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Canadian Music Week: Cassie and Maggie MacDonald, Sterling Road

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Cassie and Maggie MacDonald. Photo credit: Haley Anne MacPhee

Cassie and Maggie MacDonald. Photo credit: Haley Anne MacPhee

Previously on NTSIB’s own personal Canadian Music Week: some rock, some punk, some sweet dirty blues, from the rust belt and the praries. Today we’re jumping out to the Maritimes, to Nova Scotia, and to Cassie and Maggie MacDonald, who have an invigorating sound that draws from Scottish, Irish and Cape Breton traditions.

Here are a few tunes from their new record, Sterling Road:

Jimmie’s, written for an uncle and the family farm, is a charming delight, sweet as sea breeze on a warm summer day:

The Dusty Meadow Variations, a glorious piano and fiddle romp:

And finally, their interpretation of Buain A’ Choirce (Reaping the Oats), a Scots Gaelic milling song, which I like because it is both beautiful and gloomy:

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Canadian Music Week: Two Songs from: The New Wild

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thenewwild2

The New Wild are Sean and Daniel Guezen of Winnipeg, Manitoba. They play heavy, bluesy garage rock, the kind of thing that will rattle your bones and pin your ears back if you’re standing in the front row.

This is Dallas, the first song from their self-titled EP, which causes me to sway along in my chair, grinning, every time I listen to it:

And this is Play It By Fear, from the same EP, which is . . . something of a cautionary tale, complete with guitars that burst out like the sharp end of a buzz-saw:

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Canadian Music Week: Heart Static, YouYourself&i

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So, as some of you may know, Canadian Music Week kicks off today in Toronto. I am not there, but, in honor of the occasion, I’ll be shining my light on some Canadian bands and musicians that I love.

First up: YouYourself&i (Daniel Gélinas), of Montréal, Québec, with a new EP Heart Static which I like because a) he does actually use static as an instrument! and b) the songs are like sonic puzzles, full of unusual shapes and complicated connections. The tone is gloomy, in places, but yet also shot through with bright shimmery tones.

As an example, here is Mummies, the first song on the EP:

And also Blubber, which I could perhaps describe as “a heartbroken computer muttering to itself:”

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TIO, A Simple Way

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And now for something that does not involve a couch: A Simple Way, by TIO, of Toronto.

This song is everything I like about electronic music: hypnotic, shimmery, but with a hint of drone, sandpaper and ancient videogames. Plus some ambiguously sexy cover art. Come, let us listen and squint at that picture and wonder if it’s a dick together.

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The Honorable South, Faithful Brave & Honest

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Faithful Brave & Honest is the second full-length from The Honorable South, and while a little bit more mellow than I Love My Tribe, it is no less delightful. Their funky soul vibe is very much intact; if anything the slightly slower pace gives one more space to appreciate their complex jams and Charm Taylor’s beautiful voice.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Overdue, which has trippy alternating tones floating over a slow, hypnotic beat:

Champagne, which is built around a heavy, aggressive rock and roll guitar:

And finally The Sun Dance, which is fluid and mellow and a call to try harder and shine brighter:

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Two Songs From: Jeffrey Martin

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Earlier this week I was, once again, noodling around Soundcloud looking for one thing when I found something else: Dogs in the Daylight by Jeffrey Martin.

Old Good Friend was the first song I heard, and I’ve been sitting with it these last few days, letting it simmer. Thinking about some of my old good friends, and olive branches, and whether I want to extend them. Whether I can extend them. I still haven’t decided.

Dogs in the Daylight is the title track. It’s less of a gut punch than Old Good Friend but really that’s like saying aged whiskey is smoother than new.

Most of the rest of the record is available for test-listening at Soundcloud; I say “most” because it was recently re-issued with four additional songs. It’s excellent, and all y’all should go and listen to it.

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We Were Strangers, I Believe

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I Believe, by We Were Strangers: This one is easy to sink into and get lost in. I made it through twice before I paused to wonder what, exactly, was going on here – were the rich piano tones and lush strings disguising a dark tale of love and kidnapping? Or being kidnapped by love?

The answer, as it turns out, is somewhere between “maybe” and “kind of,” depending on how you feel about settling on one person; per singer and chief lyricist Stefan Melbourne, it’s about “letting yourself commit to someone, and sustaining that.”

Also appearing on this track: James Kenosha (drums and piano) and Lins Wilson (cello). Kenosha, who initially heard the songs when Melbourne posted them under the name The Works of Isaac, also acted as producer. The band is from Manchester, but their first show will be at the Bedroom Bar in London on February 25th; check it out if you’re in town.

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Friday Morning Jam: Smoking Ghosts, Maybe Tonight I’ll Find You

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Ok kids, let’s start this weekend off right, with Maybe Tonight I’ll Find You, a jaunty noir-inflected romp about looking for true love in mildly unsavory places by Smoking Ghosts, featuring Liana Lewis Agredo. It’s from their new EP, Flores De los Muertos, which is, on the whole, quite good. Refreshing is probably the best word for it; I heartily recommend it

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HT Heartache, Sundowner

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Sundowner is the second record from HT Heartache (Mary Roth), of Los Angeles, CA. And, for a record named after a biker gang, it’s surprising mellow. It’s also awesome: there isn’t a single song that’s filler, not even one note out of place.

I like to put it on in the evening and sink into it like a warm bath.

Ok, a warm bath with strong noir undertones that – just to totally mix metaphors here – if it was a person, very likely wear red lipstick and would regularly be asked to surrender all of her knives. She wouldn’t, of course, she’d just hand over the ones people can see. But they’d try.

The first song is Trenton, and it sets the tone for the whole record: meditative, melancholy, sharp and lovely:

These next two are just my favorites.

Soft Rain, for the velvety texture of the interplay of her voice and the melody:

And Darkside, because it’s the most up-tempo tune on the record, and fun to sing along to:

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Video: Jameson, Breathe Your Last

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This is the video for Breathe Your Last, by Jameson (Jameson Burt), from his new EP Carnivore.

It considers, visually, the battle between artist – writer, in this case – and demons, and artist and self, and contains some weird Fight Club-style bloody violence and Blair Witch-style shaky footage of one man’s mind coming apart at the seams. There is one extended scene with words melting off a blackboard that is seriously the stuff of nightmares for anyone who keeps little piles of scribbled chunks of story and notes-to-self laying around. On the plus side: our hero does climb out of the nightmare pit at the end and presumably lives to fight (and scribble) another day.

Jameson Burt - Breathe Your Last - Official Music Video - TV Edit

Some thoughts about Carnivore as a whole: I’ve been listening to it on loop for the last couple of days, and it is the kind of record that 1) will stand up to that kind of test – I have yet to get bored with it and 2) blooms under that kind of scrutiny. Breathe Your Last has a distinctly Americana sound, but the rest of the songs don’t really; they shimmy all over the indie rock spectrum, borrowing from a variety of genres including art rock (for lack of a better term), world music, and whatever we’re calling what Don Henley was doing in the early ’80s.

You can listen to more of it at his Soundcloud, but I’m especially fond of Liar: