madvillain all caps

bonnie 'prince' billy & the red sparowes

big day for shows yesterday. first, bonnie 'prince' billy and, then, the red sparowes. needlessly to say, the red sparowed won that contest hands down - i mean how much fun can a guy with an acoustic guitar be (unless, of course, you are damien rice)? not that i dislike bonnie 'prince' - i just much prefer listening to him on record. anyhow, this is an entertaining ad for his new album "the letting go". the reference to pissed-on shark probably has something to do with it being recorded in iceland. everyone knows icelanders like pissing on their food. that's why the girls are so pretty. there are a couple of more - undoubtedly to be found on youtube.com

the red sparowes have a new album, every red heart shines towards a red sun, coming out in september. the album does not represent a radical change from their previous album, which is a relief - at the soundless dawn was one of my favorite albums last year. if there is any discernable change, every red heart is a bit harder and, perhaps, less accesible. and if you get a chance to catch them live, they are certainly worth checking out. like always the songs have long titles like: Like The Howling Glory Of The Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And The Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe

swan lake

swan lake consists of carey mercer (frog eyes), spencer krug (wolf parade and sunset rubdown), and dan bejar (destroyer and new pornographers) so in theory this should be the best band in the world, or at least, in canada. whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen but this song, all fires, is certainly promising. the album arrives in november and is called beast moans.

i stumbled upon this cover on pitchforkmedia. now i'm not a huge fan of velvet underground (i know, i know... but i won't go into that) and covers are rarely good but i like this one:

DeVotchKa - Venus in Furs

ladyhawk from vancouver sort of remind me of okkervil river. pretty nice stuff: the dugout
and since i mentioned okkervil river, why not listen to for real once again. it's such a nice song.

and check out patrick phelan. his album cost had been sitting on my desk for a while and i never really got into it but one day.... favour. nice and poppy.

i also rediscoverd centro_matic: calling thermatico

and snowden from atlanta just released their first ep (?) or album (?) - well, they released something and it isn't bad at all: anti-anti

the big sleep

i've been kinda bored with music lately. and even more bored with blogging. although the guillemots' rave reviews were almost enough to get me started again - i actually listened to the their albums several times to try to figure out what i was missing and that supposedly makes their album so good. i never figured it out and except for a couple of decent pop songs i think the album is absolute shit. just had to get that out of my system. anyhow, i'm pretty excited about hearing the big sleep's forthcoming album son of the tiger. it seems like quite a few bands these days are inspired by late 80s-early 90s indie music with the great majority of them zoning in on my bloody valentine but unfortunately mostly ending up sounding like chapterhouse. with some exceptions, of course. the big sleep's influences are less obvious perhaps but i'm pretty sure their record collections/harddrives contain a fair amount of music from this period. they actually remind me quite a bit of the faith healers who, at least in my opinion, were somewhat underrated. at any rate, the big sleep shares the same driving, almost mechanical, beat, which also brings stereolab to (my) mind. at any rate, definately worth checking out. murder & you can't touch the untouchable.