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F*cking awesome.

That is all.




[Amanda Palmer - MySpace] [Dresden Dolls - MySpace] [Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Amazon]

Labels: Amanda Palmer, Experimental, Indie, Rock

Montreal band Pas Chic Chic has been getting some rapturous press of late, both locally and nationally.

They're often been compared to Arcade Fire, and even though their sound is quite different, they more than merit the comparison because of their energy and their magpie ability to steal from all kinds of music genres to create something completely unique and exciting.

Front man Roger Tellier-Craig talks about his early inspiration for the band:

I wanted to do a band like this for a very long time. When I was around 18 years old and barely playing an instrument, I first heard Serge Gainsbourg. I had been listening to a lot of Anglophone music before that, stuff like My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, the Velvet Underground and Brian Eno and I have to admit that at the time I thought all francophone music was shit ... Stereolab first showed me you could sing in French and make interesting music, but when I heard Gainsbourg I realized that there was a history of French music I had never heard of through radio or TV... [more]

Labels: Experimental, Indie, Pop, Quebecois

Canadian rock collective, experimental outfit and critical darlings, Broken Social Scene, have always been just a little bit too squirrelly for me.

Having said that, though, there are a couple of their tunes that take pride of place on my all-time-most-favourite-songs-ever-ever-list.

When they get it right, Broken Social Scene come close to transcendental.

A song that might begin with an unusual rhythm and complicated time signatures will suddenly open out into a sprawling, mesmerizing soundscape transporting the listener far, far from the madding crowd.

And who could ask for more than that, really?

Here's "Frightening Lives" and "F--ked Up Kid" from the album Spirit if..., (which is, in fact, the first in the Broken Social Scene Presents series, which aims to showcase the solo efforts of different BSS members -- in this case, founder Kevin Drew).



[Broken Social Scene - MySpace] [Amazon]

Labels: Canada, Experimental, Indie

Sometimes the iPod's shuffle feature throws up the most weird and wonderful juxtapositions.

How about Crystal Castles' "Courtship Dating" followed by dEUS' "Suds and Soda"?

Pure brilliance.

Toronto's Crystal Castles have been getting a lot of ecstatic press lately, and deservedly so (in my most humble opinion).

I've seen lots of reviews by blokes raving about how the Atari sound takes them right back to their game-boy-geek adolescence. It's a "I-
guess-you-had-to be-there" kind of thing, and since I wasn't, I don't get it. But I take their word for it.

For me, Crystal Castles suggest some kind of f*cked up, magnificent mélange of Sleater Kinney, Le Tigre and Soulwax.

They're their own trip, though, no question. So if you haven't yet, you should leap on the ride!

As for dEUS, they're old favourites. And somehow CCs' "Courtship Dating", with its shouted, call and response chorus segues perfectly into the see-sawing intro and shouted, disjointed verses of "Suds and Soda".

Go figure.



[Crystal Castles - MySpace] [dEUS - Band website]

Update: Seems CC are in a bit of hot water of late, for liberally pilfering samples from a community they'd previously denied any knowledge of. (Thanks to my anonymous commenter for the tip.) There's a good breakdown over at Create Digital Music of the controversy, along with an interesting discussion and examples of the offending songs.

Labels: Electronica, Experimental, Indie, Pop, Rock

People go crazy for summer here in Montreal.

Windows are thrown open, pale, sickly faces are lifted to the sun, and clothes are removed in a most reckless and arbitrary manner.

We creep out from our slovenly, smelly little nests and slowly unfurl in the warmth.

People are happy. They smile at strangers in the street. Everyone is all hail-fellow-well-met. The world is full of endless opportunity.

At the beginning of every summer, I join the rest of Montreal in this collective, dizzy exhalation of joy.

Sadly, it lasts barely a moment.

My summer bubble of amnesia bursts abruptly, and I remember -- with clenched fists and an ever present snarl -- why summer in Montreal is an awful time for grumpy old misanthropes (like me).

Summer means construction.

It means every man and his dog decides they have to fix their rotting balconies and sinking driveways and collapsing roofs.

And god forbid that construction crews start at 9 a.m. like every other civilized profession.

No. Construction crews start their day at 4-fucking-a.m.

Alright, I concede: that may not be strictly true. But when you're fast asleep at 7 a.m. and woken by what sounds like a truck backing up in your living room, pipes dropping from several stories into your bedroom, a band saw in your kitchen, and men yelling at each other in your bathroom, it feels like 4-fucking-a.m.

Disorientated and disgruntled after this less than auspicious wakeup call, you weave off to work on the bicycle you pulled out of storage at the beginning of spring.

You've decided it'd be a great idea to risk life and limb by entering the insane and unpredictable world of Montreal's roads, where, daily, pedestrians, cyclists and drivers try to kill one another through various staggering displays of inattention.

(The season has barely begun, and I, for one, have already kissed the asphalt. A jay-walking pedestrian stepped blindly off the pavement, I slammed on the breaks -- and flew right up and over the handlebars. Quite spectacular, really. The bruises are only just starting to fade.)

Having braved the roads once again at the end of your work day, you stagger into your apartment and collapse on the couch. You sip your lemonade and enjoy the breeze and think how nice it is to have escaped the madness outside.

You're startled from your reverie by a blood-curdling scream.

It's a child screeching, full-throated, at the top of her lungs. My god, is she being garroted? Is someone trying to remove her eyeballs with a fork?

You leap from the sofa and bolt onto your balcony, looking around wildly for the source of the noise, so you can run and help.

Down on the street below you see some neighbourhood children. They are playing on the grass. They are being watched over by a guardian. The screaming-banshee-child is one of their number. She lets one loose every minute of so.

You can only stare in abject horror and wonder: if you'd made that kind of noise when you were a child, your mother would've garroted you.

While you're gazing at this perplexing scene, a neighbour from the opposite apartment block comes out onto his balcony. (You could probably spit on his shoes, your balconies are that close together.)

As you glance over, you see him whip out some kind of mouth organ piano thing.

He begins to play. Tunelessly, as far as you can make out.

Now you're staring in open-mouthed consternation at your neighbour.

Number one, he's a grown man, why is he playing this fucking toy? Number two, what makes him so certain that everyone within a two mile radius wants to hear him play his fucking toy?

Right about now your nerves are at snapping point.

You stomp inside.

Once you threw open your windows to feel the warm, refreshing breeze.

Now all you want to do is slam them shut on this mayhem.

Which is not an option, of course, since in no time at all you would be sweltering in a hellish oven, consumed by indignation and ire.

Ah summer.

What power you have to make us suffer and like it.*

If I could set the experience of a Montreal summer to music, it would have to be Fuck Buttons' "Sweet Love for Planet Earth".



Oh, sweet, sweet irony.


[Fuck Buttons - MySpace] [eMusic]

*Russell Baker

Labels: Electronica, Experimental, Rock