Author: jprobichaud

Categories
Live music galleries

Live music galleries: Alvvays [2016]

(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)

Alvvays live @ Dragonboat Festival in 2016

Artist: Alvvays
When: June 25th, 2016
Where: Ottawa Dragonboat Festival, Ottawa
Context: I had already seen this Toronto-based indie pop band just the previous year and though they were good live, they weren’t so mind-blowing that I would’ve gone out of my way to see them again so soon. However, they were announced as headliner for one of the nights of the Ottawa Dragonboat Festival’s free concert series and I just couldn’t turn that down. Indeed, I’m not sure how they continue to do it but this festival continually books some of Canada’s hottest acts and does so without charging a cent for admission. Anyhow, a year of touring definitely agreed with Molly Rankin and her band Alvvays (pronounced “Always”) because they were phenomenal this time around, playing the hell out of their buzz-worthy, self-titled debut and pleasing to no end the indie kids up front with the album’s hits (like the one below).
Point of reference song: “Archie, marry me”

Molly Rankin of Alvvays
Kerri MacLellan, Brian Murphy, and Phil MacIsaac of Alvvays
Alec O’Hanley and Molly Rankin of Alvvays
Molly Rankin, Brian Murphy, and Phil MacIssac of Alvvays
Kerri MacLellan of Alvvays
Molly Rankin of Alvvays
Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2011: #21 Peter Bjorn and John “Tomorrow has to wait”

<< #22    |    #20 >>

Much like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s “Hysterical” (whose title track appeared at number twenty-three on this list), Peter Bjorn and John’s “Gimme some” was something of a comeback album for me in 2011, even though neither band had ever really went away.

if you’re unaware of them, Peter Bjorn and John is a Swedish indie pop trio made up of Peter Morén, Björn Yttling, and John Eriksson (see what they did there?). They formed in 1999 but rose to international relevance in 2006 with their third album, “Writer’s block”, an excellent album that I love all the way through. However, many know it simply as the album that hosts the band’s best known song, “Young folks”, a great, great pop tune that if you don’t know, you should most definitely investigate. After their breakthrough, the three members took a bit of time to work on personal projects before coming back together to make a (mostly) instrumental album (“Seaside rock”) in 2008. They followed that up with “Living thing”, a darker experimental album, in 2009. These two albums, while interesting, weren’t my cup of tea. So when “Gimme some” was released a couple of years later, I checked it out without great expectations. Happily for me, though, it was a return to the quirky indie pop sound that caught the world’s ear a few years earlier.

And yes, this trio really does pop well. “Gimme some” opens with this tune, “Tomorrow has to wait”, an invigorating number that was not one of the three singles the band released from the album but it really could’ve been. It pounces on you with the tribal drumming right of the bat. Peter Morén plays the call and response game with his band mates on the verses but this reverts to a shout along fist pump by the chorus. This isn’t a song for watching the dance floor from the sidelines but one for which you could quite easily find yourself right in the middle of the fray, doing the pogo, something you swore you would never do, without knowing quite how you got there.

Yeah. It’s that type of song.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Cranberries “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Cranberries
Album Title: Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
Year released: 1993
Year reissued: 2018
Details: standard black, 25th anniversary, 180 gram, remastered at Abbey Road studios

The skinny: Living in North America, my first exposure to the jangle rock of The Cranberries and the incredible vocals of frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan was the single “Linger”. MTV picked the video up, MuchMusic soon followed suit, and then, it was everywhere. This was just the beginning, of course, because the band would explode and achieve outright superstar status the following year with “Zombie”. But we’re talking about the debut right now and this here is its 25th anniversary. Before Dolores tragically died earlier this year, plans were already underway to remaster this album at Abbey Road Studios in celebration and as you can see above, it also became a way to remember her glorious voice.

Standout track: “Dreams”