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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This is the cover of their new album Yeah I Know which seems to invoke the image of some new Sonic Youth-ers, and it’s a spot-on way to advertise their fresh, raw sound that’ll wake you up like a strong cup o’ joe.  Also fresh is the format of the cd, which is actually not a jewel case, but a pamphlet, with lots of Wonder Years-inspired retro suburban photos of a bygone era (apparently they are pictures of the band members’ parents.) And, thanks to an exciting mix of fuzz-soaked indie lo-fi goodness, their music is as fresh and punchy as the pictures included in their book.

They immediately sound as if they’re channeling the rawness of The Strokes and the grit of The Black Lips with a bit of indie-fied Sebadoh, Superchunk and Pavement thrown in for good measure, but for anyone who’s been kind of over The Strokes (like me) will want to pick this up for a fresh spin on a now been-there-done-that idea. Yes, they are clearly driven by the best of the garage-rockers.  Jogging through the tracks as I usually do when previewing a new album, I dug just about every one, especially since I have a penchant for good quality garage rock outfits (yeah I know…quality garage-rock is perhaps an oxymoron…) Any way you take it, Darlings is an exciting new band fer sure. Out now on Famous Class.

Here’s their myspace.

Listen to them this Thursday on The New Spin. Also streaming online, listen to the latest editon of The New Spin.

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Mopey Mumble-Mouse unleashed some sonic intensity at CHMR in anticipation of their cd-release party on July 4 at Distortion for I am Happy Being Nothing. Listen to the podcast.

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King Khan and The Shrines’ new album, What Is?! is kickin’, you can listen to the whole thing at thenewspin.ca. I’ve also been playing it on my show (which is on tonight, by the way–it will stream online here at 9-11, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific.) It was released April 21, and they are about to do a tour across Canada.

Here are the dates:

Myspace Presents:
8 May Babylon – Ottawa, Ontario
9 May La Sala Rossa – Montreal, Quebec
12 May Phoenix Theatre – Toronto, Ontario
19 May Calgary, Alberta – The Warehouse
20 May The Starlite Room – Edmonton, Alberta
22 May Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, British Columbia

 

They will also be performing on MTV Live on Monday, May 11 at 6:00pm & 11:00pm EST.

Listen to the album now at The New Spin! It’s full of classic rockin’ freak funk. For fans of The Arkelles, The Hives, The Strokes, and other “The” bands.

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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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My latest article on Geoff Berner can be read online in Current Magazine. 

album cover of Klezmer Mongrels

 

Geoff Berner has a new album, the third in a trilogy, called Klezmer Mongrels, and he’s coming to The Ship here in St. John’s with his band on Feb. 21! Also check out my podcast of our conversation. We discuss statistically improbable words/phrases such as starving artists, mongrels, accordion revolution, dog breast-feed dog world, and bisexuals and Hitler, to name a few. I’ve been playing this album quite a bit on The New Spin. This podcast has been digitally edited to appeal to those with short attention spans (including myself), but I tried to include the most interesting talking points. Listen to the podcast.

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Since pretty much all the music I loved growing up was punk music or derived from punk/post-punk music, my jaw dropped when I heard of Killed By Death Records, which is really a blog that has uploaded out-of-print 7″, from the 70’s and early 80’s. I guess I’m getting into punk again since i’m reading a book called Our Band Could Be Your Life, Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azzerad, which i picked up when i was in Toronto. It’s a detailed account of seminal bands that have later become classified as the American Indie Underground. The bands include Black Flag, the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Husker Du, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Big Black, etc.  I just finished reading all about Black Flag’s history, and boy, what a mess they were!!! But they were self-disciplined and hard-working DIY’ers, and it just reminds me how it’s a huge disservice to bands to think, hey, anyone can do it, which is exactly what drove the punk ethos to begin with. Yeah, that is the idea behind DIY’ers, that you don’t have to be a guitar virtuoso or a singer, but not everybody can do it, not at all. What does matter is your work ethic, as in, do you even have one? Are you prepared to work yourself to the bone, does your dream of being a rockstar mean that much to you? And that’s where the filter really comes in, and it separates the men from the boys, especially in Black Flag’s case. Black Flag worked diligently, six days a week, often seven to eight hours a day. And they did everything themselves, from promotion and booking, down to sales, all thanks to Greg Ginn, the founder of SST Records and Black Flag, of course, the driving force of the Southern California Hardcore scene. But damn, what a history.  What a read. And it’s got me listening to punk again, when my girls aren’t around, that is. The funny thing is I never was into Black Flag, it wasn’t my bag. But Big Black, Fugazi, and Bad Religion were, big time. So, check out this website, check out this book, and dust off those early punk records! Oh yeah, and listen to my radio show, The New Spin, “the best music you’ve never heard.”

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Spiral Beach is a thrash/pop/dance-punk/rock outfit out of Toronto and they have a sick new EP called Bonus. Their EP has been getting lots of rotation on The New Spin, especially the track “Made of Stone,” which begins with one of the most wicked guitar riffs ever to trigger a track. They share the same “high kicks” energy as another New Spin-featured band, The Stolen Minks.

Apparently they do shows that include all sorts of carnivalesque jungle-gym escapades complete with bright balloons, kaleidoscopic vid screens, and all-ages playgrounds with ropes and tire swings.  Sounds some wicked. You can listen to their last album, Ball, on their website.

 

Here’s the video for “Made of Stone.”

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I have just uploaded my podcast from Oct. 30, great list of songs, and here they are.

for Oct. 30, 2008

Jenn Grant’s Orchestra for the Moon, Dreamer

Hayden, Worthy of Your Esteem, In Field and Town

Whispertown 2000, Swim, “Lock and Key”

Laura Marling, Alas I cannot Swim, “Captain and the Hourglass”

Corb Lund, Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier, “Horse Soldier”

Herman Dune, Next Year in Zion, “My Home is Nowhere Without You”

Castanets, City of Refuge, “Refuge 2”

Blitzen Trapper, Furr, “Furr”

Robyn Hitchcock, Spooked, “Television”

Cuff the Duke, Sidelines of the City, “Long Road”

Mt. Eerie and Julie Doiron, Lost Wisdom, “Voice in Headphones”

Sebastian Grainger and the Mountains, “Who Do We Care For?”

Beck, Modern Guilt, “Walls”

Les Claypool, Of Whales and Woe, “Nothin’ Ventured”

The Stolen Minks, High Kicks, “Reflexes”

Sprial Beach, Bonus, “Made of Stone”

Fembots, Calling Out, “Hand in Wet Cement”

Nick Hudson, The Elegy, “Under the Mill”

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