you say you want a revelation?

one of the neater, classier album covers I've seen in a while

Again, I've got a handful of new music since my last post, including The New Pornographers' Together, Crystal Castles' (second?!) self-titled album and Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record. I even went out of my way and paid for the first and last of those. Now they've all been highly rated, and reviewed all over the internet, so I'm not going to waste a lot of my time or anyone else's by writing reviews for those. Suffice it to say: I love Together, I'm in love with Forgiveness Rock Record (yes, there's a difference), and I'm lukewarm towards Crystal Castles (II? 2010? what's the procedure here?), so it'll have to grow on me.

What I'm gonna do today is a bit more of an experiment. I'm posting a song, and you have to decide what you think it sounds like. It used to be that you could throw out simple terms for music: rock, pop, hip-hop, country, jazz, maybe electronic. Then the internet age began, and as technology increased, so did the experimenting and collaborating people were doing. Genres were folding in upon themselves, some were expanding like veritable universes, and some were falling out of existence altogether.

For a joking take on what I mean, check out this t-shirt from (often read) hipsterrunoff.com blogger Carles. It would be both futile and hilarious to try to pick out the best genres from there, but hopefully you get an idea of what I'm talking about. So without further ado, I delve into the discussion by offering you a cut from Spanish group (?!) Delorean's recent effort, Subiza.

Delorean - "Stay Close"

Now what does that make you think of? Is that a maraca? Is that an old soul sample crooning "baby"? Those are definitely synths, no? There's vocal effects galore, pedal effects thrown in for good measure, then dance-y English vocals. What the hell? Now, this breezy kind of music, with an intentional push of most of the sounds on the track under a layer of "lo-fi" - albeit a thin one in this case - classes it with my often-hated-on genre of "chillwave". But I actually like this song. I like the album for the most part too. Nine consistent tunes, hearkening a night on a Greek island beach, high on life, and maybe a bit tipsy from the drinks. Some of the songs delve into maybe waking up on that beach the next morning, somehow feeling even better, and watching the sun rise over you. Other ones might take you back to the club from whence you came to the beach. Either way, there's a mood, a theme, and Delorean does a great job as a collective sticking to that.

But let's not get too off track from the track itself. We're talking about chillwave here, or at least I'm pointing the discussion in that direction. Some artists, like Best Coast, hate being branded as chillwave, to even more of an extent than when "lo-fi" branding was all the rage over a year ago. It seemed to cause a rift and confusion between those who did it out of necessity, and those who did it as an aesthetic. Was there a right and a wrong use for the lo-fi sound? That's up for argument as ever, but chillwave is decidedly a direction you have to take by your own volition. 

Much of the blame for branding of course comes from reviewers, who, like myself, are always looking for a way to class something, to attach a genre to it. It makes comparisons easier I suppose, but with all the genres out there, and the list ever-expanding, your search for similar sounds either gets you something too specific, or leaves it so wide open that it's a pointless endeavor to try and class a song or group or artist in the first place. Now Delorean, as you can see above, are - quite strangely - better described by where they sound like, more than who or what. Sometimes, it's simply laziness that leads reviewers into this genre-fying. When you really search for an in-depth comparison, it may be better than just bandying about taglines like "sun-tinged lo-fi" or "attic-dwelling chillwave". What the hell does that even mean? may be the thought coming to most reader's and listener's minds.

We've delved a bit into that issue of genre and classifying then I hope, or at least my stance on it. But that still leaves this whole chillwave thing, and how I can rectify my liking this Subiza album while still maintaining a healthy disdain for the chillwave sound as a whole, and especially as a way of classifying new music. I can do so, by saying that Delorean's sound is nothing more than dance music. That's right. Plain, simple, dance music. Throw in a bit of that lo-fi sound, and you've got their charming aesthetic. Maybe lo-fi just makes it sound like you're not trying that hard, so it's cool, it's effortless...it's chill. Whoa. I think I just brought that shit full-circle.

But truly, Delorean have just crafted an unpolished dance record, free of the glitz and glam that leads most dance records astray (I'm kiiinda looking at you, David Guetta/Armen Van Buren). And I say that in the best way about Delorean. They've got all the dance music elements, from the BPM's to the synths to that Euro sound. That's not a knock on it. That they can make it so appealing to an otherwise "indie" crowd, who've sworn off anything remotely techno for as long as I can recall, is truly an accomplishment. Maybe it's that there's a bit of likeable pop mixed in there on some tracks, but that's for another day's judgement.

In the end though, it was my iTunes that steered me to this all-encompassing revelation. I'm a bit OCD, which I may or may not have mentioned on here before. Now I'm not so much that I'm gonna have to now go through all my old posts to see if I have mentioned it - I just like there to be some order and organization in my life. So in my music library, you won't find a lower-case letter starting a word for song or album titles. Each song is given a genre, and most importantly, an equalizer setting. Usually I'll wait til I've listened to the song to decide if it should be "Acoustic" or "Rock" or even "Jazz" if it's got the right sounds. 

But back to genre for a second. In light of everything I said above, I'm obtusely narrow-minded in giving genres to my music. Heck, I don't even know why I still do it. People just like classing stuff; it's a game we all play, and for me in particular, it goes: "I got some new music. What kinda genre should it be? There, cool, I'm done." It doesn't help me sort my music in any way, and it doesn't even help me pick what to listen to really. 

It's that equalizer that really matters though, because that dictates what's brought out from the multi-layered sounds in a song; it tangibly and truly affects how I listen to my music, which I think makes it the most important classing practice there is - at the very least, on iTunes. So when I listen to Delorean, I think: "Dance". There, simple as that. As for genre labeling; I give out the simple ones like "Electronic", "Alt. Rock", "Pop", "Rock", "Hip-Hop", "Folk" or the catch-all, "Alternative". You know, the way it used to be in the old days.

The Shower Playlist...and other oddities

don't worry, I can see it too

I shower with my laptop. Yes. Well, not in the actual shower of course, but I bring it with me so that I can have some music while I'm in there. Yes, some people have a radio. In my apartment, we don't. So laptop it is. You know how tough it is to figure out what you wanna listen to for 15-20 minutes when there's nothing you can do about what's playing? It's one thing to make a playlist (believe me, I have a couple), and it's something totally different to choose an album to throw on. 

You have to be picky. If it's a morning shower, what can you play that's gonna get you excited for the day? If it's a late-night shower before bed, what are you gonna play that'll help wind the day down? If it's something you enjoy, is it gonna be too quiet to even hear over the fan and the running water (I'm looking at you The xx)? If it's something that's best played loud, is it gonna be to the point that you're gonna start annoying your roommates? These are all the considerations that must be made for The Shower Playlist.

Sometimes though, you luck out, wake up at 11am on a Monday like this, your roommates are gone for the day, you have nothing to do but study for your final exam tomorrow, so you jump in the shower and turn up We Are Wolves' electro-rocker of an album Invisible Violence. 

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...but The Shower Playlist is only the lead-in to this post. What I really wanted to do was two-fold: I originally wanted to highlight "Reaching For The Sky" from that album, but then I was just listening to "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." from The Wooden Sky, so I figured I'd tie those two together somehow. They're both on the longer side of their respective albums (The Wooden Sky's comes from If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone), and as I've made clear on here before, I'm an absolute sucker for a longer song that's done well. If there's two pieces of music that are equally good, but one is 3 minutes long, and the other is 5, wouldn't you rather the longer one? That's my attitude at least.

So anyways, I was giving The Wooden Sky's tune a spin like I was saying, and I noticed it was a great slow-builder, so I went and checked, and it clocked in at 5:29. I scrolled up a bit in my iTunes library, and there's the We Are Wolves track I wanted to feature...also checking in at 5:29. So I figured that coincidence was as good as any reason for creating this post.

I was initially tabbing "Reaching For The Sky" because for all of We Are Wolves' immediate, chugging rockers (like my can't-stop-spinning-it-right-now favorite "Paloma" - check that one out at the end of the post), it's one that sounds more LCD Soundsystem-like in its cadence, quickly building up with an undercurrent of a jive, adding electronic bloops and bleeps, drum machine hits, some deft keyboard work, a crunchy guitar after about a minute, then finally some vocals. It takes its time though, not rushing things along, almost recalling some of The Who's sprawling rockers if I'm really gonna make a reach for comparisons (around the 2:20 mark though, tell me you can't hear it too).

We Are Wolves - "Reaching For The Sky"

Like LCD Soundsystem's more outstanding grooves, "Reaching For The Sky" really hit its stride at 4 minutes in, just when you think you've settled into a monotonous rut. There's no real chorus here...just good old fashioned dance-punk done with We Are Wolves' own great twist.

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On the other end of the music spectrum lies "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." (alright, maybe acid jazz or death metal actually lies on the other end, but humour me here). It's a great, slow ballad, kept alive for the first few minutes by the faster-than-usual-paced percussion and expressive vocals. The latter seem to be The Wooden Sky's hallmark - pensive lyrics delivered with sincerity and an underlying power to them. 

The Wooden Sky - "Something Hiding For Us In The Night."

Around 3 minutes into this one, the cymbals crash here and there, and the vocals raise in intensity and volume, before mellowing for a verse or two, coming down to a level even quieter than the intro, hitting a nice little guitar solo...then bam! exploding into a pained-sounding chorus, which - whether this is just a case of the file I have, or the actual mixing of the album - sounds like it's going to burst out of the speakers.

Either way, that's two great slow-burners, from very different areas of (Canada's!) alternative music. And two more to add to my ever-growing list of great long(er) songs.

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As promised, We Are Wolves' raucous affair: (bonus points if you know what the hell he's saying...I'm pretty sure it's Spanish, but from a Montreal-based group that has some Francophone songs on their albums, it's a strange direction to be sure)

We Are Wolves - "Paloma"

there is a mountain of snow, up past the big glen...

Dan Deacon. The one innocently-named artist I would never think to share with any of my friends -- at least the ones I want to maintain a semblance of a relationship with. His music isn't necessarily abrasive; it's just that it's "batshit-crazy pop music" as I've seen it described. Sadly, that's probably the best and most apt description for his brand of songs. From earlier release Spiderman Of The Rings to 2009's Bromst, Dan Deacon has kept his class of glitchy, impossibly-catchy electronic music going, and has even managed to reach a world audience larger than the ones he entertains in his native Baltimore. His up-close-and-personal shows should come as no surprise -- any idea that Dan Deacon is the least bit sane is smashed as soon as you listen to any one of his tracks.

Looped samples of cymbals crashing, piano hits literally too fast for a human to play, chipmunk-y voice filters, fantastical lyrics, droning synthesizers, Casio-centric effects and a whole gamut of other noises, sounds and beats proliferate Deacon's work. This is definitely the kind of stuff you have to be in the right state of mind to listen to; if you're having a bad day, this isn't going to cheer you up. On the other hand, if your day is going inexplicably wrong, and you're largely confused as to how it all turned out, then you may find a bit of salvation in these songs. Nothing seems to make sense, whether it's a three-minute burst of energy, or an 11-minute rendition of nursery-rhyme-like fantasy like the tune featured below: (accompanying lyrics here, cause heaven knows I needed them to figure out what was being said)

Dan Deacon - "Wham City"

As mentioned though, those I hold dear can barely stand my electronic music choices as is, and they're a relatively pedestrian outcropping when compared to even Deacon's least-abrasive content. Over the Christmas holidays, I thought I'd throw on "Wet Wings," a slow-building and almost tribal-sounding track bubbling with emotive female voices layering themselves a capella over each other, but alas, I was shot down when my sister asked "what the hell is this? turn it off" and my mother commented that it sounded like women mourning at a funeral. 

Was it really that bad? No. Was it really that weird? Yes. And that's probably the biggest reason I can't share my Dan Deacon tunes: he's just too weird. Unfortunately, being blessed with the ability to make catchy, crazy pop music out of anything and everything is a bigger detriment than you'd think.

SuzieQ, I've got a List Of Demands

Wow, it's been just under three months since I last wrote anything on here. And to be honest, I'm only writing now so that I can get some practice in before I start writing a myriad of papers for university. But also, I've been listening to a ton of music in that time (I mean a lot of music; since my last post I've had the following fill up my iTunes: Stars, Bon Iver, The Avalanches, Shout Out Out Out Out, Pink Skull, HEALTH, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Yeasayer, Dan Deacon, Dinosaur Jr., Interpol, The Ghost Is Dancing, The Mantles, The Weakerthans, Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene, The Besnard Lakes, Los Campesinos!, Neko Case, Neutral Milk Hotel, Islands, Hockey, Fucked Up, Slow Club, Liars, Free Energy, Crystal Castles, Thrush Hermit, The National, The Antlers, Camera Obscura, Hawksley Workman, and today's subject, Gonjasufi) and obviously, my mind's been thinking of possible subjects I can talk about on here.

So whether this is trivial or not, I thought I'd take a quick look at the subject of sampling. I'm not talking about like, old soul samples, the kind Kanye West worked to perfection back before AutoTuning himself to death. I mean the kinds of samples where it's a simple riff taken from one song and placed as the backbone of another. I know a few examples I've only heard of, but none that I've been able to experience first hand, i.e. having both songs in my library. This happened to come up though as soon as I delved into the new album by Gonjasufi, A Sufi And  A Killer.

I had no idea what to expect from the album, even after I'd read Pitchfork's favorable review. Maybe some "head-nod" music, but "what is that anyway?" I thought. The sixth track, "Suzie Q," piqued my interest however. Now, after giving it a few listens, this is an album I've explained to friends sounds like a mix of rock, hip-hop and jazz. There's stranger combinations, but I've never heard anything that sounded so...listenable while having that many influences. "Candylane" is my personal favorite, but I'll leave that one for another day and subject. Today, I want to look at how "SuzieQ" samples the crunchiest bits of Saul Williams' "List Of Demands (Reparations)" from his acclaimed self-titled 2004 album.

You may recognize "List Of Demands" from some Nike SPARQ commercials that ran a few years ago, and indeed that's where my first exposure to the song came from. It's a powerful song, both musically and lyrically, which made it a great song for Nike to use in promoting its then-new line of training equipment. For the sampled part in question, I'm not sure that it's a guitar, because it seems bouncy and synthy in a way a guitar never really is. But whatever it is, on "SuzieQ," the effect is replicated by what most likely is a guitar. Now it's not just that the "SuzieQ" reinterpretation sounds vaguely similar -- it's exactly the same, right down to the pace of the sample.

One thing that intrigues me is whether or not Gonjasufi's producer, Gaslamp Killer, took his cue directly from Saul Williams' tune, or even if Saul took the sound from another song that came out even before his. That's where this investigation kind of stalls. But in the meantime, take a listen to both the tunes, and judge for yourself the similarity.

Gonjasufi - "SuzieQ"

Saul Williams - "List Of Demands"

this was hard, it was dumb, we should do it again

it's not "The Rural Saskatchewan Advantage," cause there isn't one

In my constantly expanding list of music I've been disgustingly late on, I'm doing a bit better if you judge by The Rural Alberta Advantage. I actually picked up quite quick on them from hearing "Don't Haunt This Place" from a blog that now escapes my memory. It was back in April of this year...and I loved it. Everything about it. I never tired of hearing it, it was a perfect jam, short and sweet -- but in usual fashion, I never gave their album Hometowns a chance, even after a glowing 8.0/10 review from Pitchfork, probably my most trusted source for musical advice. Late in November though, after a happenchance incident I'll describe in a bit, I decided I had to get the rest of the album and give it a spin.

In a bit of my defense, "The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" was the second song I heard off Hometowns, and it's probably the one black sheep from the outstanding tracklist. But instead of getting into all that, you know what? If any group's gonna get the song-by-song album review treatment, I have no problem giving it to The Rural Alberta Advantage:

"The Ballad Of The RAA" | With such a self-referencing name, it's a pretty good track to start an album with. The fast-paced and muted drum kick gets things going, and Neils Edenloff's voice exhibits itself in a way that you're either like "yeah, I really like this guy, this is gonna be good" -- or basically the exact opposite reaction. You can feel the emotion and strain in his delivery, and the "singing in a barn" exhibition of it during the a capella ending is icing on the cake, along with the triangle tinkles playing like snowflakes above the insistent drumming. I've heard that he gives off a Jeff Mangum-like vibe (of Neutral Milk Hotel), but having heard maybe one or two of NMH's tunes, it's something I'd have to look more into before I could say one way or the other.

"Rush Apart" | There's something endlessly charming about the acoustic guitar and Edenloff's far-away-sounding vocals that start off "Rush Apart." In an album of comparatively short songs (most are in the two-minute range), this is the second-shortest at 1:56, but still manages to flesh itself out into something more than respectable. It's like a campfire tune that managed to convince an entire drumset to make the trek. When Nils says "it's hard to know what's right/I need you tonight," it's one of the love-soaked references on an album chock-full of them. You'd love to know who hurt him this badly, because there has to be a place where all this creativity stems from. And on that note, this is probably not an album you want to be listening to while you're with someone; it functions much better when you're trying to get over someone.

"The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" | The RAA does punk? The vocals have an almost-evil bent to them, no doubt helped by the line "you let me down, I let you down/with your grandfather in the ground." Not to say it's not a good song - it is - but it seems kind of out of place with the rest of the tracks on Hometowns. The others tend to have a more or less melancholy feel to them, instead of the seemingly revengeful tone of "Deathbridge." At least they named it the right way though. Let's skip ahead, cause as mentioned above, this one pretty much turned me off The RAA the first few times I laid ears on it.

"Don't Haunt This Place" | The track that pretty much got it started for me with these guys. It's got that same upbeat and stuttering drumming (courtesy of part-time Woodhands member Paul Banwatt...a fact I found out when I caught both groups at Osheaga this summer), and if I ever said "Sun In An Empty Room" was the best song to play if you were leaving an old apartment Friends-style (and I did say that), this would certainly be a close runner-up -- especially if you shared said apartment with a significant other. The lyrics change up confusingly between declaring the whole ordeal as "hard" and "fun" then switching to "hard" and "dumb" effortlessly. Keyboardist Amy Cole makes one of her few cameos providing precious backing vocals, and the emotions are laid bare for all to see with crisp-clear lyricism.

"The Deadroads" | For all the acoustic guitar abounding on Hometowns, you can't really hear many familiar strains from other songs, a rarity when all you've got to work with are six strings and some chords. The drumming again makes itself well-known here, but I'm not gonna take all the credit for picking up on it; Pitchfork pointed it out pretty well in their review, and I can't help hearing the album without focusing strongly on the superb percussion. It's much the same way I listen to The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema; I've always been a fan of nerdishly drumming along to the beat, and that album along with Hometowns provide me with ample and exemplary opportunities. The "oooo-oooo-oooo-oooooooo"s add that little something extra to this tune, and Nils brings his now-dependable rakish croon to the forefront once again.

"Drain The Blood" | If "Don't Haunt This Place" first turned me on to the group, and "The Deathbridge In Lethbridge" almost turned me off of them, then "Drain The Blood" was that track that truly sold me on The RAA and sucked me in enough to get Hometowns. Even at 2:50 long, this is one of those strange tracks that feels much shorter than that, a quick-burst of sound and passion. It's one of the few where Edenloff showcases more than one side of his voice: the mid-range delivery in the verses, the more throaty and alternately pleading vocals of the chorus, and the outright desperate croaks in the break the song so abruptly builds towards.

Whereas most songs are rollercoaster rides, with multiple ups and downs, "Drain The Blood" comes off like those super-fast thrill rides, that speed you up until you think you can't go any faster, then it's all over like that. It also signals the album turning more to a deemed cohesiveness: where the first few songs kind of stand apart, and prepare you for some cross-Alberta road trip, "Drain The Blood" is like where the road-trip comes to a head, and you know you can't really look at the people you're with quite the same again for the rest of the trip/album.

"Luciana" | In reference to the above, this is kind of that "night after" track, where you can just imagine having a few too many at the local dive bar, and The RAA playing this tune up on stage the whole while. The drums really stand out here for me, the crashing cymbals accentuating Nils' now-whining voice with a vigour that's kind of lacking from the vocal delivery (not something you can say often about the vocals on Hometowns). The horn section also makes an appearance, showing The RAA's versatility and continually-surprising take on alternative rock: they do everything well. Like it's not even fair; they pick and choose their styles and pull them all off expertly, like they've been at this much longer than the four years it's been since they formed. Every track is a rewarding listen, and the album as a whole is that much more listenable because of that.

"Frank, AB" | They also tend to nail those little things that bring their songs to that "next level." They again employ some "oooo-oooo"s, this time with male vocals, and add in the right amount of bass, snare, and everything else that makes their instrumentation just lush enough without being overpowering. The lonesomeness of "Frank, AB" is easy to hear, like it's the hangover "morning after" to the above track. The minute-long a capella at the end is especially moving, with Amy joining in with Nils ever so quietly, like the hand on his back as he's getting it all off his chest.

As an aside, before I wrote this entire review, I never really considered Hometowns as anything more than a love-and-loss-tinged album, but the closer I listen and analyze it, the road trip analogy and all the emotions and scenery that goes with it makes more and more sense, as even some of the next few tracks will show. The fact it works on so many levels is another great thing about the compilation. Heck, for all the place-name-dropping going on, just about the only thing I haven't picked up on yet is the painting of visual scenery you'd assume would come from the album's evocative cover art.

"The Air" | A swooning acoustic guitar and piano-inflected slow-it-down kinda tune? Yeah, I guess there truly is a bit of everything on here. "The Air" literally clears the air, even though it states "the air is unbearably harmful tonight." The clean slate provided by the sparse instrumentation lets the piano shine and the guitar slide along with purpose, keeping a calming quiet over everything before the album itself slows the pace down a bit. Not much to say here; you just have to check out Hometowns and hear for yourself.

"Sleep All Day" | Of all the tunes, this is probably my favorite to drum along to, with the exceptionally nimble snare providing the perfect balance to the organ-like keyboard and longing vocals. For the monotony of the track (over 3:46, it never really goes up, but it never creeps that far down either) it keeps your attention admirably. I really can't rave enough about the diversity of this album. Even though there's a few of these slower numbers, they're never done the same way, and all the originality and creativity in the world seeps out of them in a way I've heard from few groups, let alone on their debut full-length. I have all the faith in the world that The RAA will be able to bang out another album on endlessly enjoyable folk-rock-pop along the same lines as Hometowns, without copying any of the essence or ideas from the latter.

"Four Night Rider" | The shortest tune on here, by one second over "Rush Apart," you can truly feel the frenetic pace set forth by the energetic drumming, and when everything kind of explodes right before the end, you can easily hear the full musical force of the trio in a kind of last gasp effort to convince you that, hey, if you don't like us by now, we're really gonna try our damnedest anyways. Amy's vocals come through the strongest right before that section, drowning out Edenloff's for the first and only time on the album. There's nothing on "Four Night Rider" that hints towards the drawn-out and boring "four night bike ride out of town" to Edmonton professed by the band. There's even an underlying triumph to it all that's a little hard to explain on here, so again, you've really gotta check out the full album.

"Edmonton" | If it was all building up to something, Hometowns' true piece-du-resistance is this tune, just by an edge over the other amazing standouts on the album. It starts off boisterous and doesn't let up until the tambourine breaks in around 1:45; but it's just setting you up for the re-build, where the percussion builds back up again, the guitar becomes more insistent, Edenloff's voice gets that familiar strain, the lyrics take their most powerful turn, and then after the once-through, it slows down once more into the emotional "and I will never try/to forget you're not alive," then breaks out into full-force once again for the victory lap around the whole damn countryside.

On a note again: I write each song's review while I listen to it on repeat. It's a common thing I do whenever I review any song or album, because it puts me in the best mood to write about each individual track. With every other song on here though, I've had to take multiple listens to encapsulate what I really want to say about it; with "Edmonton" however, I banged it out in almost precisely the 3:52 run-time of the song. I'm not trying to say that I'm a fast typer or that I'm so good at describing songs or whatever -- my point is that "Edmonton" is so immediate, so good, that it can't help but being taken at face value, because it's raw emotion on a musical level. Plus it kinda gets to me in a way, so for whatever reason, I wouldn't wanna go through the whole process of listening to it again, with that slow build and everything. Take that for what you will.

"In The Summertime" | Much like the love interest in this tune, we're done. I have some personal interest in this song actually, and every time I listen to Hometowns all the way through, it's always "Edmonton" and "In The Summertime" that get to me the most. I don't know if it's just where I am right now in my life, or if The Rural Alberta Advantage just crafts songs so damn well that they call to mind feelings and emotions you didn't think could well up so easily like that. It doesn't make much sense for me to try and explain this one, and I say that just as it closes out its 2:38 song length.

I don't think I've ever been so emotionally invested in an album to be honest, and it kind of pains me to say that, because I wonder where I was way back in July when this thing actually came out and I had my chance. But I guess life's all about those missed chances...but also about the joy you feel when you're still able to get what you desire, even after it's seemingly too late. Sorry.

(Buy Hometowns here: Amazon)

out out out out out out out out out

watch out

This could be a first. Look up Alberta's (best? only?) electro-outfit "Shout Out Out Out Out" on hypem. (Here, I'll save you the time.) Didn't really find what you're looking for, right? Now look up "Remind Me In Dark Times." (I'm so nice to you.) Still nothing? Darn. I think for the first time, I'm posting a song that has yet to be shared on the whole wide interwebs. It's also almost 9 minutes long, so start listening now.

Shout Out Out Out Out - Remind Me In Dark Times

This was a tune that I put in heavy rotation in the strangest of ways this summer. I had a government job, meaning the only thing I could listen to on my desktop was CBC Radio3 podcasts. "Remind Me In Dark Times" was charting on Radio3's Top 30 countdown back then, so I would download the condensed podcast whenever I wanted to hear this, skip ahead to the part where it started (and sometimes listen to the Junior Boys track right before it) and then I'd backtrack and listen to the whole thing again once it was done. The great thing about songs over 8 minutes -- especially electronic ones? If they're good in the first place, they're so long that by the time they're done, you wouldn't get sick of them if you listened again.

Anyways, I'm super-tired, overstuffed from supper, and I'm rambling/not making the best points here. So let the song ride out, in all its awesome, sinister vocoded-ness. And remember who sent you.

Buy Reintegration Time here: Amazon

Sunday Night Spotlight | No. 3 | (on a Tuesday)

your guess is as good as mine

Little Dragon is a Swedish pop group. Among other things I've professed my love for on here, European sugar-pop is probably my biggest guilty pleasure of any. It makes no sense to me: I hate things that sound like the 80's. I hate pop music (in its current state). But I love Swedish people. Okay, I've only ever seen one Swede in my life that I know of, and that was Lykke Li. But I imagine they're all just as cool as her. I'm extrapolating here. Either way, Little Dragon are at least deserving of a Sunday Night Spotlight -- even if it is Tuesday.

They make slightly downtempo and dreamy pop, and lead singer Yukimi Nagano (yes, half-Japanese, half-Swedish), sounds eerily similar to Lykke Li, which is probably why I like Little Dragon so much in the first place. The quirky instrumentation is definitely there, mixing slippery drums with synthesizers, whistle noises, and even one song seemingly sampling that noise Mario made when he jumped up. Yukimi's flighty voice is the perfect compliment to all the above, delivering an airy accompaniment in cutely endearing English. There's so much summer in recent release Machine Dreams that it's a shame it just came to this side of the ocean in the fall.

Little Dragon - Never Never

"Never Never" is probably as downtempo as Little Dragon actually gets, but it still carries with it a bit of swagger, lilting along on the strength of the drum hits and Nagano's perfectly up-and-down, side-to-side vocals. It has a bit of a lounge-y feel to it in the verses, but never feels old or staid thanks to smile-inducing bridge and chorus, with its synthesizers working on overtime to produce the desired pick-me-up. When you listen to a song like this and call it "pop," you're ostensibly putting in it in the same dimension as the tunes you hear when you turn on the radio. But all you hear on the dial is a bastardization of the genre -- Little Dragon delivers pop music with a retro vibe, and in the way it's supposed to be heard.

Little Dragon - Swimming

"Swimming" on the flip-side is Little Dragon at its quirkiest. "ooooh-oooh"s abound, and the simple piano chords lay down the basis of a boy-girl story -- told on top of a tune you could easily imagine soundtracking a silent film, at the part where the couple-to-be is running around the park, playing a most-flirtatious round of hide-and-seek, peeking out from the trees just in time to see their crush and run off to their next hiding spot. (Wow, if that's not evocative enough - whether good or bad - I don't know what is. Try imaging Charlie Chaplin and seeing the whole thing in black-and-white and that might help a bit.)

Yukimi is good at some juxtaposition of sultry and kooky, her voice emoting both at different times, with the aide of that complimentary instrumentation. On top of "Swimming" and "Never Never," there's a few other tracks from Machine Dreams that border on dream-pop, thanks to their deft use of atmospherics and space. It just goes to prove that what you don't use is just as important as what you do -- silence is not nothing, it is simply the absence of sound, and sound and silence have to work in an effective tandem to make music truly great. Little Dragon know when to carry on a beat, when to cut it short, when to change it up. Sometimes they may over-indulge, like the "why'd they do that?" break on "Looking Glass," but largely, Machine Dreams is an enjoyable album, full of everything there is to love about 80's-tinged European pop music at the moment.

Buy Machine Dreams here: Amazon

LCD Soundsystem

I fucking love LCD Soundsystem. I'm just putting that out there. My dad can't stand them. My roommate complains about me playing my "shitty" music whenever I put them on in the car. I can't really find many people I know at all that like them, let alone as much as I do. I don't understand it. There's nothing particularly offensive about their sound. It's punk- and disco-inflected dance music -- without the over-aggressiveness of some strains of punk, and borrowing from disco influences in an almost pretentious fashion (I'm not even joking: they literally have a song called "Yeah [Pretentious Version]").

LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations

Band front-man/lead singer/DFA Records boss James Murphy is the essential cog to LCD Soundsystem, with his matter-of-fact delivery and stunning knack for turning what are seemingly monotonous subject matters and beats into minutes-long opuses on life and death and everything in between. Obviously, he crystallized the latter pinpoint-perfectly on top-ten-track-of-the-last-10-years "All My Friends," but the guy's been doing it with his cohorts in LCD Soundsystem for years in one way or another. Their 2007 album Sound Of Silver is also widely considered one of the best of the last decade, and it's certainly among my favorite albums ever. Recently though, I've been listening to their first release, a double CD simply titled LCD Soundsystem, a compilation amassing one disc of earlier singles, and a second disc of then-new for 2005 material.

Both are certainly great CD's on their own, and could easily have their own glowing reviews from me, but for some reason, I tend to favour the disc of their older material. There's no great discrepancy between any of their three discs really: 90% party-ready jams, and 10% slower numbers that cover everything from how shitty New York got in the last decade, to the heart-aching departure of someone you really love -- all corkscrewing their way into your psyche in seven- to eight-minute cuts.

LCD Soundsystem - On Repeat

Maybe that's the one thing about LCD Soundsystem that makes them a hard band to get into and appreciate: the formidable length and structure of their music. The elements themselves are fine, and rarely stray from the usual dance-floor fare: hi-hats, drum machines, atmospherics, crunchy guitar, and (God love James Murphy) more cowbells than are probably a good idea. Either way, the manner in which all of those culminate is truly something to marvel at, if you really take the time (quite literally) to do it. There's one Sound Of Silver track - "Get Innocuous" - that for about 30 seconds, takes a fast-paced kind of "banging on alien steel" sound, and transforms it bar-by-bar into an equally quick but simple ticking noise. I mean it's intricacies like that that I really appreciate about these guys, but that may go unnoticed or just plain ignored.

But getting back to it, it really might be that musically density that forms a wall between eager ears and musical minds. When even the above-mentioned "All My Friends" spends its whole first minute of seven repeating the same piano loop over and over again (the source of my father's frustration with the group), I may start to understand some people's hesitance at getting into LCD Soundsystem. Begrudgingly, I'll even admit that James Murphy's voice is - realistically - not the most pleasing thing to listen to for the three hours of their music I have in my iTunes.

LCD Soundsystem - Great Release

But it's not always so much how he's saying what it is -- it's without a doubt what it is he's actually talking about. And it really is more like talking than singing. I can barely think of any lines he actually rhymes with proficiency, and it seems like most of his lyrics are stream-of-consciousness verbal assaults on ageing and friends and socializing and love and getting fucked over and music and what's cool and what's not. And all of it is endlessly quotable. For me, James Murphy is nothing short of a modern philosopher. In reference to above quotability, I could write an entire post on the genius musings contained in LCD Soundsystem's tracks, but the best way to pick them out is to actually give the tunes a listen.

This is possibly the best analogy I have for LCD Soundsystem's music: Remember "The Sunscreen Song"? Sadly, not as many people as I thought do, and its lyrical content and origin are an entirely different story, but if you imagine Baz Luhrmann in that song is some kind of fatherly figure doling out advice to you on your graduation day, James Murphy is like your best friend yelling life advice over the dance grooves at a house party. And when you really think about it, it's as simple as that.

Buy LCD Soundsystem here: Amazon

look in the book...

Pointless musical trivia: Pink Mountaintops' members come from the same collective of artists that form Vancouver's Black Mountain -- which also produced the indelible Lightning Dust outfit. It's like a gift that keeps giving. I've already broken down some of Lightning Dust's and Black Mountain's previous work, and as much as I appreciated some elements of their music, Pink Mountaintops seem to take the best of both groups, with folk-inflected and sometimes plodding rock music, along with more uptempo jaunts and cathedral filling wails.

"Execution" and "Vampire" are the singles already released from Pink Mountaintops' album Outside Love, and I knew what to expect from those songs having already heard them, but when I delved into the album itself, I was pleasantly surprised with one track in particular. "Holiday"is outfitted with harmonica, tinkles, acoustic guitar, and a campfire melody -- something that's a bit of a change of pace for a group with its feet well-set in the comforts of straightforward rock and dreamy psychedelia. I mean, I'm talking like I'd toast s'mores to this tune.

Pink Mountaintops - Holiday

It's actually a pretty mournful song in lyrical content, lamenting friends who have left "on holiday," and preaching about bastards and cowards, but you'd never guess from the sea-shanty-like sway of the thing, drowned in expressive yet almost monotonous singing. In view of the Peaches-sounding guitars and garage-rock drums of cuts like "The Gayest Of Sunbeams" (yes, you read that right) and ballroom twirls of "Come Down," Pink Mountaintops certainly make use of the many musical styles they have under their belts, and are no worse for it. The whole album still sounds like a whole piece, with good flow from start to finish and a good number of strong tracks.

Look at that. I set out to write a little snippet about "Holiday," and I ended up with a mini album review on Outside Love. But it felt organic and natural, a lot like Pink Mountaintops' music.

now I'm just crazy, and fucked in the head

Girls really had to grow on me. No, not like that -- Girls, the band. Maybe a bit less than the xx, I was wary of the hype surrounding these guys. Pitchfork's review had a most interesting story on the band's background, but that still wasn't enough to get me to listen to the group. An initial listen to "Laura" didn't convince me of their talent any more either. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I half-recall listening to the particular track featured in this post, "Lust For Life," but if I really liked it that first time (in the summer if I remember at all), it would certainly stick out in my memory a bit more than it seems to right now.

No, it took a very random and recent listen to "Lust For Life" for me to warm up to Girls even a little bit. I'm still not totally into them, and it hasn't even been two weeks that I've had the track I'm speaking of. But -- damn is it ever catchy. At 2:25, I've probably taken longer pees. But the ridiculously jangling guitars, the almost-cartoonish half-croon/half-whine of lead singer Christopher Owens, the barely-there beach vibe, the sustained tempo of the whole thing (not much time to really do anything different with it anyway), the out-of-nowhere harmonica riff that for the life of me I can't place quite which 90's TV show it reminds me of...for God's sake, it's not really fair that a song with really only one verse can be this good. Even the way it trails off at the end is irresistible, and I frankly can't get enough of the song.

Thankfully -- and probably a big reason why I like the song so much -- what it's lacking is that "chillwave" beach-haze, symptomatic of this summer's drowned-out, barely-audible excuses for sun-soaked soundtracks. The song could've easily went that way, but laid bare (or what some people might call "not produced with layer-upon-layer of tape-deck hiss, pushed to the background vocals, and unrecognizably distorted guitar"), it sounds ten times better than anything else of a similar ilk put out in the last six months.

Girls - Lust For Life

Obviously if you wanted to, you could delve into the deeper meaning of the track, as there's certainly enough there to work with. Owens' probably-personal longings -- some we can relate to (sun tans, beach houses, bottles of wine) and some we can't (boyfriends, for those of us heterosexual males; and fathers, for those of us who grew up with them) -- abound. Vulgar thoughts of insanity and matters of the heart even wander their way into the condensed-soup of a song, but it never feels like too much -- rather, it feels just right. Even if seemingly nothing in Owens' world is.

did you dive too deep, like you always do?

Music for me isn't just the sounds. It's the feelings and the memories and the stories associated with those unique sounds. Sometimes it's complicated, like a concert experience. Sometimes it's as simple as a memorable tune in your car or on the radio (not a great chance it was on the radio nowadays though). "Lions For Scottie" by Hey Rosetta! has a very abstract backstory for me.

My younger sister occasionally borrows my car. While I usually listen to my mp3 player when I drive, she brings along her own mix CD's, which she tends to leave in the car afterwards. After I moved out this September, I started taking quick drives around town, as opposed to the half-hour treks I used to commute on before my move, so that meant either forgetting or foregoing my mp3 altogether. As alluded to above however, the radio absolutely sucks in Halifax. So on those quick drives, which would sometimes extend into mini-shopping trips or proverbial taxi rides for my roommates, my sister's CD's came in more than handy.

On one particularly eclectic mix, I found some Noah & The Whale, Death Cab For Cutie, Joel Plaskett, some oldies, and a few Hey Rosetta! cuts. Very representative of my sister's listening habits to say the least. Those Hey Rosetta! tracks really connected with me though -- until then, I'd really only listened to one of their songs with any consistency, aside from seeing them in concert this summer. So picking her up one night from work, I asked if the songs were indeed by Hey Rosetta!, and told her how much I liked them. A while later, I got the band's two albums (as well as a concert ticket for their Halifax show this December) and though I'm still missing a few songs, they've got a solid catalog already just from that pair.

"Lions For Scottie" really stood out to me for one reason or another though. It's one of the more immediate songs the group has, starting with a few drumstick hits and launching into a full-out assault right off the top. It doesn't build and well up like most other Hey Rosetta! tracks, and singer Tim Baker's vocals are among his most exuberant and impassioned on the Plan Your Escape disc "Lions For Scottie" comes from. Though the album cut is 7:41 long, the meat of it really only extends 3:26 in, then gives way to a markedly more somber and diametrically opposed affair. In iTunes, I left that self-titled "Extended Mix" alone as part of the whole album, and cut myself the shorter version for easier listening to the single. Take a listen to it for yourself here:

Hey Rosetta! - Lions For Scottie