This Friday I'll see Neko Case live for the first time.  A perfect primer, her recent concert in Washington, DC recorded and podcasted by NPR. I've edited it down for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Download: Neko Case - Live in Washington

Patrick Watson is one of the bands I've discovered in recent years who has made it onto the list. It's ever-growing, but limited to those who really get me good. The ever-growing part excites me, suggesting music is getting better. Or perhaps my tastes are changing and with more genres to pluck from I'm finding more greatness. Whatever the case, it's an amazing time in popular music.

Their follow-up to 2006's Close to Paradise (for which they won the Polaris Prize - Canada's Mercury) continues in a similar direction. No major shifts, really, though it's got its own energy. While Paradise felt like a gigantic opus of grand sounds, Wooden Arms has a few more moments of quietness, smallness. On "Man Like You" it's downright tiny, just vocals and an acoustic guitar, an album high-point, Watson's voice reaching into the highest parts of his limitless upper-range.

While slightly more intimate than their last effort, this one loses none of the manic, driving intensity. If you've ever heard an interview with the guys from the band, their surprisingly easy-going. I would have thought they'd be boorishly intellectual, but no. They are kind of dopey and quirky, actually.

With just enough blips and blops to satisfy my secret love of Space Rock, Wooden Arms moves through a lot of influences - Everything from cinematic orchestral ("Hommage") to plucky country on "Big Bird in a Small Cage" through to circus-dirge on "Traveling Salesman". It's one of those albums that grows with each listen, new sounds heard each time. While not everyone's cup of tea, I'm sure, it's definitely mine and will be on my playlist for many years to come.

Download: "Man Like You"

Rating:

Patrick Watson's new album, Wooden Arms, has leaked. I am so excited.

So, I'm going through a bit of an Antony phase. After downloading his fantastic concert podcast, I've been listening non-stop to his entire catalogue. Newly released, the Epilepsy is Dancing single includes a b-side from their Crying Light sessions called "Where is my Power". A great track, percussive and plucky, it's a bit of a sonic departure, though I would have loved to see it on the album proper. The album art is also quite lovely, very Bjork-esque.

Download: "Where is My Power"

You all know how I feel about iTunes, iPods, and all things Apple. Well, further to that, I wanted to gush for a moment about podcasts. While not everyone should have one, anyone can, so that means there can be a lot to wade through. National Public Radio, however, provides some really great ones, from features on writers and personalities to live music. Obnoxiously well-read hosts and interviewers notwithstanding, these are the podcasts I tend to go for.

I recently snagged the live concert and interview they did with Antony Hegarty (and the Johnsons) in February and it's amazing. Not only are podcasts free, but they're generally quite high quality. So, for nothing, you're getting a live concert album that wouldn't be released for commercial consumption. Marvelous!

Using Adobe SoundBooth, I imported the large, uncut, nearly-two-hour MP3 file and chopped it up into tracks, faded in, faded-out, the whole nine yards. I tossed together some album art and everything. Please enjoy.

Download:
Antony and the Johnsons

Live in Washington

There are certain songs that take me back to high school. Anything by the Spice Girls, for example. My dear friend Sandi and I spent a lot of time listening to music. We did a lot of duetting Sarah McLachlan songs (see: Teenage Fagatron) while Sandi plucked her acoustic guitar. As years went on, our musical tastes changed. After the Lilith Fair phase, we went through the requisite Can-Rock phase, which included Our Lady Peace, The Tea Party and Moist. We attended EdgeFest. We rocked out.

In our last couple years of high school Sandi started a band and while I remember our time with The Smashing Pumpkins and Jewel, the overarching musical-memory of our teenage experience will always be her band, a pop-rock quartet who pumped out punk-lite songs about secret crushes and bitchy girls from English class. Ironically, I promise. We spent nights at gigs and weekends at indie rock festivals hosted by rural Ontario hedonist campgrounds. Or something. It was a strange and beautiful time.

Sandi's band evolved and got more intense, less poppy. They ditched their Veruca Salt overtones and got a bit dark, a bit first year college. Eventually the group disbanded; one member joined the Green Party, another got married, and the third (an inexplicably tall, blonde girl) got pregnant. Or her sister got pregnant. Or something. It's all a bit hazy.

Sandi and I moved to Toronto and she soon assembled a new band, The Guest Bedroom. Described as "brain-infecting, angular post-punk pop" (Now Magazine, NNNN) they have definitely carved out a place in the Toronto music scene. I won't gush, because Sandi wouldn't stand for it, so take a listen. If you're in the city, check them out live.

Download: "Planted" from their new EP and visit their site for more.

But while I'm walking down memory lane . . . Since preparing for our big move, I've been digging through many boxes, purging as much as I can tear myself away from. Out with old movie stubs, but in with the letters and report cards. I was also happy to stumble upon CD-Rs filled with wonderful (read: hilarious) memories. When Sandi was in college studying music production we recorded a few little songs together. Just for funsies. When we lived together we recorded one last song, a cover of Aimee Mann's "It's Not". It's a terribly low-fi glitchy little thing, but it's nice. Take a listen. Sandi and her impromptu white-girl rapping on the bridge will live in my brain as one of the best things to ever happen.

Download: "It's Not" recorded by us in our living room in 2003

Julie Doiron's new album I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day starts and ends enthusiastically, with "Life of Dreams", a plucky minute-and-a-half complete with bird-chirps, and "Glad to be Alive", a list of reasons she's . . . well, you know. If you're a fan, your heart swells upon first listen; anyone who has followed her knows of her emotional ups and downs, so to hear her sound up is like knowing a dear friend is in a good place. This collection runs the gamut between her early 90s noise and her more-recent skeleton-purging autobiography.

Doiron is as straight forward as they come. No bullshit, she's a genuine lady whose made a serious mark on the Canadian music landscape. From her early days in Eric's Trip to the misery-ridden era under the Broken Girl moniker to Indie Soccer Mom moments on more recent albums, she writes and records from a startlingly raw place. Few modern artists are as laid-bare, sometimes to the point of indiscretion. There's almost nothing we don't know about her, from her issues with booze to her children to her recent divorce. Somehow it never reads as self-indulgent, but rather, a reminder to note the particulars of daily life, or sometimes as a cautionary tale.

This album is, often, considerably more amped-up than recent releases. With nods to her days in Eric's Trip, she shouts and sings in full-voice atop a band full of guitars and drums and a cacophany of fuzz. (It might seem strange to those who don't know her, but suggesting she sings in more than a whisper is saying something. In concert, crowds are hushed as she fumbles charmingly through her catalogue and awkward stories between. It's one of the most intimate concert experiences available, catch it if you can.) "Consolation Prize" is full-on, and, for me, edging into a genre I have trouble with. Picks scraping along strings and the sound of a rotary telephone being thrown through an amp are just a bit hard for me to get behind, and perhaps even a bit overwrought. I'll likely stick to songs like "Blue", a ghostly dirge laced with harmonies. "Heavy Snow" bridges the two perfectly.

For me there are artists who can do no wrong. Julie Doiron is one of them. While my favourite part of her discography will likely always remain the gorgeous 2002 companions Heart and Crime and Desormais, I appreciate it all. Everything from Julie sounds like a secret, and thus, an honour to be privy to.

Download: "Blue"

Rating:

If you haven't climbed on-board, come on! Allow me to satiate/convince you with one more track from Neko Case's incredible Middle Cyclone.

Download: "The Pharaohs" and head to iTunes for the rest. Seriously. You can't miss this album. Come December it'll be on all the lists and you'll feel like a fool for missing ten amazing months in its company.

Read the review I posted on These Roving Eyes for more info.




My friends and loved ones really like to rip on me about my taste in music. Jeff (whose favourite bands include Coldplay) likes to joke that I have the taste of your average Art House Lesbian. After all these years his prodding still gets me. I get my back up, reeling off the reasons why Rachael Yamagata is fantastic, or why Annie Lennox is a legend or why Neko Case is one in the making. My friend Nick got in a real good one just the other day. While listening to music, my iPod inevitably shuffles to any number of "girly" artists. In his hilarious accidentally-funny way he proclaimed: "Your iPod would make anyone get their period three days sooner." Now, while I resent the sentiment, I appreciate a zinger like nobody's business.

Neko Case releases her much-anticipated follow-up to the bananas-amazing Fox Confessor Brings the Flood on Tuesday and all I can say is: Jesus Christ. A perfect next-step, this album has a similar feel to Confessor, though stands on its own entirely. Case is an exacting musician, her phrasing and diction clean and organized, her tone effortlessly pitch-perfect. Listening on headphones (you must!) you hear every breath and each pause, utter control over every aspect of the record. That said, there's nothing robotic about her. It's simply pure talent and musicianship. And she surrounds herself with the same; guests on the record include M. Ward, Garth Hudson, Sarah Harmer, members of The New Pornographers, Los Lobos, and Calexico.

"This Tornado Loves You" gets the album started in a frantic and mildly-manic state, a runaway song convincing a man she loves him. "I miss the way you sigh yourself to sleep." With a jittering guitar under the whole thing, it races along and gets your feet stomping.

"The Next Time You Say Forever" is just shy of two minutes long. She has a way of writing chorus-less songs that just drive, leaving you wanting so much more. When each set of sounds happens just once, you pine for more. We're so used to a great harmony coming around two and three times, but Neko insists you just listen to the album on repeat if you want that. "I've been away for so long, I've lost my taste for home. And that's a dirty fallow feeling to be the dangling ceiling from when the roof came crashing down." And a wordplay mastermind to boot. Throughout her entire catalogue she dangles great runs or melodies, but sparingly. 1:16 into "Vengeance is Sleeping", a swell of harmonies never heard again makes you want it all the more.

"Polar Nettles" is a great example of something else Neko is skilled at. Sometimes the character she sings about doesn't particularly interest, the story, the setting, something doesn't grab you, but then a little detail in the music does: 1:23-in, a rattling snare drum makes this song. The first time I heard it, it caught me off-guard and I could feel my eyes widen, my smile too. My stomach dropped a little and I scanned back to hear that again. Fantastic. Those dangling moments, so unexpected.

"Did someone make a fool of me, for I can show 'em how it's done." At her best on tracks like this one ("Middle Cyclone") she sings three verses about something other than an old-timey murder, in this case, it seems, her own inability to get close to others, singing "I can't give up acting tough, it's all that I'm made of. Can't scrape together quite enough to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love." All to a quiet guitar and the twinkling of a little girl's ballerina musicbox. Economical songwriting like this is so rare, so perfectly restrained.

Download: "Vengeance is Sleeping"

Rating:

Julie Doiron - Heart and Crime (2002)
Sending the Photographs









Emily Haines - Knives Don't Have Your Back (2007)
Reading in Bed









Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue (2008)
Trying My Best To Love You
(2008)








Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (2007)
Rich Woman









Tegan and Sara - The Con (2007)
The Con

Fleet Foxes
Blue Ridge Mountains
(2008)

Just because this song is amazing.
Go buy something on iTunes by Fleet Foxes.