’s like an ongoing disperse of words when I feel something.”
In a world obsessed with consumption, Shake is a much-needed breath of fresh air, more than ready to make her impact felt through music.
“I want it to make a change in the world. The agenda is bigger than just music.”
Holy Fuck dropped their long awaited fifth album called Deleter.
The project was introduced by incredible singles, Luxe (featuring Alexis Taylor), Free Gloss (featuring Nicholas Allbrook) and finally, the album title homage, Deleters.
Want to get away from the Christmas holiday music and hear something new before 2019 ends? The Sarandons was previous posted back in November.
The Toronto band just dropped their self-titled EP today.
The 6 track EP is filled with indie roots rock with some added grooviness to their music.
About the EP: Damian Coleman on vocals & bass), Edmund Cummings on vocals & keys, Craig Keeney on lead guitar, Phil Skot on drums and Dave Suchon on vocals & guitar create, through a common creative process, nostalgic yet evocative atmospheres that only a perfect interweaving of melodies and lyrics are able to generate. In their words: a “plush roots-rock impressionistic post-twang” sound delivering “melodic laddish beer-soaked holler ballads”.
A brand new experience carefully built by the band to gift the fans with an “enriched and adorned” selection of six captivating pieces. From the strongly instrumental ballad ‘Stormy Endings’, that braces its intense lyrics with a soft guitar, sliding into the country-inspired atmosphere of ‘Continental Divide’, where an obliging (to the me lody) piano seems to rise from an old Western movie’s soundtrack, this EP carries on that catchy flavor of its first single ‘Worse or For Better’.
Overall if you are into upbeat roots groove rock, then you should check it out.
Best tracks:
