Indier Than Thou: January 2007

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Architecture in Helsinki: Australian Terriers of Indie Pop




AUSTRALIAN TERRIERS: Small hairy creatures yelping for meat and jelly from a can, and sometimes wearing cones around their faces.
ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI: Small hairy creatures yelping for meat and jelly from a can, and sometimes wearing cones around their faces.

AUSTRALIAN TERRIERS: Used for rodent and snake control, adept at driving most living creatures and some non-living creatures away after a certain period of time with their exhaustingly obnoxious bark.
ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI: Used for rodent and snake control, adept at driving most living creatures and some non-living creatures away after a certain period of time with their exhaustingly obnoxious bark.

AUSTRALIAN TERRIERS: Despite their many faults, their even disposition does make them suitable companion dogs.
ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI: Ditto.

OTHER MUSICAL TERRIERS
James Blunt: West Highland Terrier of Breathy Musical Weeping
Ja Rule: Jack Russell of Hip-Hop
Animal Collective: Fox Terriers of Noise
Paris Hilton: Poodle Terrier of Lazy-Eyed Celebrities
Belle and Sebastian: Scottish Terriers.
The Arcade Fire: Airedales of Montreal
Six Organs of Admittance: Kerry Blue Terrier of Freak Folk
Google Image Result for Terrier Look Alike

Thank you for your time.

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Sunday, January 21, 2007

"Get Your Art On"? ft. Participation: Un Question Pour Vous!


I think this is a very cool thing!!!

But wait. If you feel like taking a look at the little art projects people have sent in to them...are they really good, or really bad? I honestly can't tell. But I do get the impression that pretty much anyone can design an appropriate cover-artwork-square-thing. Which is...depressing? Because designing album art could very well be one of the very raddest jobs out there, but I get the feeling, based on these examples others have sent in, and Sharpie graffiti on bus seats, and even just little sketches in the margins of kids' notes at school, that everyone is equally qualified for it. Art is easy, shit that looks good can happen out of anyone - maybe even YOU. Unfair, damnit! It makes my dream job far too easy to do and not get paid for, and damn near impossible to do in exchange for moneys. Also it makes me feel so very not-special.

AND, is there maybe a finite number of styles of album art out there? Bad grammar, maybe, but stuff looks the same as other stuff. I think.

Anyway, enough of that because I really must pose a certain question to The Ones Who Know (...I'm looking at you, Voxtrot fan guy):

Why isn't the Wolf Parade fellow really really really famous? He's talented and good looking with some likewise talented and good-looking chums, with whom he's made quite a bit of music. Near everyone who's heard them, likes them, and enough people have heard that you'd think word of mouth would make them bigger than U2. Would him and his cronies maybe be starsies if they were to unify their body of work or whatever, find some way to give it just one name instead of the one million different names they go by now? Or is it that they're Canadian (but has that ever mattered really)? Or that maybe I am dumb; uh, there's something obvious that I'm missing or what? They just aren't interested in getting lots and lots of money for something they do very well, or...is something stopping them? If so, what is it? Do they just need a bit more time?

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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Mosey's Top 10 of 2006-second installment

Author’s Note:
If you’ll remember from the end of my first installment of the top ten, I had a hard time with #5. I woke up this morning, after several strange, choppy dreams about wall-to-wall carpeting, with Kimya Dawson’s song, “Underground”, in my head, so I took it as a sign.

5. Kimya Dawson-Remember That I Love You

So, quick recap if you don’t know who the hell Kimya Dawson is: she was in the cool, quirky, self-effacing, self-proclaimed “anti-folk” outfit The Moldy Peaches in her formative years, who sang silly songs and wore silly outfits onstage. I love that they wanted to call themselves “anti-folk” when I could write an article on how Remember That I Love You is so neo-Bob Dylan folk, complete with colossal narratives and politics-on-sleeve lyrics….but I’ll save that for another post. For the record (tee-hee, pun!) I wrestled with putting the following records at #5: The Born Ruffian’s EP, Tokyo Police Club’s EP, and Cat Power’s The Greatest, but decided on Kimya because of the following lyric from the song “Giants”: “I like giants/especially girl giants/cause all girls feel too big sometimes regardless of their size”. WARNING!! These songs will glue themselves to the inside of your medulla oblongata, and you will not be able to pry them loose!!

(I inputed “cranium” into Thesauras.com and it gave me “medulla oblongata” so I don’t know what the fuck it means! Long Live The Internet!!)


4.Band Of Horses-Everything All The Time

Magnet magazine suggested we could call them “My Morning Jr.”, and the sound is similar to My Morning Jacket, but I think Band Of Horses comes off with a much more nostalgic, romantic sentiment. Let me paint a little picture for you: when Everything All The Time came out, in March of 2006, I liked it a lot. At the record store where I work, someone kept throwing it on, and as spring turned to summer, that like grew to love. When fall came around, the play copy got buried under piles of other c.d.’s, and like one of Leonard Cohen’s sentimental one-night stands, Band Of Horses became a sweet, covert memory. It remained thus buried, until one fateful evening while watching an old episode of The O.C….and my love for Everything All The Time suddenly came rushing out in a flood of love and neediness! (such is the perplexing nature of love!) I so missed those opening notes that signaled the beginning of the song “funeral” that I was almost weak with desire! Oh, Wherefore Art Thou, Band Of Horses, and when will I see thee again? I cried into the unforgiving wind. Luckily, I went to work the next day and secured myself a copy. Sometimes I sleep with it under my pillow.

3. Amy Millan-Honey From The Tombs

Okay, so I’m finally ready to admit that I’m not a huge Broken Social Scene fan….I liked the song “Lover’s Spit” but that’s about it…I would probably agree if someone said they were overrated…but don’t tell anyone I said that. I think that in the case of BSS, the sum of its parts is greater than the whole (whatever that means, I’m no good at math). I’m not sure why I love this album so much. The songwriting is solid, the instrumentation is cool…it’s sortof a country-pop album, but more rock/pop than Neko Case. Oh, I just remembered…she talks about drinkin’ all the time! That’s the country in the record! Whenever I listen to it I think to myself: “I have to write more songs about whiskey and wine!”. I get all excited, sit down with my guitar and…it doesn’t come out as bad-ass as the Jenny Whiteley-penned song Baby I. When Millan laments: “Sometimes I feel like my only friend is a whiskey glass”…I know exactly what she’s talking about.
(One of my favourite live shows of 2006 was when I saw Amy Millan at NXNE, in Toronto, sometime in the summer. She had a plethora of extremely talented musicians/friends backing her up for most of the set. The pinnacle, however, was the song: Pour Me Up Another, where she stood alone on an empty stage with her finger picking soft chords on her guitar. I remember exclaiming to my friend: (loudly, as I had been drinking), “IS THIS SONG ON THE ALBUM?? I DON’T REMEMBER IT!!!” 'Nuff said.

Another Author’s Note: (hey, I’m getting about as sick of these pretentious ramblings as you are, BELIEVE ME!) However I wanted to apologize for not including #’s 1 and 2, and give you the excuse that I’m tired…(and o.k. truth is, I want to waste my time watching YET ANOTHER old episode of the O.C.)

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Friday, January 12, 2007

Another Great Thing About Sweden

We all know about Sweden's extensive social programs, including their 62 weeks paid parental leave (with a right to return to the same job) as well as, of course, all of their attractive residents, but they've also added Peter Bjorn and John to their impressive resumé.

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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side


About a fortnight ago, Ned and I took the Rolls-Royce out for a simply delightful spin across the countryside near the manse on the Riviera. You know how Old Ned likes his drives! We bantered on breezily, as Ned and I do when the driving mood strikes us, mulling over the art and literature of the age, chatting about esprit de corps, jovially pursuing nothing in particular as the fields of Cap Ferrat blurred sentimentally past.

Now, as we drove and idled and picked apart Flaubert, Old Ned couldn't help but notice the simply stifling rural silence encroaching upon us as the conversation(s) du jour grew stale. Miles away we were, simply miles from the manse, with not a conversational foothold to be found!

But Ned is of course the kind of ever-so-prepared chap I simply die to associate with. With a simply startling "fiddle-de-dee!", he burst out a disc of music he'd purchased recently, a collection of ditties he referred to as Viking black metal.


What the hell? Who MAKES this stuff? That's actually all it is: Viking black metal. Nordic hard rock. Whatever. It's the worst! Not since Lordi have I been so delightfully disgusted!

Now, these guys are a little vanilla when put up against Lordi who do, in fact, oooooze menace and authenticity. One "John Hegg" of "Amon Amarth" can roar and wail all he wants about "VALHALLAAAAAAA", but whereas Mr. Lordi is HARDCORE (and married!), I'm pretty sure John Hegg is just a regular old guy turning his personal experiences into music. Just like Dave Matthews really did "do it", these guys really DID ravage your village and rape your sister!

DON'T EVER LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM!

Note: My hard drive fizzled out. I made my daddy take the computer to an expert and there's nothing for it, I lost everything - EVERYTHING! That music library took years to compile! I actually assigned album artists, and album art, composers and genres to all of it! Made sure there were no "Iron and Wine"s among the "Iron & Wine"s! AND IT'S ALL GONE NOW! I'll probably never find those Hilary Duff concert bootlegs again. So I suppose I'm starting again from scratch, and memory. I cried. ON TOP OF THAT, I watched the first half of Memento yesterday and am actually DYING to watch the rest of it, but can't yet, AND Eurovision is beginning! Point is I'm going a little nuts! More than a little, and I just couldn't help myself!!! Members of upper-class British society listening to Nordic death metal, not funny? Probably! BUT COME ON THESE GUYS HAVE LIKE 23948 ALBUMS AND THEY SERIOUSLY THINK THEY ARE VIKINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Voxtrot

Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives,
Raised by Wolves,
Rise up in the dirt!
Wrecking Force;
Missing Pieces
Sway.
Trouble.

Not poetry. Those are Voxtrot tracks. Go listen. Full-length being worked on...

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Best of 2007

Update: Ok, too enthusiastic. Oops.

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Sunday, January 07, 2007

Mosey's Top 10 of 2006-first installment

10. Joanna Newsom-Y’s

This is one of those haunting records that grows on you--slowly, creeping up inch by inch. Also, this is going to sound extremely cheesy, but I think It’s helped me to grow (yikes, worse than I thought). Now look, see-(I start snapping here) it used to be I only liked pop music….there was a time that I couldn’t even follow a Bjork song… “where is this going?” I would ask myself, then throw the cd across my living room in annoyance. Now I feel like I finally understand! There are hooks, in the work of both Bjork and Newsom that seem to dig into you slowly instead of catching you quick and frying you up for dinner. My favourite part occurs in the last song, where Newsom’s voice reaches a feverish squeak while repeating the phrase “and I miss your precious heart” over and over again. Plus it’s got lots of harp!

  1. Emily Haines-Knives Don’t Have Your Back

This grew on me too….so much so that after only a couple of listens, I actually convinced a friend not to buy it. I take it back! It’s not really pop music, see…the piano sort of meanders around. Sometimes chugging a rhythm, sometimes not so much. If you listen closely, between the low notes of the piano, you can hear the sound of a rocking chair on a porch far, far away. I love the darkness of this record, and Haines’ low raspy voice breathing: “this call costs a fortune and it’s late where you live” in Crowd Surf Off A Cliff.


  1. Sufjan Stevens-Avalanche and Christmas Songs

I love this prolific bastard…though with each album he seems to get further and further away from his “plan” to write an album dedicated to each of the states in the United States-still I wouldn’t put it past him. Avalanche is the outtakes from his previous album Illinoise, but I think I like it better….it’s possibly more of a pop album. The Christmas album is not as annoying as it sounds…Stevens mostly makes cute pop songs that mention Christmas. It’s a limited edition 3 cd set with awesome packaging including stickers and the cords to play along with all the songs!

7. Jolie Holland-Springtime Can Kill You

The first song kills me-it’s about taking the bus home after staying at your (new?) lover’s house the night before and how everything seems to be drenched in sunlight and coated in honey. She’s “still dressed up from the night before, silken hose and an old parisian coat” sigh. Couple this with the pretty, drowsy barroom voice of Holland and you’ve struck gold. It’s dark and sad too-the song Stubborn Beast is subtitled pleading bitterly with fate and includes one of my favourite lines from the album: “But like a stubborn beast when the barn is on fire, I might resist you when you try to save my life”

  1. Neko Case-Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

I’m pretty sure that Neko is the re-incarnation of Patsy Cline. I’m probably not the first to postulate this, however, but I never read music magazines anymore so who knows. I’m just realizing that the dates work-Cline died in a plane crash in 1963, Case was born in 1970. C’est possible! Cline was never punk rock enough to get banned from the Grand Ole Opry, I guess, but the 50’s were tamer times. So Maybe Neko is Cline crossed with the ghost of Sid Vicious. Case also has a heap of indie cred hip-ness by way of: first, going to art school in Vancouver, second: playing drums in the punk band Maow, and third: singing with indie-rock darlings The New Pornographers and alt-country heroes The Sadies. But fuck all that, this album is brilliant. Thanks to Case, people everywhere are holdin’ out for That Teenage Feelin’.



authors note:Mosey thought this top ten might be getting a bit wordy and hard to digest in one sitting, so she will hold you in suspense (that's right I'm grabbing you there) until the final installment....and also she hasn't completely decided on number 5...

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Karen Dalton - In My Own Time

Nick Cave, Lenny Kaye and Devendra Banhart rave about her. Pitchfork gave the record its coveted 9.0 rating (although those guys are retarded, so who gives a fuck?). Bob Dylan was a peer. But this record is
36 years old, and Karen died, homeless and fairly unknown, in the streets of New York in 1993. Why the delay?
Well, I'm not sure. This record, Karen Dalton's second album released in 1971, was out of print ages ago, and was a rare and valuable find for those people you read about in Nick Hornby books who live in record stores. It was the Holy Grail of 70s folk. Now, it's been reissued, and over Christmas I heard for the first time her oft-described other-worldly voice, and I wish I had heard it sooner.
(work in progress)
-kit

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

MySpace!


"It's a great way to get connected, keep in touch with old friends, make some new ones...BE BETRAYED BY ONE."

So a kid at school wrote this lengthy, whiny monologue about the emotional hazards associated with MySpace's illustrious "Top Friendzzzz" category, right, and then Time Magazine goes on for a million years about who and what has catapulted it/his/her/them/other -selves/-self into artistic greatness via this weird-ass website network...thing, so I figured it was time to hit up this dark and dreary and LAME (well, if you're like me, and start off not knowing where the hell to look) corner of the internet for myself. Admittedly I didn't get very far, but I'm learning.

I now present!
MY MYSPACE TOP FRIENDS, BUT NOT ON MYSPACE, YAH. ACTUALLY JUST FIVE MYSPACE LINKS TO...STUFF.

Ilona Mitrecey
I recommend you listen to: Un Monde Parfait

She's this twelve year old Parisian pop-star prodigy with videos of dancing marshmallows and such. I don't care that she doesn't write her own songs, or that she does a ton of commercials (eeeaagrr..), or that her voice is very doctored, or even that her videos look like Japanime or something awful like that. The "comments" section of the thing is dominated by NAZIS! What's not to like? "Danke schon, Ilona!" (that might be a curse! i don't know!) Oh, and that song up there? There used to be a better version of it up, with more awesome accordion action. This one is more techno and less French-outdoors-cafe-but-on-acid. Oh, well. A better video can be found here: http://wufs.net/coop/media/1-minute/Perhaps_512k.wmv !

DJ Hunnicutt,His Winnipegian Friends (not just those ones, there are many more on his "list", including Moses Mayes, that stuff's really good)
I reccommend you listen to: Memories

This is actually a poor replacement for Casper, because I lost the link to his thing (but if you can find it: he's a young Londoner and a very good freestyler, and I know he has a myspace SOMEWHERE...). Anyway, Hunnicutt's been around for a long time but no one seems to care, probably because he's just a tadge less "original" and "innovative" than he thinks he is (though, still pretty good) and thus hardly anything special, and also, maybe because he's had his fifteen minutes or whatever, maybe even some time before I was born. Though I do doubt that. Oh, he's got an OK record label, Peanuts and Corn, if you're at all interested. And there's a tutorial on crab-eating somewhere on the page, again, if you're interested. Two fun facts! One, he knows a lot about M*A*S*H, two, peanuts and corn are not only two of the slowes-digesting foods, they're also two of the top carriers of the CANCER-CAUSING "aflatoxins" also found in many animal products and genetically altered fruits and vegetables! Carcinogens everywhere you turn - learn about it, replace old insulation, don't inhale cleaning fluids, and fight cancer!!!

The Arsoncityscape
I recommend you listen to: We Will Go Down In History

Oh, brother - literally. There is nothing wrong with shamelessly promoting family members, especially if they're not bad, for a bunch of just-outta-highschool-ers. They've been doing this "glam rockpop" or "softcore emopop" (credit Isaac Sherry, 2007) since they were like eleven, and I guess the hard work (and breaking strings off my guitar, which I later had to pay for myself, which was totally not fair, until I got his bike stolen and now we're pretty much even, but not quite seeing as the bike was mad expensive, anyhow) pays off, or something. They've grown a lot in the past half-decade, from Grand Theft Gumball (the Simple Plan pastiche group) through to who they are now, and I got to watch them do it! But enough family sappiness. If you ignore the howling girls in my grade who respect them more than I do, and see nothing wrong with discussing their Madrenas Family Fantasies with me, they're great live, too. Unfortunately their very good looking bassist left recently, and they only just recently recorded some new stuff that's not finished yet, so I'm posting this right before they'll undergo changes, etc, or hit puberty or whatever. So if you don't like them now maybe you'll like them later?

Chris Bush
I recommend you listen to: The Ducks, VERY LOUDLY!

It's not even Chris Bush that I'm wild about, it's that one song. Pity it's not the full version there: the beginning of it, this lovely quietly swirling breathy-sounding-keyboard version of the main piano theme, that swells into the piano you hear here (hear here, hah), has been cut. It's still gorgeous, though! Words can't really describe this, especially if you don't know the Angles in America story, but try and picture: Prior and spectral Louis dancing by Prior's hospital bed, until the melody sort of...peaks, at which point, Louis drifts away to the park bench upstage, in Central Park, where he really is (in actuality he abandoned the sick Prior weeks ago). Prior dances with the air until suddenly, music changes, lights as well, he falls, coughing, into a red spotlight, sobbing and wheezing and twitching and sick until, finally, the music dies down and he collapses completely. The lights are back to normal, he's not dreaming anymore, just lying there, motionless............oh Christ it was such a good scene.

Roar & the Wolf
I recommend you listen to: Ghotel + Right Angles

Loverly electronica! Music avec le texture! This stuff is very Postal Service, and very awesome. I'm sort of typed-out, though (my arm's sore from giving blood - DO IT, easiest life i ever saved!), so I'm not going to go on for too long here. Just yeah, Ghotel is one of those wonderful modern-young-love-feeling songs like Such Great Heights (but not as sickeningly hear-it-everywhere-you-turn) that always puts a smile on my face. Am I making any sense, at all?

Also, www.myspace.com/exesandeyes is a friend of mine I've never actually gotten around to listening to, so if you want, you can do that.

Lastly, before I faint, Seth Cohen has a myspace. What does this mean? Can I contact him? MARRY HIM? ...please?

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