BATTLEHIP

Watch this. It's......just perfect.

So since I'm certainly not a writer but feel like something should go up, here are some pictures I took at this weeks Polaris gala. Some have already appeared for the Grid, and Line of Best Fit.

Austra front-woman Katie Stelmanis rocking the stage during The Beat and The Pulse.

Damien Abraham and Grant Lawrence hosting the crap out of the gala.

Galaxie being the over the top rock stars that they are.

Dan Mangan oh so adorable.

Timber Timbre wooing us with his eerie folk.

Camera

Cuddlin Braids.

The drummer from Braids (I'll find his name later) looking on in awe.

Hey Rosetta: The best looking band at the gala.

Taking flight.

Winners Gagnon.

Polaris founder Steve Jordan looking dapper at the press conference.

Win after the win.

In his last post, Kristian eloquently discussed how tough it is to remix Owen Pallett, and he also mentioned the Final Fantasy man's enviable skill with reinventing the work of others. It was a nice consideration of one aspect of what made Pallett so famous, and I totally agreed (not very adversarial, I know).

With that in mind, what greater proof could I provide to back Kristian up than Pallett's incredibly moving cover of My Favourite Band's classic single "Hard to Explain"?

I must admit that when I first heard about Stereogum's tribute to the Best Album of the 00s, I wasn't down with it. I didn't feel Is This It needed any kind of updating, any more reconsidering, or any general fucking with, whatsoever. 

And then a wise friend of mine sent me a link to Pallett's cover of what's probably my consensus favourite track on the album, a song that I actually once sang over and over in my head for an entire month. (I think that month was September 2003.)

Knowing that Pallett is a Strokes fan, and being an admirer of all his other work, I broke down and tried it out.

And I was thrilled. It's positively goosebump-inducing the way those hyper-precise guitars can be transferred so breezily into a dreamy arrangement of strings that sound like they're weeping. My favourite thing about the song is the way Pallett breathes the lyrics, with his barely enunciated tones hiding under a similar layer of lo-fi, kind of like Julian himself. 

All in all, it's just another glorious piece of work from Canada's greatest musician, and I'm glad it exists. (Even if I still haven't listened to any of the other covers. Fuck that noise.)

Remixes aren't a two way street.

For the record, I'm not a fan of the way Odd Future appear to glorify things like raping and killing and using homophobic slurs. Those are things I don't do or approve of in any way. There's a debate raging somewhere in there about the concept of creative license, and simply using those things as a form of shock value to turn people onto the deeper reasons why that kind of horrible stuff might ever go through your mind in the first place, but it's past 3am and I'm very tired and I saw James Blake tonight with Kristian and I'm still in a state of "Look I found her / Red Coat" placidness. 

For the past few years indie rock musicians have been using minimal equipment to try and recreate the sounds of yore. First it was four track surf rock, followed by lo-fi 80's pop. At long last, someone is finally creating college radio rock! Yuck has hit the ground running this past year with a string of seven inches and are about to embark on a tour of the United States to support their upcoming full length. Although they already came and went in Toronto, you can still catch them on the west coast and at Pitchfork's annual music festival.

Granted they may not be doing anything fresh, but the music is solid and it's nice to hear something self recorded with some fidelity for once.

Tonight the boys from Battlehip will be heading out for a night out on the town. The Destination? James Blake at Lees Palace.

Since Rob is a legitimate journalist he will be doing a review for The Grid, Toronto's newest arts weekly. My review will most certainly be much less professional and on this very blog.

Sitting at my day job today, the goal is to immerse myself in James Blake live videos to try and get ready for what's in store. James Blake seems like the type of artist that may be hit or miss live, but after seeing a few videos my expectations are now higher than preferred.

Let's face it: "Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn and John was one of the most emblematic songs of the 2000s, that amazing decade when we all came of age. Not saying it was one of the best songs of the decade, but looking back, it's one of those songs that you'll never be able to forget if you were there. Proof of its power: I think I heard it at every indie dance night I attended for about 18 consecutive months. Some of us still love it, some of us are incredibly sick of it, but it's impossible to deny it didn't affect us in some way (admit it, you whistled that song with a drink in hand at one point.)

Yet just like most people, I had zero interest in Peter Bjorn and John once that song began to fade from our consciousness. I paid no mind to their follow-up projects and didn't have a ton of interest in their new album, Gimme Some. And then I heard it. And it's great. Here is my final review for the now defunct Eye Weekly.

Peter Bjorn and John Gimme Some Four Stars out of Five "These Swedish pop-rock gurus spent the last five years releasing oddball instrumental records, producing pop stars and dabbling in side projects as they attempted to escape from the shadow of their 2006 whistle-heavy hit “Young Folks.” Amid all the expectations (and whispered accusations of one-hit-wonderdom), the freewheeling vibes of Gimme Some feel like long-awaited relief, a confirmation that Peter Bjorn and John have officially shrugged off the hype. The trio’s fiercely unencumbered sound is signalled by their return to a standard guitar, bass and drums formation—a back-to-basics attack that yields a disc full of fun-loving rockers headlined by cowbell jam “Second Chance” and the summery breeze of “May Seem Macabre.” Gimme Some likely won’t yield a track destined to light up dancefloors across the hemisphere, but over-the-top ubiquity is by no means a necessity when all you’re looking for is a good time."

What was originally released as a limited run compact disc, Welcome Home by Ireland's Sacred Animals has found its way online.

Welcome Home is a four track EP of ambient keyboard tracks. It's hard to listen to it without references to Radiohead coming to mind, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing and it works particularly well with the lower fidelity recording.

I have spent my entire day off sitting at home, listening to Cold Cave, and a little bit of Heartbeat Hotel and Foxes In Fiction (to get in the mood for their show tonight at the Magpie on Dundas), but mostly wasting my time watching clips of the best scenes from what's probably the greatest movie of all time — High Fidelity.

So I was all stoked to review the new album by The Kills. I adored their previous one, 2008's Midnight Boom, and I had high expectations for Blood Pressures. I was glad Jack White finally let Alison Mosshart,one of the best singers in the rock and roll game today, out of his JamVan so she could return to writing killer (no pun intended) dancey garage-rock with Jamie Hince. Imagine how sad I was when I realized the new album sucks. Here's what I said:

The Kills Blood Pressures Two Stars out of Five

In the three years since their last release as The Kills, band members Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have discovered new passions: he frequents London’s elegant hotspots on the arm of Kate Moss, and she helps Jack White peddle 7-inch singles from behind the counter of his Third Man Records shop. AlthoughBlood Pressures gathers up the elements that once made The Kills sound so deadly (Mosshart’s sultry vocal turns and Hince’s chugging, bluesy guitars) the reconvening of this transatlantic duo fails to summon the tuneful urgency that made 2008’s Midnight Boom such a stellar piece of garage-rock goodness. Without the hooks, Blood Pressures is reduced to a sluggish, forgettable mess, a clear signal that as these longtime collaborators continue to grow apart, The Kills can’t help but sound like an afterthought.

- Cakes In The Home 7" - Near Marineland Demos - Signals From Pier Thirteen 12"