to sing this anthem of our dying day

It's been a while, so I thought it was time for a recap.
I have seen some great, great concerts lately. I pick my concerts carefully (due to being very poor), and I have not been disappointed this autumn. Let's review.

Alt-J
I saw Alt-J at Echo Beach in a thunderstorm. It was the night after I adopted my cat, and I worried about her the whole damn time. What if she was scared of the thunder? What if we were struck by lightning and she was on her own for days until my family could get her? We left early because I was panicking too much to really enjoy the concert, but what I did hear was wonderful. The highlight, for me, was Bloodflood. That is such a fucking great song. We were sat back from the stage on a table, so I couldn't really *see* anything, but I didn't really need to -- they sound as great live as they do on my iPhone. Realistically, they probably sound better. Props to them for carrying on despite the storm, too. We walked back to the streetcar listening to Tesselate in the rain, with lightning flashing in the not-so-distance. It was surreal, almost magic. I am definitely looking forward to their return.
The kitten was fine, by the way.

CHVRCHES
CHVRCHES were up next. I was a little less excited for them - I wasn't even going to go, I bought tickets off a Redditor.  Wow. In terms of atmosphere, this was the best show I have ever been to, hands down. THEY ARE SO GOOD LIVE. Even better than mixed and recorded, I think. The opening act, XXYYXX was worse than Bear Hands. Bear Hands is the standard by which opening acts shall forever be judged. But the rest of the show! They are such an exciting band. I am very excited to see where they go, and thrilled to have seen them in the wonderful Danforth Music Hall. My boyfriend also had an amazing time, and he is normally a Beatles-Zeppelin-Floyd fan, so that is just A+ as well. Recover remains my absolute favouritest of their songs, but Science and Vision is utterly transformed when you see it live. Magnificent.

Bell X1
Bell X1 played my city on my birthday, I'm not sure it gets any better than that.  It was so wonderful, and I don't even want to talk about it. I pine for their return.

Scream It Like You Mean It
I won tickets to Scream It Like You Mean It! The opening bands ( I Am King and Sleep When You're Dead) were atrocious. Worse than Bear Hands. Set It Off were a pleasant surprise. I looked them up afterwards. They're one of those bands that depends on stage presence so they're much better live, but still a good time. They got the crowd moshing on command.
Hawthorne Heights were up next and I was there for Hawthorne Heights. The Silence in Black and White was a huge part of my formative musical experience. They started with NikiFM and I almost started crying. That happened...more than once, and then they made everyone's night and closed with Ohio Is For Lovers.

and I can't make it on my own

because my heart is in Ohio

so cut my wrists and black my eyes

so I can fall asleep tonight, or die

Everyone else was there for Silverstein, but I just never really got into them that much. The crowd got super into it, and there was moshing and a bunch of circle pits, and it felt amazing, it's just not my jams, if you will. Still, they were good fun. 

Story of the Year was up last, celebrating ten years of Page Avenue. God, that album brings back some memories. They were wonderful, but the most meaningful part of it was (mostly) captured on video. I heard the first chords of Ocean Avenue, and I legitimately went weak in the knees. Everything before and after that was just icing on the cake. Lots and lots of delicious screamo icing. I didn't take the wristband off for a week.I feel like that doesn't do justice to them, but they were just so good and it felt so good.

It was the first show I had been to that had a circle pit on stage and in the crowd at the same time. Actually, it was my first show with moshing. I led a deprived, sad existence before I moved to Toronto.

breezeblocks

Long time, no post. What a wait for such a letdown. ;)
I just came to leave the RZA remix of Alt-J's Breezeblocks right here.
It's very good. You should listen to it.
I have tickets to see them next week, yay! First concert in ages.

i've got too many friends

I try. I try so hard not to be that girl who can't let go of the past, the one who clings desperately to I Know and Ask For Answers. Bands grow, and bands change, and I know that - can usually forgive them that, love them for that, at the least accept that - whichever as applicable. I mean, I loved a lot of the songs on Meds, and I think I even listened to Bright Lights once or twice. 
The point is that things change! And that's a good thing. I love falling in love with a band and watching their maturation. 
I just can't get over the fact that they used  the wrong accent on communiqué at 0:22, and no accents at all on Champs-Élysées (0:12).  BRIAN MOLKO SPEAKS FRENCH. The others might as well, I'm not sure. 
I despise that font - despise - and I was originally going to rant about how it was just so goddamn boring, but you know, I think I have decided that that actually works for the song. If nothing else, they never used to be boring; see, for example let's follow the cops back home and rob their houses. 
Nothing about this video screams capslock. It sounds like a trivial complaint, but when you are making a lyric video, it's almost all that you've got, so it's really, really not. 
Brian still sounds good, but everything background is just so BLAH. I find it really hard to look forward to the rest of the album. 
Is the song about having online friends?  I'm okay with that. I just wish they had more feeling about it. Once more with feeling...

what happens tonight

They are so fashionable and they try so (too) hard.
My hatred for music videos which revolve around party scenes knows no bounds, and that extends to Happens In The Dark by Jedward, despite the fact that my love for Jedward knows no bounds.
This song feels so vibrant and positive, but it deserves a music video which more accurately reflects how zany (cultivatedly so, but still!) these twins are.

Now, if you want to watch a PROPER Jedward video, look no further than the Lipstick video.

It has the great costumes, the peppiness, the hilariously choreographed dance scenes (plus bonus cartwheels) and some bits that are just out of left-field. They're dancing on the subway, for fuck's sake. There are shoes with teddy bears.
Also, the hair is better.

it's a drive-by summer

This is a link to that link. 

It is beautiful. Melancholy and gentle, it rocks you like a lullaby. Our boys are at their best when they are being reflective. More than most bands, they can sing about real life, not just the esoteric, and make it feel genuine and important. They remind me of William Blake, in that respect.
Actually, maybe there's even more of a direct parallel there: to see a world in a grain of sand / and a heaven in a wild flower / hold infinity in the palm of your hand / and eternity in an hour vs we're still watching /your rainbow through the shower / and we still see you / in every sunflower. Perhaps they are Romantics.
In Drive-by Summer and Starlings Over Brighton Pier, I hear more echoes of Music In Mouth than I do of Bloodless Coup. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a ~return to their roots~, at least not before hearing the whole album, but it is kind of exciting. It's a style that works for them, and their commentaries on the human condition are so delightfully fresh, lyrically intriguing, and, often, funny that it never feels stale.
Listen a bit longer for bonus Rocky Took A Lover. Be excited with me for the new album, out in late June.

thirteen word review

Holy Jesus never has anyone done anything so good with Call Me Maybe. 

i made this blancmange

Today, this blog reviews videos, not music, and not the skillful melding of the two mediums.


So, uh, Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Swim And Sleep (Like A Shark). Not terribly safe  for work.
While puppet masturbation carries its own unique set of horrors, I was honestly most scared and confused by the laughing horse. 
Puppets: not just for children's birthdays anymore. And honestly, really over-used.

go if you want, i can't stop you

I hadn't listened to much Tegan and Sara for a few years. Then came Heartthrob. It is an enthusiastic and vital celebration of emotions, and the worst of them.
Now I'm All Messed Up is one of the strongest songs on it.

now I'm all messed up/sick inside wondering where/where you're leaving your makeup

now i'm all messed up/sick inside wondering who/whose life you're making worthwhile

There is so much raw emotion in this song. It feels painful, and it feels honest, and it feels relateable. I think that is one of the strongest aspects of Tegan and Sara's work; they have always remained in touch with the everyday and the emotional. Now I'm All Messed Up is one of the best examples of that in their entire discography. 

There is a part at the end where contrasting voices will the other away and then take it all back: go/please stay. I haven't felt so emotional during an upbeat song since No Children.

The strongest part of this, though, is the video. I made my boyfriend (the editor) sit and watch it, knowing he wouldn't like the song, because the editing is *amazing*. The water and ink spots and handwritten lyrics are masterfully woven together and blended with the music. It is gorgeous and, for all that it is "just" ink and water, it heightens the drama of the song. Droplets burst to match the music and it is magnificent.

Seriously. Just watch it.

and one thing i know is true

There are songs that I come back to. The Animals' We Gotta Get Out Of This Place is one.
It was 1998 when I first heard  this song; I would have been twelve, and just becoming musically aware. It was late one night. Back in those days, 89.1 did a countdown at midnight - maybe not midnight, but late at night - and I stayed up religiously to note down the top five songs in my Little Women notebook. I had that notebook until my last move, the important one. I wish I still had it. The back had an extensive list of my (probably now, in many cases, embarrassing) favourite songs, and  the front had two sets of lists. It had 98.1's Top 5, and Rick Dees and the Weekly Top 40's Top 10.
I know that I could just look all that up online, but it's not the same.
Anyways, I remember re-hiding my notebook under my mattress that night, and lying back down. I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't turn on a light and read because I shared a room with my sister, so I just closed my eyes and listened to the music.

we've gotta get out of this place / if it's the last thing we ever do / 

we've  gotta get out of this place / girl, there's a better life for me and you.

I remember feeling changed after I heard that lyric. Lying in the dark, and feeling, at twelve, as though yes, I do have to get out of this place, and yes, that is okay; no, I am not alone.
And that's the best of rock 'n' roll. The song still sounds amazing, even after close to fifty years, but that's not even the heart of it. It doesn't carry any less weight. It still resonates. It still gives me chills.
Escape is a universal constant.
I've held onto this song through my years of running, and I think I'll keep holding onto it, albeit in a different, more nostalgic way as I grow up and older and into myself and my place. Make a home. I won't forget the things that made me and the songs that shaped me. I won't  forget the songs that made me realise that, for better or worse, I was not alone; even more than that, my feelings weren't unique, they weren't even unique to people living in my decade. People had lived through this, and found a way out and through, and had done so for years.
I made a point of never buying this song in any form because I knew that, when I needed it and whether I realised that or not, I would hear it on the radio. I think I will soon be ready to buy this, and say yes, I am able to need this song and what it means to me, and it is okay to have it now; I do not need to wait for it to have meaning because the meaning is inherent and inseparable from the act of listening to it.
I am coming back to it now because my boyfriend and I have, as they say, gotta get out of this place. It's not so dramatic as trying to get out of the ghetto, but I feel like the message still applies. He's trying to move here, I'm just trying to move out on my own. We want to start a life together. It feels hopeless, but I guess we can't really afford to feel hopeless. The Animals would probably prefer that we don't.
So we'll just keep working for it, for that better life. 

RIP Chas Chandler

they advance as does his chance

I bought tickets to see Alt-J at Echo Beach. It's not until September, but I am QUITE EXCITED. I really wanted to see them during their Spring tour, but I missed out on tickets due to....being broke at the time, lol.
So, September!
I've never been to Echo Beach. I'm quite nervous; there isn't much about it in the way of reviews on Google.


9:36pm
I've been thinking more about this. When I said I bought tickets, I meant that I bought tickets - plural - for myself and my boyfriend. After the debacle that was Bell X1, it meant a lot that he agreed to come with me this time. We've always made a point of trying to share that which was important to us with each other, but I feel like that has kind of...fallen off. We've fallen into habits. He doesn't read my blog. That kind of trivial thing. We both want to get out more, and he wants to learn to appreciate the things that I care about - the bands that evoke strong emotional reactions in me, the bands that make me gasp out loud when Songkick sends the tour notification, the bands that I will find the money to see. I want to do the same for him, with the things that he cares about; I do, or I try. We'll maybe try harder. For now, though, we'll just go see Alt-J - Johnny Marr if I can find the funds - and maybe try going to see some local bands instead of going to a movie some nights.
We'll try again, because we love each other, and we want to understand why things are so important.

they say they always visualise their flights at dawn

What I find so interesting about the video for "Heavy Feet" is that they made a conscious decision to overlay the words of the visually-impaired men in text. They made a conscious decision to use their words in a way that the men themselves would never be able to see. Would they do that because they feel that the men already own the words, and so do not need to see them as they are sent out into the world? I do not feel that there is anything sinister, but it is an interesting creative choice.

Everyone - everyone - looks up towards the planes when they take flight. We cannot help it. We want to see that which is leaving us, that which has transcended.
I won't give away the ending.

it's like being inside a dream or something

THOM YORKE DANCING. *drops mic, walks away*

I was tempted to leave it there, but I won't. The video to this (Ingenue - Atoms for Peace) is fascinating. To quote one of my favourite movies, there's truth but no logic. I seriously feel like it all means something, but I am inadequate to discern what. Is  he dancing with the ingenue? Is the ingenue a part of him? Is the other dancer a part of him? Are we all just atoms dancing? I really don't know. I feel inept. It doesn't seem chaotic but it leaves me feeling ungrounded. 

What stands out about this video and this song, to me, is how comfortable Yorke seems with it. He seems to have really assumed a place. I don't feel like it sounds unlike Radiohead, but it is distinctly different.

I am very much looking forward to seeing what else happens with Atoms for Peace.

we are magnificent machineries of joy

My boyfriend told me that, when you google British Sea Power, the first result is the band, not anything to do with Her Majesty's Royal Navy. Quite proud of the little "indie rock band based in Brighton, England". 
They have a new song posted on their website, and it is wondrous. It is beautiful like pain and like life and like love. It welcomes. It embraces. It is a fireplace on a frigid day. It aches. 
I can't stop listening to it.

keep conversations away from your mouth cause they're selling you out

I must be procrastinating an anthropology paper, because all I wanna do is read poetry* and write about music. 

So, Ghost Beach has a song called Been There Before. All over the internet (and currently touring the west coast) from New York City, they describe themselves as "tropical grit pop". I can go with that.
Anyways, back to Been There Before. It is a stellar song. It's gritty and poppy, as they promise, and it's also just interesting, which I honestly haven't heard a lot of lately because I've been listening to dubstep (but we'll get to that in a separate post). Oh So Fresh! Music linked to a remix done by Shook, with the promise that it had "plenty of dance vibes and catchy grooves to help you transition into weekend mode". I'm in. Right?
No.
It was just...bad. It was boring. That is unforgivable in electronic/dance (or even just dance-y) music. You can't take a good song, make it boring, and expect people to dance to it. I understand the point of dance music, but Been There Before and most of Ghost Beach's discography makes you kind of want to flail!dance excitedly because you feel good, and wouldn't you honestly rather do that than be a douchebag to electronic?
Go back to listening to their EP and Modern Tongues, both of which are on their website and on iTunes and all the regulars.
A little bit on Ghost Beach: they do a good job of listing their influences on their Facebook, and there's nothing earth-shattering that I would add - yes, you can hear Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, The Police, and Tears For Fears. I can't offhand think of a good comparison - maybe Beach House on glitter with glowsticks with a bit of that cover The Horrors did of Best Thing I Never Had. You could maybe draw comparisons to MGMT, but they wouldn't be good ones. (But HEY HEY HEY new MGMT album this year.)

Did you know that Ghost Beach was the twenty-second book in the Goosebumps series?


*The Music Lover's Poetry Anthology, ed. Helen Handley Houghton and Maureen McCarthy Draper, with love from my boyfriend for Christmas.

you can fight

 Down, don't don't bring me d-d-down

Dubstep* and I have kind of a weird relationship. I do not fully understand what it is, and I do not understand why I like it.
We'll start with the easier question first: why I like it. Allmusic, according to Wikipedia, describes it as having "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals". Here we go: I can appreciate tightly coiled productions. I enjoy a good bass line, and I certainly love a good go on the drums. Sampling is great, if done appropriately, and of course I like vocals. Straightforward enough. But...okay, that really doesn't seem adequate. Not for what dubstep is, and not for how weird my boyfriend gets about my appreciation for it.
I need to know more about what it is.
Okay! An early supporter was John Peel. I like John Peel well enough. This bodes well. A gentleman called Plastician was an early practitioner...I was talking about neuroplasticity earlier tonight! It is often dissonant and dark...that's kind of like my soul, amirite?
This is actually a super-interesting quote (and I am so sorry that this is from Wikipedia) by Kode9: the "track is so empty it makes [the listener] nervous, and you almost fill in the double time yourself, physically, to compensate". You know, I think he might be right, and I think I like it when my music makes me feel nervous. I think I just want my my music to make me feel. Huh. Maybe dubstep is deeper than I gave it credit for being?
And honestly, I enjoy the drop.

Now, I don't like brostep. I thought all dubstep was brostep, and it's not. DAMN YOU, SKRILLEX!
Then I found The Glitch Mob's remix of The White Stripe's Seven Nation Army, and I started to wonder. Eventually, I stumbled across Adventure Club's remix of Brand New's Daisy, and thought HMMMMM, and I looked into this so-called "Adventure Club", and decided to join their little club.
I'm not even gonna lie, it's partly because they're based in Montréal and I do love Montréal, and rock on, Canada!

HERE IS A YOUTUBE PLAYLIST!

First up, we have Adventure Club's remix of Foxes' Youth. The beginning to this is kind of heartachy - don't tell me our youth is running out / it's only just begun - and then the build to the drop feels like heartbeats, and the drop underscores the theme - don't tell me our youth is running out - and we've only just begun. This isn't a plea don't bring me down; this is a statement that the music will not permit you to bring us down.
The Bassnectar remix of Ellie Goulding's Lights builds to an illuminated crescendo before the drop.  The remix has a strobe light feeling to it, almost more than it has a dubstep feeling, at least until the drops, but it works for the lyrics and the style of the song. I think this has echoes of the brand of dubstep to which you can slam and twirl around on the dancefloor.
We have another visit from Adventure Club - their remix of Lips' Everything to Me.  This is a weird and kind of weirdly awesome official(?) video. You can fight but you won't always win followed by the drop...yes, yes that is good. You can fight but you won't always win.
Moving on, we have the first of two remixes of Meg and Dia's Monster - the Kicks n Licks remix. This one is quite electric, and I feel like it would be getting closer to brostep if it wasn't sampling a Meg and Dia song.
I have selected for your auditory pleasure Dexcell's remix of The xx's Angels. They keep the breathiness of the original, and really dance it up more than they dubstep it up, really. But they do dance it up well.
Metric! Collect Call by Metric! Adventure Club's remix of Collect Call by Metric! Canadians remixing Canadians.  Emily Haines has such a pretty voice, and our lovely Adventure Club remixed to complement it. They let her have her epic parts, and they do the drop (there are good drops in this song) during her quieter parts. This is a well-played, well-shared remix.
There is actually another remix of Meg and Dia's Monster on this list - the DotEXE remix. I think this gets into slightly more hardcore dubstep territory than anything else I've linked, and it sounds a lot more mechanical, but the sweet vocals make that all okay.
Adventure Club makes one last appearance, remixing Brand New's Daisy. I might be biased because I love Daisy to begin with,  but the melancholic vocals remixed against - and it is against - the dubstep background creates a cognitive dissonance that sounds intense. It must be something about humanity versus the machine...
Finally, we have my introduction to dubstep, Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, remixed by The Glitch Mob. You might know it from the GI Joe trailer. It's epic. I have nothing else to say.


*Cue, if this was the type of blog on which people actually commented, a thousand people telling me that the songs I have referenced are not actually dubstep.

pinch myself 'cause too much is not enough

Tonight, we will look at a few new videos.

We'll start with Suede's It Starts And Ends With You. This starts off really Suede-y, and then gets weirdly...boy band. They get it back by the end, but it's a weird few minutes.
I like the video. It's kind of stripped down, but with funky lighting, and it works.  I'm not entirely sure that this is a return to Britpop, but they sound pretty damn good and, while I'm sure they have disappointed numerous fans, I doubt they hate themselves for this one.
So that's good.

The internet would like you to know that this video is "seedy". 
I've got a foetus on a leash. There are no foetuses in the music video for Nick Cave & The Bad Seed's Jubilee Street, but don't worry! It is classic, classic Nick Cave. The song and the video both, and you will love every minute of it. There's a bit at the end where the lightning starts and I think I may have purred. IT FITS SO WELL. The video gets 10/10, but I think I mostly adore the song. I am so excited for this album.
I feel like this should go without saying, but do not watch this video at work or anywhere that it would be inappropriate for someone to notice that you are looking at nude women.

I can't grab the video, so here's the link.

Hey Marseilles released Bright Stars Burning just recently. Is it just me, or does it sound like old-school Death Cab? I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (although probably not a good thing), it's just...a thing. As far as lyric videos go, I suppose this one is above-average in terms of both creativity and quality. There are bits - "you can go back home / but I'll never let go / you can just walk away / I won't leave you  alone" - that are very well done, and others (all the cycling backwards) that just are tired indie cliches.

This isn't a video, it's a link to the Summer Heart remix of Ghost Beach's Faded.

Oh, man, I love this remix. I think it makes me nostalgic for the good bits of summer when I was a teenager. Ghost Beach is one of my current favourites, and this remix does them justice.

just a quickie

Tonight by Theme Park: for when you want a disco-esque, upbeat song accompanied by a video of people pretending to have a better time than you will tonight.

~come on baby let's fly tonight~

richey

I didn't have the heart to post this yesterday, but yesterday marked eighteen years, although only nine for me.
I still hope - maybe even assume - every year that this this year will be the one that he decides that enough is enough and it's time to come home. Maybe not home home, but just to say hello, I am alive, carry on, as you were.
It never happens, of course. His family thinks it so unlikely that it will that they have had him declared legally dead - but the band still puts aside his share of the earnings, just in case. We can't afford to have hope, but we do anyways.
I like to think that he would, at the least, appreciate the conflicting and complicated feelings he generates in us.

I knew that someday I was gonna die
And I knew before I died
Two things would happen to me
That number one: I would regret my entire life
And number two: I would want to live my life over again

sometimes i slide away, silently

It feels like it's been a while, and in some ways, I guess it has. Depeche Mode is back with a new single. It is "Heaven", and Pitchfork has it here.
The video is quite gothy. They're in a church, naturally. The beginning features a skull. The hand gestures at around the one minute mark are stellar. There's some funky bits where their editor just discovered how to make it look like they're going through space.
It is quite good.
It's off of their album "Delta Machine" which is up for release on March 26th. They're also apparently touring in 2013, so should be good!