Monday 30 July 2012

Weekly Pick: Hannah Georgas - "Enemies"


Canada has been serving up some of the world's best female singer-songwriters since before many of us were born, and I can't see any signs of things changing anytime soon. Musicians like Feist and Kathleen Edwards have helped carry the torch to a new generation of Canadians, bringing honesty, beauty and divine musicianship that seems lacking in a time where women in popular music are presented as an image instead of a artist. Hannah Georgas is set to release her sophomore album this October under her new label Dine Alone out of Toronto, who also represent others such as City & Colour, Hey Rosetta!, Yukon Blonde and Dinosaur Bones. Her new single "Enemies" is an example of a musical evolution, she breaks out of her shell and borrows elements from different genres to make the sound her own. There is an ethereal aspect to this song that brings together poeticism and beauty in her vocals and instrumentation that caught my attention instantly. The new album will also feature Graham Walsh from Holy Fuck, Ryan Guldemond and Ali Siadat from Mother Mother, Ted Gowan from Tegan and Sara, and Andrew Braun from Rococode. It's just too bad that we have to wait until October to hear it, and if it follows the gripping nature of this track, should be one of this year's best. I'll leave you with opening lyrics from the song and a live, in-studio performance of the song from an exclusive CBC Music Session. 

"Enemies"

We're in a sea full of sharks
Just swimming around and around if we get caught
They're gonna taste our blood
You leave a trail and the word will get out
That we're all lost and ready to kill



Thursday 19 July 2012

Weekly Pick: Cadence Weapon - 'Hope in a Dirt City'


So the weekly picks haven't been quite 'weekly' recently, but I'm working on that. The point here isn't to make you like the same music that I do - it is to give you something (possibly) new to listen to while getting dressed or baking cookies. And if you want to read my two cents about it, you are welcome to do that as well.

Lately I've been totally immersing myself in new music, new genres and different approaches to composition. With an open mind I'm rediscovering the art of listening to an album - although albums these days are just binary code on the computer, I'm relieved that musicians still write quality full length albums and not just singles. I still miss the excitement of unwrapping a new CD and popping it in for the first time though. I also used to be one of those guys who religiously listened to rap in grade 10, thinking Tupac Shakur was the messiah and that the 7 Day Theory was actually true. Since then, my taste in music has matured a bit but I'm still always open to listening to good hip hop. A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys and J5 opened my eyes to intellectual hip hop and the power it has to represent real skill and technical ability over the gangster image.

A lot of times Canadian rappers remain under the radar, as hip hop seems to be disproportionately centred around the United States. Not to take anything away from what Drake has achieved, but his breakout came from getting signed by Lil' Wayne's Young Money Entertainment. Even more, I still think a lot of it is about the fame and fortune. It still boggles my mind how rappers make money from writing about how much money they have - it's like a never-ending circle that promotes being a douche. I guess that's one of my main problems with so many rappers, that they are consumed with the wrong things and then writing songs about stuff I would never care about. I can't connect to something I don't care about. The pretentious aspect of it all takes away from the core of what hip hop is all about: the human condition in urban culture.


Obviously this isn't a blanket claim. The fact is that most 'real' hip hop remains unseen and unheard by the general public. I'm not claiming to know everything about underground hip hop, far from it. I'm only starting to get back into it again. One Canadian artist that stands out is Cadence Weapon (Rollie Pemberton) of Edmonton, AB who now resides in Montreal. His latest release Hope in a Dirt City through Upper Class Recordings has been getting huge reviews and critical acclaim. His recent short-list nomination for the Polaris Music Prize is a result of delivering a risky, yet dynamic album that forges different styles of music together. It includes everything from jazz-influenced intrumentation to 80's sounding bass lines - the rules of hip hop composition have been thrown out the window in favour of a completely original sound.




The overall  approach to this album is the use of unconventional approaches. The lyrical phrasing is often 'sloppy', but intentionally so. Pemberton goes back and forth between verses with rhyme and flow to  ones that are more disjunctive and almost spoken. The use of synth to create a darker aura in several songs, and there aren't many repetitive loops or samples. This makes the album one that requires a few listens to really develop an appreciation for - with so many different things happening, it might come across as strange at first. Personally, I've had it on repeat since I downloaded it.

Part of what makes this album a success is the way Pemberton explores darker themes, and how he reflects them through lyrics. The narrative changes throughout the album, songs like 'Hype Man' look at the hip hop scene through different perspectives and tell a story through an interesting dialogue. Tracks like 'Get On Down' really focus on the technical aspects, as he provides an unrelenting and intense flow that makes you wonder when he has time to take a breath. His skills as a DJ and producer are apparent throughout the entire album. The production is more intricate and developed than his 2008 album Afterparty Babies (also a Polaris Prize nominee), and offers listeners a much different sound to almost anything out in the music world right now. Overall, listening to this album is a refreshing experience.

I recommend giving all the Polaris Prize shortlist nominees a listen. This year's crop of artists won't disappoint. I recently saw Pemberton on Discovery HD's National Parks Project, an incredible documentary-style series that brings together Canada's rugged and beautiful landscapes with our nation's most promising and talented musicians. He joins musicians Laura Barrett and Mark Hamilton in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB, where they band together and create incredible music that reflects their experience. I can't recommend this series more, it is impossible not to enjoy. Check out the Waterton Lakes EP features Cadence Weapon, Barrett and Hamilton here.


Monday 9 July 2012

5 Worst People to Stand Beside at a Concert

We all love the experience of looking forward to a good live show. When the day finally arrives, the excitement piques and you gather with your compadres in front of the stage to get your fill of eardrum abuse. Unfortunately, not everyone who comes out knows that there is a certain unspoken etiquette to which most of us adhere. I've been waiting almost a decade to get this list out one way or another, and dammit it feels liberating. This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, but it covers some of the big ones. And when I refer to 'you', I'm not speaking to you the reader, but to the perpetrator of each respective crime. So here it is, the 5 worst people to get caught standing beside at a concert.

5. The Guy Who is a Drunken Fool

This is the guy who spends most of his time at the bar and not actually watching the band play. He comes up beside you double fisting a couple tallboys with spills on his shirt and starts yelling incomprehensible words and slurs, making a point to yell louder than the lead singer's vocals coming out of the PA. I'm not against drinking at shows, I do it all the time. But if you go to a show with a primary goal of drinking to get sloshed with the band as background music, then we have problems. Handle your liquor and don't ruin it for the rest of us trying to enjoy our time.

4. The Guy Who Smells Like Sewage

Here is the guy who thought it was a good idea to avoid showering for a week before attending the event. A little bit of sweat and odor are to be expected at shows, and in most cases it is part and parcel of the concert-going experience. But if you walked into the venue smelling like a pair of old, urine-filled sneakers then I must ask why, WHY couldn't some level of personal hygiene been reached? Neither me nor my friends at the show appreciate being more overpowered by your smelling body than the band in front of us.

3. The Guy Who is a Karaoke Singer

This guy thinks it's Monday night karaoke at the local pub. I definitely don't mind people singing along with the lyrics, in fact this is a great part that both fans and the band can enjoy. But there's a limit. If you are belting out every song like you do when trying to impress your friends singing Living on a Prayer on said Monday night, it's too much. No one came to hear you mutilate every lyric of the the band's repetoire. Plus, the lead singer is RIGHT THERE in front of us singing the songs the HE/SHE wrote. I'm pretty certain they don't want to hear your version. Ever.

2. The Guy Who Thinks the Stage is a Jukebox and the Band is the Music Library

We've all been to pubs where the musician is happy to take some requests and please the crowd. That's why they play covers, because people love hearing the songs they know. But if you're at a show and the band is playing a variety of songs that they wrote, it's because they want the crowd to hear more than what you may have heard on the radio. Yelling out something that you want to hear isn't just annoying, but insulting to the band who already has a setlist drawn up just for us. It's not about you. And for the record, if you hear some guy yelling 'shut the fuck up' right after you request your favourite song, it's me. Chances are if you wait patiently until the end, you will walk out of the venue feeling pretty satisfied with what you heard.

1. The Pusher

This one is the worst, but it may not apply to smaller shows. It is also not gendered, because I've had this happen to me by both sexes. Some people who are really excited for a concert wait in lineups for hours, uncomfortably, just to get a great spot up front when they enter the venue. It's what hardcore fans do. It takes perseverance and a strong will. Often times it's a one-shot thing to be able to get that close to one of your favourite bands in general admission. So, as the gods of fairness dictate, those who wait less don't get as good a view because they didn't put in the time. If you are the guy who thinks it's fine to just torpedo your way through the dangerously packed crowd of people in order to get a spot up front you think you deserve, then you are a bad person. In your head you are probably thinking 'I don't care what people think, I'm doing this bro'. Everyone you push through is thinking of the best way to end you life. There is no greater spectacle of douchebaggery than someone who thinks they are entitled to their space at the very front with others who have waited for hours in order to be where they are.

Douchebag (n): An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intellegence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears.

The selfishness and ego it takes to pull this off demonstrates the kind of thing that is wrong with our society today - advancing oneself without regard for others. This doesn't only apply to douchebags, but chicks too. If you think that you are so hot that you can just waltz up to the front, you are wrong. You are ugly, on the inside. And you aren't going to sleep with the drummer.



Monday 2 July 2012

Looking back at June: Zoo Legacy & Silkken Laumann

Photo: Ming Wu
Silkken Laumann (Photo: Ming Wu)


Ottawa musicians seem to be hard at work this summer (which begins in early May according to my internal life calendar). With Fevers releasing their debut music video for "Passion is Dead (Long Live Fashion)" a few months back, alt/hip hop trio Zoo Legacy just dropped  their first video for "L.K.U.T." off their upcoming album City Light Glow. The Acorn frontman Rolf Klausener's experimental side project Silkken Laumann also released a new video for the song "House of Common Problems", the second single from the forthcoming album Not Forever Enough. Both videos are strong precursors for their respective band's full-length release, giving us visual stimulation on great tracks while we wait. And both are dance-party worthy, so check out both new videos below and have a dance party.