(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.)
Kalle Mattson and his band at Bluesfest 2014
Artist: Kalle Mattson When: July 5th, 2014 Where: Claridge Homes stage, RBC Bluesfest, Ottawa Context: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that one of the great things about Ottawa’s biggest music festival, RBC Bluesfest, is the organizers’ focus on promoting local talent. The years that I purchased a pass and attended on multiple days exposed me to a lot of bands and artists (many of them local) that I might not have ever experienced otherwise. Kalle Mattson, who came to the nation’s capital by way of Sault Ste. Marie for school, is a talented indie folk singer/songwriter that I had already seen opening for Cuff the Duke a few years prior, but his early afternoon set in 2014 really won me over. The weather that afternoon was sunny and humid and hazy, a perfect suit for his dusty and languorous tales of heartache. I would later purchase that year’s Polaris prize nominated album, the Gavin Gardner produced, “Someday, the moon will be gold”, and jumped at the chance at Mattson perform with his friends once again the following summer. Point of reference song: “A love song to the city”
Kalle Mattson on the mouth organMattson and Andrew SowkaJF Beauchamp, the man on the hornRory Lewis on guitarMattson with drummer, Kyle WoodsAndrew Sowka and JF BeauchampKalle Mattson taking it home.
So I’ve mentioned once before in the last month or so that this blog is quickly approaching its fourth anniversary*, and looking back over my posts, I’ve noticed, much to my own surprise, that with the exception of one of my Vinyl Love posts, Canadian indie rockers Metric have yet to have been the focus of a post on any of my lists.
Metric got its start as the duo of James Shaw and Emily Haines back in 1998 in Toronto. Drummer Joules Scott-Key joined on in 2000 and a couple of years later, bassist Joshua Winstead made the group the quartet that we now know and love. As I wrote in that aforementioned Vinyl Love post, I was aware of the group from their early days because of my friend Jez. He saw them a number of times at various intimate clubs when they came to Ottawa in support of their debut album, “Old world underground, where are you?”. After his first time seeing them, Jez tried dragging me along with him and though I was sold on the music of the album he loaned me, I never seemed to have the money to spare.
By the time I finally did see Metric live, it was a number of years and three albums later and their latest, 2009’s “Fantasies”, had garnered them enough success to earn them a spot on Ottawa Bluesfest’s main stage, albeit one at a time slot in the early evening. My wife Victoria was quite a fan of that album and so I was able to convince her to join me on the lawn of the Canadian War Museum (where the festival has been annually held up to last year’s rude COVID-19 interruption) on a warm summer evening in July. Metric’s energy was fun and we both enjoyed singing along with all of our favourites, though Victoria later pointed out that Haines’s dancing was sometimes awkward and her vocals not as strong live as they were on the recordings. My opinion slightly differed than my wife’s – I thoroughly enjoyed finally catching their live experience. I’ve since seen Metric twice more, both times at different festivals, including once in support of their next album, “Synthetica”, from which comes today’s song of focus.
If “Fantasies” broke Metric more into the Canadian mainstream, “Synthetica” finished the job, songs like second single, “Breathing underwater”, gilding the festival stages for the appearances. The intro of synths is like a laser show starting, the whir of exciting machinery, then comes Shaw’s stadium ready, dancing guitar line and the driving drums, regularly punctuated with exciting fills at perfectly opportune moments and Emily Haines can hardly believe that it’s her up on the stage, singing “Is this my life?”. Indeed, the song seems to be a meditation on their good fortunes and success, the achieving of the impossible, and the worry that they are not at all up to the challenge of supporting the weight of being adored by fans around the world. Meanwhile, the video is a collage of clips of their charged live performances and the masses of audiences, including footage from a performance at Lollapalooza the previous year.
Apart from all that, “Breathing underwater” is an incredible and uplifting synth tinged rocker that will have you dancing and singing along every time.
*Now in 11 days to be exact.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2012 list, click here.
(I started my Vinyl Love posts pretty much right after the launch of this blog to share photos of my growing vinyl collection. Over time, the photos have improved and the explanations have grown. And looking back at a handful of the original posts in this series, I found myself wanting to re-do some of them so that the posts are more worthy of those great albums. So that’s what I’ll be doing every once in a while, including today…)
Artist: Lowest of the Low Album Title: Shakespeare my butt… Year released: 1991 Year reissued: 2018 Details: Black vinyl, 2 x LP, part of a five album box set, autographed and limited to 300 copies (box set includes booklet, lyrics sheets, poster, and stickers)
The skinny: Just two days ago, I wrapped up a countdown of my ten favourite albums of 1991 with this very album landing at the number one spot. I feel that this gives me an opportunity to do one of these Vinyl Love revisits for “Shakespeare my butt…”, something I’ve been looking forward to doing for a while. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I started doing these revisits to do a better job with some of my favourite albums that I did early on but in the case of this one, it’s more because I actually updated the vinyl version I had in my collection. I finally decided to pull the trigger on the “Shakespeare my box” vinyl box set with some money that I received for Christmas but this meant I had an extra copy of the Low’s debut record. I shipped my old one to my younger brother and this here’s my new one, the first album in a five album set (the other four will follow in the coming weeks). And yeah, they really did a great job with this box set. The fact that each one was signed and included stickers and reproductions of handwritten lyric sheets is really just a bonus tacked on to the 24-page booklet, the band’s first four albums, and a bonus disc of rarities.
My (life in) music lists 