Scott Pilgrim's Toronto

The CN Tower is built upon the bones,
The CN Tower will always be our home
- Owen Pallet (Final Fantasy)

The jist of my undergrad thesis was that writers put pen to paper in order to share some profound feeling wrenched from a dark corner of their mind, in order to establish a feeling of human connection through these living ideas in those who read their words. And that’s just what makes reading so appealing isn’t it? a feeling of personal familiarity with the situations and sentiments that play out in a great novel. The great thing is, I have no real concept of what Russia was like in the mid 19th century, but reading about Raskolnikov’s struggles morality in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I feel like I'm right there walking the streets of St. Petersburg, sulking on bridges and visiting overcrowded slums. This is why I always avoided history classes at university, I could never find a satisfying point of reference; I always preferred the literature of the time to the actuality (or whatever approximation history books produce). In addition to Russian literature my passions happen include music, comic books and the city of Toronto where I live. And there is one thing I discovered a couple years ago that combines all of these things (save Russian literature): Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. The problem with these books is that they take me to a place that is oddly familiar, a parody of my life, if you will. You see, there’s my Toronto, and then there’s Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto, and as opposed to 19th century Russia, which lies off to the side from my world, at a different depth, crooked and askew, Scott Pilgrim’s world feels as though it is layered carefully on top of mine- and that’s an unsettling feeling. The characters frequent the same bars as me, engage in the same brand of distinctly obscure self-aware Canadian humour and have the same ambitions and problems as me. And so I found myself in a trance staring out the second floor windows of Sneaky Dee’s last night and again, hungover, riding my bike up Christie past Dupont this morning, transported, of no will of my own to this place where everything follows a zany, clever, heartwarming pattern, where everything is quirkily oddball awesome and Toronto and I are at the center of a story with an unclear but highly anticipated ending.

Akron/ Jammy

Akron/ Family
Born Ruffians
At Sneaky Dee's in Toronto, March 21st

Akron/Family

Akron/ Family- Everyone is Guilty (From Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free)

I recently heard Akron/ Family's fantastic homemade sounding self title for the first time and it really struck me as a brilliant, intimate album with food for thought introspective lyrics and heartwarming acoustic arrangements with the odd burst of electric ecstasy. Skip ahead a few years and the Akron's have lost a member to a Buddhist temple (awesomest reason to abandon a band ever) and are set to release an album called Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free. The album leaked shockingly early (as is wont to happen in this internet crazy amoral culture) and in hearing it I was surprised at the loud heavy blasts of bass, drums and electric guitar, I would encourage anyone who reads this to go buy when it hits stores. While the band retains its profound introspective qualities, they also let fly with a spilling over of rowdy spirit in the form of wild guitar shredding heavy bass and group chant/ shouting. Quite frankly I haven't really done my homework, but I get this weird impression that Akron/ Family hangs out at a some sort of music dojo in the off season jamming, eating rice and kale and meditating. Their set put every band I have seen in recent months to shame. They only played three or four 'songs', but the energy, chemistry and musical proficiency they displayed over the course of their meandering, crowd pleasing set seemed to indicate that the Akron/ Family are a force that harnesses a primal, mystical element that demands a discipline and focus that other bands lack. Okay... it looks like I've spent my entire word quota gushing about the Family, um, on the negative side, their was some feedback right at the start that kind of sucked?

Born Ruffians:

The Born Ruffians were great as usual but they really should have opened as their set was pretty intensely eclipsed. That said they played their little hearts out (they have a new drummer and added guitarist who fill out the sound nicely) and front man Luke Lalonde looked cute in his grey beater (pictured above).

Born Ruffians- I Need a Life (Four Tet remix)

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons

I watched this on MTV2 today and thought it was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but it's totally not. Isn't it wonderful?



I've never made a habit of wearing sunglasses so I'm a bit conflicted in relating to the protagonist of this song. Apparently this song is about putting blinders up to love, says the band:

"People wear sunglasses to ease their eyes from something that is very, very bright. Also people ignore each others’ bright shiny beautiful hearts, you know? This song is what happens when a relationship falls apart because of blindness ... Watch yourself."
(That quote is from the band's Daytrotter Session.)

Photo Blog?

Sure, why not?

Toronto: Feb.28 / 09

Fisher and Tezuka

I have so much love for stores like She Said Boom, Zoinks! and, to a lesser extent, BMV. They all seem to be run in a very similar fashion and totally rock the used book/CD/vinyl realm. Why pay regular price for needle in the haystack books at Indigo (or whatevers) when these places are all needles and employ a serious re-figuring of prices. Check out this book Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights, for example. I was drawn to it by the awesome cover art, and sure enough the inside is just as beautiful. Unfortunately I found out that the artist, Seth Fisher, whom I'd never heard of before, is no longer alive, despite having been born in 1972. I found that out about him, and little else, from his website, www.floweringnose.com. Check out, in particular, this page of his site, which has some amazing pattern-type drawings such as...


'Tokyo Days' quickly got me much more interested in both Tokyo and Japanese comics (manga). So I picked up a copy of Dororo at She Said Boom yesterday, a 1969 serial by manga-master Osamu Tezuka. He's the guy behind Astroboy and a bunch of other respected Japanese works. While I was perusing the store's graphic novel section I noticed that they had a copy of 'Tokyo Days' for two bucks less than I nabbed it for at Zoinks! Go pick it up. You lucky dude, you.

Kurt Vonnegut's Sweater-Vest

Photos: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
February 12th at Lee's Palace in Toronto



Kip Berman: "This is the biggest show we've ever played!"

Of course it is Kip, you just got famous five minutes ago! The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have stimulated a chain of orgasms across the blogosphere over the past couple of weeks, topped off by a best new music review over at Pitchfork. Although their pseudo fame is sudden, I don't think it's unwarranted; their self title album's got some sweet stuff going on and since you can read about it on a million other blogs, I'll simply leave you to look at these photos and check out the tunes at the bottom. Suffice it to say the band had a really modest stage presence and lead singer/ guitarist Kip Berman's socially awkward excitedness was quite endearing. The short set was well received (the hi-light was a new tune called 103rd) and the Pains (who really seem like such nice kids) bustled off stage, visibly dumbfounded and wondering how their audience got so big.













Photos by: Dave Hurlow, Gabe Kastner, Deirdre Dimitroff

Kurt Cobain's Cardigan
Young Adult Friction

Animal Collection

Alright, alright, alright the new Animal Collective album's pretty good... I said it. This album got out of hand overhyped in my head and when the vinyl pre order arrived I got high, lit some candles made some tea ate some ginger cookies turned the lights down low and cued the record while staring at the cover art. I kind of freaked out though cuz I'm a lightweight and the needle is worn on my record player and everything sounded distorted and some of the the choices they made with the clubby bass are unfortunate... plus that song Bluish? You know you were questioning it on first listen. I spent the next two weeks walking around talking about how much better I liked Strawberry Jam and not really giving it a fair chance.
But I'm reformed now, I've ordered a new needle for my record player, listened to the digital download version of the album through my headphones while sober and found quite a bit to like. Another problem I had was that I had listened to the leaked tracks (Brother Sport and My Girls) way too many times, and these songs act as important bookends in the context of the whole album. This realization has sparked a great deal of conflict in me, as I love downloading leaked preview tracks, but don't want to ruin first listens of albums I love. Looks like I've got some serious soul searching to do. In the meantime, here are a few of my favourite songs from AC's discography (in order of most recent to least), including 'Summertime Clothes', which completes the triumvirate of best tracks on Merriweather in my unesteemed opinion.

Summertime Clothes (Merriweather '09)
Street Flash (Water Curses EP '08)
Purple Bottle (Feels '05)
Who Could Win a Rabbit (Sung Tongs'04)
Slippi (Here Comes the Indian '03)

Strikes Back

Inaugural Comics Post! Yes! Robots battling bass wielding Scott Pilgrim! Also Yes!


Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe came out last Wednesday, and I naturally rushed like a drooling fanboy to the Beguiling ( In Mirvish Village) to pick it up the morning of. There was a small lineup to buy the book and the store manager was leaving to fly to New York for the release party (Bryan Lee O'Malley actually used to worked at the Beguiling, which I guess makes buying his book there a lame source of nerdy pride) so the mood was generally pleasant. Vol. 5 occupies the unfortunate Empire Strikes Back-esque space of segueing the triumphant fourth volume: Gets it Together with Volume six's (probably triumphant) finale. I especially enjoy the parts where Scott describes detailed X-Men plot lines to Ramona... and the robot fights are pretty sweet too. This stuff hits way too close to home to review objectively, I play a ric bass in a rock band, love the X-Men unconditionally and hang out at Sneaky Dee's, so fuck I guess I'm a walking stereotype, at least indie rockish A.D.D dudes with girl troubles living in Toronto will be a well-loved cultural institution henceforth as a result of these books.

As for MP3 content for this post I've come up with a couple things, exhibit a: The song that Scott Pilgrim got his name from by a 90's Halifax rock band called Plumtree that seems to be the female equivalent of Thrush Hermit and partial inspiration of current awesome halifax all female rock band, The Stolen Minks.

Plumtree- Scott Pilgrim

ALSO a song by Bryan Lee O'Malley himself, who records under the name Kupek and releases all of his music for free on his website. This song is from his most recent batch and for some reason I'm quite attached to it (partially owing to the sweet piano riff).

Kupek- Good Book

Furthermore, the good dudes at the Beguiling have gotten me hooked on a Grant Morrison series from the 90's called The Invisibles, about freedom loving radicals who embark on trippy spiritual quests and travel through time in order to defeat the powers of evil who are trying to maintain status quo, enslave humanity and destroy the world. fuck. I just read that back and it sounds really lame... but actually it's really sweet I swear. you can download the first issue here: http://dccomics.com/media/excerpts/1680_1.pdf

Statement

Canada's foremost jazzy, instrumentally, vibraphone heavy collective, "The Hylozoists" put out their third album, L'Ile De Sept Ville, last weekish. This sweet, unassuming, artistic piece of music looks to have been funded by Factor grants, and commissioned by the CBC; seems reasonable no? With track names such as 'Acadia, Acadia', 'The French Settle In' and 'Bras D'or Lakes' (reffering to a beautiful chain of lakes in Cape Breton), you couldn't find a better fit for a government funded arts project!



To the point: it actually says fuck Stephen Harper in tiny little letters in a groove of the trippy topographical map album art. What really amuses me is that someone made something so damn pretty, with almost no conceivable space for literal interpretation and and then wrote such a blunt fuck you message to the Prime Minister of the Country that paid for it right on the front of it.... Amazing! Judging by the song titles and the samples from the last track (taken from Expo 67 celebrations) the underlying theme of this album is Canadian Pride and the richness of the historical spirit of our country. Damn skippy! Another theory is that band leader Paul Aucoin was looking out for his east coast homies Holy Fuck who took the heat over the recent cutting of goverment arts funding. Those East coasters sure love their wacked out instrumental music and their cursing!

Island of Seven Cities

The Hylozoists are playing a free show at Soundscapes Record Shoppe in Toronto, 7 pm this Wednesday

Smacks of Slack

I picked up a copy of rock critic Rob Jovanovic's Pavement bio, "Perfect Sound Forever" as a self present at Christmas time. A completely fascinating read, especially with regards to original drummer Gary Young's drunken antics (onstage gymnastics and cabbage charity service) and Malkmus' late Pavement diva behaviour. More than anything it inspired me to dig through the Pavement discography, which, as it turns out, is pretty fucking timeless. "Brighten the Corners" (which Matador recently reissued in a sexy deluxe package) caught me off guard especially as being such a brilliant, musically competent album, standing out as the obvious pinnacle of the bands career (though Slanted is still pretty fuckin badass).
Stereo (sizzlin lead off track from Brighten)

Malkmus also indicates in interview, that despite being labeled as slackers, Pavement always tried their best:
SM: "Usually we're trying as hard as we can to be entertaining."
The slacker reputation, so it seems, comes more from their naive, laissez faire approach to the music industry, the story of the first Pavement 7" is especially characteristic of slacker behaviour, here's a spattering of quotes to whet your appetite:
SM: "I was fucking around getting static from the radio and Scott had a keyboard and was recording himself with this little handheld cassette. It was pretty reasonable to be able to make a single for $1000, so we decided to go for it. We didn't have any real plans because we weren't a real band."
Gary Young: "These 19 year old kids walk into my recording studio to do a four hour thing. They come in and they play this weird guitar noise and it just sounds like noise with no background. My drums were in there so I said 'should I drum?' and they said 'ok'... [Malkmus]'d play the guitar and he'd say, 'okay get ready, do, do, do- one two three,' and that's how that worked."
Spiral Stairs: "I had no idea mastering was a big thing. I got the test pressing back and it just sounded so bad. It sounded like it sounds now- it's just a mess- but being poor and not really caring I said 'okay that's cool, if it sounds like that- whatever"
The day after they recorded Malkmus left to CA to travel the world:
SM: "I was on vacation in Austria and i heard the EP over a record shop stereo... Iasked the guy in the record shop whether I could see it and there it was. I told him Pavement was my band. He said "that's a good name, somebody had to use it eventually"
and so forth. what a bunch of jokers those Pavement guys, hey? Here's a couple tracks from a 94 show in Hollywood that i found over at the always excellent aquariumdrunkard.com blog a couple months back,
Box Elder (Live, 94 [one of the two songs on slay tracks])
Stop Breathin (Live 94)
Coming soon: The first installment of I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOUR DISCOGRAPHY AND I WILL BEAT IT'S ASS, featuring: More blog posts about, you guessed it, Pavement!