WEAKERTHANS- LEFT & LEAVING

It's been too long! I make no promises about posting more but hey, I'm like a streaky hitter. I'm .224 for my career but I've been known to go on 15-game stretches of .376

This is a good post to come back with though! For those who don't know, The Weakerthans are the product of John K. Samson. Samson got his "start" (quotations since I doubt he was planning to stick around or was musically fulfilled) in the 90's band Propaghandi as their bassist. After leaving that band he started focusing on his own material and formed the Weakerthans. The rest is Can-rock history.

Musically, this is hyper-literate, soft-spoken pop-punk with a lot of mellow songs and all-around fantastic songwriting. If you like Jawbreaker but wish they sounded more like Yo-La Tengo then this is the ticket!

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HUM- YOU'D PREFER AN ASTRONAUT

Just some more Hum. Good-ass spaced-out alt-rock. Pumpkins with more of a shoegaze/pink floyd influence!

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IMMORTAL- AT THE HEART OF WINTER

Black Metal, like pretty much every other sub-genre of extreme music, constantly sparks debates about sincerity within the genre. These kinds of debates almost always touch on some set of arbitrary rules about something as significant as songwriting or something as trivial as how the band members are dressed. One common debate I've seen on message boards and in reviews is how much "rawness" (the extent to which the recordings are made to sound intentionally lo-fi) is important to the music being "true" or sincere.

While a lot of classic black metal is very raw in its production, so what? Keeping both feet constantly in the philosophies and practices of the people who inspired you can lead to not only your own artistic stagnation but also increases the likelihood of your music sounding like a poor imitation of those bands. Which is why I'm glad this album exists.

Immortal were one of the first-wave Norwegian Black Metal bands and their early recordings were very raw but album to album the production, not to mention the musicianship and songwriting, took incredible leaps and bounds. This is my favourite of their albums and while this is undeniably a black metal LP in terms of the music, the production makes it sound as crisp and clear as Ride the Lightning! Sadly, Immortal will always be more remembered by hipsters as the band that made ridiculous music videos and wore a ton of makeup and medieval armour... at least people who actually like music for music's sake can enjoy this!


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GLOOM-Vokusatsu, Seisin, Hatansha

Hey everyone, remember me? I forgot my gmail password for 3 months or more, but I have it again and I've got a lot to share.

Here's the band that burst my crasher crust (blown out Japanese d-beat) cherry and still remain my favorite practitioner of the genre. Listen to Wargasm and Decay and pump your fist.

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CRYSTAL SWELLS- HARSH SIDE/SLUDGE FREAKS 7"

This is the perfect acid-fried, garage-pop, speed-trip for your summer! Four jams in seven minutes, oodles of reverb on the vocals, drums that sound like Chuck Biscuits backing Dick Dale and some truly killer guitar playing! This band has been at it for a few years and they always rule! You can download the individual tracks on the bandcamp... ohh, just got to track three and it's a fucking anthem! this band is too good!

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THIN LIZZY- BLACK ROSE

This is a fucking great record. If you like guitars then you'll dig this... if you don't like guitars, go to a different blog.

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MONOMYTH

Monomyth are a new band from Halifax making great shoegaze-surf-jangle-noise-pop... Now, of course that sounds like a million other trendy bullshit bands that currently populate every music scene in the western world BUT these four dudes have the edge. Great musicianship, songwriting and a fuck-ton of charm. I had the honour of meeting and sharing a stage with these guys last night and needless to say, they were the highlight of the night by a Texas mile. They're touring Canada right now and are all the way from Halifax so if you live on Vancouver Island or in Vancouver, go see them this week before they go back to their crab fishing jobs.


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CRIME DESIRE - IN LUCIFER'S GRIP

I think the cover of this album says it all really.

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HUM- DOWNWARD IS HEAVENWARD

Well, what to say about HUM? a cult act if there ever was one. Spacey (but not shoegazy) alt-rock with lyrics about girls and astronomy. When I say "alt-rock" I worry it conjures memories of Pearl Jam or Stone Temple Pilots or something else that sucks but I'm thinking more along the lines of Smashing Pumpkins' heavier songs circa 95! This is very blissful music with the occasional crushing guitar part and feedback-laden lead melody. I feel like by describing it, as I'm trying to do right now, I'm over contextualizing it and not getting to the point. This band is really good and sadly forgotten in comparison to other bands from the era. This is their last album but it's a good starting point!


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WRITE OFF- TERROR COMPOUND DEMO

Full disclosure, I'm not very "cool" in the traditional sense of the word. I wear the same thing almost every day, I don't party (unless getting drunk in a park counts), I watch Two and Half Men reruns and I work the counter at a gas station that belongs to a billion-dollar corporation.

Having a job like this means I get (have) to interact with the largest possible cross-section of people in this city. Entitled people who yell at me when their credit card is declined, angry people who threaten me through bullet-proof glass when I'm working the night-shift, smokers with no patience for my attempts at small talk and the worst: people who refuse to follow instructions clearly written on the pumps so they don't have to talk to me. Those are just the assholes though. One bright spot is the location. We're right next door to one of Vancouver's busiest and most-popular rehearsal spaces so I get to talk gear and music nerd stuff with the occasional stranger. One such stranger I've become acquaintances with is a man named Bubba.

Bubba walks with a cane, has a massive mane of greying hair and a beard to match, always buys orange juice and has Sleep and Winter patches on his vest (A+). I assumed he just lived in the area but one day he came in and had a bag from a nearby music store with some swank new mics in it. I asked him about recording and that got the ball rolling. Bubba is the singer for an awesome new hardcore band here in the city and their name is Write Off. This is straight up, in your face 80's styled hardcore with modern vocals that remind me of Look Back and Laugh. The real spike in this punch bowl is that the guitars are tuned to drop-D, something totally foreign to retro-hardcore, and it adds a subtle modern touch to the music that sounds slightly unlike anyone else currently playing this style. Anyway, Bubba gave me the demo the other day and it kills. Ten songs in nine minutes. Enjoy!!!

p.s. the above video is Write Off jamming in their rehearsal space!

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