Thomas S E L F H E L P
(Self Released)
Toronto, ON ::web/sounds::
Turn out the lights. Light a candle. Slip into something comfortable. Take it off. Grab a drink and come back to the hot tub. Weird Canada is for sharing and I’d like to introduce someone to you. His name is Thomas. His new album, S E L F H E L P is the post-smooth hyperbole you’ve been waiting for all day. Fetch me a towel. Allow me to wipe the bubbles off my body and talk seriously for a moment. Thank you. Thomas takes off where the late-70s AOR, yacht-rock movement degenerated into slap-bass bull-crappery and his interpretations are bang-on. In the most serious fashion Thomas covers the gambit from Jodeci/Guy-jack-swing, Hall-and-Oats-esque yach-synth, and Sade–is-his-operator smoothness. Thomas has attended the Tim Buckley school of singing, accentuating his verses with grunts and hollers, bringing this pop-explosion into an other-worldly palm-tree paradise. There are elements of every pop cliche executed brilliantly and fashionably. It’s tasteful, sexcellent, and most importantly, strange; dripping with creative genius, every channel of pop has been approached from bizarre, acute angles producing unimaginably beautiful results. It’s the soundtrack to an alternate, psychedelic beach party where every dead celebrity is getting down; martinis in their ageless hands tipping their glasses to the young boy riding on the smooth-rock shoulders of pop giants. Need more? Check out the video to Thomas’ hit Don’t Think, Just Hate.
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“It’s just some songs I recorded by myself” stated JV DUB, Shearing Pinx‘s drummer and participant in a plethora of Vancouver fringing (Black Dicks (best band-name in Canada), Aerosol Constellations, Totally Ripped, and Shitty Weed). A fairly humble statement considering the miasmic bludgeoning of basement doom and hellish guitar shreddery contained within A Poison Stronger Than Love. As bewildered and shocked as I was (and still am), it’s brilliance lay in providing the type of intimacy that is addicting and shameful; we become voyeurs on the brink of some terrifying shit. Which is great, because we need unnerving music to remind us of how remarkable it is to be moved. I’ve searched long and hard for artifacts that carry this banner and they are few and far between; intense, serious, and heavy. Real heavy. Really heavy. If you listen to this cassette at night you will, and I paraphrase the wise words of rapper Plies: go to bed real; wake up reala.
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The past three years have seen Shearing Pinx focus their creative blasts from harsh noise-punk to decimating experimentalism, tying together streams of sans-wave, noise, 90s-whatever-rock, and experimental every/any/something. Weaponry, Shearing Pinx’s first of two slated albums on Halifax’s Divorce Records, is by far their most meditative release and leaps into the unchartered netherlands of post-ritual druid-wave; ruminating vocals pierce through our cosmetic musical barriers and channel sinusoidal rhythms embedded within searing pleas of release (I’m really trying to convey a feeling I’ve had while listening to this record for the past four days straight and it’s hard). Fourier would be proud as the album converges; inspiring, leading, and transcending national boundaries in an effort to present the world with one the best adjective-punk records of 2009. My highest recommendation.
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Weird Canada is proud to present some live footage from one of Canada’s greatest visceral displays of flourescent vomit. This will give you a small, colour-inbalanced impression of what GOBBLE GOBBLE is like live. It’s amazing. It was so hot I had to go upstairs, so I’m not in this video. OR AM I?!?!
Poler Bear Poler Bear
(Self Released)
Saskatoon, SK ::web/sounds::
Saskatoon is Canada’s secret cultural hot-spot. The last time I was in Saskatoon I yelled at Herbie Hancock from afar, found one of the rarest Canadian psych records for $3 (Christmas on Paragon), made-out with a Lesbian, and stumbled upon picture sleeves from one of Canada’s best garage 7″s (The Witness Inc. – Not You Girl). My fondness with Saskatoon continued when I met Feral Children and seems to grow with each Weird Canada submission from the city. Thus, it comes with no surprise that I stumble upon another creative genius conjuring soundscapes in their Saskatoon basement. Poler Bear’s ambient canvasses are captivating in every way they shouldn’t be; fluxes of multi-instrumental blankets forming pop structures and catchy wisps too slow and wavering for radio pop but too structured to bear the avant-garde moniker. Most of the songs are built around narratives from Canada’s landscape: water, people, television, and birds; all playing a role in shaping Poler Bear’s soundtrack. It’s mellow and soothing and time seems to slip away every time I listen. Hopefully my next trip to Saskatoon will feature more artifacts of Canada’s underground, including Poler Bear.
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Mourning Coup Light House
(Self Released)
Montreal, QC ::web/sounds::
Mourning Coup’s yet to be released Light House is a private mystery; intrigue leading unto intimacy. From it’s intricate, precious packaging (that’s fabric and three types of paper you see there) to the tethered mix of single-mic’d vocals, samples, drums, and keyboards, there is a prevailing sense of blurred closeness. Deservedly so, as I had to beg Chandra Melting Tallow, the creative force behind Mourning Coup, to send me a copy (1 of 5) having convinced her that ideas trump all and therefore her rough recordings will suffice. Mourning Coup will certainly join the ranks of master Canadian etherealites like Katie Stelmanis with her flowing, ghostly echoes; calls from a reality she’s transcended and tucked between our collective consciousness. Chandra returns from India in 2010 and we will all wait patiently.
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From the musical cabinet of soon-to-be-Dr. Joni Sadler:
It seems fitting to write a review of Nervous System’s latest cassette at an altitude of 36,000 feet. At this moment it is still godawful early and I’m on an airplane high above the prairies. The turbulence is just rough enough to verge on unsettling and I am feeling way burnt out. In a way, ‘Burning White Light’ is the perfect music for this scenario: careening psych freakouts equally capable of leaving you really excited or feeling a tad on edge and queasy. The fact that most of the tracks on the cassette were improvised during the recording sessions is impressive, and there’s a certain recklessness that has (perhaps unsurprisingly) found its way into these songs. Pounding repetitive drums lay down a solid backbone for swaths of wailing fuzz and occasional shouts from singer/guitarist Mat Oxley. It’s all coated with a heavy layer of distortion for good measure. The centerpiece of the album is the nine-minute epic “Freak Construction†– it’s a serious stoner jam fleshed out around a burning guitar lick and given the final touch with some echoey vocal loops. This is serious mind-trip music, best experienced with your head way up in the clouds. [Levin's notes: I am so into this kind of modern-psych that is so strange and poppy at the same time. Bruised Tongue is really killing it these days!]
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Fortress Untitled
(Self Released)
Vancouver, BC ::web/sounds::
There is a gravity lens in Vancouver, bending all things no-wave in a peculiar, time-lapsed direction; each interpreting this re-emerging scene in their own unique way. Fortress is no exception; vocalists Spencer and Kelly take turns dictating and professing as barrages of angular guitar patterns hold their onslaught together. The effect is hypnotic and you’ll hastily submit to their disjointed alter. It’s the kind of art-punk that real satanists jam while slaughtering goats. Or, if you’re like me, it’s the kind of art-punk you jam while playing Magic the Gathering. Either way, Fortress is definitely at the focal point of Vancouver’s no-wave gravity-well and will soon join the ranks of Vancouver art-punk giants from the past (UJ3RK5, Tunnel Canary, Emily, Warsaw, Popular Front, etc.) and present (Shearing Pinx, Sex Negatives, Stamina Mantis, etc.), making claim to every adjective.
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PIG continues to deliver their strange brew of time-lapse-weird-punk on this interesting document of Nova Scotia’s experimental-everything scene. Splitting the bill with PIG are !Kung San, a somewhere-between pastoral noodling and post-hardcore endeavor from Westville, and Scribbler, Halifax’s gravity-lens for experimental-anything in the Maritimes. Scribbler’s six contributions seem to be cut-ups from an insane live-set full of atonal screaming and guitar shreddery; relentless stuff. And, man, I just can’t get enough of PIG; the three tracks from them were not enough!
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The Pop Winds Understory
(Self-Released)
Montreal, QC ::web/sounds::
Wind is an apt word for this paisley psychedelic pop trio originating in Ontario (now residing in Montreal). Canada’s industrial heartland is a strange place for music of this kind and much like Jarvis Street Revue, Thunder Bay’s out-of-freaking-nowhere garage-psych freak-fest, The Pop Winds defy Ontario’s cold, grey mien to deliver sweeping currents of breezy drum-machine pop. It’s the perfect fall record; a mellow travelogue contrasting the darkness of Canadian winters on the horizon. Understory was logically recorded at Lab synthèse, a hub for weird-pop explorations in Montreal.
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