Results tagged “music”

Although it isn't technically a brand-new release, we would be negligent parents to ignore today's long-overdue official release of Hometowns, the debut album from relative scene babies The Rural Alberta Advantage. It's noteworthy not only for the fact that the re-release happens to be courtesy of Omaha, NE's indie-mecca Saddle Creek Records (where the RAA find themselves among other friendly CanCon faces such as Sebastien Grainger, Land of Talk, and Tokyo Police Club), but because of the gradual grassroots buzz that Hometowns managed to accumulate based solely on the strength of the minimal and urgent indie ballads in disguise.

The jury for the Polaris Prize—the twenty thousand dollar prize for the best Canadian album, chosen solely on the incredibly subjective measure that is "artistic merit"—has whittled down their forty-album long list to ten finalists, to be picked and announced on September 21. The finalists: Elliott BROOD, Mountain Meadows; Fucked Up, The Chemistry Of Common Life; Great Lake Swimmers, Lost Channels; Hey Rosetta!, Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood); K'NAAN, Troubadour; Malajube, Labyrinthes; Metric, Fantasies; Joel Plaskett, Three; Chad VanGaalen, Soft Airplane; and Patrick Watson, Wooden Arms.

Whatever else you may have thought of former mayor Barbara Hall, she will forever be a champion for besting Boston, whose Brahmins looked down their noses at what would eventually become the award-winning Toronto Music Garden. After much bureaucratic red tape, landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and collaborator cellist Yo-Yo Ma gave up on trying to build a music garden in New England’s famed city by the sea. Instead, they headed north to Toronto where they were warmly welcomed by Mayor Barbara Hall, Director of Parks Susan Richardson, and financial backer Jim Fleck. Starting with a windy plot at the western reaches of Harbourfront near the foot of Spadina Avenue, Messervy and Ma began to transform the lakeside property into the Toronto Music Garden.

Kanye West recently took a short break from infuriating everyone in the world and making sweet kicks for the kids to direct a video for Degrassi: The Next Generation alumni Drake (née Aubrey Graham). And Drake recently took a short break from regular summer vacation stuff such as being—along with Michael Jackson's death—among the most-trended Twitter topics this week, dating Rihanna (allegedly), signing to Lil' Wayne's record label, and having two songs in the Billboard Hot 100 to give the words "make your bra strap pop" from his single "Best I Ever Had" a whole new meaning. A whole new set of meanings, if you will. Big, bouncing, I-can-use-bad-stereotypes-if-I-pretend-they're-ironic-but-really-I-just-like-them Kanye West meanings.

It’s hard to blame the band for trying. The Shuffle Demons wanted to wrangle one thousand saxophone players to perform, live, at Nathan Phillips Square on Canada Day—and they were this close to fulfilling their musical prophesy. Too bad they were short a couple (hundred) players.

              

For the second time in a few days, Dundas Square was again home for fans and mourners of Michael Jackson. Unlike the impromptu dance party that landed at the intersection of Dundas and Yonge on Friday, last night's event—a tribute to Jackson and his music that was also billed as a Canada Day celebration, hastily organized by The Manifesto Festival—was prepared a bit more in advance and lasted three hours, concluding just before 11 p.m. with a moment of silence for Jackson.

Few things are better suited to the sleepy, sun-soaked air of summer than acoustic folk-pop songs about girls and nature. Toronto singer-songwriter Nick Rose sure knows how to nurture the big ol' sentimental sap that lurks inside all (okay, most) of us, and Oxbow Lake—released independently and available for purchase through Indiepool—is a sweetly sung and gently played testament to simplicity and wistful reflection. How seasonally appropriate.

The passing of the King of Pop last Thursday inspired different reactions. Tweeting about it and frantically downloading his discography were two popular ones. In Toronto, rather than mourn, people celebrated his legacy by moonwalking all over Yonge-Dundas Square. And we suspect a slew of tribute shows are already in the works. Torontoist got in touch with some well-known local fans who were eager to share their tales of MJ worship with us.

Brooklyn's Dirty Projectors were supposed to play at Lee's Palace on Wednesday night, but then they got in a car accident. They're okay—Domino Records released a statement saying that "all members of the band have been safely discharged from the hospital" but that "the band will be flying home to New York in the morning to regroup and rest." You can't really blame 'em.

When Three Gut Records ceased operations in 2005, it left a gaping hole in the larger Toronto-area music community. The Guelph-originated label was short lived but prolific and hugely significant, not unlike one of its primary acts and raisons d’être, Royal City. The promise of a once-planned posthumous Royal City rarities compilation has been lingering unfulfilled since the Three Gut demise, but earlier this year Sufjan Stevens' (a long-time friend and supporter) Asthmatic Kitty Records picked it up for release, and today is the day we can hold it in our eager little hands (it's distributed in Canada by Outside Music). A wise woman once said that you don't know what you've got till it's gone; awful clichés and Counting Crows covers aside, in the case of Royal City, she couldn't be more right.

             

Well, it's over. We came, we saw, we didn't wait in line once (thanks, priority pass). But before we throw up our tattered white flags and rejoin society, it’s nigh time for some sort of festival wrap-up to prove we were actually there and weren't just telling you what to do. So here is a smattering of reviews and photos from our handsome reporters who we set loose into the night every night for however many nights it's been. Marvel as we run down our most memorable shows (thankfully limited to maybe one-quarter of what we saw) in hopes of helping you relive the magic. Or at least helping you fake like you were there if any of your cooler friends ask.

According to the National Post's Ampersand blog, our pals Crystal Castles "were involved in a melee with security while onstage in Barcelona early Sunday morning. Their show...had been marred by technical issues. At some point during the set singer Alice Glass went into the crowd and punched a security guard. She then climbed back on stage, and pulled out the kick drum and appeared to be about to heave it when a sound technician grabbed her. And that's when her bandmate Ethan Kath jumped in and rushed to her aid." (There is, of course, a YouTube video showing part of what happened.) As history shows, the band really doesn't like sound problems.

On Friday, the City of Toronto announced the ten finalists for their anniversary song contest. The winning entry, to be announced on August 21 at the CNE, will get five thousand bucks and, the City's press release gushes, "bragging rights as the songwriter of Toronto’s 175th anniversary song."

Well guys, we've almost made it. Tonight is already the last night of NXNE and it features a significantly scaled-back number of options compared to previous nights. For those of you who opt not to mingle anywhere near some other big party happening tonight for a glimpse at those Jonas Brothers, here are some great last-minute chances to take advantage of your festival wristband (or, for you at-the-door types, throw some extra gas money into the touring bands' pockets).

Is this festival still going? Because the party force within us is weakening. Between having out-of-town bands crash on our floors day-round and bars taunting us until 4 a.m. (oh, and that music stuff too), we are just about ready for bed and it's only Saturday. But alas we must rally, coffee in one fist and—for a limited time only—computer in the other. Preview post go!

Sleep and morale are still intact as we start the third day of NXNE, but things are just getting started. Friday's finest include two L.A. noise-pop bands you wish you started, the best of the new East Coast herd, and the surprise reunion of a Toronto-grown and nationally treasured indie institution. No time for chit chat; here are your plans for this evening. You can thank us later.

Today's the day our not-so-humble music festival kicks into high gear and wouldn't you know it from the increased presence of beater tour vans confusedly driving past all your favourite patios. But when it's raining, as it's apt to do tonight, it's a billion per cent less fun to show-hop if you have a pass (and are a wuss). So here are some stacked bills that you can plunk yourself down at all evening and remain stoked (and dry) amongst fellow stoked (and dry) people.

You know the drill: starting today, and every day until Sunday, a dizzying array of local and international music, film, and industry events take over the city courtesy of NXNE, and Torontoist will of course be squeezing our way into as many as we can. But no one likes to show up to the party alone, so we want to make sure you're hip to our tips too. Tonight's scaled-back festivities are a perfect, polite introduction to what is sure to be an exhausting, but exciting weekend. Ready?

A new release from mega indie(ish) entity Arts & Crafts can either elicit a dedicated excitement or a slightly more jaded (and healthy) skepticism. On one hand, there is an undisputed affinity for the little homegrown label that could—and did, and still is—and, on the other, there's the poisonous burn-out factor, the feeling that our reigning DIY community kings have grown too comfortable, too inclusive, too safe.

This year's Polaris Prize—the twenty thousand dollar prize for the Canadian album released between June 1, 2008 and May 31, 2009 with the most "artistic merit without regard to genre, sales history or label affiliation"—has announced its forty-album long list, to be narrowed down to a short list on July 7, and one winner announced at a gala on September 21. (Last year's award went to Caribou; 2007's went to Patrick Watson; 2006's, the prize's inaugural year, went to Final Fantasy.) The albums by Toronto (or Toronto-area) bands in the running? Bruce Peninsula's A Mountain Is A Mouth; D-Sisive's Let The Children Die; Elliott Brood's Mountain Meadows; Fucked Up's The Chemistry Of Common Life; Great Lake Swimmers' Lost Channels; K-OS's YES!; K'NAAN's Troubadour; Metric's Fantasies; One Hundred Dollars' Forest Of Tears; Charles Spearin's The Happiness Project; and Timber Timbre's Timber Timbre. If you count Hamiltonians as Torontonians, and why not, you can add The Arkells' Jackson Square and Junior Boys' Begone Dull Care to the mix.

It's rare for something so new to have such an authentic old sound. Little Girls was born from the solo recordings of Josh McIntyre earlier this year, and with the recent release of their Tambourine EP on Paper Bag Digital, they mine a sorely underrepresented niche of assertively lo-fi fuzzy post-punk that sounds made for the sound system of a dusty record store.

On the same night that their magazine counterparts were feeding on a chocolate fountain at the Carlu, the scrappy newspapermen and women of Toronto's major dailies were knocking back bottles of Molson and rocking out at the Opera House: Newzapalooza V, the city's fifth annual Battle of the Media Bands, went down last Friday, raising close to eight thousand dollars for the Children's Aid Foundation. And far from strumming as Rome burns, the event served—intentionally or not—as a defiant celebration of the romantically proletarian spirit that somehow still manages to underpin the culture of the broadsheets.

The "Night In The Big House @ THE DON JAIL," scheduled for tonight, was to be the rave of the season. But a note posted to the Facebook event page on Thursday morning called it off: "As of 10am on Thursday, June 04, 2009 the Ontario Realty Corporation, an arm of the provincial government and the agency that controls the Old Don Jail has cancelled our event on Friday, June 5, 2009 and ALL other events for the Old Don Jail in the near future."

After twenty-seven prolific years of defining quirky Canadiana with defunct hometown heroes the Rheostatics, Dave Bidini will be celebrating the release of his first solo album at the Horseshoe Tavern this Saturday, June 6. Not content with convention, however, he will also be celebrating in record stores, book stores, music stores, and right out in the streets earlier that evening, with guest musicians, authors, and comedians joining him along the way. Saturdays rarely look so musical (and literate and hilarious).

Even a marginal indie pop fan should have a soft spot for Ohbijou—three years ago, their darling sounds and community contributions (both musical and social) helped define a new sector of Toronto's indie scene and made them an instant focus. After a recent signing with Last Gang Records, Ohbijou release their second album, Beacons, today (digitally, with a physical release on June 16), and it's a perfect reminder why their orch-pop left such a lasting impression.

Children's songs can be depressing, really. It seems strange to lull small children to sleep with songs about babies falling from treetops, or have them sing about ashes and then play dead. But one of the most memorable and haunting lullabies speaks to a more viable fear―one of long-lost loves and stolen sunshine. It's a song that inspired a fun-lovin' spinoff nearly a decade ago, and now, something more sentimental.

In a basement studio at the corner of Oakwood and Amherst, a small group of hip-hop hopefuls has been meeting for the past ten weeks. Under the tutelage of urban music veteran Dan-e-o (best known, perhaps, for his 1995 single, “Dear Hip Hop”), these emerging rappers have literally learnt it all; from rhyming to freestyling, to writing, recording and producing their own tracks—Dan-e-o’s students aren’t playing pretend. And on Sunday, May 31, they're hosting a block party—a real block party—to celebrate the release of their new album, Visionists.

Throughout his fifteen-year career, Hayden has been travelling a leisurely path from gravelly grunge-folkie to a more refined folk-pop sound. It's a transition still in progress, and on The Place Where We Lived, out today on Hardwood Records, Hayden gets a little help from his friends on a fitting next chapter in his ever-expanding sad-boy saga.

Many of the world's greatest discoveries were made serendipitously. From Post-its and silly putty, to microwaves and penicillin, lots of good things happen by mistake. When Brian Joseph Davis, while browsing the web at the Blocks office, misread the name "Alvin Lucier" as "Alvin Lucifer," he asked his colleague Steve Kado how he might put to use his misinterpretation. And in the world of grant money and experimental everything, a tiny misread can mean a whole new method. So begat "Alvin Lucifer."

Music and movies and theatre—oh, my! Thanks to local indie music impresario Eric Warner, you'll be getting all three of these forms of entertainment in one tidy festival package. With events kicking off today and continuing through to Sunday, Warner has jam-packed Over the Top's schedule with all sorts of tricks and treats for the whole family to enjoy.