City and Colour

Have I posted about Dallas Green before?

I should have. 2009's Bring Me Your Love was one of those albums I played in my car, at my desk, in my flat, for my friends, for my cats, tried to learn the chords, put some of the lyrics on the "about me" section on the Facebook. Even if it's emotive, heavy on the sentimentalness did bring down my street cred.
Don't judge, you've done it too wombat.

As the alias City (Dallas) and Colour (Green), the frontman of post-hardcore Alexisonfire plays melodic, largely acoustic folk music that airs this side of vulnerable. His third album Little Hell, released earlier this month, was both recorded and mixed on tape at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton, Ontario. Canadian analog, I dig.

While a solid handful of tracks seem ripe for the One Tree Hill picking, the dusky brothel video shot for the first single, inspired by his wife's frequent night terrors, might say otherwise.



City and Colour // Fragile Bird
City and Colour // Hope For Now

Diamond Rings

John O, you are fun with a capital R A I N B O W U N I C O R N I C I N G.

Glitter napalming you from Toronto, John O grew up this side of jock before ditching the athlete's foot to fully embrace a well-sequined pair of ballet slippers. A boy of many talents, at a young age he managed to pack in piano, football, guitar, basketball, saxophone, and dress-up seshes pulling from the Tickle Trunk all before he was legal. Makes for an understandably difficult search-for-self growing up. "Are my friends goths or goalies? Punks or pointguards?"

You could presume John O leaned hard in one direction, eventually leading to the October release of Special Affections. Sort of. The other direction isn't too terribly far behind him, which makes for an ecstatically-camp wtf outburst over the "Show Me Your Stuff" music video. Might need 9 more views before I decide if my teeth hurt from irritable grinding or cavity-inducing sugar rush.




Regardless, the grating baritone over excitable synth has me dancing all the way to the color copier.

Diamond Rings // You & Me

Arcade Fire

I perch on my second-hand couch in a shotgun 1-bedroom flat on Grace Street. The first place of my own on an "artsy" block in this old, slow, charming city. The stylish kids coast down the street on single-speeds. Leashed dogs pad down the sidewalk. A lover's pair of cardinals have a nest in the oak in front of my window.
My quartered building is two down from a halfway house, my bike's been stolen, I suffer the August drone of window units, and I make my sandwiches on top of the washer - as it's the only counter-top available.
That's my personal interpretation of The Suburbs, releasing Aug. 3. Read on for something a bit more glossy.

It's a different notso different Arcade album compared to what's come before. Funeral, '04 was our first taste of the massive singalongs influenced by several deaths of relatives to the septet; drenching us in an orgy of instruments - viola, French horn, doublebass, xylophone, glockenspiel and hurdy-gurdy just as appetizer. Neon Bible, '06, a soldier's concept album, was cramped and paranoid; disavowing the things American dreams are made of. The Suburbs, even more so than NB, needs to be listened from start to finish. And it might take a few listens, so dedicate more than a coupla hours to your headphones. Admittedly, I had moments of "they are turning into g-d U2" and "what is this, a Bruce Springsteen relic," but just keep at it, they'll become more themselves. Because see, before Win and Will Butler made their way up to Montreal to set the kindling of Arcade Fire, they grew up in The Woodlands - ridiculously ordinary suburban sprawl of Houston, TX. This piece of information changed them a bit in my eyes. They're not quite so pale, tightroping another dimension. And so we set our stage.

When you first turn in, all you see is the dreamy haze of sprinklers. The music rollingly plinks along "The Suburbs," the sun shines on tow-haired children and cars stay under 25mph.
Drive through a roundabout or two of "Empty Room," and you catch glimpses of angsty, lonely teenagers. Unhappily smoking filched cigarettes, collecting together by ditches lining the manicured hedges. There is wistfulness, a pull of where you come from and where you'd rather be.
By the time you crest the hill of "Half Light," couples are fighting in the driveways after one too many at the neighbors, not noticing their middle child slipping away into the evening. Even the twilight can't keep the edges from being hard and unyielding. No amount of drawn shades can keep the prying eyes away.

But then after all the "Sprawl," dimmed dreams and forgotten teddy-bears in emerald front lawns. You can drive away away, flicking your gaze to the rearview mirror. "If I could have it back, all the time we wasted, I'd only waste it again."

Arcade Fire // Suburban War

Basia Bulat

I'll admit, this image is a little outdated. It was taken a few years back when a fellow fan - dear, darling to my heart - and I went to the Devotchka show at Hat Factory, only we weren't really there for Devotchka. Love the band of gypsies, don't doubt it for a minute. But we were REALLY there for a flaxen-haired Canadian woodsprite who sings like you should go to church and consider yo'self in this world - because even when she's not singing gospel she might as well be. That's how much truth rings out in Bulat's vibrato-laden voice as she claps, stomps, strums and sways - oft with autoharp in arms.


But I was THERE, man! From the beginning! Her debut followup, Heart of My Own, benefits from a little bomb-pow courtesy of Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire's familiar). The mountains of instrumentation can sometimes overwhelm, but if you get out breath, make it to "Hush."

Listen and confess your sins. If you have to. Or maybe just listen.

Basia Bulat // Heart of My Own

JBM

There isn't much to gather on JBM. He's from Montreal. His given name is Jesse Marchant. He's touring with Sondre Lerche, playing his '09 release, not even in July. But honestly, who wants to read a loveletter to a lanky gent when alabaster skeleton folk is tripping up your spine?

Hope you like. Not like I do or anything.

JBM // Cleo's Song

JBM // Friends for Fireworks

Timber Timbre

Take Tom Waits and remove his lifetime smoking habit and you might get a born again grown baby that sounds somewhat like Timber Timbre. Soulful, haunting, and laced with a dizzying chemical that spirals the spirals in my pupils, this experimental Toronto duo led by space alien Taylor Kirk will likely have you moaning for more.

Lately, I've been getting into organs. Mainly boob organs. But this kind is good, too. Very good.

Timber Timbre // Lay Down In The Tall Grass

Junior Boys

These Ontarians blew up, whatever that means these days, right off the bat in 2003, when they released something good enough for Christian Fennesz to remix.

The song Fennesz really liked.

Their new album is Begone Dull Care, on Domino. It is named for the short film by animator Norman McLaren.

As usual, it was difficult for me to choose just one new track to share. One I really like called "Work" was recorded in Berlin and sounds like DJ Hell a bit-- I didn't want to beat you over the head with Hell any more-- and another is basically electro RnB ("Sneak a Picture"). The song I choose is like neither of those.

Junior Boys // Dull to Pause