Peasant at Rancho Relaxo was rather pleasant

"I could take this photo a million times and I would still look the same." - Damien DeRose, aka Peasant

I didn't know a lot about Damien DeRose, better known as Peasant, before going to see him at Rancho Relaxo in Toronto last Thursday night. Joanne, who also writes for the blog, has been a fan for quite the while so I've heard that he's a singer-songwriter with a simple vocal-piano-guitar sort of set-up, and that his music is very pleasant and honest. I was baffled to arrive at the venue to see the poster for the night's lineup. To me, it seemed kind of off putting to put the soulful solo artist with his acoustic guitar and apologetic but endearing smile onstage following local acts "The Panty Peelers" and "The Dildonics". Seriously, guys?

So following a surfer-rock set by The Dildonics that sounded more like a soundtrack to a teen beach movie than a live band, Peasant took to the Rancho stage. He apologized for not rocking as hard as the bands before him, and he apologized for being American since we had just found out that the Canadian women's hockey team had beat USA for gold, 2-0. He let us have our hoots and hollers, and he proceeded to serenade us with some standout tracks off of his upcoming album, Shady Retreat, as well as some older ones from On the Ground.

I've finally had the chance to listen to the album now, and I can say that much like Shady Retreat, Peasant's live set was short and sweet. The album is about thirty minutes long, and I can't imagine that his set at Rancho was much longer. But no matter how short or long that amount of time was, it was then that I was introduced to his music. And I do love it! While the album is fairly bare essentials in itself, his live performance is even further stripped down. It was a man and his guitar. Minus the production work, his songs can sound even more familiar and closer to home in that rare, comforting way. Between endearingly enthusiastic and sometimes apologetic banter about being American and his loving relationship with Canada, he delivered a collection of casually contemplative folk-pop songs. Peasant has a way of putting his inner monologue into pretty melodies and songs that simplify the same thoughts and feelings that you and I tend to over-complicate from day to day into something clear and understandable. It's this kind of clarity that came out best in his performance of We're Good, and the first single off of Shady Retreat, The End. It's really a shame that the clarity became muddled in the drunken, boisterous conversation of Panty Peeler and Dildonics fans that stayed behind.

My thoughts now said, are you ready for some Impressionable Youth blog bad quality bootlegs? Well, alright!

Peasant - We're Good (live at Rancho Relaxo) (mp3) (amazon) (iTunes)

Peasant - The End (live at Rancho Relaxo) (mp3) (amazon)

Peasant - The End (mp3) (amazon)

Despite the inappropriate crowd and opening bands, the singer-songwriter had nothing bad to say when we met him at the merch table after the set. In fact, he appreciated an eclectic mix of music. What a trooper. Following a truly pleasant conversation and photo-op with him (above), I feel like the music industry needs more guys like this.

So it really wasn't his crowd last Thursday, but he had another show in Toronto the following night at the Opera House. Opening for Fucked Up... I agree with Peasant when he says that variety in music is great and all but personally, I think someone needs to talk to his booking manager.

Shady Retreat is released March 2nd. Go ahead and pre-order it at Paper Garden Records, and check out more from Peasant at his mySpace.

Ali in the Jungle

Whenever anyone mentions the word "Pulp", I immediately whip my head around and demand "WHERE", expecting to see some grand image of the band, older and more mature, ready to reunite and challenge the new modern social issues about the working class with ultra-catchy Britpop music. But alas, my dreams are never the ones to come true. Nonetheless, when I received an email about The Hours, a new band featuring Antony Genn, former Pulp and Elastica member, and Martin Slattery of The Mescaleros, I felt a little flutter in my heart.

I know, I shouldn't be comparing to the past. It's a bad habit. The Hours have an essentially recognizable Britrock sound, although different from all of the bands I've mentioned above. The one most important aspect of their four-track Ali in the Jungle EP, released Jan. 24th, is honesty and it comes across in a way that is really quite inspiring. So inspiring in fact, that Nike used the title track in one of their most recent campaigns. It references some of the most triumphant moments, heroes and icons in history, putting them alongside lyrics that remind us "it's not how you start, it's how you finish. It's not where you're from, it's where you're at. Everybody gets knocked down. How quick are you gonna get up?" Set these words to a strong drum beat, strings, and the first perfect take of the piano track that the band got down, and you've got a song that will make you feel like you're ready to take on all the world.

Check out the video for Ali in the Jungle, directed by Jonas Odell. It's kind of like video for Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand meets the Float On video by Modest Mouse, coloured by your typical inkjet cartridge.



The four track EP, featuring two more songs as well as an orchestral version of the title track, really reinforces that sense of perseverance and determination as first outlined by Ali in the Jungle. Definitely a good choice for a rainy day. Listen to the Ali in the Jungle EP in full at the Hours' mySpace, or get it at iTunes!

Aestheticism

Dance music. What is it really? What makes it that makes us want to put on our dancing shoes? What is it that makes us wanna dress up and go out and bring our A-game?

Chicago based dance-rockers Kid Savant want the night to last forever. They're able to take that feeling and create a four minute pop song that references everything from Pink Floyd-inspired funk rock to modern piano rock and infuse it with bass-heavy club-friendly trance. It's not an easy mixture to do well and they certainly manage to pull it off. This is dance music, but there's also an emotional resonance that is often lacking in typical dance music. Inspired by DJ sets in Montreal, they bring a synth-heavy-electro-rock sound and add elements of house and techno over top. It's got a grainy quality, not in terms of production quality, but like that sound you hear when you're at a noisy club where there's alot of excitement and the music just washes over you.

It's dance. It's pop. But its complexity and delivery makes it so much more.

Kid Savant - Ominous Dance Floor (mp3) (buy)

Kid Savant - Better Side of Paradise (mp3) (buy)

Greens & Honey

Dress Rehearsal whispers softly. Acoustic at it's core, this London/St. Mary's/Toronto, ON group layers on guitars and vocal harmonies ala Smashing Pumpkins Gish-era, if it was whispered rather than amped up. But without Billy Corgans voice. And Kevin Graham (the brainchild and lead singer), has a much more pleasant voice. On second thought, maybe it sounds like a sunnier Sunny Day Real Estate. It's a got warm sound, with swirling guitars gving it a dense feeling, like the air when the late afternoon sun streams through the curtains midday. Perfect for downtime.

Their Greens & Honey LP is out on iTunes now.

Dress Rehearsal - Platypus (mp3) (buy)

Dress Rehearsal - Featherbrain (mp3) (buy)

Dress Rehearsal - Gumdrop Hills (mp3) (buy)

The Girl of My Dreams

Is this you?

Okay, this post is not so much about music. It's about a boy, the girl of his dreams and his search to find her at theGirlofmyDreams.co.uk.

The story goes like this: Adam Pacitti had a nightmare about zombies one night and in the dream, he met the girl of his dreams. He quickly woke up to draw a picture of her (seen above) and notes that he sucks at drawing and this is not even close to 1% of her beauty and her hair is actually more like Kate Nash's.

He states "I don't think I dream about people that don't actually exist. Whether they are friends, family, or people that I've seen on television; everyone that has even been in my dream I've seen somewhere. I genuinely believe this person exists."

So help the bloke out. If you look like the person above or know someone who this could be, send them to this website. It could be true love.

Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End (mp3) (buy)

Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (mp3) (buy)

Cass McCombs - Dreams Come True Girl (mp3) (buy)

AHCF

Dinosaur Bones are having a release party Friday March 5, 2010, at the Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto, with 100% of the ticket sales donated to the Artist's Health Centre Foundation. This is for the outreach, education and prevention services for over 20,000 professional artists in the Toronto area. To date Steam Whistle Unsigned has raised over $18000 for the AHCF.

Dinosaur Bones - N.Y.E. (mp3) (buy)

I Have a Dream in My Heart

Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Evan Voytas paints mystical quality of Americana in his songs. This ain't no Bruce Springsteen Americana. Rather, it captures a dreamy west coast pop landscape, where the young and fearless look up to the stars above and follow their dreams into the unknown. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Voytas beautifully captures the idealisms of the Hollywood mythology in the American dream. I'm not sure if he meant to do this as his songs are basically about "feeling good" or "feeling bad," according to his myspace.

The tinny synth-pop layers create within the songs create a strange space, like being the only car on an long unknown stretch of highway with only distanct stars as light, but somehow feeling very safe. The harmonies sound fresh and new, but like they've distilled over many decades. It's futuristic, but it draws alot from the past. It's very strange, but also very exciting.

Evan Voytas - I Run With You, Spirit Animal (mp3) (buy)

Gimme Indie Rock!!!

Volcano Playground - Waiting (mp3) (buy)

Irresponsible Logic

There's no doubt the Stance is from Halifax. What is in the water in the East Coast that churns out so much hook heavy rock and roll. This is a classic example of garage mixed with equal parts power pop.

Their new album, I Left Love Behind a Long Time Ago is out Feb 23, 2010. The story behind this collection of songs is that they hid for months from their label (Just Friends) while working on the record. The label got quite nervous as to the whereabouts of the band and the progression of work. The group stayed quiet the entire time and the record was at the pressing plant before anybody got a whiff of what it would sound like. Luckily for the label, they had nothing to worry about.

The Stance - Jenny Jitters (mp3) (buy)

I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart

Butch Walker is preparing for the street release of his new album, I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart, with the help of the Black Widows. The entire album is available for streaming on the preorder website, and the good people at One Haven Music are giving out the track Trash Day for free!

Butch Walker and the Black Widows - Trash Day (mp3) (amazon) (iTunes) (mySpace)

Even if you haven't heard the name before, you've most definitely heard his work. Butch Walker has been in the music scene for quite a while and he's built up an impressive resume for himself. At the age of twelve he was playing drums in an Elvis cover band, though he's probably better known for later fronting The Marvelous 3. More recently, he's been writing and producing for such big acts as Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, Simple Plan, Hot Hot Heat, Weezer and the All-American Rejects. He also played banjolin onstage at the Grammys this year with Taylor Swift for her hit You Belong With Me (his cover version is amazing). All name-dropping aside, Butch Walker is first a talented artist in his own right and those of you who stick your nose up at top 40 artists will find yourselves pleasantly surprised.

I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart is Butch's fifth full-length studio album. I didn't know about it until very recently (just yesterday in fact), but I immediately fell in love with it during my first listen. While I can't give you a comparison to his older work, that I have yet to hear, other reviews have compared it favourably to his previous album, Sycamore Meadows.

Trash Day is the opening track to I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart. It's a good introduction to Butch, his voice and his narrative, but has a stronger country twang influence than implied by the rest of the album. It was during the second appropriately titled track, Pretty Melody, that I really started to get into his music. The song is reminiscent of old 60's ballads, complete with sweeping strings and a dainty piano that lead into the story-telling, love-song verse. Accented with delicate pizzicato and sweet, longing lyrics ("I'll be your waste of time/You'll be be happy end/You're such a pretty melody/I'm just another tattooed tragedy"), Pretty Melody, makes for one of the strongest tracks, and my personal favourite on the record. The strings and country feel are reoccurring throughout the album, though often crossing-over an blending in with other styles, most notably in the soft, folky Don't You Think Someone Should Take You Home, and rockabilly inspired Days Months Years. With a multitude of genres and influences that it draws from, I Liked It Better manages to keep together as an album with strong cohesiveness, perhaps pulled together by great composition and an overall underdog narrative. It just goes to show how talented and versatile of a song-writer Butch Walker is, even disregarding the many guilty-pleasure pop hit songs he's been involved with.

To help promote the new album, Butch recently offered fans a chance to spend a day working on a song for the new album with him in exchange for a $25 000 preorder for the album. And who else would take him up on the offer but lovably geek-tastic Brendon Urie of Panic at the Disco fame? Watch the video as hilarity and horror ensue.



I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart is already out on vinyl, but you can get your digital and CD copies on February 23rd. He's going on tour to open for Train, and those of us in Toronto will be able to catch them on March 24th at the Phoenix. Hear more from Butch on his mySpace, and stream the entire new album at the official site.

Rejoice

Pearly Gate Music is the project of Zach Tillman, who plays songs that sound crystal clear. Songs that sound like they would cut through a fog and bring out some of that fresh-after-the-rain smell. Pearly Gate Music is simple but it does so much. It's acoustic, confident, poppy in a 60ish way and..... fresh.

The self titled debut LP, Pearly Gate Music is out May 18, 2010 on Barsuck Records.

Pearly Gate Music - I was a River (live take) (mp3) (buy)

Song for the Gang

Thrush Hermit. A much beloved band when I was too under-aged to get into their shows. And then the broke up.

Luckily for me, one of my teenaged hopes that someday "Thrush Hermit will get back together and play a show" came true! (Ah, the non-reality based problems of being young). They're actually play many shows around the East Coast and Ontario:

Thurs. March 18, 2010 Moncton, NB @ The Manhattan
Friday March 19, 2010 Halifax, NS @ Paragon Theatre
Sat. March 20, 2010 Halifax, NS @ Paragon Theatre
Tues. March 23, 2010 Waterloo, ON @ Starlight Social Club
Wed. March 24, 2010 Peterborough, ON @ Historic Red Dog
Thurs. March 25, 2010 Ottawa, ON @ New Capital Music Hall
Fri. March 26, 2010 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace (sold out)
Sat. March 27, 2010 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace (sold out)
Sun. March 28, 2010 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace (early all ages 4:45pm show)

Thrush Hermit - From the Back of the Film (mp3) (buy)

Thrush Hermit - Before You Leave (mp3) (buy)

There is a Light that Never Goes Out

An album inspired by the metallic pings you hear in an MRI machine (or "IRM" en francais), doesn't seem like it would translate well into into 43 minutes of listenable audio. But Charlotte Gainsbourg manages to pull it off. IRM is a spacey and subdued album much like producer Beck's Mutations, but haunting and effortlessly cool. Either though a potentially life threatening accident and recovery was a driving creative factor behind this work, it shows there's always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Even Charlotte states in Flaunt Magazine about the incident, "I can't say it changed my life, but it's true that when you wake up-I don't mean physically when you wake up-but when it's over and you realize that you are still there, there's something very exhilarating. But it passes very, very quickly and you go back to normal."

And she adds "I don't think that way [about survival]. I just hope I'll continue, I hope I'll get to meet people. I just hope I get to do exciting things. And I hope that I am at the beginning."

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Trick Pony (mp3 link deleted as per request) (buy)

One Life Stand

Hot Chip is a group I couldn't really get into. They have all the elements of sound that I would love to hear, but on the whole, the pieces just don't quite fit together. I've listened to their albums and it's not an earth shattering experience like some would say. However, when they get a song right, they get it RIGHT.

Hot Chip - Touch Too Much (mp3) (buy)

Hot Chip - Alley Cats (mp3) (buy)

It's Time to Write a Happy Album!!

One day (sometime during that faint memory that was 2008) David Macmichael of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia band The Danger Bees decided "it's time to write a happy album". With the drumming and production help of fellow Danger Bee James MacNeil, that's exactly what he did. And that's exactly what he called it.


It's Time To Write a Happy Album!! Track List:

1. Lolcats 4 Cats
2. Video Games!! (mp3)
3. Don't Call It Being Lonely Anymore (mp3)
4. Brad + I: Team Supercop
5. James + I's Big Night Out (mp3)
6. maybe there was just a suck portal in your life that hammer sank into accidentally, meanwhile ice would up on the center of a life sized turntable.
7. Parents Bass
8. The Open Mic
9. My Room Is The Greatest
10. A Conversation I Have With My Friend If, While Waiting in the ER for Antibiotics, A Wheelchair Becomes Unattended and She Can't Resist It's Call
11. Shark Guitar (Is a Pretty Good Axe)
12. Lunchtime II
13. I Know, Kitteh... I'm Hungry Too

Download It's Time to Write a Happy Album!! in full for FREE over at The Danger Bees' MySpace page.

Admittedly, I had my doubts about the Happy Album at first. Surely with cover art and track titles like that, it must be a novelty comedy album, right? Well, I've had it on my iPod for about a week now and I've listened to it an embarrassing number of times.

Totaling to just under twenty minutes, with none of the individual thirteen tracks exceeding two and a half minutes, Happy Album is the epitome of short and sweet. It's got lovably simple guitar and piano hooks that'll easily having you humming and toe tapping. And while it's pretty to listen to, the true genius lies in the anecdotal lyrics and the charmingly playful, mildly absurd narrative. It obviously stems from someone with a particular appreciation for the more mundane things in life. Take the lyrics from James and I's Big Night Out for example. "Some drunk jerk came and pushed past us then turned around and laughed at our matching glasses". Or how about the line in Video Games!! that says that Guitar Hero is "the very best thing to play. Just between you and me it's better than the real thing anyway. It's probably just because I'm really bad at guitar". I'd love to go on ruining the lyrical punchlines and discussing the precision of the album's subtle humour, cleverly strewn among melodically ear-pleasing tunes. I'd love to but I feel that I've talked for too long. I'm sure that the word count in this review has gone beyond the word count of the album.

Case in point, the Happy Album will make you happy. Surprise, surprise. Give it a couple of spins and I guarantee that you too will be singing bromantic odes to Brad, James and a cat named Fancy R2D2. Download it in full at no cost by visiting the Danger Bee's mySpace page, and catch them live in Toronto:

Feb. 3rd @ Poor Alex
Feb. 8th @ Drake Hotel
Feb. 9th @ The Central (with Ryan MacGrath)
Feb. 25h @ C'est What?
Mar. 17th @ The Supermarket