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FOALS: Too Much on the Subject of New Album “Holy Fire” and a Band I Love (+...
August 29th, and I find myself sitting having a beer with Foals’ Yannis Phillippakis in Vancouver at the Electric Owl on Main Street. Friends of his girlfriend – she’s local – were playing the small...
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REWIND: A letter from Wayne Coyne, Flaming Lips, 1997. Posters, Spider Bites...
Fabulous freaks The Flaming Lips announced recently that they were planning to re-release their quadrophonic musical experiment Zaireeka (originally to be purchased as four albums, and played –...
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INTERVIEW: Petey Dammit of THEE OH SEES talks Floating Coffin, Dead Notes and...
Hello Petey Dammit. I am Mikala Taylor. From Vancouver, currently in Toronto, saw you live in San Francisco last year, and I look forward to hanging out with you in Primavera Sound in Barcelona this...
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Post #300: THE EELS in Toronto – Tracksuits and Swamp Sludge
“Let’s do one that goes back to the 1900s, before you were alive,” says Mark Oliver Everett, known mainly as E from the Eels, as he presides from high atop his “lead-singer riser” at the front of the...
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The Legend of HÜSKER DÜ’s BOB MOULD: Live in Toronto at the Horseshoe Tavern...
It’s three hours before Bob Mould takes to the stage of the tiny Horseshoe Tavern and the lineup to get into the venue is throbbing with middle-aged men demonstrating boyish excitement. The couple in...
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UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA/FOXYGEN live in Toronto
Toronto’s Wrong Bar was thrumming with hipsters by the time we arrived. Sadly missing first-band-on-the-bill Wampire, we fought through the beards, thick-framed glasses and girls who were born in 1993...
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DJANGO DJANGO & NIGHT MOVES: live in Toronto
There don’t appear to be any awards for playing a debut album on tour for what seems like an eternity. There’s award for the band who tours endlessly, heading from Cracker Barrel to Cracker Barrel on...
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ICEAGE live. Punk. Rock.
One does not possess enough of The Facts to know what the deal is with Denmark’s young punks Iceage and whether they are fascist, socialist, contrived, stupid, smart, artistic, rubbish, naive, or...
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Top 11 Memories: The GRAPES OF WRATH on history, hot dogs and new album High...
Something quietly lovely and quite-ly important happened earlier this month: the original lineup of Canada’s Grapes of Wrath released their first album as the original lineup, in 22 years. It marks a...
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THE SPECIALS: on the subject of Terry Hall, perfect sounds and two nights...
It’s 1:30am. Lynval Golding, one of the original members of UK ska legends The Specials is at a bar next to Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom and is explaining to me that I am only the second-ever Mikala...
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Gallery/Review: ALT-J Live in Vancouver
It was a given that Alt-J’s first-ever show in Vancouver would blow minds – probably even the minds of the yappy ones blathering through the pristine, quieter moments. Their rise has been accelerated,...
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PALMA VIOLETS: What Makes A Gig of the Year? This. (Review/Photo Gallery)
What makes a gig of the year? What makes people – seeing you for the first time in a city that’s not Berlin or New York or Austin – lose their shit in a small club? What transforms casual fans into...
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In Photos: Portraits of the LOCAL NATIVES live in Vancouver
In a city they’d played many times before but never this big on their own, Silver Lake’s Local Natives wowed a fresh-faced, university crowd at the Commodore on April 27. Purveyors of warm indie pop,...
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Photo gallery/review: METZ destroy – fiercely and epically
It all started with openers White Lung, a local Vancouver punk band helmed by Mish Way, blonde-headed She-Ra, presiding over a mosh pit so frantic that the small Biltmore Cabaret probably shifted...
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Hallelujah! Hallelujah! It’s KURT SAMUEL VILE (and the FRESH AND ONLYS)
Oooh it was set to be a good night, even on paper. Steve Gunn – Kurt Vile’s buddy and extra Violator on this tour – filled an early, early set with layered, rich indie-blues – haven’t heard a lot of...
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PRIMAVERA SOUND FESTIVAL: Day 1 Photo Diary with Dinosaur Jr, Savages, Animal...
It was colder, windier and walking back and forth between 7 stages on concrete was more punishing than expected. Sets started at 6pm and headliners went on in the darkspace of 3am. Clashes between...
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PRIMAVERA SOUND FESTIVAL: Day 2 Photo Diary with Blur, Jesus and Mary Chain,...
Aching and disoriented, your heroine wakes in Barcelona, alive from Day 1 at Primavera. She checks her phone and accepts an invite via Instagram from the lovely chaps in Django Django to head on site...
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PRIMAVERA SOUND FESTIVAL: Day 3 Photo Diary with Hot Chip, Nick Cave, My...
It’s a more manageable and later start to the day, and your heroine is thankful for this. Following Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear’s advice on Day 1, we go to check out Barcelona’s amazing food market, La...
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#MTLMoments: Win VIP weekend in Montreal for Osheaga Festival (and Wanted:...
Montréal, long since considered one of Canada’s coolest cities, is also home to an incredible local music scene. Suuns, Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Wolf Parade, Besnard Lakes, The Stills,...
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Hanging out with…The Hottest Brand in the World, KISS!
It is lunchtime, on a July day in Vancouver, and I’m standing a few feet away from KISS, who are in full makeup. It is surreal, of course, to be standing a few feet away from KISS in full makeup....
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