Vicar - Moment

If you're looking for proof that I'm biased in my blog content you might want to pay attention here since that's my painting on the cover of Vicar's new album "Moment". And to be fair I am biased as all hell, but I also don't do album art for bands I don't think are absolutely awesome. Vicar are absolutely awesome.
The brain child of Tyler Lovell bass player for one of my favorite bands going AE Bridger, the guys are real  young but they know what they're doing. Vicar are easily the most experimental and sonically confrontational band that can also call themselves "rock" on the east coast. The sound is DENSE, the drums and vocals march like the gestapo and the guitars perform fine needlework on your brain. Listening to the album is like watching a Max Ernst collage violently destroy a car park. There is not much tranquility on this release, Orwellian death marches are broken up only by the voice of Tron-like demon gods operatically pummeling a theatrical Einstürzende Neubauten chorus into your chest plate. Look at me, the hyperbole is spilling from me like tropical geyser. Anyway, it's real good. 
It got nominated on The Scope's long list for the Atlantis music prize, it's not gonna win, but give this album some friggin' attention anyway.   


Giv'er a listen in the player below.

Hunting Winter

Before I start flooding this blog with vile self promotional nonsense I should talk about some of the cool stuff my friends have been doing since I went on blogging hiatus.

Justin Mahoney is one of my oldest friends/most talented musicians I know. He's the first of a few of my Corner Brook friends who went from playing BRUTAL technical death metal in highschool and naturally transitioned into jazz and then of course to country music. For the last few years he's been working as a genuine, fer reals professional musician in Toronto backing up mainstream acts such as Brian Byrne and Tara Oram while also working the underground in acts like North Amorica, The Evelyn Room and The Coastguard. Over the years we have been bugging the crap out of him to get on the go recording his own material and this year he is relenting in a big way.

Under the moniker "Hunting Winter" Justin has come up with a haunting and dramatic short player with bare boned but exquisite guitar playing and aching close knit vocal harmonies. The songs express a certain kind of sorrow with a simple poetic understatement that doesn't beat you over the head with any trite sentimentality. If you are the type who needs a list of similar artists to compare to before you listen to anything, I'd say you wouldn't be too far off comparing Hunting Winter to Bon Iver mixed with a bit of the more polite John Frusciante. The songs are a more direct and a little less "precious" then a Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes but have a similar direction towards the transcendental despite the homespun quality of the recordings.

Anyway, give the EP a listen to yourself in the player down below if you're curious. And if you like it GO BUY IT.

ZOMBIE BLOG COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD SOON!! as soon as my new album is done...

I mean it! I am gonna start blogging again (eventually), and I won't stop for it awhile. I will do this as soon as I am finally finished this friggin' bloody album, which I have been slaving over since January of this year. It is just about at the stage where I can no longer make it sound any better without scrapping the whole thing and starting over again. I've been so deeply entrenched in the production of it I've basically forsaken all other aspects of my life such as this blog and my reviews for The Scope. It's gonna be friggin' good though. At least I hope it is, I listen to all the songs about 4 times a day and tweaked and re-tweaked them to the point that I have absolutely no idea if they are any good or not. Sometimes when I listen to it at night I fucking LOVE it and sometimes when I listen to it in the morning I fucking LOATHE it. I've heard other people talk about how they can only hear the flaws in their own work when they listen to it, and I definitely have a bit of that on the go (not that other people won't find flaws in it, they are plenty of obvious ones just littered all over the place). But I have got to get it done soon as I have a CD release show booked at CBTG's for January 1st (more details on that to come as I get shit organized).
The album will be under the name of my band "Patrick Canning & the Suffering Mothers" and will possibly be titled "Let's Celebrate, With Blood!". It will be 65 minutes long with 14 tracks which a lot of people will say is stupid because audiences barely have patience for a 4 song EP nowadays. But fuck those people, I still like my albums the way they're supposed to be: long and meandering with a ton of filler. You can listen to it in installments if you are too lazy or impatient to sit through the whole thing, but hopefully that shouldn't be a problem.
I've already made two fancy shmancy videos that are sure to shock ya eyelids but they won't get uploaded until I have the thing ready to sell. One of them is a fully hand animated thing I made frame by frame in photoshop that I think worked out pretty good, but you have to tell me what you think of it when I finally get it revealed.
Anyway, I gotta finish up and start the promotion train engine up to full throttle until I inevitably run it off the tracks in a few months. Make sure you got me on your RSS feed as new non-self-promotional posts are coming at you in the very near future.

Review Round Up! ~ Puddle of Mudd, Bon Jovi, Slayer, Ke$ha, The Disengagement, Bob Dylan, am/fm dreams, Pathological Lovers, Dead Language,

Whoops! I haven't done this in awhile. Here's all The Scope music reviews I've done since the Last review Round-up. I'm starting with this review of Puddle Of Mudd's horrible new album: "Volume 4: Songs In The Key of Love and Hate". This was rejected by The Scope for being too obscene or something. Whatever! Pansies! Onward the reviews!

Puddle of Mudd
Volume 4: Songs In The Key of Love and Hate
Oh God... So it's come to this? This is what mainstream modern rock music has come to? This despicable 36 minute audio tumor? Puddle of Mudd have sold 7 million CDs! In this day and age that's equivalent to around 70 million 1980's albums. Their horrible song "Blurry" is one of the most played songs on the radio of the last 10 years! Wes Scantlin's voice is like shitting sandpaper. Listening to his strained nasal mewl spew out poetry like "Let’s get it over and just get naked with sweat dripping down your little back" is enough to make your genitals recede all the way back into your body. This album is like a hundred screaming colonoscopies in a building on fire. It's like having a catheter inserted in you and ripped out again over and over and over by a very angry orangutan, or maybe a very angry Fred Durst.

Bon Jovi
The Circle
Jon Bon Jovi is here to help you America! His grand ageing carapace keeps his hand on his heart (which is swaddled in the American flag) while he Rides into town on the back of a majestic unicorn soaring through the sky on clouds formed from the purest, gossamer nebula of cheese. Jon Bon Jovi woke up from his giant platinum bed in the sky and through the power of his magic douche goggles he saw that America was in trouble. Instantly he knew that only his retarded over produced power balladry could save the day for all the soccer moms out there in desperate need of his ridiculous, grandiloquent, throat-ripping choruses. With anthems like "Work for the Working man", "We weren't born to follow" and "Brokenpromiseland" he clearly is at heart a true working class hero and clearly not a vapid, ultra-processed, piece of auditory vomit with a thousand dollar hairdo and cadre of image consultants.

The Disengagement
Masters in Escapism
You ignore the west coast long enough and eventually they try to sneak some awesome albums by you without you noticing. The sophomore release "Masters in Escapism" from Stephenville native band The Disengagement is a tasty slab of guitar driven rock with a distinct 90's indie throwback edge to it. The album is busy with the sounds densely layered with great inventive guitar lines and rambunctious drum work throughout. The songs are full and rich but are thankfully left natural and unpolished with the just right level of murk present to ease your head in pillow of guitar fuzz as you listen through your headphones. If I had to be a boring music reviewer and compare them to other bands I'd say their kinda reminiscent to a poppier sounding Built to Spill with some "Washing Machine" era Sonic Youth thrown in for good measure. A thoroughly enjoyable hard plastic disc from out of left field.

Slayer
World Painted Blood
What's wrong with prepositions? Why couldn't they call the album "World Painted in Blood"? All their other album titles make sense grammatically. But I digress. Slayer, if they didn't invent the genre of thrash metal they certainly perfected it 23 years ago with 1986's Reign in Blood and their fans have pretty much looked disapprovingly at everything else they've put out since then. But metal fans are mostly assholes when you get down to it. Slayer's signature sound and quality haven't really changed at all in the 9 albums since "Reign" and when your catalogue is that consistent or in other words totally interchangeable, fans will always value the first album they got into above the others. Pretty much every Slayer fan starts out with "Reign in Blood". So is World Painted Blood heavy? Hell yes it's fuckin' Slayer! Is it identical to every other album they've put out? Hell yes it's fuckin' Slayer!

Bob Dylan
Christmas In The Heart
I'm pretty sure Bob Dylan could record himself raping a llama for 45 minutes and a certain ageing section of the population would hail it as "an amazing display of evocative and confrontational songwriting prowess". I know it's not really kosher to be overly critical of charity albums (all profits go to help the World Food Programme which sounds like a fine charity) and I know you gotta set the bar lower when criticizing Christmas records and I've had a long history of barely tolerating mister Dylan; but honestly, was anybody (not obsessed with irony) really begging for 45 minutes of Bob gargling his intestines through 15 ancient, cornball Christmas standards? Everything on the album is so syrupy and over produced Dylan's presence is like throwing a dying horse into thedebutante's ball. Hearing Dylan sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing is like listening to a pit-bull choke on a bag of marbles, it's totally hilarious.

am/fm dreams
Whistle and Sing
With this being their third full length release this year I don't think anyone will call am/fm dreams a lazy band anytime soon. Maybe lazy in terms of gigging and promotion but certainly not in terms of writing and recording. On Whistle and Sing am/fm dreams change stylistic gears again turning away from the retro grunge of last February's "Plaid Album" and the synth-pop of January's "Suburban Teenage Riot". This time around they opt for a stripped down, strictly acoustic sound with 17 short and sweet, banjo and harmony rich tunes all concerned with mortality and matters domestic. The recording and production is as tasteful and rich as always with delicately balanced arrangements that are simple but inventive and really help to highlight the songwriting which is some of their strongest yet. And Just think, the February RPM is just 2 months away, that ain't much time before they kick your ass with another full length!
listen to it here.

Pathological Lovers
Calling All Favours
The Pathological Lovers' debut album Calling All Favours is an hour long propulsive blast of high energy rock ambition. Jody Richardson with his miracle pipes (voted best local rockstar two years in a row don'tcha know) sounds as passionate and powerful as he ever has and the production sparkles and snaps as it should. The thing is The Lovers seem to be suffering from a bit of ADD nowadays. Very few songs are played straight. Big left turns, sudden change ups and complicated wordplay are paramount throughout a lot of the album and can make it a bit of a challenge to absorb at times. It would risk being too much to take if it weren't for the fact that everyone involved is givin' it their all and playing at the height of their game. But when Jody hits on the vocal hooks and keeps everything as direct as possible like on songs "Wednesday", "Change is Good" or the beautiful closer "Parking lot in life" the album really soars.

Dead Language
s/t
Local pickers and crooners the Dead Language's debut self-titled album proves a fine display of their spare and delicate arrangements and a showcase for singer/songwriter Katie Baggs rich and enchanting vocals. The songs have a direct rustic simplicity to them with a surprising amount of restraint shown in the guitar, banjo, mandolin and violin combinations with no one player dominating the spotlight, choosing instead to subtly fill in the empty space with their understated pluckings while Katie's voice seduces you. Obvious standouts are the ballads "Breath by Breath" and the album opener "The Dance" which are just total heart rippers. This is a CD that falls into the rare list of albums where the hidden end track is one of the most compelling on the record, the sprightly and energetic instrumental would've been better placed somewhere in the second half where the pace starts to drag. All in all a truly lovely set of ballads and lullabies.

Ke$ha
Animal
Am I a 14 year old girl?
Not the last time I checked.
I have no business listening to this album. Mainstream pop music has always been run by an evil consortium of Hollywood Svengali, Freemasons and Swedish engineers but now in 2010 it's reached the point where I feel like I'm reviewing a Reebok sneaker. No there's definitely more honest artistic expression in a typical sneaker then what I hear here. The Milli Vanilli scandal would never have happened nowadays, why bother hiring nameless studio singers to cover up for your VH1 drone's total lack of talent when you can just drench a shit ton of autotune over every worthless syllable they drunkenly mutter? I guess all the stupid Hot Topic kids who grew up watching "The Hills" or "Paris Hiltons New BFF" looking for role models need something to reaffirm their worthless lives before the real world inevitably crushes their dreams. I've always hated teenagers and I always will.

On Christmas Day The World Ended

Last year I started a tradition of writing the a Christmas song and making a video for it just before Christmas day. This year's song "On Christmas Day The World Ended" is my second Christmas classic, it is destined to be played in preschool Christmas pagents and Christian Bookstores across the nation for decades to come.
If you're so inclined you can buy the tracks from my Bandcamp page Here.

Merry Christmas! Thanks for your support. Cheers for the New Year!


Oh and here's last years Christmas video "Everyone Cries at Christmas" if you were at all curious..

Review Round-up - Creed, Do Make Say Think, Lightening Bolt, YSP!WSD!, Hellothisisalex, Daniel Johnston, The Idlers, The Flaming Lips, Chris Kirby

It's that time again. Here is a round up of all the CD reviews I've done for the Scope over the last couple of months. Enjoy.


Creed
Full Circle
Has it really been 8 years? Wow. It's seems like just yesterday when Creed were the biggest, shittiest, 5th generation grudge band dominating the radio with their tasteless, overblown, chest-thumping power ballads. But it's been 8 years since Creed put out their last album "Weathered" and left the modern rock world with nothing but Nickelback to fill their void. Now *Finally* they have reunited and delivered "Full Circle" which is "probably" their best album (I wasn't curious enough to actually re-listen to any of the previous ones) with Creed giving a more concentrated effort to appear to be "Edgy" and "Metal" (for the first couple of songs at least) and not at all like ageing, washed up bags of sadness. Scott Stapp has the lyrical subtlety of a sledgehammer and a sac of kittens. Regardless if it's Godsmack or R Kelly they're trying to emulate, Creed are the auditory equivalent of a glass of piss warm Red Bull and a bag of Styrofoam peanuts.

Do Make Say Think
The Other Truths
Is it a sign of the times / the failing music industry when more and more modern recording artists seem intent on making movies or at least music that sounds cinematic nowadays? This could always be said of Toronto's premiere post-rock (what an awful genre term! let's never use it again) instrumentalists Do Make Say Think whose long form instrumentals always seem to evoke a strong visual synesthetic sense. The Other Truths is a detour from the direction of their previous album "You, You're a History in Rust" which had them stripped back and recording in a barn to capture a more "authentic" band sound. But this time around they are very much in a studio artist mode densely packing arrangements with orchestras and thickly woven guitars. The four 10+ minute tracks (each titled cheekily "Do" "Make" "Say" and "Think") ebb and flow epically but with much more vigour and exciting dynamics then usual. The final product is a finely crafted and rich audio layer cake from experts in their prime.

Lightning Bolt
Earthly Delights
For the last few years there seems to been a weird trend in hipster music to purposefully make music sound like shit. I'm not necessarily saying purposefully making shitty "music" but to make the music of highly regarded and popular acts, who should have access to decent recording gear, sound like it was recorded with the built in microphone from a 1989 Magnasonic boombox and mastered by a living compression pedal. No band more clearly defines this aesthetic then Rhode Island's Lightning Bolt. On their latest album the drum and bass duo turn up the psychedelics, dumb down the riffs and turn the oppressive wall of relentless static way the hell up. The duo's modus operandi has always been total sensory overload and although the album occasionally slows down the onslaught of blast beats and nonsense riffage to fine druggy sludge, on the whole it is near a Merzbow level of audio carnage clearly not meant for those of a milder disposition.

You Say Party! We Say Die!
XXXX
Most people seem to focus on the "Party" part of Vancouver indie/disco/punk band You Say Party! We Say Die! and not the "Die" part. Through all the upbeat energetic club beats and sing/shouting histrionics there is a pronounced dark and gloomy streak. Always catergorized as a band best appreciated live rather then on record, YSP!WSD!'s new album XXXX does a much better job of conveying them as more then just a pile of drunken scenesters. The songs have a deeper maturity then you would expect and work best when mining the lonely nightclub atmospheres. I will say this though: Hipsters nowadays have got to get off the cocaine and stop trying to sound like Berlin or the Psychedelic Furs, the tacky vintage casio tones were a fun novelty four years ago but you can't live in a Degrassi Junior High episode your entire life, even though many people would clearly love that..

Hellothisisalex
The Accidentals
Hellothisisalex is an electronic duo formerly of Corner Brook fame who now live in dirty old Ontario. The duo's new album "The Accidentals" is a light fizzy concoction of 8bit analogue beeps and bloops with playful jaunty melodies. Many of the song titles reference Newfoundland locales such as "On the shore of Walden Pond" or "Blackpoll Party at Lobster cove Head" but the tunes are more prone to elicit images of Konami games rather then lobster pots or heritage sites, although the fog horn sample on "The Paper House" does set a bit of a nautical scene. The retro Gameboy tones are kept pretty dry throughout and the bass deficient buzz of the keys can grate the ears after awhile, especially to those of us who are sick of the ubiquitous 80's Nintendo nostalgia music circuit ala Dan Deacon, but there is enough enthusiasm and invention present on this short offering to make it worth the while.

Daniel Johnston
Is and Always Was
Some people will try to make you feel bad for enjoying Daniel Johnston. While it is true that a large part (if not most) of his fame comes from stories related to his mental illness, this attitude that by listening to him and buying his albums we are taking advantage of his disorder and belittling him or making fun of him somehow is misguided to say the least. Yes, part of Daniel's appeal through the years is in his unusual delivery and his bent ways of writing pop songs that do show evidence that he is damaged in ways that most of us aren't, but that's only part of the equation. The new album is a lushly produced and arranged collection of pop gems that truly emphasizes Daniel's gifts for satisfying melodies and raw heartwarming sincerity while providing the needed variety that has escaped most of his early home recordings. "Is and Always was" is the most accessible and lovely album of Daniel's career.

Idlers
Keep Out!
I've always found the phenomenon of dance bands with overtly political messages in their songs a little bizarre. You'll never find an audience less concerned with the lyrics then an audience at a disco, and you'll never find a singer with a harder job of being heard then the singer for an 11 piece dance band. Is it the fact that people are less likely to be paying attention that gives the frontman more gumption to throw in controversial political statements? Is the idea to subliminally influence the dancers while they're distracted? The idlers new album "Keep Out!" seems to be circumventing these questions by being surprisingly laid back and stripped down and putting Mark Wilson's voice front and center in the mix. Compared to their high energy live shows which are all bombast and over-stimulation Keep Out! is a refreshingly mellower change of pace and the songs seem more like songs rather then musical backing for Wilson's politics. A groovy little album that wants to give a message but not at the cost of a good tune.

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
The strongest release from the Lips since 1999's The Soft Bulletin, Embryonic finds the Flaming Lips moving away from the overblown grandiosity and fursuit and fake blood shtick that's been their bread and butter for the past 10 years and finds them returning to their experimental roots with some inspired results. There is scarcely a single radio friendly moment anywhere on the sprawling two disc set and the buzzed out confrontational production aesthetic seems to be designed solely for the purpose of dissuading casual listeners. The songs take the form of elaborate jam sessions with an unmistakable love of 70's era German prog with less of the Beach Boy's on space acid pop the Lips have become known for. Wayne Coyne pulls back the melodrama in his voice and the band lock into fuzzy hypnotic grooves with more aggression and menace then they've shown in decades. Not all the 18 tracks are classics but the band hasn't sounded so much like "a band" in ages and the album just gets richer and richer with repeated listens.

Chris Kirby
Vampire Weekend
Chris Kirby is a musician who wears his influences on his sleeve. Drawing a straight line to classic blue eyed Philly soul Kirby's new album Vampire Weekend, with the able help of producer Gordie Johnston of Big Sugar achieves a lush vintage sound with big punchy arrangements, sweet horn sections and a tight well tuned (and this time more keyboard driven) backing band. The songs have a lot of bounce and playfulness to them but if your looking for any kind of lyrical depth or original sentiments look elsewhere. Most of the tracks on Vampire Weekend are of the classic "you-no-good-two-timing-heart-breaker" variety but Kirby's voice and demeanour is way too musical theatre precious and affable to sell any kind of emotional turmoil, not that you'd want much turmoil on a mostly agreeable, breezy pop cabaret album like this. The album has a rich well developed sound but the material is ultimately too light for it's own good.