Ryan States delivers a modern-rock meets adult alternative collection of earnest, honest pop-rock craftsmanship. Though guitar driven, the songs also prominently feature piano and horns, taking songs from sparse to lush when the melody calls for it. But, the album also has a very 80s feel and sound to it, which is a direct goal of States, who wanted to make an out record that shined a light on a time when Out Music wasn't necessarily that 'out.'His name is Ryan States. And, with his debut full-length, "Strange Town" (Drooling Class Records), he has made the first album recorded and mixed on a circus train, where he lives and works, in a train yard near you.The result is a record that pays homag...
After returning from a cross-Canada tour with Jon-Rae Fletcher, both as his backing band and his opening band, Alphababy packed their bags and moved from Kelowna to Vancouver. Big changes lead to new beginnings, and with that, the band changed their name to Yukon Blonde, signed to Toronto-based Nevado Records (Bahamas, Fox Jaws), put their 300 show history behind them (including performances alongside Ladyhawk, Black Mountain and Women), and set out to write all new material, which they recorded in Vancouver with Shawn Cole (Bend Sinister, You Say Party! We Say Die!).Almost a year later, the result was a set of 14 songs. Borrowing from the best, the band looked for influence in 60...
United by "the boredom of an overcast city going through the indie rock motions," and "a common goal for things bigger, better and more colourful," MAY68 formed with aim of being the antidote to Manchester's musical malaise, but may just take the world too."My Ways" is their debut single, and a perfect introduction to their groove-driven, good-time electro-pop. With its call-and-response vocals shared by uber-cool singer Jude Wainwright and French-born drummer/singer Camille Bertin, it concerns a failed relationship started in a club and it's a modern disco-edged electro hit-in-waiting: fast paced and fun to dance to.On the B-side of the 7", "The New You" is spac...
After the acclaimed release of their debut single/EP ‘Decisions', Blitz Kids' flourishing career continues with their follow up; ‘Scavengers'. The band's former release saw them described as having hints of "the powerful punch of Thursday" (Kerrang!), sounding like "Lostprophets massacring about seven different bands" (Punktastic.com) and significantly, as the type of band that will have you "headbanging, shaking your arse and singing along all in the same breath" (Rock Sound). It also saw them championed by XFM, Kerrang! Radio and Scuzz - who selected the band in their top acts to watch out for in 2010. Step forward a few months and ‘Scavengers' prov...
Having spent the last two years touring the world in support of their critically acclaimed debut - A Book Like This - Angus and Julia Stone return with their eagerly anticipated sophomore release Down The Way.On Down The Way they make their debut as producers, and develop their sound without losing the spirit of their debut. There's been a subtle shift in gear, evidence of a growing confidence - the music gravitates from sparse to rich and textured arrangements yet never loses its etherealness and charm. Travelling has been an integral part of the Stone's musical story so it's not surprising they opted to record in a number of diverse locations around the globe - an old sawmill on the ri...
Allan Hayslip (vocals, bass guitar, guitars, tracking engineer, composer, producer) established Bonedome as the nom-de-rock for songs and performances that have never quite fit in his other bands. Although he wrote, performed and recorded material for SPAM, Crackbox, Vibrolux, Sixty-Six, Prince Jellyfish and The Big Guns, and even took a few turns singing songs in some of those bands, Thinktankubator comprises material developed under the influence of but outside these projects and other projects like Tablet, Sushi Gabor, Floor 13, the Barry Kooda Combo, and the Darren Kozelsky band, and with Allan as the primary singer.Gerald Iragorri (drums, percussion) was Allan's primary working partner for Thinktankubator fro...
"Last Spring my recently acquired publishing administrators sent me an e-mail from the music supervisors of an upcoming TV sitcom. They needed a 'Main Title,' otherwise known as a theme tune. I'd never tried anything like this before but found myself intrigued by the idea of writing within a set of confines.Half an hour later, I had the tune and right away booked a nearby studio to record it. Foolishly, they turned it down, even though I'd nailed that sucker.Two weeks later, another request came along and the same scenario repeated itself, this time with the added nuisance that the 'Folks At The Top' chose the most lame piece of work for the show you could possibly imagine.Enough of this, I thought, and went off to wri...
There are a handful of Canadian lyricists writing songs this powerful. Few of them are under the age of 50; fewer still offer performances as artistically-charged as their writing. In his home country, Greg MacPherson shares a sparsely populated space saved for musicians who truly matter.There is a certain authenticity in Greg MacPherson's music. Maybe it's the tremor in his voice, or his carefully crafted lyrics, or his unpretentious stage presence. To compare MacPherson to the likes of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan would be blasphemy if it weren't for the combination of pure talent and sincerity in MacPherson's songs and performances. The voices of those great singer-songwriters are legendary in their di...
Neon Indian is Alan Palomo, the Mexican-born, Texas-raised, brilliantly lucid 21-year-old synth-wizard who learned his production chops as part of Ghosthustler and honed them as VEGA. In October 2009 Neon Indian released his critically heralded debut album, Psychic Chasms, nearly anonymously and drew wild speculation for months. Moving from the hotbed of music in Denton, TX to Brooklyn was a much needed change for the mature, emerging artist. As Neon Indian, Palomo has made an art of leaving out the details and letting the world draw its own conclusions... which is very much the case with the lyrics to his new Green Label Sound single, "Sleep Paralysist." Neon Indian kicks off 2010 by teaming up with Green Label Sound to...
Much has been written recently about the long and colourful life and late-developing career of Seasick Steve, not all of it accurate. The facts, so far as he remembers them, are as follows.Steve Wold was born in Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area around the post-war period when white folks started paying serious attention to the music of black America. His father Gene played boogie-woogie piano in a local band. Steve tried the piano as a kid "but my fingers weren't big enough to get anywhere." Instead, aged 7, he fell in love with a guitar he came across at summer camp. "It just gobsmacked me, the way the thing looked. It was as big as I was but the moment I saw it, I knew I was gonna pl...
Singer/songwriter Neal Casal has just released his photo book chronicling his time with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, A View of Other Windows. Click HERE to read our review. We were fortunate enough to catch up with Neal recently for an intimate conversation about music, photography, and the Cardinals.Todd Levinson Frank: You’ve obviously been documenting the Cardinals for a while, when did you think it could and would make a decent book? If the Cardinals hadn’t “ended” in 2009, would this book have still come out this soon, or did the timing work out that this book would put a nice bow on the Cardinals era?...
Having spent several years carving their teeth on the Canadian highways with the likes of The Sadies, Sloan, The Weakerthans, Calexico and Nick Cave, Toronto's CUFF THE DUKE have made the jump from indie-scene-darlings to bona-fide Canadian music icons. Their new album, and first scheduled for US release, Way Down Here was co-produced by Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor in rural Ontario and features the band's most mature, captivating and impressive collection of songs to date.CUFF THE DUKE started out in the small Ontario city of Oshawa before making the move to Toronto in 2002. Their debut album, Life Stories for Minimum Wage was released on Three Gut Records, at the time one of the most exciting indie-labels in Canad...
About a year ago, Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith couldnt swim. On a good day, he might get a decent doggy paddle going but, really, he could barely stay afloat. All that changed when his wife got him swimming lessons for Christmas. Then I became completely obsessed with it and now I swim constantly, he says. The only times I really left the house in the past year were either to go out to a club late at night or, in the middle of making music during the day, Id go to swim every day. It was important to get some distance, and ideas would percolate around in my head as I was swimming away. So it seemed like a theme that was appropriate. With its absorption of club culture sounds weaved within subtle pop framewor...
The long-awaited follow-up to the acclaimed Copia, Eluvium takes a courageous creative leap with Similes, an 8-song album featuring three key musical elements previously uncharted by Eluvium: percussion, a verse-chorus song structure, and singing. For a celebrated experimental musician, it was just about the bravest and scariest direction to go. In this way, Similes is the most truly experimental Eluvium album yet, and also the most accessible. Written, performed and recorded as always by Matthew Cooper in his own Watership Sounds studio, Similes marries Eluvium's trademark dream-like aura with Cooper's unique, laconic vocals, akin to an especially contemplative Ian Curtis with trace reflections of Magn...
From the Haddons, the Hills and the Heights of suburban New Jersey, comes It's a King Thing. A band for boys and girls, late bloomers, nose pickers, pussies and procrastinators. Their songs can beat up your band's songs.For the better part of last year, It's a King Thing has been recording Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, the band's 2nd full length album. Buffalo verse chorus verses its way into a 12 song 36 minute concoction of "I can't believe my mom just caught me masturbating" and winsome anti-folk vignettes.In June of 2009, the band opened a sold out show for The Lemonheads at Johnny Brenda's and in October Philebrity defined It's a King Thing as one of the fro...
Post Harbor not only blur the line between genres they transcend the boundaries. The band set aside over a year to write and record They Can't Hurt You If You Don't Believe In Them, not playing any shows for that entire year to give the process their full and undivided attention. It shows as Post Harbor has constructed a seamless album where each track compliments the entire work as a whole.Instrumentally, Post Harbor pushes the limits with ambitious arrangements creating gorgeous and complex musical landscapes. Expansive and reflective without compromising the band's focused precision; Post Harbor has the ability to transport the listener to another time and place. The ethereal vocals of Anthony Carlucci tremble ...
The self-titled debut from Toronto's Crash Karma - Edwin (ex-I Mother Earth), drummer Jeff Burrows (ex-The Tea Party), guitarist Mike Turner (ex-Our Lady Peace) - is the result of three musicians with multi-platinum pedigrees coming together with one equally skilled musician, Amir Epstein (ex-Zygote), in a curious "six-degrees of Amir" story.The story begins when Amir, a prolific songwriter for the past 14 years, expressed to a friend a desire to co-write with Edwin. To his surprise, this friend had connections to Edwin and agreed to set up a meeting. On his way there, Amir decided on a bolder approach. "I thought i...
I remember when I realized what I wanted to do in life. I was helping my mom clean out our swimming pool when an old Frank Sinatra song came on the radio. I remember saying, "Mom, I want to write things down that I have to say, and I want to sing them real loud so everyone can hear me." I was seven at the time. Ever since that moment, making music has continued to be my goal.Writing has always been a constant escape for me. A lot of horrible things have happened in my life, and without the ability to write my feelings down and communicate them with a melody; they essentially would have blown up inside of me, for all I know. I graduated high school super early, and then went to culinary school when I was just 16. I...
Cosmo Jarvis is a new kind of artist, for whom one world will never be enough. He's a songwriter and a singer, but he's also a filmmaker, storyteller, poet, iconoclast, Jessica Alba enthusiast, and campaigner for the equal treatment of gay pirates. He's an ordinary teenager with extraordinary talents.His heroes are as varied as the art he produces every single day; John Lennon, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Terry Gilliam, Jerry Garcia, Samuel L Jackson, Jamie Fox, Will Smith, George Lucas, River Phoenix, Joaquin Phoenix, Muhammad Ali, Maximus Decimus Peridius, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, Elliot Smith, and Frank Zappa.And he's fast becoming a hero to others, not least Wall Of Sound MD Mark Jones, who will re...
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars started playing music together in West African refugee camps while their homeland was being racked by years of bloody warfare. Since then, audiences around the world have embraced the band and their utterly extraordinary story. On their forthcoming album, Rise & Shine, the All Stars' sound, as well as their biography, evolves further; the music finds them "establishing an identity based as much on skill, imagination and charisma as on their undeniably touching story" (The Los Angeles Times). Cumbancha will release the album on March 23, 2010. An extensive US tour will follow the release beginning April 10th including the album release show at New York City's Highline Ballroo...
John Baldwin Gourley Vocals, Guitar Zachary Scott Carothers Bass, Percussion & Vocals Ryan Neighbors Piano, Rhodes, Organ, Synth, Farfisa... etc. & Vocals From Satan's Satanist to America's GhettosAs I sit down to get into this topic that is American Ghetto I am realizing that I have put it off for far too long. I for some reason have it in my head that I have told you all that I would be posting on this subject nearly every month since it's completion... Well, I really have no excuse aside from our endless work schedule and our promoting of The Satanic Satanist. Before heading on I cannot help but point out how funny I find it that every time I talk about promoting the Satanis...
In 1996 five high school students from Recife, Brazil challenge the music trend with intensity started a rock band, The River Raid (TRR). The group consists of TONI (vocals/ guitar), PRAGA (vocals/ guitar), GIBA (guitars/ moog), DUDU (bass) and GUZZ (drums/ sampler). Their music is influenced by The Stooges, Violent Femmes, Radiohead, Sonic Youth as well as other Brazilian artists from the sixties and seventies such as Tom Jobim, Roberto Carlos, Os Mutantes, and Luiz Gonzaga.The early years for The River Raid offered much success, receiving the honor of being published in a reputable magazine known as Showbizz, being at the time the #1 music magazine in Brazil. They rapidly gained media attention after winning fir...
"Anaïs sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details ... are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things."-Hugh Blumenfeld, Sing Out!From her current home base in a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Vermont, Anaïs ("uh-NAY-iss") Mitchell writes songs that are as intimate as conversations and as rich in detail as short stories. The daughter of "hippie back-to-the-landers" whose father was a novelist and English professor, she remembers her family's home (another farmhouse in the same state) co...
Okay, let's just get this part out of the way. Most people know OK Go from their videos, especially those treadmills. Any video that's well enough known to be parodied on The Simpsons is a cultural force in itself and, checking the YouTube rating right before sitting down to write this, I was amazed to see that the number of views on the band's YouTube page alone now stands at 47,788,229. That's a lot. That many people and a brother who's the Governor of Florida is pretty much enough to win you a presidential election. Add the zillions who've seen it elsewhere, and you might not even need the brother.So if you're reading these words, you've probably seen that video. I find even more endearing the video dance to &q...
Warmer, deeper and more stripped back than their previous record Made In the Dark- One Life Stand is still conscientiously crafted and informed by the kind of intelligent evaluation that is now second nature to Hot Chip. The seductive and surprisingly glossy finish they can deliver when the mood takes them is enhanced by an emotional honesty and open-hearted optimism that is disarmingly affecting. With both feet in the Jack Track underground roots of classic house and techno, and a heart in candid song-writerly craft, the album is convincingly inspired by Joe Smooth, Marshall Jefferson, Derrick May, Theo Parrish, Bill Withers and Bill Callahan all at once. One Life Stand seeps through to your soul while...
Hello, my name is Eric Nally and I am the singer and founding member of this rabble-rousing pack of fucks they call Foxy Shazam. Our other five members are (in alphabetical order): Daisy (bass) Aaron McVeigh (drums), Alex Nauth (horns) Loren Turner (guitar) and Sky White (piano). I love them but before I get into their story, I would like to spend a little time on myself: I am twenty-four years old, the father of two boys, Julian Michael and Francis Jordan, as well as a loving husband to Karen Nally. This creates an interesting contrast to my career as a professional musician.I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was one of two white boys in an all-black high school. The band name Foxy Shazam came from a saying in m...
A band called The Radio Dept. was formed by Elin Almered and Johan Duncanson when they were in the school together in the late 90's. The name was taken from a gas station/radio repairer in Lund (Sweden) which had a large sign with the name »Radioavdelningen« (The Radio Department in Swedish) hanging outside their shop. Just like today Elin and Johan hung out with people who, if they didn't play music, were into photo, film, art and the likes. The Radio Deptartment was a suiting name as it became a department of its own among their friends' activities.For a few years there was some random activity, members coming and going, recordings being made but after a while the Radio Dept. seized to exsist. When M...
When global bass music matriarch Mary Anne Hobbs recently told The Fader Flying Lotus, for me, is like the Hendrix of his generation it seemed more then an audacious opinion, and with the arrival of Cosmogramma, it's revealed as a revelation. In the past couple of years, Flying Lotus has grown into the position of being far more than a producer, he has helped materialize a far-reaching strain of musical ideology that has encompassed not only a global family of like-minded artists, but also a nearly infinite palate of planetary (and interplanetary) sonics.Looking back, his full-length Warp debut, Los Angeles appears to be much more of a mission statement than a simple introduction - laying the foundation for a fi...
Butterfly Explosion are a band from Ireland that blend powerful spiraling music with delicate vocals to form rich soundscapes of beautiful melodies, gliding between moments of ethereal dreampop and explosive sonic bliss.The debut album 'LOST TRAILS' is released February 2010 on Irish label Revive Records. 'Closer', the first single, has been receiving extensive airplay from Ireland's leading alternative music shows such as Paul McLoone(TodayFM) and Dan Hegarty(2FM) who described the track as "My Bloody Valentine meets M83 meets Sigur Ros in Heaven".With two critically acclaimed EPs, the band have toured from Dublin to London and New York to Toronto with bands such as Howling Bells, God Is An Astro...
