SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

The New Spin’s goal is to expose the great underground musicians of today. But given that 35% of everything The New Spin plays must be Canadian, I have discovered many great Canadian bands from among the piles of crap that’s out there. So here is a list in the order that I discovered them (kind of), the cream-of-the-crop Canadian bands making waves on The New Spin for 2009, some of which I have already written reviews for (they have links included.)

Of course, to listen to any of these artists, you can always tune in to the show every Thursday night on 93.5 CHMR-FM, online here, 9-11 Newftime, 7:30-9:30 EST, 4:30 Pacific. You should be able to find most of them on CBC Radio 3. I have added a few keywords to describe each artist in case you only like certain genres. SL means “sounds like.”

Tonight I will do a special show playing these artists, so tune in and hear the best of the best in Canadian music.

Hear a playlist of most of these artists here.

Timber Timbre (truly unusual folksongs, like Patrick Watson, this guy’s in a class all his own.)

Bruce Peninsula (dark choir/chamber folk, oh yes.)

Geoff Berner (Klezmer punk, what more needs to be said)

The Hylozoists (all instrumental like post-rock, but wow.)

Headache24 (SL Pixies)

Japandroids (SL Fugazi)

Olenka and the Autumn Lovers (if you like Dead Can Dance, etc.)

Weather Station (folk on the laptop loveliness)

Rae Spoon (how many transgendered folksingers do you know who sound like women but are actually men and who trade in their guitars for computers? not many, I’m sure.)

Patrick Watson (one of the best of the year, avant-garde/progressive indie folk)

The Torrent (dark 80’s inspired electro)

Pat Lepoidevin (amazing folk guitarist with an oh-so-sweet Scottish touch)

Eleazer Vs John (like Junior Boys?)

Tiga (play this at any club and watch them feet move)

Rural Alberta Advantage (dark, folky, I like them better than Elliot Brood)

Lovely Feathers (indie rock)

Hidden Cameras (80’s, New Order-ish, I love their new album)

Dan Mangan (folk, songwriter)

Wooden Sky (dark folk, reminds me of 16 Horsepower a bit)

Kids on TV Remixed V.1 from Blocks Recording Club (beats!)

Cousins (I can’t get play “Growling” enough)

Spiral Beach (kick-ass garage rock/punk)

Acres and Acres (lo-fi folksongs with St. John’s guest Amelia Curran)

Brock Geiger (banjo heavy folk songs)

Reverie Sound Revue (SL Stereolab)

Dark Mean (a little EP, but let’s see what they do in the future)

The Got to Get Got (fun fun in the sun indie rock)

Ambisonic (avant-garde-ish)

Jordan Klassen (love this guy from Calgary, oh my. SL Sufjan Stevens, David Pajo)

Gypsophilia (my interview with them is on my site here)

The Diableros (they have a new album, but haven’t heard it yet!)

The Danks (you love da danks if you love da strokes)

Flotilla (harp-based folk stuff from Montreal. SL Sunday All Over the World if you know who the hell that is)

Extra Happy Ghost (I only like one of the songs on this EP, but it’s so incredible I have to mention it. That would be “mash up: neither being nor nothingness”)

Vincat (Vincat!)

Rival Boys (alt-country, but their EP has grown on me)

Jesse Matheson (this guy’s songs are hilarious and oh so fun)

Octoberman (SL Calexico)

hellothisisalex (unusual chill-out chipcore or chipcore chill-out, whichever sounds better)

The Sales Department (electronic)

The Mountains and The Trees (from St. John’s, they’re making waves!)

Errand Boy (he moved away from St. John’s, too too bad, but keep an eye out for this dude)

Islands (not really underground, but whatever)

Language Arts (whoah, spoken word/hip-hop folk, cool…)

Fritz Helder (not really my favorite, but he has a very original electronic style that’s hard not to notice and that you may love, who knows)

Gregory Pepper and His Problems (problems? on his eclectic album With Trumpets Flaring I don’t see any problems, this guy’s uber-talented)

Makita Hack (straight up bluegrass, but awesome bluegrass at that)

Miss Quincy and The Ramblers (less exciting than Makita, but if you’re a bluegrass fan, why not?)

Woody Johnson (this guy’s a whiz on the acoustic blues front. so is Trevor Caswell, for that matter.)

Let’s Go to War (funky, electronic stuff, probably worth mentioning. SL Groove Armada)

We are Wolves (easily one of the best Canadian albums of the year, wow…)

Peace (who is this dude??? dark 80s-like stuff. SL early P.I.L. or Wilderness if you know them)

Minto (don’t know the album too well, but it’s produced by Steve Albini. yes, Steve Albini!)

The Fugitives (find me, find me! oh god, I’m drooling over them banjo licks.)

Digits (this guy emailed me and showed me his music. I cannot stop playing “Endgame”)

Jon and Roy (from BC, “Another Noon” is one of the best songs of the year.)

Vivian Houle (WTF???)

Rep by Pop (one of my favorite Canadian albums of the year, Cell Phone Camera, just wrote the review.)

Devil Eyes (very raucous, loud, but in a good, trashy-garage-rock-kind-of-way)

Sex with Strangers (I just love “We Want the Fire”)

Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills (good folky stuff)

You Say Party We Say Die (yep, this is a good album, very punchy and lively)

The Racoon Wedding (like if Arcade Fire came from a bluegrass angle with some brass thrown in for good measure)

Okay, that’s it, I hope that’s enough to keep you busy for awhile, assuming you read this. I’ll post another list of the best underground artists from the rest of the world later. If you’re a new spinner, you already know them. If you need more, here is my list of top ten most under-rated records of 2008.

in sound,

Dashiell Brown

www.thenewspin.ca

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For an average Gen-X guy like me who grew up in the 80’s listening to The Cure, The Thompson Twins, Joy Division and New Order, Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel and other MTV-like Euro New Wave/Post punk acts, Cell Phone Camera, the new album from the Canadian outfit Rep by Pop instantly grabbed my attention and gets regular play on my show The New Spin. Though the album’s punchier first half is stronger than the more U2-like rockin’ second half, Cell Phone Camera is all very fun and upbeat, fusing together everything I loved about the 80’s and then some. For you youg’uns, I’d put them in the Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, Cut Copy, Of Montreal, and The Rapture family.

Timothy Kingston’s voice has an uncanny ability to drift from sounding like Robert Smith to Bono to that lead singer dude of Gene Loves Jezebel in “Spray Paint.” A few songs sound like early U2 backed by the early Cure, and “Bisbifren”, “Comfort Me and Comfort You” and “Cell Phone Camera” have immediate hooks with the latter having a wicked wah-wah/flanging guitar patch I salivate over every time I hear it. I love “Unknown” with its transcendent, uplifting quality.

This band has the potential to blow up huge and “sell out,” though that’s near-impossible to do these days, and as any new spinner might know by now, I don’t like bands that stick to formulas, but nonetheless I wish great success for this band. Though Rep by Pop is clearly inspired by the 80’s sound, thankfully they aren’t trying to copy it so much as use the sounds of the 80s like an artist does with a palette of colors. The challenge for them, for any band really, is to push their familiar sound rather than be swallowed by it. Needless to say, Cell Phone Camera stands out in all the right ways. Here’s a vid:

Read other reviews here.

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Easily one of the most exciting releases of the year, Toronto’s The Torrent are Cameron Groves and ex Hidden Camera’s Mike Barry who left his band because it “felt like more of a job.” A fuse of early post punk and new wave (supposedly this might be considered “No Wave,”) The Torrent are not so much about rehashing old sounds, as blending the old with the new giving birth to a whole new post-millenial baby, what with minimal drum machines, atonal singing, scales and modes outside of conventional Western ones, not to mention the droning and Krautrock styles suggestive of the uberprolific Stereolab, and you have an idea of why this album should be on the top of your playlist. Cameron Groves also adds some intense violin to create the droning effect that I love with so much Scandinavian music, Swedish bands like Garmarna and Hedningarna. Other bands that come to mind are Early Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, Bauhaus, B52’s, Beat Happening, Magnetic Fields, Public Image Ltd., etc. This is crazy good. Crazy good you can dance to, or drug out to, either way, you’d be a fool to overlook it. 

Hear it on The New Spin this Thursday night, 9-11 P.M. on 93.5 CHMR-FM, 7:30 EST.

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as promised on The New Spin last night, I said I would put up a post about Anavan. The last time I heard an album as fun and energetic as this was either Hercules and Love Affair, LCD Soundsystem, or The Rapture’s Echoes, which was made so delectable since it was a DFA production (all of these are DFA productions.) Anavan is not produced by DFA, but it might as well have been because it has that same dirty and raw post-punk sound that immediately grabs you, forces you to get out your dancin’ shoes and pounce.

but hey, there’s no guitar in this crazy trio, imagine that. but the synths go flying in every which way, the beats are pumpin’, and i’ll be spinning this album for quite awhile, there’s not a bad track on it that i could find.

rather than Brooklyn where the DFA home is, Anavan actually hail from Los Angeles home of the So Cal hardcore scene in the 80’s, where I got my weekly dose of Rodney on the ROQ on K-ROQ, which sucks now that it sounds like every other radio station. Is KROQ owned by Clear Channel now? this album does have a retro 80’s synth-heavy feel to it, but they are doing their own thing, and a wonderful thing at that. not much seems to be known about them, though they’ve been around for five years now, but i’m sure that’ll change once they play at the SXSW in Austin. to not take notice now, you’d have to be blind. http://www.myspace.com/anavan

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