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November 28th, 2011

New Canadiana :: Quaker Parents – No Crime When Covered In Grime

From the grime spree of Alison Lang:
Tape number three from the brothers Grundy feels like a lyric poem that was torn into shards and taped back together again, peaking with “When You Can’t Beat the Dream,” a song that stutters and starts and spits, talking pretty about the edges of consciousness and old rays of light. This band excels at describing the intangible; each song’s mathy meat gives the delicate lyrics weight and heft. Quaker Parents are part of a Halifax vanguard making healthy music that’s good for the brain and body and soul, cleverly disguised with blink-and-you-miss-them hooks. These are songs you can hold onto and listen to over and over again, until you get older, until you smile at last in understanding.

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Quaker Parents – Get In

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Quaker Parents – When You Can’t Beat The Dream

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Categoria!! cassette :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 1 Comment »

May 18th, 2010

Review :: Long, Long, Long – Long, Long, Long

Long, Long, Long
Long, Long, Long
(Self Released)
Halifax, NS
::web/sounds::


From the loins, loins, loins of Aaron Levin:
From the ashes of York Redoubt‘s blitzkrieg through Canada’s art-pop continuum, Long, Long, Long have emerged a deliciously sauteed phoenix. More ambitious, weird, angular, and, dare I say, funkier (maybe?) than York Redoubt, Long, Long, Long is a wild continuation of the brilliant stream of pop cognizance festering in Canada’s mathematical east. Long, Long, Long is a marvel of price-per-hook insanity and is brimming with narrative, noise, and every pop sensation known to humankind. I suggest you grip. NOW. A+++(infinity).

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Long, Long, Long – Judy Chicago

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Long, Long, Long – Joseph Just Walked By

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Long, Long, Long – Drugstore (3am)

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Categoria!! cassette :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 4 Comments »

January 22nd, 2010

Review :: Various Artists – The Compilation of Hope!!

Various Artists
The Compilation of Hope!!
(Bart Records)
Asterisk, Canada
::web/sounds::


From the compiled danglings of Jesse Locke:
The Comp of Hope starts off with a serious wallop: the 1-2-3 whirligig of Vancouver’s Damages, Nova Scotia’s Minivan Halen (snagging the prize for Best New Band Name) and Toronto’s Place Hands, three groups with distinct yet equally imposing approaches to the post- / proto- / avant- / eff-it-let’s-just-get-rowdy hardcore continuum. Bart Records founder Kevin Stebner seems to favour the tuff gnarl stuff, with seven of the comp’s 10 acts setting their phasers to beatdown. From the spazzy attack of Abbotsford’s GSTS! to the rastafried “turbo jamz” of Edmonton’s Slates, Missisauga’s Whiskey Priest and unfuckwithable label faves Gift Eaters closing it off, this cassette could provide the perfect aggro soundtrack for any hesher’s backyard mini-ramp sesh. The softer side of weird Canadiana is also represented with the Strokes-meet-a-blown-out-Casio addictiveness of Swwords (the former project of this very site’s founder), Montreal’s math-pop dangereux duo Special Noise and a live jam from the inimitable dd/mm/yyyy. Another top-notch tape release from Bart, with awesome foldout liner art (front & back) from Calgary’s Heather Kai Smith.
[Levin's Note: This has the most links of any review on Weird Canada. Which means you get to virtually travel across Canada, all thanks to Bart Records. Benjoy!]

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Special Noise – Fitness

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Minivan Halen – Epic

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SLATES – blooloend

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swwords – The Hit

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Categoria!! alberta :: british columbia :: cassette :: manitoba :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia :: ontario :: quebec :: saskatchewan | 1 Comment »

October 15th, 2009

Review :: York Redoubt – York Redoubt

York Redoubt - York Redoubt York Redoubt
York Redoubt
(Hot Money Records)
Halifax, NS
::web/sounds::


Halifax is on an advanced level of pop-wizardry. For a city with less than 400,000 people, they put the rest of North American to shame with the shear volume of crafted sounds. And they all have their own Halifaxian aura to them; seemingly channelled through distinct avenues, returning home from remote adventures with presents of pop’s future. York Redoubt has proven themselves a worthy flag-bearer of Halifax’s bubbling underground. Their first cassette showed a brief glimpse into a future-now, and with their self-titled debut out on Hot Money Records (limited to 100 vinyl copies – screen-printed with personalized photograph (cop that!)), they’ve finally actualized into the math-pop behemoth we’ve been waiting for. Weaving complicated threads of stubborn-catchiness between time-signatures that make so-much-nonsense and vocal harmonies buried within angular distortion, it’s difficult to turn your attention away from the album and it’ll be no-time before you’ve listened to the entire thing six or seven times. It’s ridiculous music to write about because it’s so incredibly layered, complex, and easy. Which is where York Redoubt really shines: they’ve taken all this ridiculous math-pop and made it serene; like just another pop song. Listen and buy the damn record. They. Are. Next.

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York Redoubt – I Said Slightly

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York Redoubt – Stenciled Lines

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Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 3 Comments »

August 3rd, 2009

Hunting and gathering.

Hunter-Gatherer - Hunter-Gatherer EP Hunter-Gatherer
Hunter-Gatherer EP
(Self Released)
Calgary, AB
::web/sounds::

I remember being young once. I would prance around my basement in pajamas playing Zelda and fighting with my brother. This one afternoon I watched all the American Ninja movies and tried to do a front-flip off a small play-coffee-table. I landed on my back and knocked the wind out of my body. I recall laying on the floor in shame as the world circled above me in a fizzy haze of creative indulgence. Had I been a better ninja I would have landed on my feet to the roaring audience of my brother. Calgary’s Hunter-Gatherer is a better ninja. They skirt the challenging math-pop with a fizzy edge that puts them in a category no American Ninja dare venture; deep in the wooded grounds of dissonant-catchiness and inordinate-yet-amazing-harmonies. I’ve been listening to their EP repeatedly and I keep returning to that exercise of my physical limitations; as the world once spun in my childhood eyes, so will Hunter-Gatherer’s whirlwind of distorted-pop ramble on in your ears. Hopefully you’ll land on your feet. That metaphor makes no sense (it’s a metaphor?).

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Hunter-Gatherer – Carrion Hearts

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Hunter-Gatherer – Magpie Trap

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Categoria!! alberta :: cassette :: New Canadiana | 1 Comment »

July 14th, 2009

Dad. I want to die.

York Redoubt - Cheap Funerals York Redoubt
Cheap Funerals
(Self Released)
Halifax, NS
::web/sounds::

Halifax has this propensity to insert pop into everything it produces. Maybe it’s because the musical land-scape is like a giant venn-diagram with every genre-cloud fornicating until the only thing left is post-frat-orgy-remorse. Who cares? At the end of the day you end up with boundary pushing music that is incredibly accessible. York Redoubt’s debut cassette, Cheap Funerals, takes the insane time-changes and chord progressions often seen in arithmetic-rock and calculates its anti-derivative (with respect to time) to produce math-pop; it’s weird, it’s changing, it’s catchy. There are red-line vocals, noise freak-outs, songs that sound like pre-Sook-Yin-The-Wedge, panned-guitars, and more! And they’ve fit it all on a four-song cassette. Bravo!

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York Redoubt – Guilloteens and I

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York Redoubt – Dad

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Categoria!! cassette :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | No Comments »

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