Oh, how this time of the year can be so unexciting. Holidays are done, the New Year has come, and there is not much to look forward to until, well, the new statutory holiday. Until then, Musicologist recommends indulging in the odd show that surfaces from the woodwork and makes trekking through 20-below weather worthwhile. This Friday, for example, is worth that trek: Metal Kites and Great Bloomers are playing the Rivoli for a mere......

An excuse to post Feist's "1234"? Yes, please. In October, i (heart) music asked 30 music bloggers across the country––Torontoist included––to rank the 10 hottest Canadian bands in 2007. What defined "hottest" was up to each panelist to decide; we figured it meant "rank good bands by their popularity," and voted accordingly. One month later, with 150 bands receiving nominations, i (heart) music announced the top 33, with Feist edging out the Arcade Fire......

This Monday, September 24, the winner of the second-annual Polaris Prize will be announced at a gala event at the Phoenix. There will be stars, musical performances, free food and drink, and, unfortunately, you are probably not invited. Given to the best Canadian album of the past year, and awarded solely on artistic merit, the $20,000 prize is getting handed to someone (probably Feist) at a media and invite-only event. (Torontoist was graciously invited, but......

Finally, another excuse to write about La Blogothèque's Take-Away Shows. The last time we covered the France-based music filmmakers, they were psyching us up for the Arcade Fire's May concert with the best concert footage we've ever seen of the band. Before that, they won us over with The Hidden Cameras parading along boardwalks. Now they've given us Owen Pallett plucking away at two songs––"Your Light Is Spent" (above) and "Horsetail Feathers"––in Paris. If......

On September 4, the The Misshapes released their style book, and the trio of trend-setting, New Wave rock-producing New Yorkers are hitting Toronto on Thursday, September 6 in celebration of its release. Who are The Misshapes? Known for their weekly Saturday night parties—the "best in hipster Manhattan" since February 2004—these musicians (and cutting-edge fashion influences) have established themselves as "an intersection of music, art, and fashion." The Misshapes are Greg Krelenstein, Leigh Lezark, and......

Photo of Cadence Weapon by David Topping. Earlier this afternoon in the Drake Sky Yard, the shortlist for this year's Polaris Prize was announced. Established by Steve Jordan last year, the $20,000 prize "annually honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history, as judged by a panel of selected critics......

For the time, it seems, side-projects are here to stay. If you take a look at any of the large indie bands from Canada (Broken Social Scene, Stars, New Pornographers, The Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, off the top of our head), they've got at least one offshoot, whether active or not. The surprising thing is that, for the most part, these side-projects have done a decent job of living up to the hype brought......

Photo by Chromewaves (Frank Yang) in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. One of the best ways to characterize Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, compared to their previous effort, Funeral, came from a review several months back (on a website whose name, sadly, escapes me): where Funeral was dark yet triumphant, Neon Bible "lurches." In tracks like "My Body is a Cage," the title "Neon Bible," and "Intervention," there is a kind of a steady, dark thump......

If you were one of the many Arcade Fire fans not lucky enough to grab tickets to one of the band's Massey Hall shows on May 15 and 16, we can but offer two paltry consolation prizes. The first, above, is a brilliant video by La Blogotheque/Take Away Shows, of the band at their March 19 show in Paris. It is, far and away, the best concert footage that we've ever seen of the......

Lots going on around town over the next little while. One of the city's biggest music festivals, NXNE, held their press conference this week announcing the 2007 lineup (warning, the list is tough to read), hosted by Dave Foley. Many show dates and venues were announced, including the addition of the Dinosaur Jr., Voxtrot and The National shows as officially being part of the festival. Limited wristbands will be accepted at each show, so......

After rumours and speculation, Arcade Fire recently announced that they would perform at Massey Hall on May 15 & 16. Both shows sold-out in less than a minute. But hopefully those who missed-out on tickets (and are avoiding scalpers) caught their performance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. The band performed two tracks from their new album Neon Bible (to be released on March 6), "Intervention" and "Keep The Car Running. They also appeared......

Let's just get this over with right off the bat -- Arcade Fire have announced their Toronto show dates. Hurrah! They'll be at Massey Hall on May 15 & 16, and tickets go on sale on Feb. 23rd. Predicted time to sell out? 1 minute 49 seconds. If you have no luck with those, the next closest location is Montreal on May 12 & 13. In other big concert news, unless you've been living......

Part Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, part Animal Collective, part something else completely, Grizzly Bear have a unique sound that's tricky to categorize. This is not music you will necessarily dance to, but you will be moved. The Brooklyn-based band hits Toronto on Tuesday at Lee's Palace with Dirty Projectors to promote their newest (and critically acclaimed) record Yellow House. Despite ranking their last show in Toronto in support of TV on the Radio their......

Damn it, Arcade Fire, why do you keep teasing us? Beginning at the end of this month (in support of their soon-to-be-released new album, Neon Bible) the band is playing five consecutive nights in three big cities -- and not one of them comes from the Iroquois word for "place where trees stand in the water" (that is, they're starting in London, then in Montreal, and ending in New York). Tickets for all fifteen shows......

After being hotly anticipated for months- at least by stores- All Hallows' Eve is finally here. If you're at all concerned, the so-called North American Halloween Prevention Inc. has released a charity single, "Do They Know It's Halloween?" (It's really a spoof of the well-intended-but-slightly-patronizing "Do They Know It's Christmas?") It features a slew of Canadian musicians, including Arcade Fire, Buck 65, Sloan, Feist, and Wolf Parade; even better, all proceed go to UNICEF.......

Bell Orchestre, a 5 piece band from Montreal, recorded their first LP while some of its members were simultaneously working on Arcade Fire's "Funeral". With the latter's success and the release of "Recording A Tape The Colour Of The Light" delayed until 2005, touring and promotion has been sporadic. Following a brief tour through Europe, the band arrives at Indie Unlimited at the Harbourfront Centre. Frontman Richard Parry talks to us about a new album......

Pants off, dance off. Indie exotic dancers (as opposed to exotic indie dancers) have probably been around for a while (didn't Nathalie Portman play one in Closer?), but it's still interesting to hear that dancers at the North Toronto boutique erotique Mystique Lounge are now entertaining to the sounds of Bloc Party, Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand. (Not all independent artists per se, but still falling under that catch-all phrase, "indie") And it's not Mystique......

Shanghaiist probably knows a little more about China than the Chicago Sun-Times. Giving them the benefit of the doubt on that one. The city does to have a music scene. Don't even front like they don't. They also have Dorito bananas and white guys shopping for wives. What they don't have is any more tolerance for jaywalkers. Bostonist sees Boston and Somerville each whip out their art and face off. A plagiarized novel is the......

Toronto's condominium market isn't always a pretty one. Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (also the strings arranger for The Arcade Fire and The Hidden Cameras, pictured above at left) decided to take an unorthodox approach to dealing with the problem: he wrote a song about it. Pallett's newly-released LP, He Poos Clouds, includes a song called "This Lamb Sells Condos." The phrase should be familiar to anyone who's seen this billboard, an advertisement for......

The Village Voice gives us their annual Pazz and Jop Critics' Poll today, with predictable, transparent and delightful results. So delightful, in fact, that we consider this to be the most definitive list of anywhere anyhow. (Yay, as they say, for the Gorillaz and Three Six Mafia on the singles list and for the best album actually being the best album.) Now for a little comparitive analysis, let's look at the eye's Canadian critics'......

Torontoist enjoyed Stuart Berman's interview in this week's eye, pitting Max McCabe-Lokos (the Deadly Snakes) and Bry Webb (the Constantines).We're not taking sides in this little "tiff" but we'll gladly go and watch either band this weekend at the Horseshoe. But enough of the friendliness of Canada's indie scene, we think that underneath all this collegiality and 'pat-on-the back' we're all in this together joviality there's some real rage. 1) Sarah Slean vs. Sarah......

In the year that the popularity of the ringtone might have outweighed the popularity of the single, Toronto-I-S-T comes up with the top ten songs that mattered in 2005. 1. Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley - "Welcome to Jamrock" Called "the reggae song of the decade" by the New York Times, "Welcome to Jamrock" is the cross-over hit that shouldn't be: Unlike his contemporaries, Marley the youngest didn't have to employ an RnB hook from Beyonce......

Do you see what happens? Do you see what happens when you give negative reviews to local bands? Good thing for Torontontontoist, there's no need for a negative review or much backlash in the case of Annex-favourites the Diableros. It all starts when opening track "Working Out Words" betrays the commonplace misconception that the Diableros will play some sort of psycho-billy or Mexicana pop (Diablero = Spanish for evil sorcerer, you know). Its' burried/blurried vocals......

As featured in the Toronto Star and the New York Times, and just in time for the howl-iday weekend, it's the Islands-as-Geldof benefit CD, Do They Know It's Hallowe'en? There's no real analysis needed here, so here you have the basics: The Islands are two individuals from the Unicorns, who wrote the song to counter the absurdism of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" The track and its four versions feature impressive-slash-slightly unnoticable contributions by David......

Maybe it's because they're not coming through Toronto on this tour, but there's a small contingent of the universe that believes Broken Social Scene is from Montreal. That small contingent includes New York Times writer Jon Pareles, who just now realises the band is from Ontario's capital city, not Montreal. Only this is neither a typo or a small oversight, since the crux of Pareles' review is that the band is from Montreal and they......

- Adam Nayman slaughters Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown on the Eyeblog. It's a rough cut, but the trailers (and Kirsten Dunst in a beret) have been scary enough. - Pop Wherry reports that Thursday's Hard Rock Cafe Tribute Bands Katrina concert may or may not include New Orleans is Sinking. - How close have you ever gotten to Bono's right hand? - A bummer: Zoilus will be retiring his Overtones column. Can Gary Michael Dault......

Toronto writer Sheila Heti waxes romantic about The Arcade Fire in the new issue of Walrus magazine. Her contribution to the summer "Love Letters" feature is addressed to Régine and makes reference to digging tunnels, naming babies and other activities held sacred by Montreal’s finest. The note, affectionately signed ‘W’, could or could not be inspired by the Fire’s spring show at the Danforth Music Hall. The magazine is on newsstands now and also features......

In perhaps the ultimate gesture of admiration, Torontoist has learned that the Arcade Fire will play back-up to Mssr. David Bowie on his next concert tour. This is not totally surprising - since Bowie has had an increasing presence in the Arcade (they wrote a song for him) while the Thin White Duke has been big upping their album to just about anyone. Whenever it is they play these alleged shows (probably to promote Bowie's......

Bob Geldof, the Nobel Prize winning, hunger hating, debt relieving, musician and activist, officially announced Toronto as the Canadian location for Live 8. With less than a month to go before the July 2nd concert and Canada Day events taking place all over the city the on the 1st, planning Live 8 is going to involve a lot of tough decision making. Where is it going to be? Who’s going to play? Torontoist comes through......

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are LATE. Have you seen this man (left)? Unbeknownst to Torontoist, he was "target="new">reportedly in Toronto yesterday, planning the Contact Photo show. Do let us know of any sightings. Too bad he wasn't here for the Arcade Fire show. Or was he? Also: besides Remain in Light, what's your fave Heads album? Ours is Buildings and Food of course. And song? What about......