Damn hippies!

It’s funny how every interview or article I’ve ever read about Fleet Foxes has made a point to mention that the Seattle-based band are NOT, in fact, hippies- despite their penchant for uncut hair and fully bearded chins.  Physical appearance aside, it is pretty difficult to not associate their sundrenched, nature-lovin’ tunes with flower children of decades past:

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood

See what I mean?  In terms of other bands I love, I’d put Fleet Foxes as a hybrid of the folk-rock acoustic sounds of The Acorn or Plants and Animals, the harmonious vocals of Iron and Wine, and a little country twang a la Wilco.  And speaking of the latter, Fleet Foxes aren’t doing much to dispel the hippie image with their recent collaboration with Wilco, which finds them teaming up to cover Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” in support of the upcoming American election: Vote!

Combining politics and acoustic guitars “on a summer’s night in Oregon” sounds pretty “Summer of Love”-esque to me, Fleet Foxes, so don’t think you’re fooling anyone. (Note: at the above link, you have to pledge to vote in the November election in order to get the link to the song.  I figured that since us Canadians have an election of our own coming up in October, the pledge totally counts for us too.)

As the former tambourine player in a university production of HAIR, I know a thing or two about hippies and I’ve gotta say: after listening to the rest of their debut album “Ragged Wood”, it’s all a person can do to keep from sporting leather headbands and organizing sit-ins for peace - and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Now where is that tambourine…  

Don’t talk down to me.

I know I’ve been mentioning the Stills quite a bit recently, but last night’s show at Call the Office here in London was the best show I’ve been to in awhile. Good tunes, good friends, good atmosphere. What more can you ask for?

I didn’t catch the opening acts, but it was clear who the audience came to see this Thursday night, and the Stills triumphantly took the stage, complete with glowsticks on their microphones that seemed determined to ruin every one of my cell phone pictures. They opened with Don’t Talk Down, the first song from their new album and from then on the approach was less talk, more rock. Aside from the occasional political quip between songs, the band played a seamless set heavily loaded on Logic Will Break Your Heart and Oceans Will Rise, giving the fans what they wanted. The only conspicuous absence was Love and Death, considering that’s one of their more popular numbers. In my experience, London crowds aren’t known for their enthusiasm, but the crowd was positively bursting with energy, at least the sector I was in. Come to think of it, I never really saw how full the bar actually was during the show, but it felt packed. I also appreciated the co-frontman vibe that Tim and Dave seem to exude. Whereas the Without Feathers-era seemed to be Dave stepping out from the drumkit to take hold of the band, there now seems to be a happy medium that allows both to share the spotlight. Vocals have shifted back to Tim, for the most part. As always, bassist Olivier Corbeil was a joy to watch, wandering around the stage, causing a ruckus and joyfully singing along. The show surpassed the last time I saw them (three years ago) in nearly every way. Negative cool points go to one of the opening bands. Upon the show’s conclusion, as people were headed out into the night, they blocked the exit trying to sell their album (at a possibly discounted price, no less.) It reeked of desperation.

The setlist, in what may or may not resemble the actual order:

Don’t Talk Down
Lola Stars and Stripes
Being Here
Snow In California
Destroyer
Of Montreal
Snakecharming the Masses
Still in Love Song
Panic
Eastern Europe
In the Beginning
Rooiboos/Palm Wine Drinkard

Encore:
Gender Bombs
Hands on Fire
Changes Are No Good

We could do it in the library, on top of the books, but you can’t be too loud.

Whether you’re at work, or at school, I’m sure, like me, you’re spending a whole lot of time doing stuff you don’t want to be doing now that the fall has set in. The only way that I find I can make the time passable is by putting on a nice little playlist to get me through the day.

So, on that note, I thought I’d upload my Songs for Sanity at Work/Shhh! Use Your Library Voice Asshole Mixtape. It’s made-up mostly of instrumental and softer songs - sorry to all the dance party fiends.

Songs for Sanity

Library Voices

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Insert some Kinks lyrics here.

The London Ontario Live Arts Festival has come and gone for another year, and again I was there. I previously expressed my concerns over the line-up, and while it didn’t live up to last year’s event, there were still some gems to be found. I didn’t bring my camera, so you’ll have to do without my shoddy amateur photograpy.

I was torn on Friday, as I would’ve liked to see Bocce since I’ve heard their show is much improved. I previously saw them a few years ago after they opened for Shout Out Out Out Out instead of Crystal Castles, who were no-shows. Sadly, even promises of songs about bears couldn’t force me to go clear across the city to see them that early. The free shows appearing at Victoria Park that day weren’t that appealing to me, so I only caught a bit of Do Make Say Think before travelling to Call the Office where the real night would begin. While I wasn’t flat out bored by DMSY this time around, I still have issues with post-rock in the live setting. For me, it works well as background music but when it’s forced to take centre stage, I’m not really sure what to think. I mean, I can’t dance to it, it’s too disjointed. I can’t just sit there, it’s too hypnotic. Anyway, enough babbling, suffice it to say, I was ready for a chance of pace.

I left the park early to beat the rush heading to the bar for the after-party, thus the room was still rather quiet. Sure enough, the masses began to pile in as Woodhands began their set. I was only passingly familiar with the duo, having stumbled upon a few songs in the blogosphere and figuring it was worth the gamble to see them. Indeed it was. A keytar was an integral part of their act, how can you not love keytars? After acknowledging the city, noting that they usually play the Alex P. Keaton (a place I oddly have yet to visit), the pair burst into an electro-dance party that got the people moving. Highlights include a rap session resulting in the drummer jumping into the crowd, hilariously performing a Jay-Z song he didn’t really know, before stopping and moving onto a cover he actually knew. The band closed with Dancer, the first track from their album Heart Attack. In lieu of the woman singing on the album, the drummer took lead vocals on the verses, sheepishly saying it was because he sounded like a girl. All in all, they were good fun.

Woodhands - Dancer

After a brief interlude and rush to the bar, We Are Wolves took centre stage and owned it for the rest of the night. The Frenchmen commanded your attention while ordering you to dance, and dance you did. I was also relatively unprepared for what the three-piece brought to the table, having only heard the single Fight and Kiss before the show, but the frantic rock and roll was crowd pleasing and a fitting end to the night.

We Are Wolves - Fight and Kiss

Day two had two acts playing the Victoria Park bandshell I was interested in; the first was Plants and Animals. The band drew quite a large crowd even before they burst into the opening chords of Good Friend. What followed was a pretty excellent set of folk-tinged rock and roll, marked by guitarist/vocalist Warren Spicer existentially musing on life while tuning his guitar, as well as an excellent whistle opening to Feedback in the Field by drummer Matthew Woodley. After ending the show on a high note with Bye, Bye, Bye, the band was brought back for an extremely forced encore after the rather obnoxious MC got the crowd to chant “PLANTS AND ANIMALS.” This isn’t knocking the band, but really the MC, whose schtick got a little unbearable after awhile. Even moreso when he pulled out the classic, “When I say holy, you say: FUCK!”

Plants and Animals - Good Friend

After the childish chanting of their name (seriously, aren’t we over that yet?) Holy Fuck hit the stage and started performing their phat beats with their fantastic machines. Truth be told, my experiences seeing Holy Fuck have been mixed at best, it’s highly dependent on my mood (or relative degree of sobriety). This time around, I couldn’t help feeling something was off in the sound department. Perhaps it was just the open stage in comparison to the usual seedy clubs I frequent, but that atmosphere can’t be undervalued. It certainly would’ve gotten more people moving, in any case. Anyway, I really only go so I can hear them play Lovely Allen, then I can leave happily.

Holy Fuck - Lovely Allen

Line-up concerns aside, LOLAfest is a hugely important event to London, and I have to give full credit to the people that make it happen year after year. I don’t know where I’ll be this time next year, but hopefully LOLAfest is back and stronger than ever.

Randomness

Since the summer of dial-up has long ended, I’ve managed to catch up on the music I’ve missed. The following is a series of scatter-shot thoughts on the things I’ve been listening to lately.

Chad Vangaalen has a new album out called Soft Airplane; it is rather excellent. I remember seeing him sometime last year. I walked out of the show somewhat unsatisfied, not due to a lack of a good performance, moreso because I wasn’t ready for it to be over. Plus some dude had a seizure, which may have cast a pall over the whole event. We got a wicked Gameboy solo though. A lot of the songs played that night seem to have made it onto this album, which explains the lack of familiarity then.

Chad VanGaalen - Willow Tree

For whatever reason, my only prior exposure to Tegan and Sara has been to Monday, Monday, Monday, as well as Walking With A Ghost, famously covered by the White Stripes. I don’t exactly remember the circumstances, but somehow I ended up getting their last three albums, which have made up most of my listening in the past 48 hours. Back In Your Head in particular has been monopolizing my iPod. I feel bad for skipping out on their London show last year.

Tegan and Sara - Back In Your Head

Mates of State’s Re-Arrange Us is as reliable as ever, but I’m sure you knew that. Perhaps a little slower than previous albums, and with piano this time around. Help Help and Now are getting a lot of play from me.

Mates of State - Now

Brendan Canning’s Something for All of Us… has managed to get a substantial bit of attention from me, far more than Kevin Drew’s album, which I found terribly boring. Love is New is my choice track.

Brendan Canning - Love is New

As predicted, The Stills have redeemed themselves. While not surpassing Logic, Oceans Will Rise has brightly outshone Without Feathers and can be considered a return to form, at least by me. And hey, Tim’s back on lead vocals! I’m seeing them in a week, hopefully they continue to impress.

The Stills - Snow in California

Bloc Party sprung Intimacy on us a couple of weeks ago. After hearing it, I responded with a resounding meh. Maybe they’ve been overexposed in the last little while, as I’m having trouble telling songs apart. To be fair, that problem also existed with the last half of A Weekend in the City. I keep reading about the innovation on this album, and if that means the electro-glitch which is Mercury, which I still contend is terrible, or adding a choir as on Zephyrus, I could do without it. Perhaps like AWITC, this is a grower, but right now I’m just turned off. At least Talons is pretty OK.

Steve Jobs is my DJ

Sometimes when something’s wrong, I make a depressing playlist to burry myself deeper into my depression.

Sometimes I know something must be wrong, because of the playlist I find myself listening to.

Today, iTunes got smarter with a new feature called “Genius”. Genius creeps your library and compares it to everyone else in the universe and decides based on one song that you pick, what else fits your mood. Based on the playlist that it spit at me, I think it’s trying to tell me that my heart hurts. I’m not going to argue with it:

So I started with a song I posted last week, “Sad Robot” by the Stars, then pressed the “Genius button” and it gave me what you see above … the most depressing playlist I’ve ever had. So, in short, sombreros off to you Señor Jobs, your new toy works - it has successfully fed my depression. (Songs for those of you who want to feel pain are after the break)
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Toronto V-Fest ‘08 - Day 1

When I saw the V-Fest line-up for Day 1, I was pretty pleased, these were all bands that I’ve seen before and I knew rocked. So I figured why not, it rocked the first time, why wouldn’t it rock the second? So instead of checking out more novel bands throughout the day, I stuck with the tried and true.

After waiting to get on the ferry for who knows how long, I was fortunate to get to the Virgin Mobile stage just as the Constantines were opening with Nighttime/Anytime. They played a solid, but short set. To be honest I’m not that familiar with most of the Cons’ material, but I enjoyed them headlining LOLAfest last year, and enjoyed them again this time.

After they finished up, I pushed my way up before MGMT’s set, since I hadn’t seen them yet. I’ve heard contrasting opinions of their live show. While they weren’t particularly outstanding, there was a palpable energy that hit the crowd when the band played the three best songs from Oracular Spectacular: Time to Pretend, Electric Feel, and ending with Kids. The performance of Kids struck me as particularly odd, as it played out as bad karaoke with the duo singing while dancing around the stage, but it somehow worked. Perhaps the hokey passing of the water bottle in tune with the lyrics got me. But hey, the kids were dancing so I guess they did their job.
The plan after this was to run over to the TD Canada Trust stage in order to catch my old friends Wintersleep. I call them friends because I once gave them bad directions to the nearest Tim Horton’s in Simcoe. We’re tight like that. I’ve seen them 5-6 times at this point, yet still make a point to see them whenever they come to town. They were scheduled opposite Against Me!, so was it really that much of a choice? Anyway, the second stage was running considerably behind schedule, so where I wanted Wintersleep, I got the Fratellis. Another iPod commercial band, for Flathead if I remember correctly. They seemed friendly and very Scottish. That’s the extent of my opinion of them, as I wasn’t really paying attention to the set, wondering why I spent six bucks on lemonade and where Wintersleep was. They attracted quite the crowd, so there may be something to them.

Anywho, Wintersleep got on stage nearly an hour after scheduled, opening with Miasmal Smoke, Archaeologists, and Jaws of Life. Still as good as ever, and after I got my dose of Archaeologists (in my opinion, the best song they’ve ever done) I felt I could make the move to go see Bloc Party on the main stage. Of course, as I’m walking away, they start playing a brand new song. I suppose that’s my fault for abandoning them.

With the opening chords of So Here We Are echoing across the park, my eagerness grew and I quickened my pace. Kele was chatty as ever, wishing a happy birthday to Owen Pallet followed by This Modern Love, among other things. The set was dominated by Silent Alarm material, however it was also dominated by technical difficulties. Looking up setlists posted up on the web today I see Flux on the bill, and I assure you, unless I was comatose after the Prayer, that did not get played. The set seemed conspicuously short, and I’m willing to bet the technical difficulties were to blame. Shame, as I would’ve loved to hear Flux. They supposedly played two songs from Intimacy, I can vouch for Halo but I can’t remember One Month Off being played.

After being shoved toward the stage, it was the Foo Fighters’ turn. Now, I love Dave Grohl and co., but this performance soured me on the whole day. Oh, it was rocking, all the hits were there, but the problem was I saw this same show back in March. No changes in the set list except shortening it and adding a cover of the Who’s “Young Man Blues.” The same noodling and guitar-wankery during Stacked Actors, the same banter (”How many of you are seeing us for the first time? What took you 14 fucking years?”) and even the same triangle solo joke. I know that they played Toronto two days after London, so this is really kind of annoying. It was like watching a DVD over again, it felt so rehearsed. I just wish there was a little bit of spontaneity, maybe some random song we haven’t heard in years. Aurora, preferably. Nate loves it. There was one ad-lib that did make me smile. After the first verse of Breakout, the crowd started singing the chorus and Dave abruptly stopped all the music and berated the audience. “That’s not how you fucking sing it! You’re doing it wrong!” Anyway, I got Everlong again, so it’s forgiven. Just try to switch it up a bit next time, ok guys?
So, while it was a bit stale, Vfest was a good show for me. I missed the freshness of seeing all these acts for the first time, but given that I’ve seen them all within the past year, I suppose that’s to be expected. I wish Spiritualized wasn’t conflicting with everyone else in the schedule, but I guess that’s the way it goes. Anyway, I got smashed and danced afterwards, so it all worked out for the best.
MGMT - Pieces of What

Foo Fighters - Aurora

Wintersleep - Fog

Astronomy 110 Essay:

It’s Back-to-School season, and for the first time in my life, it doesn’t apply to me. I’m a little bit in denial, and as I started to write this post, I realized that it was coming out like an essay … 

 
Background:

The Stars have been pretty forward-thinking in experimenting with new music industry models over the past year. I had a discussion with some friends recently which stemmed from talking about the strategies that the Stars, and their independent label Arts&Crafts, have been using lately, which turned into a discussion on the transformation of the music industry. I thought it was kind of interesting, and so I thought, maybe I’d share some of the thoughts here:

Intro:

In releasing their fourth LP, In Our Bedroom After the War last year, the Stars chose to make the album available electronically months before the physical album hit stores, in an effort to beat internet leaks, and offer fans a legit alternative to bootlegging. Radiohead obviously brought a lot of press to this new approach with In Rainbows later in ‘07, which has been used by bands and artists in some shape or form repeatedly through 2008. Last Friday the Stars pulled a Raconteurs and announced that on the other side of the long-weekend, they’d be dropping a new EP - the Sad Robots EP - with 5 new tracks, and one live version of fan-favorite “Going, Going, Gone” from their first album Nightsongs.

Thesis: It seems like bands and labels alike are starting to realize that the old industry model of building hype for an album over the course of months and years can be damaging:

Discussion:
1. Media and fan expectations start to go through the roof (see: Dr. Dre “Detox” or Guns and Roses “Chinese Democracy”);

2. Leaks and demos continually surface and are given ample distribution time prior to a record’s actual release, which means that people have plenty of time to poke holes into an album and get tired of it, before it ever sees the light of day (see: 50 Cent, Linkin Park, or the Smashing Pumpkins);

3. The rate at which new bands and music are popping up and being shared, thanks to the Mp3, MySpace and cheaper recording technology these days, has meant that a band that no one’s heard of one day, has a platinum record within a few weeks (see: Vampire Weekend or Arcade Fire) and can become the new hottness that kills - or at least competes formidably - with a carefully crafted blockbuster music release by a major label (see: Lil’ Wayne vs. Coldplay in the USA).

Conclusion:

The speed at which information is now passed around is fast enough that hype can be built-up even more, overnight or over a week and a half (See: Radiohead) for a new release. What’s more is that in the short amount of time between annoucement and release, the odds of a leak occurring go way down, and people’s expectations for what an album should live-up to tend to not climb as high - which is nice because artists can go back to focussing on just making an album about the music (See: Kevin Drew), rather than having to make the best album of their career from a commercial and critical standpoint (See: Outkast “The Hard 10″).

——————–

So after all that, let’s go back to the EP. I like it, don’t love it. If you’ve liked the Stars in the past, chances are you’ll like them again on this EP, full of soft and gentle love songs about a man who doesn’t think he’ll be able to love again … til tomorrow. Torque and Amy sound really great, but the instrumentation and ambiant noise gets a little lazy at parts. And if you’re looking for another “Your Ex-lover is Dead” you won’t find it here.

Stars - Undertow

Stars - 14 Forever

Stars - Sad Robot