Somewhere among the rain-filled streets of Vancouver is a neighbourhood called Main Street and within this “hood” is a light blue panelled house with a tire swing out front, just like the one in The Wizard of Oz. To the naked eye this house might appear to be like any other on the street—ordinary, pedestrian even—but things aren’t always as they seem. What goes on inside this unique abode is more technicoloured than you could imagine. Beyond the gated backyard, up the stairs and down the hall lies the quaintest wooden breakfast nook of all nooks. It is here in this nook, on this rainy day, that my interview with Robbie Slade and Peter Ricq of Humans takes place. (more…)
The Pointed Sticks, though only in existence from 1978 to 1981, played alongside DOA, Devo, Avengers, Dishrags, Buzzcocks, toured in the States, pressed four highly acclaimed 45s, performed in Dennis Hopper’s cult classic Out of the Blue and eventually became the first Canadian band to be signed to England’s Stiff Records. They blew up quick, in more ways than one. When Stiff decided to go with producer Nigel Gray over Bob Rock, the sessions flopped. The Sticks retreated back to Vancouver to record their LP, Perfect Youth—an album so melodically unrivalled it remains the epitome of Canadian power-punk—but by the time it was released, the band had disintegrated. (more…)
Petroleum By-Product are bratty. They’re young, snotty and nearly a cliché of what happens when you send your kids to alternative schooling. This isn’t necessarily a problem when you play in a bratty, snotty, alternative-schooled new wave act, but it does mean that to get to the core of them in an interview you had better be too cool for Christmas and hate the government. Their defiance possibly comes from leftover voices from Vancouver’s early Eighties punk scene, or is perhaps just the contrarian opinions of youngsters, but at the very least it plays well on stage and in song. The trio consists of Sally Jørgensen (Synth, vocals), Vanessa Turner (bass) and Robin Borawski (percussion) and they have just self-released their first EP, a 12” vinyl called Superficial Artificial. The record, which was recorded by Felix Fung at Little Red Sounds, features contributions from Nicholas Macmillan, Justin Gradin, Ryan Dyck and Sean at Nominal. This is the voice of Vancouver’s youth. (more…)
The debut EP from Babe “The Pride of East Vancouver” Rainbow came out today on Warp Records. Check out the creepy video for Shaved made by the boys at Salazar.
Junior Major were a garage-y, poppy, punk-ish band from Vancouver. They featured Katy Horsley on baritone guitar, Adam Sabla on drums, his younger sister Suzy on vocals and were a spunky little outfit. Their debut album Secret Magic’s 11 song, 30-minute run was propelled along by the aforementioned fuzzed-out baritone, Suzy’s oft-compared-to-Karen O vocals (which alternated between ‘come on’ croon and ‘don’t fuck with me’ sass), and a well-honed sense that rock and roll should be, you know, fun. (more…)
Vancouver used to suffer from a small town complex. For a city of its size, it always felt kind of insular, isolated, even low key. You’d see the same people every day, there’d be little or no hustle and bustle downtown, the night life was always shitty and the music scene was so underground and cliquey it almost
seemed covert. (more…)
I’ve never been to Israel. I’ve never dated an Israeli man. I haven’t even fucked a guy who could have possibly been so much as a quarter Israeli. Maybe my vagina is kinda racist?
I had heard that Israeli men approach women differently than those in North America, that they can be dominating, forward and archaic when it comes to sexuality and gender. But these are just stereotypes. I’m not one to take any of this hearsay as irrefutable fact. But I’ll reluctantly admit that when I went to meet the three Tel Aviv musicians who make up the rock band Monotonix, I felt like I was walking in with a boob-related handicap. (more…)
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Norway. With its abundant natural resources, one of the world’s highest standards of living, universal health care and subsidized university education, Norway is a bit like Canada’s smarter, more attractive, Scandinavian cousin. We know that if we just hit the gym a little bit more, maybe learned a new language or two, we might be interesting and popular like Norway—heck, maybe we’d even get to pick a Nobel Prize winner—but we don’t and we resent them for their accomplishments. Sondre Lerche encompasses much of what is potentially loathsome about Norway. Charming, talented and boyishly handsome to boot, the indie pop singer/songwriter from the Norwegian coastal city of Bergen has been performing since the age of 12 and earning raves since the release of his first album, Faces Down, at the age of 18. That album won over critics both at home and abroad, landing the just-out-of-high school singer a spot on Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of 2002 and garnering him the Best New Act award at the Norwegian Grammys. Since then he’s been recording and touring pretty well non-stop, with a string of acclaimed albums, E.P.s and even a film soundtrack (for 2007’s Steve Carell vehicle, Dan in Real Life). (more…)
Two words to greet a pretty girl. But for the girl, a renaissance. Annie, the blonde beauty and mononominal pop star from Norway, emerges from the London Underground on the third day of autumn, and she’s met with those words – the very same that open her long awaited sophomore album, Don’t Stop. There, the opening track begins with an emphatic roll of drums, the long sounding of an apito whistle, and then, “Hey Annie!” It’s a chorus, a call to arms to stop waiting around and do something. In this case, dance. And after more than a year of delays, disputes with her former label, Island Records, and at least one tracklist shuffle, there’s perhaps an element of surprise in those words too. Because they don’t just signal an introduction—they signal a hard-won reintroduction. And they’re not just for any pretty girl. They’re for Annie, bubblegum pop’s comeback kid. (more…)
