As I wrote about today for Exclaim!, Plants and Animals have a new album called The End of That coming out next year. Man, how awesome was Parc Avenue? And how pretty okay was La La Land?
Below you can listen to the rocking single “Lightshow,” which contains a guitar riff that’s so straightforward and punchy that it could have come from a Tom Petty song. Of course, this is Plants and Animals we’re talking about, so this is a lot more brittle and grandiose than your average heartland rock song.
Here’s my favourite local discovery in a while. Vancouver’s Chris vanderLaan undertook a project in 2011 to write 100 songs, which resulted in him starting a slew of new bands in a variety of genres.
This includes his pop punk project Wars, a band that features members of Living with Lions and Ghost House. The band’s album is called, uh, Pacey from Mighty Ducks, making it probably the only LP ever named after actor Joshua Jackson (who played Pacey Witter in Dawson’s Creek and Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks).
Here’s the rousing album opener “Statue Isn’t Right,” which is a little less funny than most of the band’s songs but every bit as catchy.
Here’s another track from Little Girls‘ recent EP Cults. It’s a video for the opening cut “White Night,” which, in typical Little Girls fashion, is a hard-hitting fuzz rocker with ultra lo-fi production values and a creepy-as-fuck new wave vibe.
The accompanying video, also in typical Little Girls fashion, includes lots of flickering images and creepy, VHS-looking static. Unlike past clips, however, this actually features the band members. As far as I remember, this is the first time songwriter Josh McIntyre has actually appeared in one of his own videos.
In addition to releasing totally awesome music, Vancouver’s Peace has some of the most genuinely awesome press photos I’ve ever seen. Seriously, look at that fucking picture! Absolute genius.
Oh yeah, and the music. I reviewed the band’s excellent album My Face for the Georgia Straight. Listen to the rocking “The Dark” below. This one is a little less riff-heavy than much of the album, but it’s still badass.
Like many people who were in high school in the early naughts, I fondly recall Coldplay’s first two albums, Parachutes (2000) and A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002). The group has found a massive market in people who want solid pop songs but can’t be bothered to seek out anything other than what’s on the radio. Hey, you could do worse.
The latest album from Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow’s band of merry men is called Mylo Xyloto. Go to the Georgia Straight to read my review and, below, watch an elephant go on a life quest in the video for “Paradise.”
Silver Dapple’s new LP English Girlfriend has quickly become one of my favourite albums of 2011. It’s full of noisy fuzz-soaked ragers, but unlike so many other contemporary shoegaze bands, this Montreal outfit gets by on pure muscle.
Below, watch the video for “(Pauses),” a raucous cut with raw, echo-laden vocals that sound like they were recorded through a cranked-up guitar amp. Go to Exclaim! to stream the whole album and read my words about it.
When I reviewed the 2010 instalment of Olio Festival for Exclaim!, B-Lines were by far the best band I saw over that weekend. This brand of blistering punk always sounds better live (especially when you’ve got a frontman as freaky and awesome as Ryan Dyck), but the track “Psychedelic High School” is still pretty awesome. This doesn’t describe my high school experience at all.
The song is less than two minutes long, which makes it the longest track on the band’s self-titled 12″, which you can get over at Bandcamp.
Vancouver pop nostalgists Shimmering Stars recently released a split 7″ with His Clancyness via Splendour. The Shimmering Stars half of the record is called “Not Growing Up,” and it offers more of the same reverb-heavy, Everly Brothers-indebted delights as the band’s previous work.
Last year’s SHiNDiG winners the Oh Wells previously released a five-song collection called The EP That We Love. Now they’re getting ready to release another five-song EP, this one called, Not That Girl from Transformers. It contains three songs from the past EP which have now been re-recorded. Thanks to Greg at Exclaim! for the tip.
Here’s the original EP version of one of the songs that overlaps, “I Hate the Sun.” It’s a swooning indie pop tune that explains the weather’s influence on a relationship in the extremely impassioned but slightly illogical way that the Magnetic Fields are so good at. This could have made it 70 Love Songs.
Vancouver experimentalist Lee Hutzulak will soon release a new album called The Man with Flowering Hands with his project Dixie’s Death Pool. The LP is due out on November 22 via Drip Audio.
Below you can hear the expansive avant electro track “Sunlight Is Collecting on My Face,” which is a compelling mix of faintly threatening swirls of noise, mellow drums and gorgeous widescreen synths.
