(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.)
The Rural Alberta Advantage live at Dragonboat Festival, 2015
Artist: The Rural Alberta Advantage When: June 27th, 2015 Where: Ottawa Dragonboat Festival, Mooney’s Bay Park, Ottawa Context: It’s been almost six months since I’ve seen any live music and I’ve realized in the last couple of weeks that I’ve been (for want of a better term) seriously jonesing. Seriously. I’ve been habitually checking the concert listings, reading all the festival lineups as they are released, watching live videos on the YouTube, and I’ve even been finding myself wistfully flipping through photos of past shows that I’ve seen. And in so doing, I came across this series of pics that I snapped during a set by Toronto’s The Rural Alberta Advantage at Ottawa’s Dragonboat festival five years (!) ago. I’ve seen them a total of four times, each time was a riot, but this show was the last time I saw them. They were still touring their third album, “Mended with gold”, which like all their others, is energetic indie folk with a heavy percussion edge, this last provided by Energizer bunny drummer, Paul Banwatt, and bundle of dynamite, Amy Cole. She would actually leave the band the following year, to be temporarily replaced by a Robin Hatch, but is now back in the fold, and the word is there is new material in the works. Maybe I’ll see them a fifth time later this year. One can hope… Point of reference song: “Terrified”
Nils Edenloff of The Rural Alberta AdvantageAmy Cole of The Rural Alberta AdvantagePaul Banwatt of The Rural Alberta AdvantageAmy Cole and Paul Banwatt going all percussion-likeNils Edenloff rocking out
Happy Friday all! Yes. A wonderful Friday indeed because it is also my last day of work this year. I can hardly believe we’ve reached the end of another year and really, another decade. It feels like not that long ago that we were just ringing in the beginning of this year.
So anyway, you may have noticed that I’ve been counting down my favourite albums of the year on each Tuesday for the past few weeks and am poised to unveil my number one on New Year’s eve morning. Well, that’s not the only list I’m hoping to wrap up before the end of the year. I’ve also been quietly trying to get to the end of this Best tunes of 2011 list, quietly because I wasn’t sure I would have the steam to finish up two lists in one month and still have time to go Christmas shopping. It’s looking good right now but we’ll have to see what the next week will bring.
Incidentally, the number two song on this list appears on the album that came in at number one for the inaugural end of the year series on my old blog, Music Insanity. I said back then that Young Galaxy’s third album, “Shapeshifting”, was one that “didn’t resonate with me immediately but with repeat listens, my appreciation grew”. This is a trend that pretty much rang true for the rest of the Canadian indie pop band’s albums, save for their first. No. Their self-titled debut grabbed me right away because it fell right smack into my wheelhouse but after that, they challenged themselves and their fans right with them with each successive release, as their sound and personas changed from psych rock, dream poppers to synth-driven, art pop machines. Indeed, when I wrote about “Peripheral visionaries”, which appeared at number sixteen on this very list, I already talked about how the electronic sound from “Shapeshifting” grew out of a cross-ocean collaboration with Swedish producer, Dan Lissvik, so I won’t tread already familiar ground here.
“We have everything” is very likely the most uplifting and danceable track on the album. Sounding a little bit Blondie, a little bit New Order, and a little bit space rock, it has a toe hopping beat, an addictive synth melody, and Catherine McCandless singing up a storm over top it all. It shimmers and chugs along, ice fog whisping across the monochromatic, old school computer screen, and plenty of lasers flitting, obscuring reality and leaving you screaming for more.
Just watch the video (and while you’re at it, go back and watch the one for “Peripheral visionaries” because they are related thematically) and turn it up. Loud. And just dance. It’s Friday, for goodness sake…
For the rest of the Best tunes of 2011 list, click here.
At some point in the mid-2000s, I was in a Chapters perusing the music magazine racks while my wife was looking at cookbooks and I came across an American-based indie music magazine called “Under the radar”. I found myself flipping through it slower than I normally would a music magazine so when my wife found me (rather than me finding her for once), I was still only halfway through it. She suggested I buy it and I offered no resistance. And then, I bought the next few monthly issues. For the next Christmas that rolled around, I received a two year subscription from Victoria. When that expired, I called in to renew it for myself and I distinctly remember the woman I talked to who took my order happily telling me that they (the people behind the magazine) loved Canadians. I have since had a few annual digital subscriptions for my iPad and these days, I still check their website regularly and all because they have always seemed to have their finger on the pulse of music that I like.
This past January, a month that the music world is still typically waking up from its holiday hangover, I had a visit with my friends at “Under the radar” and wouldn’t you know, there was a review, front and centre, of the self-titled, debut album of this new Canadian band, Tallies. The review mentioned them in the same breath as Alvvays, another favourite of mine, and a couple other Canadian bands of whom I hadn’t yet heard. So I duly went over to Spotify to have a perusal of the album (as well as music by the other two) and immediately heard and agreed with the reviewer’s comparisons to the jangly dream pop of Cocteau Twins and (especially that of) The Sundays. It goes with saying that I purchased it on vinyl the next time I was out at the record stores.
I tell this story because I find it funny, the roundabout way you sometimes have to travel to discover music from your own backyard. Tallies were formed by the couple of Sarah Cogan (vocals/guitar) and Dylan Frankland (guitar) while they were attending Algonquin College right here in Ottawa. They added drummer Cian O’Neill and bassist Stephen Pitman and relocated to Toronto, where they recorded this debut. And yeah, “Tallies” is another good reason why we should still be excited about the indie music being made here in Canada.
Tallies have been described as shoegaze but I would place them more as dream pop, and yes, there is a difference. There’s plenty of jangle and twinkle and rays of sunshine, and man, is it easy on the ears! Have a listen to my three picks for you below and let me know what you think.
“Not so proud”: First off, I’ll drop this one right here and let that peppy, tip-tappety-tap-tap drumming set in. I’m thinking within a second your head will be bopping. Just in time to let the washes upon washes of tinkling guitars flutter down upon you like sparkling confetti. The crisp production is like a vacuum, allowing these lovely sounds to echo all over the place and then, Cogan starts in with her vocals. She’s singing about uncertainties and the different shades of greys and not having the answers or the endings to any story, happy or otherwise. Yet, you can’t help but want to get up and dance and sing along just as breathlessly.
“Mother”: The rhythm section gets a bit of a workout on this second track and guitars jangle all over the place, almost feeling like they’re on holiday in the Caribbean. Yeah, things are a bit meandering in the verses but they pick up substantially at the choruses and the drums get just that much more frantic. And through the joy and bliss and Cogan’s sweet honey vocals, her lyrics are wistfully relaying the varying stages of a relationship between a mother and daughter. “Don’t fill your holes with sorrow, ‘cause you’ll never be left alive.” Good advice, that.
“Trouble”: And much like that last track (and others throughout the album), the opening number seems to be exploring the pitfalls of growing up, ready or not. “Heights with no means to escape. Soaring coasts mixed with the rubble. Mind’s eye forms fields of gray. No subtle fears, no grounds for trouble.” And here more than anywhere, do we get a lot of noise, a lot of static, impenetrable, perhaps, save for the soaring and ringing vocals of Cogan, sounding very much a Harriet Wheeler doppelgänger. The naivety and exuberance breathes life into an interpretation of backward admiring tunes. Just lovely.
Check back next Tuesday for album #2. In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:
My (life in) music lists 