MusiCounts concert
MusiCounts, the music education charity that’s run by Juno Awards overseers CARAS, has been around for 19 years.
In all this time, though, the organization has never put on its own charity show.
Until now.
I wrote about this new venture for Samaritan Mag.
To read the full story go here.
Filed under Concerts, Music, Shameless Promotion
The Besnard Lakes’ fifth album ‘A Coliseum Complex Museum’
The best way to quantify The Besnard Lakes’ fifth album is A Coliseum Complex Museum is to realize that they’ve distilled their sound down to its most Besnardian essence. A casual observer might misinterpret this as more of the same — and in many ways A Coliseum Complex Museum *is* similar to pass Besnard efforts, the band once again holding steady to their distinctly gauzy space rock sonic palette — but dismissing the record in this way ignores the sharper focus and refinements in The Besnard Lakes’ game. All of the band’s hallmarks are there: the pristine textures, the deliberate build-ups that pay off in explosive, technicolour crescendoes, and the dark, often otherwordly song subjects (this album appears to revolve around magic and mythical beasts, see “Necronomicon,” “The Bray Road Beast”).
It’s in the fine details, though, where The Besnards exceed the stiffer previous record, Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO. Primary vocalist Jace Lasek seems, improbably, to be singing even higher than previously, which works to great effect when paired against the deliberate mechanical chug of standouts “Golden Lion” and “Towers Sent Her to Sheets of Sound.” The Besnards near-defiant devotion to the classic rock guitar solo also yields wonderful results on “Pressure of Our Plans” and the dramatically good closer “Tungsten 4: The Refugee.” The revelation on A Coliseum Complex Museum, though, just may be the use of Olga Goreas’ bass. Deployed with strategic effectiveness on “Nightengale,” “The Plain Moon” and “Golden Lion,” these insistent pulsing thrums magnificently set up the band’s most melodramatic moments.
All that said, what might be most intriguing about A Coliseum Complex Museum is its air of craftsmanship. The album feels like something pieced together thoughtfully and methodically, all with the grand intention of blowing our minds.
Filed under Music
Broken Social Scene at Pemberton Music Festival
The organizers of the massive Pemberton Music Festival in the scenic mountain community of Pemberton, British Columbia recently gave $100,000 to local arts and community groups.
I spoke to Evan Harrison, the CEO of Huka Entertainment, the company behind the festival, to find out what motivated them to give back.
To read the full interview head over to Samaritan Mag by clicking here.
Filed under Concerts, Environment, Music, Shameless Promotion
Grimes
Not that it should be a surprise to anyone who paid close attention to some of her wilder music videos, but it appears that electro pop queen Grimes is a big fan of mixed martial arts. Specifically, the strong women of mixed martial arts.
Grimes has been known to sport a Ronda Rousey shirt in public and has called UFC strawweight champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk a style icon.
Sarah wrote about this phenomenon for Fightland.
To read the full story go here.
Filed under Jock Stuff, Music, Shameless Promotion
On the right: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Asshole
Previously:
At some point in late 1997, I finally got over my wretched obsession with Joseph Conrad and ran straight into the equally dead white male arms of James Joyce. I spent the first half of 1998 reading Ulysses and screaming at Ulysses and going to the few parties I was invited to as a highly unpopular homeschooled teenager and talking about how much I both loved and hated Ulysses and when I finished it I declared that James Joyce was the greatest influence on my young life and that I would write the next Ulysses yes I said yes I will Yes.
This is not to say that I became a great modernist writer. Or even that I experimented with any modernist tendencies whatsoever. The thing I loved about James Joyce above all others was that he was a petty and vengeful writer. I read that he used to get drunk and sit in the corners of pubs, threatening to write everyone he knew into his books — and that the bumbling and awful character Private Carr in Ulysses was, in fact, based on some poor sod named Henry Carr who once had the temerity to argue with Joyce over a pair of pants — and realized that I had never admired or envied another human being more.
So when I stopped subconsciously working through my breakup with my best friend via stories about murder, death, and guilt on the shores of Lake Erie, I started consciously writing even worse thinly-veiled tripe about her and what I considered her “totally fake” personality. That is why this sad little story exists. Even the the musical inspiration was a shot at her, because “Smile and Wave,” from 1997’s Headstones album of the same name, was by her favourite band.
I don’t suppose Tom Stoppard will ever get around to writing a play inspired by this epic literary burn.
I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
Risky Fuel 