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Out Standing In Their Field

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

So what with yesterday being fairly quiet thanks to the US holiday, the biggest news was the announcement of the lineup for Coachella 2008, and the general reaction seems to have any excitement of the presence of Portishead and The Verve on the bill being offset by the overwhelming meh-ness of Roger Waters and Jack Johnson resulting in a net net output of raging indifference with a chaser of indignation.

Now Coachella was not and is not on my radar - I'm not a "standing in the desert" kind of guy and not even if the My Bloody Valentine rumours were true (their management debunked those months ago, by the way, saying that the June gigs in the UK would be their first) would I have hopped a plane to wherever the hell Indio, California is.

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The Harrowing Adventures Of...

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

Tokyo Police Club will finally release their debut full-length Elephant Shell in late April and have put together some extensive touring plans to promote. It kicks off tonight in Oakville (my hometown and a burg that didn't even have a rumour of a live music scene when I lived there), winds around a number of Ontarian campuses and stops in at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on the 26th for a free show. Then, in mid-March they launch a full-scale North American tour for six weeks, hitting pretty much every town you can think of and will return home - hopefully triumphantly - for two shows at the Opera House on May 2 and 3. So far the only taste of the new record is this single, which was released as a single last Summer.

Video:

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Subtle Changes

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

While offering an almost textbook example of classic indie pop done Swedish-style, Sambassadeur's self-titled debut failed to really grab me. With its jangly guitars, sweet and wispy girl-boy vocals and melodies you could bob your head to it certainly had the right ingredients but for some reason it came off just a little weak for my tastes.

But with their sophomore album Migration, released in Sweden last year and officially out in North America as of this week, they've managed to tweak something - or maybe everything - just right because I was hooked from the first listen - the new songs have an extra oomph that makes them irresistable. From the glorious strings on "Subtle Changes" through the unabashedly '80s danciness of "Final Say", Migration manages to be both extroverted and demure at the same time, evidencing the wonderful stoicism that's a hallmark of great Swedish pop and I find it goes great with the glitzier clothes.

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Hold On Now, Youngster

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

AOL Music Canda considers the glut of underage (or exceedingly youthful) bands coming up through the rock'n'roll trenches these days, based on the adventures of Welsh ragamuffins Los Campesinos! and Toronto's (via Newmarket and Midland, respectively) Tokyo Police Club and Born Ruffians.

The Times has a similar-themed piece, but wonders more about how - between the gigs, driving and general rock'n'roll debauchery - they have time to do their homework? Gareth Campesinos (and others) responds. This Is Fake DIY talks to him about their plans for 2008, which includes releasing their debut full-length Hold On Now, Youngster... in North America on April 1 (February 25 in the UK) and Crawdaddy talks to he and some of his bandmates about punctuation and being (or not being) "twee".

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Those Are Words You Used To Say

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

Men's Vogue has an excerpt of Dean Wareham's forthcoming memoirs Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance, which will be released March 13. Not surprisingly, they chose what most would consider to be the "juiciest" part of the book to reprint - Wareham very candidly detailing how Britta Phillips joined the band, the start of their relationship and the end of his first marriage (in that order). Luna fans were probably equally confused/suspicious/intrigued by it all when it went down but were too polite to inquire. Now we know.

Back here in the present, Dean and Britta will be hitting the road next month and be in town at the Mod Club February 9. They've started up a blog to follow their exploits on the road and will have a new EP of remixes from last year's

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CONTEST - Zaki Ibrahim @ The Mod Club - January 29. 2008

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

It's hard to believe that there was a time when being compared to Amy Winehouse could be considered complimentary, but NOW meant it in the best possible way when they compared this week's cover girl, Toronto soul singer Zaki Ibrahim to the troubled British diva. Even so, I don't necessarily hear it - where Winehouse trades in deliberately modern-retro soul, Ibrahim has got more of a contemporarily urban R&B, hip-hop thing going on. But if Winehouse-scale success is in the cards - preferably without the substance abuse problems or terrible dye jobs - I'm sure she'll take the comparisons.

Ibrahim is playing the Mod Club this Tuesday night, January 29, and courtesy of REMG I've got two pairs of passes to give away to the show. To enter, send me an email at contests

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Ghost Under Rocks

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

So the sabbatical I've been taking from seeing live music for the past few weeks has evidently done me a world of good because not only was my narcolepsy under control before heading into Saturday night's triple-bill at the El Mocambo, but I was actually eager to get out and see some bands play. And the lineup that was going to ease me back into things was a varied one. You had the headliners - Syracuse's Ra Ra Riot - whom I covered last week, Toronto's own The Coast, whom I've covered many times before, and from New York City The Virgins - whom I'd never heard of before this show.

But just because they were a blank slate to me, it was obvious right away that they weren't unknowns as the front of the stage was packed with showgoers ignoring the proud Toronto tradition of standing at least 10 feet back during opening acts.

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From Here To Eternity

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

I'm not quite old enough to have lived through The Clash - I mean I did, but at the time they didn't mean anything my 7-year old self - but even discovering them properly as I did some 15 years after their dissolution, it was obvious how powerful their music is and why you could argue the epithet, "the only band that matters", still applies today. But I was never a Clash fanatic and so it's just as well you don't need to be to appreciate Julien Temple's new documentary on the band's late frontman, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.

Opening locally this Friday, it's a fairly straight biopic tracking John Mellor's life from his childhood through to becoming Joe Strummer and musical journey until his untimely death in 2002 of a heart attack.

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Bring The Noise

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

Last week, I made a vague, arm-waving attempt to round up the various outdoor festivals taking place around North America this year (and since it went up, a few dates have been updated and one fest has been cancelled) and consciously avoided including their mutli-day, club-hopping, running water-friendly brethren.

That's because aside from the obvious big ones - SxSW and CMJ - they tend to be smaller or more regional events and thus largely off the radar of anyone who doesn't live in the vicinity. On top of that, they're also more likely to be industry hack-scummy rather than corporate sponsorship-scummy (though certainly not exclusively so) though there are happy exceptions. Pop Montreal has been a fine example of an in-city festival that can be very fan- and artist-friendly and one that I've had the pleasure to both attend and by

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Icing Sugar

Posted Jan 31st 2008 3:00PM by Jennifer Phillips

Since discovering The Airfields way back in Summer of 2005, it's been a treat watching them evolve. The trip may have been slow and occasionally difficult but each signpost along the way, from the whispery 4-track under the bedcovers charm of their debut City-State through the unexpected confidence of 2006's Laneways EP and then last year's limited edition teaser Yr So Wonderful, pointed to great things just down the road. And now, with the release of their debut full-length Up All Night, that promise has been delivered on.

The sounds of shyness that hid behind tape hiss on the debut has grown into a healthy musical extrovert, happy to embrace the awkward charm of its youth as well as revel in the more visceral joys of plugging in and turning up loud. The record pays homage to the...

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