Results tagged “brooklyn”

Whether we like it or not, some of us will be in Toronto all summer, with nary a trip or vacation elsewhere in sight. As a remedy, we've created Tourist. Every weekend morning, bright and early, of the summer we're featuring a photo (or two) from a globe-trotting photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Ever since Torontoist wrote about the little house at St. Clair and Dufferin—known affectionately as "Toronto's Little House" (OK, why don't you think of a more creative name, smarty-pants?)—it's received an enormous amount of local and international attention. So much attention, in fact, that it was famously associated with a potential purchase by comic/dancing machine/talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, although tiny houses are presumably much easier to give away than tiny dogs, so what was the problem, Ellen?

Photo by Darryl Scott.

Musicologist is not sure The Drake is a large enough venue for the arrival of Baby Dee on Wednesday, February 6. The multi-disciplined artist is a classically trained harpist, organist, legendary Cleveland street and circus performer, and collaborator with such brilliant acts as Antony and the Johnsons. The 54-year-old performer brings a wealth of musical and artistic experience to the stage, and her transgendered politics are surfaced through her healthy variation of wistful harp and piano-driven pieces (often reminiscent of 70s singer-songwriters) and (most evidently on her recent release, Safe Inside the Day) ones resembling those of a cabaret score. It is difficult to not love Baby Dee for her eccentricity and musicianship, but most critics and new listeners have qualms with her sparse, unfocused voice. Similar to Joanna Newsom or Tom Waits, one must look beyond Baby Dee's unique voice and understand where it comes from—a less-than-perfect voice with heart is better than a big one with no emotion.

Hot on the heels of a sweet little in-store at Sonic Boom, Brooklyn's Nada Surf have further endeared themselves to Torontoist (and allowed us to make yet another obvious "Popular" joke) by so obviously featuring our wonderful city in their new video for "I Like What You Say" (via Chromewaves) from their upcoming full-length, Lucky. How weird would it be if the band actually played a show at Filmore's? Only a sad animated cardboard box knows.

Photo of Matt of Epigram by Richelle Forsey

You may remember our coverage of the excellent Vice film Heavy Metal in Baghdad. A documentary following the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda, we reviewed it at TIFF and called it “one of our top films of the festival” before interviewing one of the directors, Suroosh Alvi.

In celebration of 60 years and counting for the local, legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Joel Plaskett Emergency will be performing six consecutive shows this week beginning Monday, each day playing in chronological order an album in their discography of full-lengths. After seeing its days as a blacksmith shop, a strip club, and of course the host of some of the most legendary first time Toronto performances including Willie Nelson, The Talking Heads, and Neutral Milk Hotel,...

Even though Brooklyn has been part of New York since 1898, the calibre of talent that comes out of there these days almost makes it seem like a separate city again (and if it were, it would be the same size as Toronto!). Tonight, Brooklyn-based Project Jenny, Project Jan are performing at our very own Horseshoe Tavern for the Toronto stop of their tour, which has already taken them to Philly, Boston and Montreal. Joining them on the tour are Brighton-based electronica legends Fujiya & Miyagi.

Brooklyn indie buzz band Bishop Allen play Lee's Palace this Thursday night. Their music is infectiously catchy with great pop hooks. If you're looking for a frame of reference, one music blogger described their sound as "a mix of the brainy lyrics of The Talking Heads and the stripped-down guitar work of the Violent Femmes." Their records are on regular rotation on the iPods of several Torontoist staffers. We can't get enough of them.

While our experience Over The Top experience from Thursday was full of guitar driven pop-rock, Friday night was all about pianos, keyboards and synthesizers. We're still all smiles from it, it was that freakin' good. Here's why.

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us.

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs.

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week.

Allegedly from Toronto, Rock Plaza Central took New York City by storm this weekend -- opening for Oxford Collapse at The Glasslands in Brooklyn on Saturday, and for Montreal's Malajube and Atlanta's Snowden at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan on Sunday. An unbelievably energized ensemble of strings, brass, and percussion, Rock Plaza Central just might be this year's most exciting musical breakthrough. The New York crowds seem to have corroborated this claim, as they wouldn't let the band leave the stage without playing at least one encore -- now, how often does that happen with an opener?

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.

Damn it, Arcade Fire, why do you keep teasing us?

Happy Holidays from the Ist-A-Verse!

The -ists this week had politics on the brain. And what goes better with politics? Partying-- that's two great tastes in one. Oh, and Kevin Federline...can't forget about Kevin Federline. That's three great tastes in one.

Oh boy! Contests! This one comes courtesy of Vice Records, and is for two free tickets to Brooklyn band Favourite Sons's show at the El Mocambo on Friday Saturday night as well as a copy of the group's new record, Down Beside Your Beauty. The show also features openers The Drones and Devastations.

Friday, we caught the 9:15 pm show of at the Bloor Cinema.

Two teams from the Toronto Kickball league will be heading down to NYC for the Brooklyn Kickball Invitational over the Canada Day long weekend and we wish the teams going lots of luck.

It's a well known joke among indie rock fans that there are tons and tons of "wolf" bands. Everyone from Wolf Parade to Aids Wolf to Guitar Wolf. There's something about the lupine animal that just attracts musicians trying to come up with a band name. With the success of wolf bands the backlash is going to be inevitable.

. Naturally, our fatally feline curiousity lured us in.

The ridiculously busy Fall concert season is getting underway, and first up is the hype band du jour, New York's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The hype machine began chugging this past Spring when the five-piece was annointed as the next greatest band in the world by the Brooklyn blogerati and confirmed as such with a 9.0 review that ensured that the initial run of CYHSY's self-titled, completely independent debut was sold out coast to coast to coast.

An extremely slap-dash look around the blogiverse has yielded the following links (excuse the tardiness of some):

Nobody said it'd be easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard. It's the time of year, much like that time of year, that Mixtapes are not in the mandate. Sorry if the music selection is scant this week.

Brooklyn based artist Jillian McDonald draws inspiration from the peculiar cultural phenomenon of celebrity worship. Her video installation, "To Vincent, With Love," showing until March 26 at YYZ Artists Outlet straddles the two extremes of celebrity worship; the innocuous deluge of fan-sites, letters, and mind-numbing celebrity "journalism" and the often disturbing phenomenon of stalking, romantic delusion and threats of violence.