Sunday, May 14, 2006

waste your life

I just got around to really looking into all the bands playing at this music waste thing I keep hearing about. apparently it's a little indie music festival/concert crawl happening in vancouver from june 1st to 4th. with 64 bands from vancouver and its neighbours, among them my sweet darlings dustin and garret, who keep getting thwarted in their attempts to return to nanaimo to play us a hot show, AND blue grey dots, casey and brian, fury and the mouse, revolution dance hits, colourbook, they shoot horses don't they? the doers, love and mathematics, pink noise, treacherous machete, collapsing opposites, raised by wolves, hot loins, the winks, fake shark real zombie and shapes and sizes. and so many more that I don't know anything about but look pretty damn awesome billed next to all the above bands. fuck.
if I figure out how to sufficiently manipulate time and space I will see ALL of them and tell you all about it, actually, I won't have to bother because you will be there too. however, commitments like radio shows and employment and obeying laws of physics might thwart that plan. click here for the schedule/venue map. and a pass for the whole goddamn thing is fifteen bucks at scratch, zulu and redcat records.

Friday, May 12, 2006

stories of boys who stomp their feet

top albums of 2006 so far:
#1- sunset rubdown: shut up I am dreaming
#2- islands: return to the sea
#3- they shoot horses, don't they?: boo hoo hoo boo
probably also, final fantasy: he poos clouds, from what I've heard it sounds pretty awesome
and, highly anticipated, arcade fire, frog eyes, the shins, regina spektor, swan lake
and surely some things I have not heard of yet.
ok. that's where we're at. it is may.

I have never seen a sun that did not bury his head in the side of the world when the day is done.

last weekend I saw sunset rubdown and frog eyes play at logan's pub in victoria. spencer krug is huge. I mean, not physically, he's kind of small actually. so is his mustache, which I do not understand at all. but this sound. thin and huge and small and huge and quiet and huge and everything loud and inside and gentle and smish smash beautiful and huge and dark chime clang bright deep sun setting humbly majestic rubbing down huge.
sunset rubdown played almost almost only songs from the new album, which came out last tuesday. the lyrics on shut up I'm dreaming are less obscure and more cohesive than on previous releases and wolf parade songs, maybe that is not true, maybe I am just getting very familiar with spencer's style. but the lyrics make so much sense, such a sense of a world of a life, of mutterings of a lover who speaks in tongues. this album is full and whole and perfect as life, with all its snakes and kings and honesty.
and its performance was as full and moving with spencer's voice and hands the gods that make the rest of the world crash and celebrate.

DOWNLOAD: sunset rubdown - shut up I am dreaming of a place where lovers have wings

frog eyes proceeded to catch me up in everything, with a band sound in which less consciousness, more enthusiastic ease of noise. I almost want to use the same words to describe frog eyes and carey mercer's power as that of sunset rubdown and spencer, and, there are similar things, when I listened to the new sunset rubdown jamie came in and said is this new frog eyes? but it is different, in feeling, in depth, in sound, in theme, though which is more what does not explain. it is possible that sunset rubdown is more like feeling deep darkly enchanting emotions through your brain while frog eyes is like being pulled along a darkly enchanted path by your hair in the most urgent but loving manner. more and not at all.

oh, here is a sense of what it is. spencer krug and carey mercer are both geniuses. ok.

frog eyes played a mix of old and new stuff, it has been a year and a half this band has been nudging its way closer to the center of my heart, so moving from the inside, and one new song stuck out at me of which I can only remember a different feeling, different kind of structure a bit, makes me look forward to their new album, due out soon I think.

it was awesome.

not so awesome,
I ventured to vancouver on tuesday with some excited friends to visit islands at mesa luna and witness their magic, but alas, mesa luna decided to cease to exist the day before and we were humans being useless in vancouver. missed them again.

DOWNLOAD: islands - rough gem

now playing: daddy's hands - don't go