Weird Canada may have blogged about them first, but I’d already heard about them and thought they were really cool. Winnipeg’s Cannon Bros make noisey mid-fi classic Canadian indie – if you’re Canadian and know anything about indie rock, you know the sound I’m talking about. That great, homey, snowey Sloan/Weakerthans/Wooden Stars-kind of sound. Anyhow, they’ll be coming to Toronto sometime soon, we might get to do a show with them 
Sleigh Bells‘ first album Treats was cool – those sugary female vocals, grinding harmonic guitars and huge ass beats were such a simple but effective combination it was kind of a wonder nobody else came up with it sooner. Their latest album, Reign Of Terror, sees them asking, “What would happen if we did some like…poppy stuff? Or slower stuff?”
Sacrificing not an iota of the band’s bad-assness, on Reign Of Terror Sleigh Bells manage to actually make their sound ‘pretty’, especially in songs like “End Of The Line” and “Road To Hell”. And when they do, the result is just brutally glorious. I love it. It’s kind of like if you did a steroid remix of the third (and best) Raveonettes album, Lust Lust Lust. Some uber hardcore pretentious types might call ‘sell out’ on it for tossing in the hooks, but anyone who didn’t get them before is unlikely to get them much more now. My call is that a really cood band just got a lot cooler.
Sleigh Bells will be playing The Phoenix in Toronto on March 26th.
Friend of the site Toronto bed-gazer Philip James (also of booze-gazers Labor Day) has a new EP up on his bandcamp called Mind Drone. As with previous EPs, it continues to improve upon its predecessors.
The other, less publicized project of Vancouver artist Jameson of Teen Daze semi-fame, Little Chords make solid, bedroom shoegaze. The new weird-music blog collective Portals requested this great track below for an aborted project you can read about here.
As is not infrequent, Pitchfork is 100% correct in giving Montreal samplegaze experimentalist Grimes’ latest album, her first full-length for 4AD, Visions, the ‘coveted’ Best New Music distinction and and an 8.5/10. It is a phenomenal album: consistent, inventive, original, and astoundingly accessible. I had already been growing more and more favourable to Grimes‘ earlier work – which I first thought good but a little too ‘grimey’ and weird for casual listening, but this totally surpasses it in every way. It feels bigger, more expensive, more experimental, catchier, melodic, even danceable sometimes. Not to get carried away, “bonny bear?”-asking friends will still think it ‘s the kind of music the skinless humans in the second planet of the apes movie might listen to while having sex – but anyone who’s sympathetic to the weirder sampletastic shit that’s been pretty hot of late will likely agree with me on this one.
I first met and saw Grimes at a Rich Aucoin Tiger Bar show being put on by Snakes + Ladders, the promo company/blog of Daniel Woodhead – Moon King maestro and brother of Airick Woodhead, who’s Doldrums project is featured one of the albums best tracks, “Colour Of Moonlight (Antiochus)”. I didn’t think this skinny chick with a strange haircut would end up being a Pitchfork darling, but I was clearly very wrong. And I’m glad that I was, as it shows that we’re moving towards an increasingly experimental-friendly indiesphere, with the boundaries determining what is just ‘too weird’ to get popular being demolished by the day.
I’m totally late on these guys but whatever. Boy Friend is an Austin-based dream-pop duo. Definitely mining the same gorgeous territory as Beach House. New album Egyptian Wrinkle is out now on Hell Yes! And it is prettyyyy solid.
Photo: Katherine Squier
So this is pretty cool. Our friends over at No Fear Of Pop did a little post about DIY being made over in Pakistan. Grunge-y shoegazers Orangenoise caught my ear.
Photo: Nefar Seghal
friday, march 2nd @ tiger bar, basement of the crown and tiger, 414 college st. (near bathurst) // free // 19+ // doors at 9
