So, I listen to a lot of music. Everyone who knows me knows that. I compulsively download, compulsively read about and compulsively listen to music for about 75% of my free time. Luckily music is such that one can listen to it and do other things at the same time. That doesn’t really matter, though.. [...]
From Sept 17-21, I saw four of the best concerts of the year so far. Following is a lengthy but brief account of U2, Lal, Peoples Republic, Saul Williams, Amina, Sigur Ros, Annie and Royksopp live in Toronto and Hamilton over four sweetly consecutive days.
My first review for the silhouette this year.. I whipped it up while waiting for the internet to arrive last afternoon without actually getting the CD out of the shrinkwrap. That’s how hardcore I am. Idlewild – Warnings/Promises Oh, copy control. Thanks to you this CD might “encounter playback problems” on my CD player. Yay! [...]
Holy good goddamn. There are a lot of shows (that is, concerts) coming up that I really want to see. Yes. Some I want to see more than others. Some I already have tickets to. Italicized shows have been attended. (Parenthesized shows mean I probably won’t go, but are noteworthy). Starred shows I have tickets [...]
The first track on Poorfolk’s self titled debut made one thing painfully apparent: naming a CD after another genre and adding some swishy guitars isn’t always enough to distinguish an album from that burgeoning heap of mostly uniform, pleasantly mediocre indie bands, especially when Jonathan Pearce’s voice sounds exactly like half the lead vocalists already [...]
This is what we would call my favourite albums of all time. Anything on this list is quite worth buying. It’s quite possible I forgot some things, and any ranking is interchangeable with most things up to 10 or 15 spots away, because ranking things is silly. But for some reason we love to do [...]
This is a list of my favourite artists and DJs and what have you. It’s not ‘the best’ just my personal favourites. I update it periodically, so it’s usually fairly accurate, though it’s obviously hard to be totally accurate about a list like this. It also tries to be temporally all-encompassing ; that is, not [...]
After just 2 or 3 listens Keren Ann Zeidel’s English debut had snuggled up against my subconscious. The songs all sounded familiar and I already delighted in each one while anticipating the next. Keren’s style is light, easygoing and very difficult to dislike. Her gentle voice caresses your ears as the dreamy but catchy melodies [...]
When listening to Beneath Augusta’s debut, it’s easy to think of Muse with the bombast knob cranked down, combined with a bit of the laudable aimlessness of Elbow-or, more appropriately, to the sound of Bends-era Radiohead B-sides. In fact track nine sounds absurdly similar to “the Trickster,” and while that’s not bad in itself, it [...]
It’s easy to think this album is a little silly, or even stupid. On first listen, I was noted to raise my eyebrow in confusion and disbelief when I heard the striking couplet “Did you take tram #7 to heaven? / Did you eat your banana from 7/11?” Eventually, my incredulity was eroded away by [...]