Dancefloor Workouts & Disco Drops

Montreal's current nightlife might not be as disco-centric as it once was, way back in the glory days when jewelry was both functional and fashionable, a hockey player could record a best-selling disco record, and the nights were long. But it is probably the best time in recent memory to go out and catch some stellar, hard-working DJs play disco, house, early 80's R&B and all the rest. The latest addition to the glittering disco-friendly landscape is the Paradise Garage night, named after the infamous New York disco and built by an impressive cast of Montreal DJs and promoters, including Seb Diamond & Phil AD, F.U.N.K. (from Love! Disco Style, Saturdays at Vinyl), Classi Assi, Rilly Guilty, New Money, Snap magazine and Peer Pressure's A-Rock.

Paradise Garage is every Friday, at Decibel (formerly Coda). 4119 St. Laurent.

More info here...

Thursday Social Agenda

Roxy Music Love Is The Drug

I'm pleased as punch to be DJing tonight at Blizzarts (3956 St. Laurent) along with Renaissance men David Shaw and Davey Lahteenma from the growing disco concern that is Loose Joints/Attitude City as part of their Neighbourhood weekly. The musical selection will be better tailored to the dancefloor than some of the stuff I've been posting, don't worry... More details at the Facebook event page.

Seemingly Thursday is the time that Montreal's bloggers are allowed to socialize, albeit only at Blizzarts. Starting at 9pm, The Bitter End will be screening their fourth episode. The Bitter End is the web-based comedy series (it's better than that sounds) featuring (amongst many others) the talents of Said the Gramophone's Daneil Beirne.

Soundalikes Or Kindalikes...

Poor choice of slacks, Pops, and that collar's far too wide.
Nice cricket sweater, though!

The Beatles Let It Be
Pluto Boogie Bump
Leonard Cohen Ain't No Cure For Love

Dad-approved parent rock for mid-morning melancholics seeking salvation in the form of secular spirituals.

Dollar Store Hallucinations: Julian Casablancas' Phrazes for the Young

"Why don't I move to LA? Take my plants, record an album, start a new life?
Orso's closing, but that's okay."

Julian Casablancas Out of the Blue
Julian Casablancas 11th Dimension (Extended Version)

It's a bit uneven as an album, but there are enough solid moments that I'd probably shell out the $9.99 (or whatever it is that a CD costs) for Julian Casablancas' Phrazes for the Young. With production duties handled by Jason Ladder (who once twiddled knobs for bad-haircut Jeep rockers Maroon 5 and Jenny Lewis) as well as Mike Mogis (one of those Saddle Creek types - blame him for the countrified moments, I guess), Mr. Casablancas' premiere outing as a solo artist is a trippy, slightly claustrophobic ride through roller-rink synthesizers, ELO circa Time chord progressions, and half-baked ideas that is over-all, pretty damn charming.

Your Easy-Pocket Reference Points...
The dominant mode here is theatrical studio fuckery. It's not overwrought genre-fuckery like The Bees who sometimes get it right (Chicken Payback) and sometimes get it terribly wrong (Travelin' Man), and it's not as polished as Jason Schwartzman's Coconut Records, which sometimes errs so poorly and frequently you do think, "Oh yeah, Los Angeles, Maroon 5, guys with too much money who really like Phoenix." I have to admit that even I loathe them, the closest reference I can make is to Of Montreal, as busy, as many textures and ideas, albeit thankfully more tasteful. Let's hope the much-hyped Casablancas stage show is more than him dancing around with tin-foil flute playing woodland creatures and other dollar-store hallucinations.

At its worst, the confusion becomes a bit much in mid-album song River of Brakelights, which has no discernible hooks, just a series of proggy keyboard lines and a chorus that sounds like the desperate chants of a robot assembly-line moments before exploding due to over-work. At it's best, you have the two songs above... Album-opener Out of the Blue is pretty damn fun, gradually developing into a supremely hooky song over a 4/4 drum-machine demo rhythm. 11th Dimension is the single - great guitar hooks, that aforementioned roller-rink syntehsizer line, and the busy hyper-produced guitar-sound that popped up on the Strokes' 12:51.

Now a short-time LA resident and loving the weather (as his bandmate's father once sang, "It Never Rains in Southern California"), Mr. Casablancas is performing 3 times in Los Angeles and once in San Francisco before embarking on a short tour. No Montreal or (more surprisingly) New York dates announced yet, but he will be in Vancouver at The Commodore Ballroom on November 23rd.

Euro-Schmaltz, Germans, Brits, & Yanks

More Bergen!

Leonard Cohen Iodine
Iggy Pop Nightclubbing
Hilly Michaels Instant Karma
Gary Glitter Rock & Roll (Part 2)
Goldfrapp Train

From an album where Mr. Spector did brandish a handgun (and maybe a crossbow), Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man, comes Iodine. Not the most beloved of his albums by the undergraduate poets in your life*, but I'm a big fan of its boozy, jazzy and occasionally shambolic, shabby glory. Also in 1977, Tony Visconti, David Bowie & Iggy Pop got together to record Pop's The Idiot. That album includes the drum machine dirge and Weimar-era ennui homage Nightclubbing (check out that schaffel rhythm**). Hilly Michaels, one-time drummer for Sparks, recorded a cover of John Lennon's Instant Karma for his 1980 album Calling All Girls. A pretty faithful adaption. The rest of the album fluctuates between baroque Queen-esque numbers (befitting a Sparks collaborator, I guess) and over-reaching power pop: mostly a pass. From there, not such a leap to Gary Glitter and then, finally, Goldfrapp.

* Another dark horse pick that Dan Bejar of Destroyer would favour - the Euro-schmaltz of 1988's I'm Your Man.
** Alas, an blip on the mid 2000s dance music scene that never got big, huh? But at least it gave us Goldfrapp's Train, without which shampoo and automobile advertising would never be the same.

Spector Without Gun.

Candice Bergen, not Dion. But much easier on the eyes.

Dion Born To Be With You

From the 1975 album of the same name, comes a morose little number Phil Spector produced for Dion (of Dion & The Belmonts) in his mid-period. Reportedly a big influence on Spiritualized's Jason Pierce (no doubt). As far as I know, no handguns were brandished and/or discharged during the recording of this album.

Camera Obscura - Destitution

Camera Obscura Destitution

Singapore

"That's the point of the story, William, the dummy couldn't tell a tiger from a lion."

- Ben Gazzara as Jack Flowers

From Peter Bogdanovich's 1979 film Saint Jack, based on Paul Theroux's novel.

Willing Victim of Circumstances

Big Country Inwards

appears on The Crossing
Modern English A Viable Commercial
appears on Mesh & Lace
The Sound The Fire
appears on From The Lion's Mouth

The Wannadies The Beast Cures The Lover
appears on Smile

This Big Country song reminds me of Dag Nasty and 90's hardcore group Fuel for some reason. Modern English obliquely strategizing on their album before their break Melts With You break, borrows from Brian Eno's Third Uncle before driving the whole song off a gigantic Colin Newman/Wire cliff. (I had another new wave song I came across a couple of days ago that did the same thing, but a hard-drive crash has put that outta my hands, and I can't recall the group's name. Alas...) I love The Sound - they remind me of Radio Berlin and Echo & The Bunnymen. Before the chipper-cheeked and crispily-produced power-pop-punk stuff that would land them a spot on (uh) the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack and You & Me Song, the Swedish group found comfort and hooks in the 4AD catalogue, as this 1989 song reveals.

Waiting On A Friend...

Mr. Bryan Ferry after a continental breakfast, and How amazing is this photo?

Roxy Music Take A Chance With Me
Billie Holiday Them There Eyes
The Rolling Stones Waiting On A Friend

Phoenix appeared on long-time favourite podcast Sound Opinions a couple of days ago, and performed stripped down versions of 1901, Lisztomania, and Playground Love. Stream the full episode or just the songs here...

Asia Through The Looking Glass Inbox

Steely Dan Only A Fool Would Say That
Steely Dan Dirty Work

Some Steely Dan songs for Chris Clark, and the rest of you get some nonsense. The following are the search Results for various Asian nationalities in my Gmail account. Not all quotes are your author's, thank you very much.

The Chinese

reporting bugs and fixes for the chinese slaves to fix

The exact significance of the number eight is yet to be revealed, but perhaps we should ask the Chinese.

hahaha "It's in the Chinese Zodiac! Asia's hot right now!"

His diabolical scheme to send the Chinese walking across the ocean?

-We all know each other.
Except the Chinese.

...former fastest typer (I even beat the Chinese), I advise you to re-examine your typing style (specifically how you place your wrists) and also perhaps look up some suitable exercises to strengthen the muscles around your tendons.

The Chinese economic miracle!

You can re-create this magic on a micro-economic scale
with your line of tea bodums
and the shipping charges will be exponentially lower

That was tailoring. Arab terrorist front.
The Chinese are more at ease with the world.

-the year is over
-No, it's the Chinese Zodiac
Should end around February 10th or so

...When the Chinese Zodiac is more favourable to my preferred balling method.

We're going to the botanical gardens - the chinese lantern festival

...He became a reclusive anti-semitic mathematician, holed up in north Vancouver, and screaming about the Chinese and their insidious plots to take over the world.

Lots of love from the Chinese...

It's called abacus like the chinese counter


The Japanese

-Yeah, I am! I don't know what show I'm going to see yet, though
That's the one about the Japanese terrorists, right?

- ever since trying to grope that schoolgirl on the metro
- iced coffee freaks too
- I've realized that I am not good at being like the Japanese

...initially highly influenced by the japanese aesthetics and culture, quickly caught the press’ attention

As it is now, you will have trouble enough with the Japanese in PEI
Haunted Halifax, evil brainwashed Japanese people.

What kind of emoticon? Some sort of graphic sexual thing only the Japanese know how to decipher?

Emily Post never wrote a book about that, I don't think.
But my father had a number explaining how to do business with the Japanese.

He loves the Japanese. Hey, the Japanese held that hot dog eating champion title, and are also considered the leaders in the world of quality control! Do you think there's a connection? Round peg, round hole?

The Japanese have the best printing facilities in the world over there, you could get some large format book published with laser cut pages, and an embossed or relieved cover or something. Or like Kiss, with actual blood in the red ink! Bound in the hides of marsupials! Sewn together with dried intestine! The first book grown from stem cells!

It would, of course, alienate the Japanese, who read the other way, but whatever,
they lost World War II anyway.

the last two Japanese movies I've seen had plenty of scotch drinking in them - perhaps the Japanese represent the unfettered unconscious drinkin' desires of the Jewish people.

The Koreans

yeah i don't mind the koreans/japanese.
i'm totally game for the halsies. where would you put your dumplings?

The Vietnamese

The vietnamese violin is 20 dallars and I'm buying one.

Baling on Ba-le.
This is the Vietnamese place?

The Asians

The Asians seem to be okay with it...

The Trouble with Men & Babies...

The Last Days of Disco & The Expanding Universe
Hollis Brown Thornton, 2009

CZR Chicago Southside (Rick's Chicago Boogie Remix)
Trouble Men Get This Party Rockin'
Pnau Baby (Breakbot Remix)
Pnau Baby
Pnau Baby (Acapella)

Today's post goes out to Mr. David Lindquist, another British Columbian expatriate* who now makes his daily bread as a stunningly talented web designer, is the head of the musical group Lagoons, and is also a long-standing and skilled DJ to boot (C.R.I.M.E.S). And one of those nice guys who you know had all of the Roulé releases starting from day one, but is still not going laugh and point at a bungled beat-match from a lesser DJ every now and then. (I know!)

Mr. Lindquist's pick, from Cesar Hernandez (CZR) way back in 1999, Chicago Southside. Unfortunately, I don't have a decent rip of the original, so you'll have to deal with the remix. Troublemen's Get This Party Rockin' proves that even in 2000, years before Justice (that era widely regarded by most brimmers as a dark and deadly place known as only an appropriate place to semi-ironically scoop Brooklyn rap acapellas), that the dance music phenomenon of pinching kids' choruses for kicks was still a sure-fire crowd pleaser.

Those kids bring us to our next track, a remix of Pnau's Baby by rising etoile Breakbot, which appeared on the Australian duo's limited edition tour CD a while back. Breakbot's remix is clearly superior than the original, squeezing and teasing the Sesame Street stylings of the original with some classic French touches (har har), and a kiddy-approved piano outro. I've included the acapella track so you can try your hand at mash-up wizardry, or at least imagine yourself hectoring and haranguing a group of underfed Australian children to express the romantic feelings of studio overlords.

En-route: Breakbot's Thibaut Berland deserves a whole post of his own, which he will get...
* The phrase BC Expat is almost as Montreal as depanneur.

Neighbourhood Romeo Re-up!

Neighbourhood Romeo No, You Call Him

For Nate of the epileptic eclectic GooDanse, a re-up of the Wax Romeo & Neighbour (Matt, the co-owner of Home Breakin' Records) project Neighbourhood Romeo, No, You Call Him that I blogged about previously. Buy the Fairweather Friends EP online (or in person) at Vancouver's finest Beat Street, which doesn't have this track on it, but has the almost equally stunning Laura Winslow.

Bedtime for Baby...

The Slow Club Giving Up On Love

The Generationals These Habits
The Raveonettes Gone Forever
Kings of Convenience 24 to 25
Maps Turning the Mind

Musically, it is an absolutely great time to be heart-broken, depressed, forlorn, or just plain melancholic. Thinking of ending it all? Hold on, wallow a bit more, the Slow Club know what it's like, which is why they're Giving Up On Love! Feeling foolish and exposed? The Generationals recognize self-destructive patterns when they see 'em with These Habits. The Raveonettes have penned a great slacker kiss-off tune with Gone Forever, from the recently released In and Out of Control and even the Kings of Convenience, that Norwegian duo with the knack for unflinchingly examining the minute details of daily power-struggles and relationship anxiety, are back with a fifth album (Declaration of Dependence) just in time for the most miserable winter of your life! The world might be cold, cruel, and miserable, but at least you're not alone when you're all alone.

If that's all a little too depressing, James Chapman, known to most as Maps, is back with a follow-up to his 2007 debut We Can Create called Turning the Mind that's remarkably upbeat and depressing. Still kinda heavy, though.

Track them down...
The Slow Club: Duo from Sheffield, England. Formed in 2006, were last in Montreal in August of this year. Moshi Moshi again.
The Generationals: New Orleans, LA group. Check out their album Con Law.
The Raveonettes: Danish duo, needs little introduction.
Kings of Convenience: Norwegians, again - little intro necessary.
Maps: solitary man.

Soundalikes 3: Partied Out

Candi Staton Young Hearts Run Free
The Replacements Swingin' Party
Kindness Swingin' Party

I gotta think that Paul Westerberg somehow nicked a bit of Candi Staton's Young Hearts Run Free for The Replacements' Swinging' Party. Lo-fi beach culture enthusiasts Kindness sense that, and thus bring it back to a (lazy) disco-sound by Arthur Russell-ifying it (come on, as if that's not the drum-beat from Loose Joints' Is It All Over My Face? married to some David Byrne-esque slack vocalness).

Kindness is Adam Bainbridge and like-minded collaborators, with some London & Berlin time-sharing kinda thing going on (time n' space-wise) and a cross-Atlantic take on the Washed Out/Toro y Moi sound (or it's just synchronicity)... This Replacements cover is from a new single released by the always-forward thinking Moshi Moshi label. Check out the Kindness Myspace.

Heaven In Your Kiss

~
Atlas Sound Walkabout (featuring Panda Bear)
Low Motion Disco Things Are Gonna Get Easier
Kings of Convenience Gold For The Price of Silver
~

Festival du Nouveau Cinema: All Tomorrow's Parties

In The Nursery Iskra

Colin Newman Alone

I stopped by the FNC last night, and nothing against the festival itself (at all!), but The All Tomorrow's Parties' movie, (contributions by Jonathan Caouette and Vincent Moon (of Blogotheque and the wildly popular Takeaway Shows)) was an abysmal train wreck. It started promising enough - the title sequence juxtaposing the dancing marionettes and the Battles performance, and the archival footage had some quick and interesting editing, with at least a tentative attempt to contextualize the festival and the movie (started as a Belle and Sebastian gathering, okay, cool). But whatever the high-points, they were frustratingly brief against a back-drop of the erratic filming of stoned idiots, contrived taking-it-to-the-streets walking parades (yeah, yeah, joie de vivre, we get it), that, rather than capturing the manic excitement and exuberance of a festival (I assume this was the intent), had me looking at my watch about twenty-five minutes in.

The majority of the film was a patchwork of minimally-filmed performances combined with behaviour that was predictable and boring when it came from the usual quarters (loutish music fest attendees) and just plain annoying from 55 year olds in Marc Jacobs trapped in their bizarre posturing personae* (Thurston Moore & Kim Gordon, ahem). I'm sure the film-makers intended it to be both a document of the energy of this precious festival, and a musing on the leisure past-times of the self-marginalized underclass of white people (hence that archival footage - pensioners on summer holiday by the sea, northern soul dancers in those over-sized pants), but it could have been called White People Acting Like Idiots and made more thematic sense.

Michael Haneke's most recent film, The White Ribbon, will be playing on Sunday, October 18th at eXcentris as part of the FNC. Good to know that there are more horror of personality films that portray Europe as a festooning mess of hypocritical people who hate each other, are eager to inflict misery upon each other even though they know it to be meaningless, and are vastly ignorant of wave after wave of immigrants hitting their shores. Is all of modern European cinema beholden to Fassbinder and Pasolini's Salo? Find out for yourself, or just skip the whole nihilistic affair and settle in for some at-home misanthropy and self-loathing, from both sides of the ideological spectrum, courtesy of Colin Newman of Wire and crypto-fascist Euro-alienation wavers In The Nursery. (I first came across this song on the From Torture to Conscience compilation LP, which I picked up many years ago while on tour in Ottawa, and also features Current 93 and Death In June).

Lea Rinaldi, when you come across this while self-Googling, please accept this as an apology for erroneously thinking that your film Behind Jim Jarmusch was a by-the-book behind the scenes look at the director. It wasn't!

*I have nothing against 55 years old wearing Marc Jacobs.

Rick James & Neil Young Fire It Up

The Mynah Birds I'll Wait Forever (MP3)

Recorded at Motown Studios in Detroit in February 1966. On this recording, the Mynah Birds include Neil Young (who wrote this song), Bruce Palmer (who'd go on to form Buffalo Springfield with Young) and the incomparable Rick James on vocals. The band broke up after Rick James, who was AWOL from the US Navy, turned himself in, on the advice of Motown, acting under information about James' status provided by the manager who they had just fired for keeping their advance money. Sordid rock n' roll economics.

Banana Split Sundaes presents: Jay Watts III, Team Canada DJs, DJ Sombrero, Jizzy B

I'm DJing this Sunday at Blue Dog along with the hyper-talented Team Canada, DJ Sombrero n' Jizzy B. There's a free keg on the dancefloor, too. If you're so inclined, stop by. Monday's a holiday so we'll be letting loose. Free for girls. $5 at the door for all y'all else or get guestlist by e-mailing rsvp@lookoutpresents.com

Theo Parrish LCD Soundsystem, DFA LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem Pitchfork

The Fix Is In! The Silly Kissers.

The Silly Kissers Thinking Of You
The Silly Kissers Easy Fantasy

The thing about the first-wave of American cutesy indie-pop, the twee-types hosting sock-hops for credit at Evergreen College and singing about cats is that it wasn't any good. Oh, Lord, it was terrible, actually. Those bands are gone, as Belle & Sebastien and Camera Obscura sucked all the helium out of that balloon, and now the musicians live on as Etsy merchants. Or maybe a couple of them struggle on, wearing frumpy minis and vintage go-go boots, trying to sex-up the second act after a dismal first by covering ye-ye songs. (And what a sex-up! Matronly versions of Janeane Garofalo in scratchy polyester!)

Even if newspapers will soon disappear and there's a gigantic floating island of plastic (seriously, how come I only heard about this halfway through September 11th and now I hear about it everywhere?) that kills birds and fish, at least music's pretty damn good in the 21st century. So despite some major twee signifiers (lo-fi recording, dual male & female vocals, cracking voices, lyrics about yearning), Montreal's Silly Kissers transcend the limitations of a genre that, hey, maybe they're not even aware of anyway. So let's say they remind me of Lo-Fi FNK, without excessive programming, and maybe a little of Think About Life.

So, it's really, really good lo-fi synth pop. If the comparisons to Depeche Mode (Dreaming of Me vs. Thinking of You) ring at all true, it's because the Silly Kissers, like early DM (1981's Speak and Spell, for example), have a knack for writing vocal lines and melodies that stick. (And maybe there's a future of international stardom, drug addiction, and an album that mixes brooding ambiguous sexuality and religion with guitars ahead for the Silly Kissers.) Both tracks are from their Halloween Summer EP, which was released this July.

They'll be opening up for the Gossip on October 13th here in Montreal at Theatre National. New Yorkers and industry-types can catch them on October 21st at Arlene's Grocery at CMJ as part of the rolling chamber of indie-rock commerce that is the M for Montreal showcase, along with Beast, Think About Life, We Are Wolves, Malajube & Duchess Says.

Some Fantastic Place

Squeeze Take Me, I'm Yours
Kraak & Smaak Squeeze Me (featuring Ben Westbeech)

Missing Screenplay, Men With White Hair, Norwegian Producers

"But, what is it, what does it mean, to be loved by the French?"

Diskjokke Staying In
Lindstrom Another Station (Todd Terje Remix)

This week's episode of Bored to Death (the HBO series' third, titled The Case of the Missing Screenplay - coincidentally also the working title of Transformers 2) featured bit parts from film director Jim Jarmusch (loved by the French, subject of a documentary screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema), a timely Roman Polanski joke (the writing of which would have pre-dated the director's most recent troubles in Switzerland, where he's currently being held without bail - thank you, Zeitgeist!), a mixed bag of Jungian & Freudian psychotherapy, and Oliver Platt as the editor of GQ and rival of Ted Danson's George character. Now that the big American cable channels have decided to embark upon becoming broadcasters of sometimes culturally relevant and well-written (if not that, at least well-meaning) fare, their core, traditional audience of horny teenage boys* might feel left out. Sensing the (wanton) need, Bored to Death gave us a gratuitious display of the breasts of Trieste Kelly Dunn's Sophia character to entice that core constituency. She'll return for the sixth episode. For the trainspotters who got all enthused by the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, this week's episode features Flott Flyt by Norwegian Diskjokke (Joachim Dyrdah) from his Staying In album, and not to be confused with other Norwegian producer Lindstrom. (Diskjokke had previously remixed Lindstrom's Breakfast in Heaven, though.) Above you'll find two tracks so you can compare.

Is Bored to Death funny? It's what you'd expect, which isn't a bad thing - it's mannered and it's more drama than comedy, which is fine. It's enjoyable. It doesn't try to be overly clever. Californication, which also is about a struggling alcoholic writer dealing with the aftermath of his failed relationship tries to be both clever and crude, and only succeeds in the latter.

Expecting that I'd get my weekly ration of guffaws and big laughs from Curb Your Enthusiasm's highly-touted Seinfeld reunion turned out to be a mistake - talk about one boring snoozefest. I guess it's a sign of cultural relevance and success that the tidy little dialogue trick that Seinfeld introduced to the world ("Is that a testament?" "It's a testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") is such a standard trick in the toolkit of lazy teleplay writers everywhere, because it was really, really, really boring. Mamet-speak and Sorkin-droid, as suffocating as they can be, aren't this limited. It might be interesting to have the Seinfeld characters caught in a lengthy, looping Terry Riley-like interaction, ("Testament?" "Testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") trapped by their own inability to escape, as each repetition becomes, as in Nietzschean eternal recurrence more and more meaningful, man. Next episode, maybe?

If you're in the US, you can catch all three episodes of Bored to Death back to back tonight on HBO starting at 9pm, or just download the torrent from EZTV, this time without the nasty HBO logo overlay.

Addenda: HBO has green-lighted Bored to Death for a second season.

*And let's be clear, the audience for HBO's Bored to Death (which it's aware of and plays off of) is a variation on that niche: horny boys in their mid to late 20s who haven't quite grown out of certain juvenilia.

How We Got To Bellavista...

Vue, way back when

Vue Child For You
Bellavista Temptation By Your Side
Tom Verlaine Souvenir From a Dream

Bellavista has a very storied pedigree, and if you're at all curious about the group, it's probably because of that pedigree - which is to say that this band, probably because of the capricious nature o' the music industry, isn't as high-profile as what it grew out of, but Bellavista is certainly worth your attention. I'll try to keep the back-story brief, and not like something you'd read in the pages of Skyscraper magazine if it was still around. (Actually, is it? I didn't check)

The story began with the San Fransisco post-hardcore group Portraits of Past (who tuned all the way down to C!), who were around in the mid 90s, and released a record on Goleta's Ebullition Records, (LP photography by Ottawa's Shawn Scallen!). I loved that record in high school. Although they gradually morphed into the much artier and interesting group, Das Audience, they've since re-formed to tour Japan, release a new album, etc. Like Six Finger Satellite's reunion, I'm finding it hard to get enthusiastic enough to bother listening to the music.

So, Das Audience eventually changed their name to Vue, a glammy garage group who put out an absolutely perfect EP on GSL called Death of A Girl, a couple of Sub Pop albums (the s/t album had a cover of Suicide's Girl on it), and a disappointing EP on RCA. An RCA debut, Down For Whatever, was recorded but never released, probably because sales were disappointing and maybe at that time, the expected rising tide that BRMC started didn't, in fact, lift all boats.

After a three year hiatus, Vue returned under the moniker Bellavista, which is both, in my mind, a return to form as well as a genuine progression. It's not as polished as Vue was for the majority of its existence, which is great, because there was something that the group lost between that amazing, astonishing EP and what Bellavista manage to get right here. It's different than what's come before - atmospheric and muscular guitar-work, surf-heavy drums, a hazy mood... I think that Rex (of all of the above bands) has one of the great voices in rock music today - there's something of Tom Verlaine in it, that's for sure, but he can also push it in a way that I've never heard Verlaine do.

Bellavista Myspace

Dan Bejar Was Not & Dan Bejar Is Not

Sam Roberts Brother Down

In honour of Michelle Adelman's birthday (happy birthday!), the trainspotter who pointed out the similarities between Al Stewart and Dan Bejar/Destroyer, and also, as Chris Clark told me, Dan Bejar being mistaken for Montreal's Sam Roberts, here are two songs. That's all y'get. Chris Clark's favourite Sam Roberts' song is Brother Down (probably the bongos), whereas I'm more of a Bridge to Nowhere guy, but they're both solid.

AIDS 2.0 HIV 2.0 New Wave of HIV

Deceitful, Complex

A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world. Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple. To return to my lecturing days: I automatically gave low marks when a student used the dreadful phrase "sincere and simple"-- "Flaubert writes with a style which is always simple and sincere"-- under the impression that this was the greatest compliment payable to prose or poetry. When I struck the phrase out, which I did with such rage in my pencil that it ripped the paper, the student complained that this was what teachers had always taught him: "Art is simple, art is sincere." Someday I must trace this vulgar absurdity to its source. A schoolmarm in Ohio? A progressive ass in New York? Because, of course, art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.

- Vladimir Nabokov, Playboy Interview, 1964

Glass Candy, Desire, CFCF, DVAS

Johnny Jewel doing what he does best...

I made my way yesterday to see Desire, Glass Candy and Cosmo Vitelli at Juste Pour Rire. Missed the Cocktail Club DJ set, and caught the last half of Desire, which (as Feeling Nouveau mentioned earlier today) wasn't the wildest in terms of stage performance, but that will come soon enough.

The last time I had seen Glass Candy was about six years ago in Victoria, having formed a band (which will not be named, save me some face here) for the express intention of opening for them. When I first moved to Montreal Glass Candy was playing with Duchess Says (which was their second show, Johnny told me last night), but, and my memory's hazy on this, I ended up missing them or coming too late. Either way, a number of fate's machinations made it so that I didn't get the chance to see them until last night, at Pop Montreal, and it was a great performance. Old classics, exceptional sound, great lights, and a fuller and more solid stage performance, with Ida No pulling out a series of aerobic dance moves... If my hangover today is any evidence, there's a good reason why I don't remember how Cosmo Vitelli sounded.

DVAS Ambient Room

Tonight there's an embarrassment of riches (as per usual at Pop), and you already have my Os Mutantes & Plaza Musique recommendation (more Plaza than Os Mutantes, if I'm being honest) but if you're looking for something a little more clubby and fun, Upper Class Recordings' showcase is at Divan Orange and includes hometown balearic remix hero CFCF, DVAS, and recently transplant to Montreal, Cadence Weapon. As well, The Cansecos and Silly Kissers are playing earlier, so you'll have some time to perfect the stand-nod-clap look. A lotta the post-French Touch retro-wave club stuff (the DVAS song above included) isn't the most ground-breaking in terms of songwriting or what it brings to the table, but I like to think of it, like a lot of good dance and pop music, as being craft more than art. And it's fun to dance to. Should be enough.

It would also be re-miss of me not to mention Karnival, Poirier's new night, which debuts at Club Soda. Featuring Mad Decent's Paul Devro (and former Vancouver boy) and a helluva lotta bass. Check out the FB page here.

Let's Drink to Character!

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in A New Kind of Love

Caveat Emptor.

A scorpion wanted to cross a river, so he asked a frog to carry him. 'No,' said the frog. 'No thank you. If I let you on my back you may sting me, and the sting of the scorpion means death.' 'Now where,' asked the scorpion, 'is the logic of that? NO scorpion could be judged illogical! If I sting you, you will die - I will drown.' The frog was convinced and allowed the scorpion on his back, but just in the middle of the river he felt a terrible pain and realized that after all the scorpion had stung him. 'Logic!' cried the dying frog, as he started under, bearing the scorpion down with him. 'There is no logic in this!' 'I know,' said the scorpion, 'but I can't help it - it's my character.'

Caveat Emperor.

"Though at first considered an apt successor to the throne, Emperor Taisho (Great Righteousness) suffered a brain thrombosis in 1919 which left him extremely eccentric. A widely circulated story tells of one occasions when, while addressing the Diet, the Emperor rolled up the script for his speech, and holding it like a telescope, peered long and hard at the assembled dignitaries."

Arthur Murray Whitehill, "Japanese Management: Tradition and Transition"

AIDS 2.0 Social Networking

Let us not praise famous men, nor our fathers that begat us...

Thee Oh Sees Peanut Butter Oven
Thee Oh Sees Can You See?

Let us speak frankly now, because we're all friends here, and because I care... Now, with all due respect to Ian Svenonius, his contribution to popular music, and his lasting legacy as the one-time Sassiest Boy in America (and subsequent ignoble de-throning), I think Mr. Svenonius' creative output has gradually fallen, witness his painfully dated skewering of suburbia and economic progress. Fish in a barrell or the side of a barn - take your pick, Ian.

When did it start? Was it in 2001, when Ian Svenonius adopted the pseudonym David Candy for an extended, abysmal romp through kitsch? Did he give up after the International Noise Conspiracy & The Hives et al. purloined his look and approach whole-sale? The Scene Creamers? Weird War?

But then again, maybe high-concept garage rock that lifts heavily from the darker corners of post-Marxist thought & radical chic was never really meant to rock anyway. Maybe as close as we could get to that was the Yardbirds trashing their guitars in an Antonioni's Blow Up.

And thank God. I'm no purist - garage rock or elsewise, which is why Thee Oh Sees are such a god-damn revelation. Started by John Dwyer of Pink & Brown and The Coachwhips and from their ashes, rises a jangly, lo-fi phoenix. Or maybe a Griffon. If you're in Montreal for Pop, check them out this Saturday.

Thee Oh Sees at Pop Montreal
w/ Pink Noise, Golden Triangle, The Fresh & Onlys
Saturday, October 3rd
Sala Rosa

Check out the Oh Sees myspace page for more information.

Festival du Nouveau Cinema: Behind Jim Jarmusch

The French love Paul Auster and Jim Jarmusch. More than they love Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, who are Italian and therefore beloved but not loved. Not in the gushy, Gallic fan-boy manner that Mr. Auster and Jarmusch are loved, at least. And that's fair - Paul Auster's post-Jungian mysticism is a lot cooler than Robertson Davies', and Jim Jarmusch has the right pedigree of Manhattan art-world cool, plus he's quiet. Still waters run deep. This is a nation that never turned its back on Mickey Rourke, and there's a consistency in that that must be admired. (This is also a nation that gave us Manu Chao, but I digress...)

French film director Léa Rinaldi shot Behind Jim Jarmusch over the course of three days, while Jarmusch was working in Seville on The Limits of Control, his most recent film, the poorly received and slow-moving absurdist crime film.

In this clip, Jim Jarmusch walks and talks about being lost, which when translated into French would be understood as "Lost. Being lost. What is this act of being lost? Are we ever truly lost? To be lost is... To be. To be lost is who we are."

Behind Jim Jarmusch is playing as part of the Festival du Nouveau Cinema on the following dates:

October 8th 1pm Cinema du Parc
October 15th 9:15pm Ex-Centris
October 18th 1pm Ex-Centris

If you miss it, the film will be featured as an extra on the DVD of Limits of Control when it's released in November.

Re-Ups: Crydajam, Plaza Musique, 45:33 Remixes, and Angie Dickinson in Opera Gloves.

It's Burt Bacharach's ex-wife, Angie Dickinson, and she's wearing opera gloves!

Crydajam Playground

Plaza Musique Magazine
LCD Soundsystem 45:33 (Theo Parrish Remix)

As many of you are probably aware, (those of you that aren't visiting to look at photos of Etta James or photos of Angie Dickinson in opera gloves), I've been using Yousendit to host mp3 files - with only 100 downloads available and traffic increasing to this blog (now that I'm actually updating it), it tends to run out before the 7 day period. I'll find a solution to that, but in the meantime, I'll start re-uploading some of the more popular and requested songs from the past couple of months.

Here are a trio to get us started. First, Crydajam's well-crafted bumping brass and organ-riffing house jam Playground was, for obvious reasons, gone in a second. Original Crydajam post here... Montreal's reigning rulers in the realm of sophisticated space-pop Plaza Musique have been getting a bit of attention (well-deserved, I have to say) from Anglo sources and beyond now that they're going to be opening for Os Mutantes this weekend at Pop Montreal. Original Plaza Musique post here... And finally, of course everyone's been looking to download LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 Remixes, with special attention to Theo Parrish's remix. Truthfully, I found the rest of the remixes snooze-worthy: Pilooski's remix of 45:33 was like being stuck in a k-hole of boring house. Zzzzz...

This Is What Europeans Do, This Is How They Are.

Vangelis Let It Happen

Vangelis Let It Happen (Beatfanatic Remix)
Lindstrøm & Solale Let It Happen
F.R. David Words

Vangelis' Let It Happen is a blissful, dreamy proto-Balearic song from his third album, Earth, (1973) with a bass-line that wouldn't be entirely out of place in an Air France song. Vocals were provided by F.R. David, who would score big with the pleasantly pleading Euro-synthpop song Words, also available above.

Beatfanatic's remix turns it more into a Still Going-style sitch: layering it with four-on-the-floor disco beats and letting the bassline carry you through an 8 minute expansion from the original. Don't hold his poorly chosen moniker against this Swedish boy ("I am your BEAT MASTER!" "I'm gonna cook up some funk in my groove kitchen!" "Take a trip through my rhythm garden!").

For his Late Night Tales mix (released in July 2007), Lindstrom tweaked Let It Happen into a darker and more sinister affair, the expansive original is now a constricted straight-jacket of a song that pops and stutters with a hammering bass-thump instead of our beloved bassline and decaying acid arpeggios... The vocals are provided by long-time collaborator Christabelle Solale If the Vangelis original calls to mind Meditarranean islands, Lindstrom's version is the musical equivalent of driving your 1980 Ferrari 308 GTSI in the abandoned city centre of Tokyo at night, during a rainstorm.

Grab Demis Roussous' version from the always amazing American Athlete blog. The gargantuan Grecian chanteur began his career in the psych-group Aphrodite's Child along with Vangelis and went on to greater, schmaltzier fame as a solo performer and, memorably, a birthday boy terrorist hostage to Lebanese hijackers in 1985. Mr. Roussos has a new album out in February of next year, two songs of which you can preview on his Myspace page.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a Sex Symbol.

Ken Jeong as Senor Chang on NBC's Community

"Why you, teach Spanish?"
"Building a wall that you can see from outer space."

&

"I don't want to have any conversations about what a mysterious, inscrutable man I am."

Joe Russo and brother Anthony Russo (of Arrested Development fame) have a new show out, it's NBC's Community and it's pretty much a dud. Our title character, a charasmatic manipulator of a lawyer who must go to community college to save his career is played by Joel McHale, who is distinctly uncharismatic in his role, and as much as I want to give a man who gave me such joy in Fletch a little bit of love back, Chevy Chase is not-so-hot either. There are a couple of sparks in the darkness, and it's obvious that there are some smart people working on this (hampered as they are by the damp hamminess of Mr. McHale), but for the most part, it doesn't work. The scenario: a rag-tag-group of misfits pulling together, and being led by a flawed figure who needs redemption (whether he's aware of it or not) is ten times more stale now than it was when it was used in the Bad News Bears...

But... The one shining bright light in the whole thing has been this scene in the second episode, where Spanish professor Senor Chang (played my real-life MD turned comedian Ken Jeong) explains his own pedagogical impulse in a physical and dynamic monologue that I'd like to see more of. Seriously, 1:48 seconds in, and just watch. It's amazing...

Crazy People

Zenas Winsor Mackay's The Centaurs (1921)

Winsor Mackay, the possibly Canadian but entirely talented creator of the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, also might have been as crazy as his spiritual successor, Henry Darger, if one imagines what we aren't able to see from this baffling animated short from 1921. A family of centaurs in the forest, huh? Check out the rest of the footage and marvel at what once was and now will never be.

Etta James, Simply Red, Beyonce, Brand Nubian - y'know, the basics

Cover of Etta James' 2006 album, All The Way

Etta James Holding Back The Years
Simply Red Holding Back The Years
Brand Nubian Hold On

Etta James might be familiar to most as the throaty singer of At Last, which is as helpful to the lazy music supervisor's looking to evoke a certain time and American mood as it must be to her bank account. Seriously - Rain Man, How To Make An American Quilt, Father of the Bride II, Kissing a Fool*, Living Out Loud, Pleasantville, The Other Sister**, American Pie, It Had To Be You, Reindeer Games, See Spot Run, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Our Town, The Bernie Mac Show, Little Manhattan, Phat Girlz, Inland Empire, The Simpsons, Criminal Minds, State of Mind, My Best Friend's Girl, etc. And that's fine, of course - no hard feelings about that - the woman should get paid and there's a certain method to placing music in film and television (a Vietnam movie without Creedence Clearwater Revival? Unthinkable.) - but there must be some residual reticence about that song's ubiquitiousness that kept me from fully delving into her extensive back-catalogue. So much the worse for me, obviously.

Beyonce Knowles as Etta James in Cadillac Records
Beyonce At Last

The bigger question about that song is not why it's such a standard (the Rhapsody in Blue-like introduction, it's a great slow dance song with a touch of the melancholic, and the string section is so smooth it must have been manufactured in a muzak laboratory) , but why Ms. James threatened to whoop Beyonce's ass*** but has, as far as I can tell, made no similar threat to Celine Dion - who also covered At Last a couple of years back and undoubtedly butchered it. Carl Wilson might be able to tell us.

Mick Hucknall of Simply Red gets pensive

Outside of threatening younger uppity dames, Ms. Etta James has, in recent years, shed a bunch of weight and also done some singing and recording. In 2006, she released All The Way, which featured her take on a number of songs - everything from R. Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly to Prince's Purple Rain to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? to, interestingly enough, the above song, Simply Red's Holding Back the Years. The Quiet Storm classic receives a faithful rendering by her (a bit bluesier, perhaps), but man, she's got a far deeper voice than Mick Hucknall. (Okay, that's no feat.)

Brand Nubian during a break on the set of A Different World

Way back in 1994, New York's hip hop trio Brand Nubian sampled Holding Back the Years for their song Hold On on their Everything is Everything album, which tackles the always timely issue of childhood pork consumption being a cause of adult mental instability. (Conclusion: it is.)

Etta James in not-so-leaner times

Etta James I Just Wanna Make Love To You
Etta James All The Way Down
Etta James Two Sides (To Every Story)

Here are a trinity of impressive songs culled from her substantial back catalogue. You'll recognize the first, the second shows that Ms. James never really gave up the game (even in the 70's, one of her more difficult periods, battling personal problems and heroin addiction), and the final one is a perfect peppy number that I'd recommend you play at your next sock-hop. Her voice grows more dynamic as the song progresses - alternately belting out the chorus before pulling back, and repeating. It's great.

Etta James: Soul Sister

* A weird romantic comedy from 1998 starring Jason Lee & David Schwimmer, written by (get this) famed embellisher James Frey of A Million Little Pieces.
** A weird romantic comedy from 1999 starring Juliette Lewis & Giovanni Ribisi about mentally handicapped lovers and, if the cast is anything to judge it by, featuring a weird Scientology sub-text.
*** Perhaps, in the words of The New Clarence Reid in Cadillac Annie, she thought she was the President's daughter, or maybe it's just a black-women-who-look-white thing. As the Post article points out, surely Ms. James was aware of Beyonce portraying her in the film, Cadillac Records, in which she also sang At Last.

Pour mes amis Quebecois

Dude might have been another jerky separatist who could barely contain his racism, but at least he gave us the above genius piece of film. RIP, M. Falardeau

Comparing Losing Political Situations to Hotel California is Superior to Calling Them Quagmires

Chris: We should go out and have mai fucking tai's this weekend

Sent at 1:41 PM on Friday

Girls Hellhole Ratrace
JJ My Hopes and Dreams
Tanlines New Flowers
The Deele Body Talk

Well, it looks like my weekends going to be spent with a pack of fashion magazines and Style.com, but it's probably going to be good to get some brain-work in before the physical work-out and flurry of activity that is Pop Montreal begins, sparing no liver or ear-drum or bank account. So, some bits and pieces, then...

...And I thought I had a fucked up childhood dealing with Pentecostal Christians and post-60s California paranoid communal living (it creeped up the West Coast... Joan Didion's selection of essays, The White Album, is one of my favourite books and also chronicles the intense disconnect and anxiety that not just followed the Haight & Ashbury period, but was at the core of it). Girls' Christopher Owens had it way worse than I, growing up in some backwards universe in a Children of God family and emerging from it with a demo and a supremely solid album of music that, on first listen, sounds like Elvis Costello fronting Spiritualized, with lo-fi digressions.

Swedish super-secret-studio creations JJ you probably already know about, but if not, the back-story is the absence of a back-story. From their album on Sweden's Sincerely Yours label, also home to The Tough Alliance, Air France and other similar-minded Nordiques.

Tanlines also on the bill with Plaza Musique and Os Mutantes for Pop Montreal. Saturday, October 3rd at Le National. Don't sleep on that.

A new album by Chromeo is due next summer (too long!), but in the mean-time, check out their crate-digging skills on their recently released DJ Kicks compilation, which includes songs from long-time Goldkicks favourites Kano and Carmen (Time to Move, rather than Throw Down - difficult choice). If you register on the K7 site, they'll send you an mp3 of Chromeo's cover of the Eagles' I Can't Tell You Why. And yes, a vocoder harmonizing on the chorus is way better than Glenn Frey and Don Henley.

A couple of years back, Chromeo put together Le Mix for Turbo Recordings, which included amongst a number of high-lights (I can name at least four DJs who play Chemise's She Can't Love You, sing along to it and do weird hand-gestures regularly, to say little of my general peer group's love for Gino Soccio) The Deele's Body Talk, which I've posted above. Babyface was in The Deele. BABYFACE!

Is The Chronicle of Higher Education predicting that roving gangs of high school drop-out meth-heads may soon take a page from Mao's Little Red Book and attack the cities from the countryside, taking specific aim at the previously departed "achievers" and "high fliers?" Let's say yes. The next Khmer Rouge may be North America's poor white underclass.

Bixi Pop

Synergy
(but not exactly)

New Chromeo song "Night by Night"

Chromeo Night By Night
Jan Hammer Crockett's Theme (Miami Vice soundtrack)

The last we caught up with Montreal's premier R&B electro-funk duo, they were jamming with Darryl Hall of Hall & Oates in his restored colonial-era farmhouse. Now they've got a new song which skews more Moroderian Hi-NRG with its galloping bass-lines and guitar and keyboard solos that wouldn't be outta place on the Miami Vice score. Sweet. To cool down a bit and get into a moody Michael Mann mood, I suggest you follow it up with Crockett's Theme from the Miami Vice soundtrack, and maybe take a long walk on a white beach with appropriate pastels and linen pants.

Quick Fix

Natassja Kinski, One From The Heart

The Shirelles Baby, It's You (1961)
The Beatles Baby, It's You (1963)
Smith Baby, It's You (1969)

~
From the pen of Burt Bacharach, Baby, It's You was always a bit melancholic, but Smith turns it into a minor-key bluesy stomper that actually kinda works with a killer bass tone...
~

Joseph Smith Hustled, Brigham Young Was a Baller

Sports jackets, dookie chains, ball caps, and acid-washed jeans
2 Live Crew in the basics.

Young Black Teenagers First True Love Affair
Jimmy Ross First True Love Affair
Tag Team Whoomp! (There It Is)
Kano I'm Ready (Spank Rock Edit, Fabriclive 33)
2 Live Crew Pop That Pussy
Billy Stewart Summertime
Eazy E Gimme That Nut

Wrongly maligned by history for their poor name choice and remembered (if at all) for Tap The Bottle, the Young Black Teenagers deserve another look, especially considering production duties were handled by Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad. Good enough for Public Enemy, good enough for me. Time To Make The Dough Nutz, which samples Rush's Tom Sawyer is not the place to start, but listen to First True Love Affair above, which samples, you guessed, Jimmy Ross' First True Love Affair, which was produced by the friendliest face of Italo-Disco, Kano. Kano's back-catalogue has been cherry-picked for samples, (and recently nickied by Spank Rock for their Fabriclive mix), from way back in my grade 8 days by Tag Team (Miami Bass from Atlanta?) for Whoomp! (There It Is). I always found it a bit strange that, because of the Jock Jams compilation or whatever else, there was a substantial and ready-made fan-base for Miami Bass amongst the Mormon basketball players in my high school.

One song not so easily adopted by the Mormon ball-palmers in Miami's greatest contribution to music would have to be Pop That Pussy, by genre-definers 2 Live Crew, which features a spectacular re-working of the Billy Stewart's Summertime. DJs, follow that up with Eazy E's Gimme That Nut for maximal libidinal labial dance-floor expression. By the way, does anyone know where the hell that songs from? I found it on a CD five years ago and have no idea where it came from.

HBO's Bored to Death

I watched the first two episodes of HBO's Bored to Death last night. It's the Jonathan Ames scripted half-hour comedy-drama starring Jason Schwartzman as Mr. Ames' alter-ego: a failed writer, recently dumped, scribbling here-and-there for Ted Danson's character, addicted to white wine and pot, who decides to advertise as a PI on Craigslist, against the warnings of his pal Zach Galifianakis. Ensuing complications and plot-twists, you get it. Well, it couldn't be any worse than Californication, right? Few shows could be. There were a couple of out-loud laugh moments, but it's what you'd expect from the principles - the flip-side of the loud-and-quiet Will Ferrel/Vince Vaughn dynamic - mannered performances, chuckles, and the low-level thrill of recognition. It was great to hear the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, but Christ, whoever was responsible for music supervision was playing it a little bit heavy-handed, y'know?

Download the first two episodes via torrent here
(Caveat emptor: screener files have an obnoxious HBO logo over-lay)
Bored To Death Side-Line

Young Marble Giants Brand New Life

Nancy Franklin of the New Yorker on HBO's Bored to Death.

Neglected Greek Children Favour Bixis

Children of Greeks ghost-riding Bixis on a Saturday evening on St. Viateur in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec.
photo: Chris Clark

Playground's A Battleground

Another Bad Creation Playground

I'm sorry to ruin the whole week for you just as it starts, but I guarantee this is the best thing you'll hear all week. Discovered by one of the Bell Biv Devoe guys, Atlanta's Another Bad Creation had a glorious outta-the-gates start with a couple of singles, an appearance on the Meteor Man soundtrack, and a New Edition cover. Not much after that, though. An sophomore slump, and an indie flop. Still, if all they gave to the world was Playground, well, they've done their part.

And check out that video! Pie in the face, and some old white fogey trying to keep the most junior members of the Rhythm Nation down. Quick question: does it really get cold enough in Atlanta to warrant those gigantic down-filled jackets these kids are sporting?

Every Pop Song is a Celebration or a Complaint

~celebration~

Herb Alpert This Guy's In Love With You
Dusty Springfield This Girl's In Love With You
Fleetwood Mac You Make Loving Fun

~complaint~

Otis Redding Security
Etta James Security
Steely Dan Dirty Work

...

....or else it's a story about a mysterious hotel that you can check into, but never check out of.

A Drum Beat 21 Hours a Day

Photo by Jacob Ring, Bianca Chang or Nikolaus Kaiser. You guess which one.

Black Moth Super Rainbow Roller Disco
Black Moth Super Rainbow Lost, Picking Flower in the Woods
Laura Burhenn Just For The Night (Black Moth Super Rainbow Remix)

I don't like Boards of Canada, and I don't think I ever will. Klaus Schulze, Sinoia Caves, other spacey synth-based music I love, in fact, but there's something distinctly un-musical (to my ear) about Boards of Canada. In their weirder moments, it makes me think they were exposed to Jeff Mills at too young an age and for too long a period of time. In Boards of Canada's more accessible moments, (Dayvan Cowboy, let's say) they sound like trip-hop elevator music for a Zen shopping mall populated by soul-less yuppies with a sci-fi twist in a CBS mini-series from the mid-90s. Or more appropriately, it sounds like coming down off some seriously bad drugs, feeling depressed and praying for sleep. I didn't grow up on electronica, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin or anything like that, so it's all beyond me, and seems to exist in a realm where I can't comprehend the musical touchstones or signifiers, with inside jokes that don't make sense to me and genre conventions that are equally as baffling.

But, were you, Hypothetical Fan, to describe in a short couple of sentences the sound of Boards of Canada to me, I would be very interested to hear it, but actually, in my mind, that band would sound like Black Moth Super Rainbow, who belong just as much to the mythical Jungian life-force as they do to wherever the hell it is in Pennsylvania they were born.

I first came across Black Moth Super Rainbow when they put a Sonicbids submission in to Pop Montreal for the 2005 edition and, while the showcase I ended putting on drew, oh, about 15 people, you can chalk that up to my own incompetence, and the fact that no one knew just how good this group was. And damn, they were good, even to a crowd of 15 people in Petit Campus.

Black Moth Super Rainbow's music is tuneful, layered, interesting, bringing up sunny summer days in the woods just as much as space travel and star dust and intergalactic flights, forward-looking and slightly whimsical, but not kitschy, although they did release an EP with a scratch-and-sniff cover...

The Just For The Night remix posted above is from last year and slipped under my radar. Ms. Burhenn is a singer-songwriter with a who appears to have some tangential connection to the Dischord post-hardcore & indie scene in Washington, DC, but a voice that's more closely related to Sarah McLachlan or, in the case of this song, Alison Goldfrapp.

VGA or Super-VGA

Toro y Moi Human Nature (Michael Jackson cover)
Toro y Moi SadSams2 (Demo)
FM Attack Sleepless Nights
Real Life Send Me An Angel

By popular demand and for a limited time only, more from Chaz Bundick, known to most now as Toro y Moi, including his cover of Human Nature from Michael Jackson's Thriller album.

FM Attack is the nom-de-chanson of one Shawn Ward, from Vancouver, BC, supposedly newly signed by Tiga (although I can find scant mention of that). This is from his debut album Dreamatic, half of which sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack to the Canmore, Alberta-filmed 80's BMX film Rad (like Real Life's Send Me An Angel), the other half of which brings to my mind a toned-down Designer Drugs (octave-jumping bass-lines, synth stabs, and those tight mid-80s LA tom fills). Slow-dancing BMXes were the height of mid-decade romanticism, I think.

I'd like to make an early Christmas request: a Cat Power & Sade duet, please, and preferably nothing too blues-y.

Sondre Lerche in Montreal

Sondre Lerche Good Luck

Jenn Wong's favourite Norwegian songster (and now Brooklyn transplant) Sondre Lerche (even more than Kurt Foss!) is in Montreal tonight along with his rollicking songs for a solo electric performance at Cafe Campus. I assume he'll be mostly playing songs from his new album Heartbeat Radio, but I'd like to hear personal favourites Sleep on Needles & On The Tower. Requests, respectfully. The song above is from the first on his new album, and doesn't the trailing guitar line and accompanying crescendos remind you of Destroyer? No? The near-overwhelming string arrangements were provided by Sean O'Hagan of The High Llamas.

Leaked LCD Soundsystem 45:33 Remixes, early Lifelike .WAV files, Misheard Can Lyrics, et plus

Neighbourhood Romeo No, You Call Him
Fatback Band Yum Yum (Gimme Some)

Despite its giant floating plastic vortex twice the size of Texas, is my preferred fish provider and general all-around ocean. So, here's a little something from the close-to-the-coast duo Neighbourhood Romeo, comprised of Calgary, Alberta's Wax Romeo & Neighbour. Fun and crisp funk with a up-pitched Loleatta Holloway vocal sample that helps buoy oil city's reputation as a fine producer of super-slick sleeper funk hits. Grab whatever you can from these guys. Neighbour will be in Montreal performing at Studio Just For Laughs on Thursday, October 1st as part of Pop Montreal's Red Bull Mega Hurtz alongside Grahmzilla (of Thunderheist), Hovatron (aka Phil Aubin), Lunice, Megasoid, and uh, some sort of weird Burning Man hippie-techno-alien-rave DJ named JELO. Don't know who programmed that...

Okay, so the Fatback Band (later Fatback) were never from the West Coast, but they sound like it. Good enough.

THEO PARRISH 45:33 REMIX OF LCD SOUNDSYSTEM AVAILABLE HERE

LCD Soundsystem's 45:33 remixes got leaked. Eight in total, from Padded Cell, Pilooski, Riley Reinhold, Prins Thomas, Trus’me Prince Language and Theo Parrish. Stream them in 320 kbps on Feel My Bicep.

Vancouver's always generous promoter & DJ U-Tern puts up some .WAV files of early Lifelike vinyl-only releases. Thanks! His new weekly The Terrace is every Thursday at Republic Nightclub (958 Granville Street), which is great news - something to do during my next visit to Vancouver.

"Animal Collective in the house!" Dam Funk to sparse and skeptical East Coast funk fans, as reported by the New York Times.

Misheard Can Lyrics/Misheard Damo Suzuki lyrics must be collected into one archive for the betterment of mankind and an increase in human understanding.

Os Mutantes, Plaza Musique, Echo Kitty, Automelodi

There are always about six or seven shows during Pop Montreal that I've marked down as must-sees (and generally end up missing, or just having enough time to catch two or three songs - sigh), and that's certainly the case this year. Matt & Kim? Okay, no. I've never even heard a Matt & Kim song but something about their promo pictures has always prevented me from investigating any further. I find it hard to believe they're not secretly from a Vancouver suburb and that half of their stage banter involves thanking their show promoters for baking them vegan brownies.

Os Mutantes in younger, witchier times

Os Mutantes Teclar

But yes, Os Mutantes. Os Mutantes are, of course, the Brazilian founders of the Tropicalia movement whose influence has been felt far & wide since forming in 1968. There have been numerous line-up changes since that time, of course, but with a new album Haih or Amortecedor on Anti (that seems to be mostly about geopolitics - uh, okay), it should be more than a greatest hits performance. The production is remarkably faithful to the jazz-inflected sounds of years past, although I think sometimes the songs veer into (gasp) Jethro Tull territory. The excesses of youth magnified by the indulgence of age.

Plaza Musique at Francofolies 2009

Plaza Musique Magazine
(MP3 RE-UPLOADED & AVAILABLE HERE)

But actually, what I'm most looking forward to on that bill is seeing Montreal's Plaza Musique. I missed them during their performance at Francofolies earlier in the summer (pictured above), and their tasteful & smooth baroque space pop, with its requisite homages to the better retro-futuristic work of Air or Stereolab. ( It wouldn't be out of place on soundtrack to Roman Coppola's CQ.)

M. Paradis

Echo Kitty Suzi
Automelodi Baunderie Jazz

Plaza Musique recorded their new EP with Xavier Paradis (formerly of Echo Kitty, currently of Automelodi, and ocasionally known as Arnaud Lazlaud). If there's anyone in Montreal with a better ear for the textures and sounds of the early days of synthesizers & new-wave pop who is also blessed with the ability to write a great hook, I've yet to find her or him. The most obvious touch-point for a poor observer of Francophone music such as myself with Echo Kitty is Indochine, but it's deeper than that. (I'm unschooled in chanson française, alas.) Visit Automelodi's Myspace page, buy the EP, see them live.