By Kate McKenna

Vancouver’s Apollo Ghosts appeared, as if from nowhere, and have made huge headway in the past year-and-a-bit.

Their second album, Mount Benson, is getting all kinds of praise.  All their songs are short, and sweet, and very Canadian.  Largely in homage to their hometown, Nanaimo, the most darling song of the album, Things you go through,  straight-up lists the trials and tribunes of being a kid in BC.  “Drinkin Brews, Heartbreak too. Things you go through”.

AC Newman described them as ‘quite awesome.’  When you’re a man of few words, like AC Newman, you gotta make them all count.

They’re coming East-bound this summer, and if the internet is any indicator (and of course it is!) their live show is as fantastic, or more fantastic, than any of their recorded work.  Notably zany, crazy, and unpredictable, Apollo Ghosts have a reputation for keeping audiences on edge.  Ryan from www.catbirdseat.org said they were becoming  ‘things of legend’. So you can’t blame a girl for being curious.

I did a little bit of an interview with them – check it, and East-coast tour dates, after the jump.

Okay – correct me if I’m wrong, but so far as I understand it, your album is a concept album about a man searching the world in a claw-foot tub to find his lost love.

I’m not really sure what a concept record is exactly. . . the opening song definitely has that line about the claw-foot tub. I helped my friend move an old one into his house last summer. They are really elegant appliances. Something very old world about taking a bath that way. He bought this house off an old woman who died in the upstairs tub. Like, that’s how they found her. There are also bathtub races between Nanaimo and Vancouver B.C., or at least, there used to be. The opening lines of ‘Wakesiah’ connect to the lines of a song called ‘Dobermans’ off our first record if you listen carefully. It’s just a knight-in-shining armour / sword in the air kind of start to the record…or at least that’s what I thought. Instead of a horse, it’s a bathtub.

Since the release of Mount Benson, how do you feel your reputation as artists has grown within Canada?  How has being from Vancouver shaped your sound?

What’s your favourite home-town band?  What ought we be listening to?

In no particular order: Role Mach, Collapsing Opposites, Thee Ahs, Chris-a-riffic, Gross Placentas, Mezamazing, Fine Mist, Half-Chinese, Madonna Bangers, Bash Brothers, Aaron Read, Rose Melberg, Pompoir, B-Lines, Nu Sensae, Shearing Pinx, Kidnap Kids, the list goes on and on…

Although your record is fantastic and huge, you’re more known for your stage performances.  How important is performance to you?  Where do you get your sweet costumes?  Is there a difference between your on-stage personalities and your ‘regular’ personalities?

Our live show is a bit more stripped down or raw than the recordings I think. We’re just a three piece and we’re not really interested in playing the wuss songs live. We’d rather get blood and sweat on the strings and jump into the crowd than sit and stare at our shoes. Performance for us is a celebration of life. We like to see people smile and we like to incorporate unconventional elements in our live show. Sometimes we wear capes (Amanda our drummer made them). Sometimes we’ll play for twelve minutes or play lots of covers. Each show should be different in some way. Off-stage we are the same people. I mean, we’re not going backstage anywhere (I don’t think we’ve played anywhere with a backstage) …we’re with our friends in the crowd dancing/shouting/heckling the next band.

You’re coming to the East Coast!  Where do you want to play most?

I think the maritimes will be a big thrill for us. People there just seem so nice. I’ve always dreamed about going to Sappyfest. But we’re excited to play everywhere in a variety of settings. New York will be a mind-fuck!

Amanda Panda, Jay O, and Adrian Teacher - Why did you decide to use stage names?

Also, we’re all a bit freaked out by the internet and don’t want our vitals floating around out there….

Though we started this blog with best intentions of covering the nation, I got stuck at Halifax about a week in. Blogging’s pretty subjective; for instance: Do you like puns? No? It doesn’t matter, because I am the owner of this blog and like puns a lot, so you can either ride this tobloggan to the bottom of the hill or go piss up a blog-rope. Accordingly, now I’m gonna give a plug to my brother from Halifax.

For those of you who don’t know him, Dan Ledwell is the scruffy keytard in In-Flight Safety who wears his shirts too tight. Lately, he seems to think of himself as some kind of producer, and he just wrapped up Jenn Grant’s new album. Apparently they were listening to a whole lot of Phoenix and Kate Bush. It’s going to melt your face off.

Dan makes music by himself sometimes, probably because people don’t want to hang out with him when his bread allergy is making trouble in his tummybox. Last year, he put out a great acoustic record, Two Over Seven, on which he played all the instruments. This winter, he also contributed this stunning reworking of Sloan’s cock-rock masterpiece “Money City Maniacs” to Take It In: A Tribute To Sloan, slowing it down and bringing attention to its halting time signature to give it a “Everything In Its Right Place”-like feel. Way to bro, Mannheim:

Daniel Ledwell – Money City Maniacs (Sloan Cover)

Shannon Pratt, PEI music advocate, is staying for another term as president at Music PEI.

Pratt’s been involved in Music PEI for years. She sits on – literally – every committee, she’s done sponsorship and media relations, and now she’s re-claiming her role as president.

We know Shannon through a host of venues. She’s the one-woman rockstar behind PR company Luck Productions. She tweets like a motherfucker*. And she’s a fixture at pretty much every local show, ever.

Shannon’s optimistic about the upcoming year.

I would like to think that in my first year I did some good and that both the music industry association (MIA) and local music industry continue to grow. . .Ultimately I just want to see the artists succeed and if there is anything that I can do to help facilitate that, I’m there. It’s become a bit of a joke among my friends and colleagues that I tend to ‘give it away for free’ because I have a really hard time not helping and offering advice and/or guidance.

Although Shannon does PR for many island bands, she feels like being part of the industry is a necessity in order to do well as an organization.

The only way to have a strong board is the get people from the industry you work in to volunteer their time. As a volunteer board you want to have the most experienced music industry professionals possible and that means getting people actively working in the business. If you have people active in the music business you are going to have them apply for funding programs offered by MPEI. You do not want joining the MPEI board to be a detriment to their business.

The Music PEI Awards Week and Conference dates for January 2011 will be announcedin the coming weeks.

*Ain’t no shame in that.

If you, like me, remember the early 1990s as a blur of sweatpants, uncooked ramen noodles, and listening to whatever record store leftovers Columbia House sent you,  I hope it’s because you were also, like me, between the age 6 and 9.  Otherwise, that’s pretty rough.  

One way or the other, we likely both probably missed out on Halifax music when bands like Sloan and The Super Friendz were at their peak, showing off the uncanny aptitude that small groups of Haligonian dudes have for singing harmonies. 

Thankfully, this phenomenon persists, and perhaps the best recent manifestation was York Redoubt, whose nationally acclaimed album and free for download EP blended glorious Sonic Youth-y guitar noise and confusion with comparatively clean vocals by three members.

York Redoubt disbanded earlier this year after losing their drummer, but have re-formed as Long Long Long (that’s the letter ‘O’ to all you Morse-coders).  Their new tape, which can be downloaded for free at their Bandcamp page, shows the band taking a more experimental approach to their song structures, with a lot of radical shifts between parts.  Most of these are parts are individually amazing, but the channel-surfing song structures can be frustrating; it’s like you get to watch twenty seconds of The Sopranos before it switches to an ad on TSN where a cat’s wearing a wedding gown.  Both are cool, but by the time you get back to The Sopranos, you kind of want to punch up your little brother and make him give you the remote. 

However, the final track “Joseph Just Walked By” is pure genius.  It’s a rewarding pop song with a culminating guitar breakdown that sounds like Deerhoof at their best, and it still plays around with elements like an atypical time signature and an Ornette Coleman-style saxophone in the middle.

This is a challenging album at times,  but Long Long Long are as great as they are because they’re willing to experiment and be abrasive. The band is immensely talented, and I have no doubt that they’ll continue to do great things.

Get your tickets via Sonic Concerts.

Pop-punk has rightfully become a dirty word. That’s because the modern genre’s pop side is code for marketability and glossy production, both of which are, sadly, not very punk at all.

Unlike that genre, Halifax’s Cold Warps mix the best parts of pop (memorable hooks, harmonies) with the best parts of punk (fast tempos, lo-fi production, a Do-It-Yourself approach).

Paul Hammond and Dom Taylor spoke with me about the band’s exploits via e-mail. Cold Warps are performing at OBEY Convention in Halifax on May 29; you can download their debut tape for free from Hot Money Records: www.hotmoneyrecords.com/songs/coldwarps.zip

Cold Warps – Hang Up On You

Cold Warps – Stupid Tattoos

PAUL: Yeah, I think that we were just looking to kind of go back to that moment in pop music where it just felt super super youthful, and new, and raw. You know, you watch the Beatles in their early days, and it’s basically just four people playing really simple, but undeniably catchy songs, and people were losing their minds over it. And then you go ahead 15 years, and you can see the Ramones doing basically the same thing, but taking the simplicity, and the rawness another step further. And again, people lost their minds. That’s what we’ve been listening to, and wanting to do.. teenage pop that is raw and energetic, and punk.. but with really classically catchy pop qualities.

DOM: Then Pastoralia went and did it even better with their souped-up version of “Science Fiction” (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jMNHLxASGs&fmt=18).

TTM: I think a lot of people will catch The Ramones’ influence in what you’re doing, but could you talk a bit about The Nerves?

DOM: I think Paul or Ryan could probably say more about the history of the Nerves. To me, they are a band that represents what is awesome about power-pop. I guess they are a distillation of my favourite aspects of 60′s pop, but faster. In terms of what we do and how the Nerves (and their side-projects) influence it, the main thing I can think of is that Paul and I were listening to them constantly when we were working on our first songs. We were definitely influenced by their tempos, chord changes, harmonies and general attitude, but I don’t think we set out to write out “Nerves” power-pop songs and, if we did, then we totally failed on that front. We also covered one of their songs, “Many Roads to Follow” at a New Year’s Eve show.

PAUL: Actually, “Many Roads To Follow” was the first thing that Dom and I jammed on together at his house. We spent hours sitting around and practicing “harmonizing”. I can’t comment one way or the other, but witnesses described it later as “really cute”. I think that spending so much time trying to get that super simple song right really got us in the right frame of mind for the band. Also, I think there was a period early in the band where I was listening to “Hangin’ on the Telephone” (which they wrote, and then Blondie later covered and made popular) at least 4 or 5 times a day. That song is incredible.

TTM: You guys give a great background of how many punk and hardcore acts you’ve played in and your love of house shows in your JUNNNKTANK interview. How do bars fit into what your band does?

DOM: Honestly, if there was a way that I didn’t have to play bars, then I would do that. Bars just happen to currently be the location where most music shows, due to a variety of concerns, have to take place. That being said, we take advantage of playing house shows and other non-bar venues as much as possible. Without getting into the issues surrounding the fact that many bar owners seem to put on shows because they want to see a financial gain rather than because they like music in any way, I’m generally opposed to the idea that the only people that can come watch us play have to be of legal drinking age. I’m not opposed to drinking or anything, but I don’t think that your chances of seeing a band should be determined by your age. Luckily, there are awesome people in pretty much every city that are willing to open up their houses, galleries, or whatever to let people of all ages hang out and experience live music.

PAUL: Yeah. Unfortunately, bars are where most people go to see shows. It’s also where you have the best chance of making some money.. which isn’t to say that we play music to make money.. but when you want to keep making music, it’s kind of important that you’re not putting in more money than you’re getting back. You don’t want to lose money just to play shows. I totally agree with Dom that ideally, I would love to have age never be a deciding factor of who gets to see us play. It really bums me out knowing that the shows where kids are welcome are the exception. I like to think that we play bar shows so that we can keep playing all-ages shows and recording/releasing records, which is for everyone.

TTM: There’s the urban legend that the cover art for New Order’s “Blue Monday” cost more to print than the single was being sold for, so New Order actually lost money every time they sold a copy of it. Whether or not that’s true, printing a pile of CDs that people just rip onto their computers seems to me to be an unnecessary expense for bands who are just starting up. Can you tell me about The Cold Warps’ choice to make a run of tapes and give away your mp3s for free download?

DOM: We thought this would make us rich, or at least famous, in the long-run. So far, I think this is working.

PAUL: We really thought that the most important thing we wanted with those songs, as a new band, was to get as many people to hear them as possible. The recording cost us nothing, so we figured we’d just release it into the wild, and hope that people liked it. Having said that … I’m a huge fan of physical media, and so I really wanted to have something I could hold in my hands. I think I can safely say I’m done making cds. I don’t see the point anymore, so in our minds it was either vinyl or cassette, and this release was so lo-fi and it was our first recording, so we thought cassettes made more sense. With cassettes, I kind of view them as a format that’s for collectors and enthusiasts. It’s a really nice object, and they feel really satisfying. I feel like this album was meant to be on tape. It’s just nice to have something real that you can sell at shows.. and people can support the band that way, but still download the songs for free. Also, I’m typing this on a golden keyboard, that I bought with cassette-money. And here we are being interviewed on the actual internet … so, fame: Check.

TTM: As a member of the acclaimed design team Yo Rodeo who have made some pretty incredible album artwork, can you tell me, Paul, what role you would like to see album artwork play in people’s experience of a record nowadays?

PAUL: I still feel that album artwork is super important. I love looking at record sleeves, and cassette packaging, and the way that art colours my experience of the music. I don’t really see album art ever being totally lost. It’s just too important. I remember when Apple unveiled their new “LP” enhanced digital album things.. and a lot of people were calling it the death knell of the physical record and album art… I took a look at it, and basically my reaction was “This? Are you kidding me? This is lame.” And now 6 months later.. I don’t know a single person that uses or even remembers it. It was a super lame attempt to replace one of the best parts of the physical format, and there’s no way that would work. Personally, I think that right now is kind of an exciting time for album art, because as physical formats become more and more niche, and collectible, the packaging really is becoming an even more important part of it. If you’re going to make objects, that costs money.. and if you want people to buy those objects, well, you’re going to have to make them something really special. And awesome artwork and innovative packaging is how you do that.

I should acknowledge that it’s funny I should have such a long-winded and adamant position on that topic, considering that for our tape, I just stole a photograph of The Who and put our name on it. Oh well.

TTM: 
I read on the band’s Facebook page that Dom is moving to Ottawa to become an archivist; despite the hiatus, what can we look forward to hearing from the Cold Warps over the next year?

DOM: Putting out a few 7″s hopefully; one with the Fat Stupids. Also, working on a summer-themed EP/7″. In the near future we are playing Obey in Halifax and the Going GAGA Records’ garage-rock/power-pop music festival in Ottawa (a few other shows around there too). Like you said, I’m working in Ottawa which makes practicing tough, but we get around it in a lot of ways. For example, we usually e-mail each other demos and practice them alone in our dank basement apartment bedrooms. I also like to drink beer in my bedroom. We are all good buddies too, which makes being a band a lot easier and fun.

PAUL: Basically we’re just trying to be as productive as we can, despite the long-distance thing. We’re using this summer to write a lot of new songs. I think that us not playing a whole lot this summer just means that when we do it will be a little more work, and a lot more special. We also spend a lot of time video-chatting, and writing each other emails that say things like “I miss you buddy!” and “WISH U WERE HERE” and doing that thing where you type a < and then a 3 and it looks like a heart, and you do that a bunch of times in a row at the end of every email. I made Dom a friendship bracelet this weekend, so when he comes up here for OBEY, we're gonna give it to him as a band, and then we're gonna cut our hands and be four-way blood brothers. Don't tell him though, because it's supposed to be a surprise!

As Halifax’s The Coast recently reported, the Maritimes
don’t have any candidates for the newly formed Pirate Party of Canada who, from the looks of their platform, have a lot of good ideas about digital privacy, and then also want to entrench one’s right to free shit on the internet via peer-to-peer sharing.  Though this is the way things are going for most music anyway (except Country & Western, which seems to still be able to sell CDs through promoting stars on radio and TV music videos) the platform of the Pirate Party promises to “help music artists educate themselves about earning money through other means than selling records.”   However, as far as ‘other means’ go, most musicians don’t earn any money from their videos, either.       

Which brings me to the impressive collection of videos directed by Ontario videographer Mitch Fillion on his website Southern Souls featuring Canadian bands performing in out-of-character locales.  Like La Blogotheque, these videos give fans a professionally-filmed, intimate look at indie bands, who often play stripped-down versions of their best songs.   Fillion’s great work is in what is possibly the worst remunerated medium of art today: the non-Country internet music video.   And while the Pirate Party is of course right that art on the internet that isn’t offered for free is going to be pirated, I think that the flip side of that argument is that donations should to become a way for people to support independent artists who distribute their work digitally for free already.

So if you get a chance to enjoy the many awesome videos at Southern Souls, you can send an e-mail money transfer to southernsouls@live.ca to help support Fillion to keep making these films, in the same way that you would pay cover at a bar.

Here is a video from Halifax’s Cousins, who released their debut record Out on Town last year on Youth Club Records.  The label was originally founded by Museum Pieces and,  as a post-punk duo with Deerhoof-like guitarwork and high-end vocals, Cousins in many ways pick up where Museum Pieces left off.  That said, they have developed a distinctive sound of their own that is well showcased in this Southern Souls performance.

By Kate McKenna

Kalle Mattson, from Sault St. Marie, are the masters of self-marketing.  Their posters, their press release, and their liner notes reference how they are Wilco, Radiohead, and Pavement incarnate.  Well, that’s not quite true. But they’re still alright.

Their music, which might be comparable to Wilco’s A Ghost is Born* (or maybe The Bends, but not really) is an off-kilter, off-key homage to quiet moments and subtle sadness.  Although the vocals are often out of tune in a way that sounds intentional but also doesn’t sound very good, it’s cute, poppy music.  Kalle Mattson is charming, pedal-laden songs for sunny days.

Mattson has opened for a number of fantastic acts, like Blue Rodeo, Elliott Brood, Great Bloomers, and The Wooden Sky.  The band is pretty young just yet, and they have the instrumental know-how and musical instincts to do great things.  Next time they swing by the island, I’ll drop in.

Kalle Mattson – Hall of Oates:

*Only because “Whisper Bee” sounds a lot like a watered down version of “Muzzle of Bees.”  Like, a lot.

Related: The Acorn, Great Bloomers, Wilco, Minus the Bear

By Kate McKenna

This week, Emily Haines told the world via Metric’s website that she was co-writing Twilight’s new theme song with Howard Shore.  She joins the who’s-who of indie music to be featured on their sountrack.

Can I be the first (or last) to say that I just don’t get it?

At the risk of sound smarmy as hell, I don’t understand why awesome bands are lending themselves to the franchise.  It’s not that I particularly care that Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Beck, and more are lending themselves to cheesy, adolescent girly flicks; it’s that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  I’m not oblivious to an undercurrent of wanting exposure and selling albums, but bands like – say – The Killers or Muse probably don’t need to tobaggon their image to sell records to teenage girls.   I find it exceptionally strange in the case of Thom York, who’s quasi-shunned the music industry regularly.

Although it’s possible that all the bands love the story, it’s more probable that some don’t.  It’s also likely that money’s a driver for a lot of the smaller bands, some of whom are in car commercials.   There’s no shame in that.  There might be shame, or at least hypocrisy, in marketing yourself, or presenting yourself, in a specific way but then deviating as soon as more money’s offered.  Metric might be more or less guilty of that.

My sentiment was – at least in part – shared with director Chris Weitz in an interview with Pitchfork.

“Fortunately, I’m not at the stage where I have to turn anybody down yet, because everything is still kind of up in the air, but I am surprised at some of the bands that have said they’re interested. It’s kind of great. The criterion will still always be what’s right for the movie at that given moment, but Thom Yorke is interested. We might, if we’re very lucky, get Kings of Leon to do something… It’s exciting to be able to have access to this kind of talent.”

Hey PR people, maybe you ought to send Weitz your bands’ albums.

With that said, I loved a handful of songs off the last soundtrack, particularly Lykke Li and Seawolf’s contributions.

Sea Wolf – Violet Hour

Lykke Li – Possibility

The weekend following the Long Live The Queen festival (profiled below), the OBEY Convention music and arts festival organized by the Halifax label Divorce Records returns for its 4th year on May 27-30, boasting another great cast of national and international punk and indie bands, showcases of Halifax visual art and film, record releases, label showcases, and a zine & record fair.  See the full list of acts and events here.  Hot damn.

One of the best shows I saw last year was Dog Day at the North End Church during the OBEY Convention festival; the decommissioned church is an incredible venue that was made all the better by the overhead projections of Dog Day’s album artwork and oil blots that helped create an epic stageshow to compliment the band’s equally epic gloomy shoegaze.

This year, Dog Day play on Saturday night, May 29, at the Bus Stop Theatre in what will certainly be one of the festival’s highlights with the Ottawa minimalist punk act Holy Cobras, Moncton bass-and-drum duo Cop Shades, and Halifax’s Cold Warps, whose incredible recent free-for-download EP takes its direction from 70′s Ramones- and Nerves-era punk (I’d also recommend this interview with the band on the JUNNNKTANK).

Tickets for the OBEY Convention festival are available at here through Divorce Records.

Synastry – Dog Day:

Hang Up On You – The Cold Warps: