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GREAT LIVE: Local Natives

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Inspired by an article a few weeks back in Consequence of Sound, we share with you some of our favourite live performances from around the web YouTube.

I don’t particularly like this band. I don’t particularly like this song. It’s too safe, too this-has-been-done-a-hundred-times-before. The studio version of it anyway. There is something about this live version, however, that I absolutely love. The intimate setting, the gentle opening to their performance. Those harmonies!

And, yes, the video is by La Blogothèque.

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REMINISCING: Life Without Buildings

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Life Without Buildings were a group that existed for a short spell around the turn of the century as part of the new wave/post-punk revival. While the Strokes, the White Stripes, Interpol, the Rapture and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were setting the benchmark on the New York music scene, various bands based around Scotland’s Glasgow School of Art were starting a revival of their own – re-hashing and modernising the sounds of seminal artists such as Television and Gang of Four.

While it was the catchy, yet often disposable hooks and quips of Franz Ferdinand who caught most people’s, including my, attention, it was their lesser-known cousins, Life Without Buildings, who left much more of a lasting impression.

Robert Johnson on guitar provides jagged, melodic riffs which are set to the tight, tempo-shifting rhythm of Chris Evans and Will Bradley on bass and drums respectively. The results will have you bouncing around your livingroom one minute, then staring at the floor solemnly introspecting the next.

The main attraction, however, lies in the sometimes sparse, sometimes dense, stream-of-consciousness spoken-vocals of Sue Tompkins, a visual and spoken word artist. Sometimes deep, sometimes playful. Sometimes wacky, sometimes honest. It feels as if Tompkins is deploying some sort of push-pull tactic in order to lure the listener in before getting them addicted.

Life Without Buildings only managed one studio album, Any Other City. The band also released Live at the Annandale Hotel, on which their songs take on an extra energy and charm. This is especially apparent when seen in the light of how Tompkins engages her audience between songs. Suggesting that her prose – as well as her performance – is an honest account of her feelings and personality and not some exaggerated caricature.

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3Tracks

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3Tracks is a feature where we share songs we can’t stop listening to. Share your own!

Liars – Pro Anti Anti

Dance-punk. It just sounds amazing, doesn’t it? The Liars have made a Mess and as the cover suggests it’s colourful, it’s bright and it’s bold. It’s also a bit wacky and a bit weird. The Liars have evolved like no other through six albums so far and this more impulsive set of tracks is the perfect antidote to the darker, more considered WIXIW, their previous release.

“Pro Anti Anti” is the fourth track taken from Mess and the first four bars will prick up your ears and have your neck rocking but, before given time to settle, Liars hit the listener with a banging club anthem with frontman Angus Andrew belting out cryptic mantras.

“Pro Anti Anti” is taken from Liars’ studio album Mess which was released in March of this year via Mute and deserves your attention.

Gruff Rhys – Iolo

The current state of the music industry requires, more and more, that recording artists find new ways to market their releases and engage their audience. Gruff Rhys, who recently released the album American Interior, came up with the concept of an accompanying book, PowerPoint presentation and even a mobile application after finding inspiration from tracing his ancestral history.

The former Super Furry Animals frontman discovered that a distant ancestor and explorer, John Evans, had set off across the Atlantic to search, in vain, for a Welsh-speaking tribe on the North American continent. Rhys spent months retracing the steps of Evans, writing material as he went along, with American Interior the final product.

The album, Rhys’s first as a solo artist, was released via Turnstile last month.

Sun Kil Moon – “Dogs”

The next time we are plunged into the depths of winter and people start going about their annual obsession with putting their favourite releases into ordered lists, Sun Kil Moon’s Benji will surely find itself towards the top of many.

On the album, the now San Francisco-based musician – also known as Mark Kozelek – reaches a lyrical peak in his career to set to his unique singer-songwriter style. While laying out his barest emotions for the listener, Kozelek manages to be philosophical and profound without being verbose, which is partially down to the sheer sincerity in his vocal delivery.

For an album whose theme is composed largely of death to those close to him, Kozelek is somehow able to add humorous spots into an otherwise heart-wrenching album. “Dogs” is one of the more light-hearted moments on the record – though it still contains some painful memories for the author – and is a perfect example of his ability as a master songwriter, containing some excellent lines and verses describing his sexual history.

How can you not love a song that begins with the verse:

‘Katy Kerlan was my first kiss
I was only five years-old and she hit me with her purse
I had braces on my legs and I almost fell down
And from that day moving forward I’ve been petrified of blondes.’

“Dogs” is taken from the album Benji, which was released via Caldo Verde Records:

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3Tracks

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Angel Olsen – “Unfucktheworld”

Last month I discovered both Angel Olsen and Toronto live music venue Lee’s Palace for the first time. Even though I was initially drawn to Olsen’s throwback Americana – though still visibly modern – style, after seeing her live I was left a little underwhelmed by both the artist and the venue.

“Unfucktheworld”, however, continues to be played in the Cairns household, despite me having to contribute a dollar to the swear jar every time I declare that I’m going to put it on. I love how the lo-fi production as Olsen pours her heart out over some chord progression, then when it is contrasted with some crystal clear vocals layered over the top.

The song is short, most of her songs are, but it works perfectly as an intro track and leads nicely into the fuzzy, garage rock number “Forgiven/Forgotten”.

Baths – “Ocean Death”

Baths are something that are supposed to make you clean. After listening to the first two minutes of “Ocean Death”, however, you feel dirty, grimy. And there’s something emerging from it, growling repetitively while its tangible odour makes the walls drip and peel. To add to chilling atmosphere, a female ‘la la la’ fades in then begins to sing about oceans and graveyards.

Listen to before your morning shower.

Ought – “Today, More Than Any Other Day”

At the end of last month Montréal-based, post-punk outfit Ought released a debut record that suggest their influences include a wide-range of artists from Jonathan Richmond to Gang of Four. This is not the case as the quartet has already admitted that they were unaware of the music of most of the comparisons made of them thus far.

Nonetheless, comparisons will ensue and “Today, More Than Any Other Day” starts like something from Slint’s Spiderland before shifting into a post-punk frenzy within which lead singer Tim Beeler adds his dramatic, and sometimes manic, vocals, asking the audience to take out reading material before declaring that today he is more prepared than ever to get his groceries in.

Check out the song and its new video here:

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Want Some New Aphex Twin?

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Yeah you do!

“minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]” is taken from Syro, the electronic artist’s upcoming album, his first for thirteen years. Listen below:

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If you don’t know Spoon…

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…you really have been missing out all these years. Here they are performing “Inside Out” – taken from their recent release They Want My Soul – on last night’s Letterman:

 

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Songs of 2014: Timber Timbre – Hot Dreams

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We’re approaching that time of year when everybody starts to exercise their desire to compile this year’s music into a look-how-cool-I-am list. Unfortunately, these lists tend to disproportionately favour songs and albums that were released earlier in the year as later releases haven’t enjoyed the same amount of time to leave a lasting effect on their listeners.

Instead, this column will share some of this writer’s favourite songs of the year (which will likely continue into next year), in no particular order, and we hope you do the same in the comments section below.

Kicking things off is Ontario quartet Timber Timbre and their elegant, maudlin title track from their fifth studio album Hot Dreams. The atmospheric track illustrates lead-singer Taylor Kirk’s spooky, unsettling songwriting style, yet contains an equal measure of comfort and sensuality. This strange juxtaposition has been evident throughout much of the band’s career to date and, this track particularly, wouldn’t sound out of place on a mind-bending David Lynch scene.

The track also features a saxophone solo from fellow-Canadian and experimental jazz artist, Colin Stetson, which periodically returns to the same note – and which is ingeniously struck with increasing frequency each time it is returned to – as the tracks builds to a close.

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Songs of 2014: Liars – Pro Anti Anti

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Liars may not be to everyone’s taste, especially given their evolution from experimental post-punk, through flirtations with electronics and more ambient sounds, to their current state of dance-punk/whatever-the-hell-it-is in the form of this year’s aptly-titled Mess.

“Pro Anti Anti”, the album’s fourth track, is colourful, bright and bold. It’s also a bit wacky and a bit weird.and this track, as well as the album as a whole, is more impulsive and is the perfect antidote to the darker, more considered previous release WIXIW. The first four bars will prick up your ears and have your neck rocking but, before given time to settle, Liars hit the listener with a banging club anthem within which frontman Angus Andrew belts out his trademarks cryptic mantras.

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Songs of 2014: Wild Beasts – Wanderlust

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Where 2011’s Smother saw Wild Beasts strike the perfect balance between their flamboyant creativity and suggestive lyricism in early releases, this year’s Present Tense sees the band move away from organic instruments, turning to laptops and synthesisers, though retaining their trademark sensuality.

“Wanderlust” opens the album with a dark,eerie synth line, bringing to mind images of a hazy nightclub in the early hours, it’s sweating walls seen through a glut of rum and cokes, while Hayden Thorpe croons in with lines like “We’re decadent beyond our means” and “Wanderlust: it’s a feeling that I’ve come to trust.” Towards the end of the track, the song gently builds and breaks, eases off somewhat as the tempo marginally shifts. Thorpe then re-emerges, repeatedly stating “Don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck.”

The change in direction is developed throughout the rest of the record, with some familiar styles and techniques retained from earlier releases and fused with the new. While Present Tense may not stand up to the quality of Smother, it is still a solid release which further displays the band’s desire to evolve and not allow old ideas, however good, to grow stale.

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Songs of 2014: Ought – Habit

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Is it too early to call my favourite song of 2014? I’d say so unless a deep cut from the new One Direction record released next week blows me away. So here goes…

Montréal-based, post-punk outfit Ought burst on to the scene with their excellent debut album More Than Any Other Day in April this year. Before that, they piqued the interest of many a music aficionado with the release of lead-single “Habit”. Lead singer Tim Beeler opens the song with a line describing the intangible nature of addiction, later adding ‘It’s not that I need it/It’s that I need it’ with the subtle shift in emphasis on the repeated words turning this lyric from a uninteresting tautology into something more profound.

The angular guitar lines drive the track sonically and add, along with the keyboard, a restless feel as the song builds to a close with Beeler repeating the line ‘I feel a habit forming’ in his manic delivery.

The rest of the album further displays the band’s unending confidence as they continue to develop a wide range of post-punk styles, making them sound like scores of bands for yesteryear. Remnants of the likes of Television, Jonathan Richmond, Slint, Joy Division and Gang of Four can all be found on the record, whether or not the band made a conscious effort to sound like any of them.

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