Lollapalooza emailed the complete festival schedule to its mailing list subscribers today, and although Perry has once again put together what looks like it will be a great festival, I want to bring your attention to another festival happening the same weekend, August 7th-9th. Now in it’s eleventh year the Wolfe Island Music Festival will once again feature festival favourites and big names like Holy Fuck, and the usual smattering of the local Kingston scene with acts like P.S. I Love You, The Rural Alberta Advantage who we’ve talked about before and a personal favourite of mine Ohbijou.

So if you’re low on funds, don’t want to drive the twelve hours from Toronto, or like me currently don’t have a passport, why not come down and camp on a beutiful rural island where lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence seaway. It’s only a twenty minute free ferry-ride from downtown Kingston. This is the music festival equivalent of giving up the fast pace of the city for some relaxation in the country; you won’t have to rush between the stages (there’s only one), so you won’t miss a beat. Plus I plan to bring lots of wine to share.

Here’s a sampling of the festival’s performers to listen to while you plan your trip to the nation’s first capital:

Ohbijou – Black Ice from the recently released Beacons LP

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Woodhands – I Wasn’t Made for Fighting

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

PS I Love You – 2012

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Full lineup after the jump…

Read more…

At the tender ages of 18 and 15, sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg (First Aid Kit) are an uber-talent to be reckoned with. Having released their debut EP “Druken Trees” last April (a cause celebre in itself), these Swedish young-uns are planning a full album for this September. Although relatively fresh artists, they already seem to have come into their own with music that really sticks to your gut. A lot of that I believe has to do with the vocals. The Soderberg sisters have a deliciously complex “pinot noir” sound – summer berries, barnyard aromas and a long finish. The lyrics and melodies also have a maturity beyond their years. You’re Not Coming Home Tonight is a ballad in the truest sense with tegan-and-sarah-esque harmonies done better. And their cover of Tiger Mountain Pleasant Song is strikingly honest. In contrast to conjuring images of puffy sleeved musicians playing Greensleeves (sorry Fleet Foxes…it’s just that song), First Aid Kit’s version has an interesting almost mysterious quality with stringier guitar, a multitude of crescendos and live-time layered vocals that give a richer quality than would be expected of two voices. This song makes me want to go camping, and I hate camping.

Enjoy!

First Aid Kit – You’re Not Coming Home Tonight

First Aid Kit – Cover of Tiger Mountain Pleasant Song (YouTube)

I’m on the road till this thing drops. The truth is, no one raps about slinging coke like Clipse, and this has to be one of the most hotly and highly anticipated Hip Hop albums of the year. In a time when you can never be too sure what genre your favourite rapper’s new album is going to be (see: Wayne does Axl-meets-Alien or Kanye does Andre 3k meets Thom Yorke meets WTF), you can always count on the Clipse to continue rapping about cocaine, and street stuffs …

The new record will feature production by Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, The Hitmen, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Dame Grease, DJ Khalil, long time collaborators The Neptunes, and the legen (wait for it) dary, Rick Rubin.

This morning, the first cut from the album, called “Kinda Like a Big Deal” was released on their blog. It’s a very big deal. Featuring Kanye West, getting his College Dropout on (and by that I mean rapping very well), the beat is harder, and more filled-out than anything you would’ve heard the twins rap on in recent history – and while it’s not a gritty throwback to “Trill” or “Keys Open Doors”, it’s a banger which will definitely resonate in the places it’s meant to – bbq cookouts in Philly and basement parties at your baby mamazeses.

Clipse – Kinda Like a Big Deal (feat. Kanye West)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

One of the more exciting things to come out of SXSW so far, in contrast to the innundation of Tweets, is a new single from a past favourite of mine, Voxtrot, who will also be playing two shows during the festivities according to their website. “Trepanation Party” is not a drastic departure from material found on the band’s first two EP’s, but it does capture one’s attention more than anything on their full-length effort. The lyrics and vocals remain true to form, but are set against a much more varied backdrop of synth and peppy drums. The result is more cohesive than it sounds, and it makes you wonder why it took two years of inactivity to stumble upon such a formula. Perhaps some of the credit for this renewal is due in part to the contribution of Jim Eno from Spoon to the recording and production of the track. No word if any more material will be forthcoming.

Voxtrot – Trepanation Party

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Via Stereogum.

As some of you already know, everyone’s favourite Canadian combination of dance beats and heartbreak, Metric, are back at it again with a new album, Fantasies, due out on April 7th from Last Gang Records. It will be almost four years since the release of their third album, Live It Out, which was not a complete disappointment but was perhaps more exciting as remix fodder for MSTRKRFT than as an actual album, especially when compared to Old World Underground which managed to do in six songs what the former could not do in nearly double that, actually get me dancing.

UPDATE: Right after posting this I noticed this over at Sterogum. So through the magic of the internets, we can also stream the whole album, right here! (MP3, and streaming version of the album after the jump)

Read more…

The blogosphere is all a-twitter with activity today. So here are some of the things that actually caught my interest (via Sterogum and P4K):

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah debuted a new song last night on the new Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. They have made it available as a free download from their website (email required), so I will not be posting it here as that would be uncouth. The performance, however is available on YouTube:

Grizzly Bear’s upcoming release Veckatimest has leaked. You can read what they have to say about it on their blog. I have not listened to it yet, but I’m sure if I did it would only convince me to buy it immediately once it’s released on vinyl. You should do the same. Read our previous post about their live show in Brooklyn.

Zooey Deschannel, the one woman I would leave any other woman for, is starring in an upcoming film (500) Days of Summer, that seems to be something like Nick and Norah for twenty-somethings. Anyway, here is the preview, it looks pretty cutesy, but what has Zooey in it that isn’t. Also if you haven’t heard M. Ward’s latest Hold Time with Zooey, among others, guesting, you should.

Finally, it’s the battle of indie rockers with similar first names. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, whose “Do You Realize? was recently voted Oklahoma’s official rock song, has trash-talked Win Butler of Arcade Fire in a Rolling Stone interview, saying, “they treat everybody in their vicinity like shit.” Butler responds on Arcade Fire’s website saying something to the effect of, “you don’t even knoooow me.”

It’s not exactly the kind of music you want to play on a car ride with your family, but The Field still somehow is unmistakenly great electronica. Somewhere in between the ambience of Eno’s Music for Airports and a pepped up Apparat album their previous effort From Here We Go Sublime, made a lot of 2007’s best-of lists, including my own. I even gave it to my brother for christmas that year, a much more discerning house fan than myself. The album, Yesterday & Today is due May 25th from Kompakt, the famous German minimal house imprint and home of another favourite, Supermayer.

The Field – The Little Heart Beats So Fast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Supermayer – Two of Us (Extended Album Version)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Of course fellow Brazillian Kompakter, Gui Boratto, also has an album due to drop even sooner. Take My Breath Away has already leaked on the tubes, but will be officially released on March 9th. Now there is no “It’s a Beautiful Life” on here, but the album and this track are still worth a listen.

Gui Boratto – No Turning Back

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today marks a significant moment in the rapid decay of my childhood. My first crush, the man responsible for my long-term lusting for the chubby and the sweaty, who compelled me to make my first online purchase a t-shirt with a pair of dweeby glasses and the phrase Got Steve? printed on the front – Steven Page – is leaving Barenaked Ladies to pursue a solo career and theatrical opportunities. I realize that lamenting this break-up does not establish me as anything resembling cool or competent as a music critic, but I can’t resist. I am posting the classic ‘Be My Yoko Ono’ as an elegy, hoping to remind all of better days, when Steven Page intended his Yoko Ono to be a fine and intelligent woman, not crack cocaine and minors.

Barenaked Ladies – Be My Yoko Ono

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

UPDATE: If you’re like me and didn’t get Robyn’s obscure reference to a play from the 70s, now being screened on Broadway with a certain notable wizard, here is something you can relate to: Blonde Redhead. (after the jump…) -justin

Here’s a brand new track off the YYYs forthcoming album, It’s Blitz!, due out April 14th. Through the fuzz of my crappy work earphones, I can make out more the first promising fist pumping, tail-shaking (more dance elements than usual) notes of their first full length release since 2006’s Show Your Bones.

Let the remixes begin.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Junior Boys recently announced the dates for their upcoming North American tour, with a stop in Ottawa May 10th at Babylon.

Here are a couple tracks from their upcoming album, Begone Dull Care.

Dull To Pause – Junior Boys

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bits and Pieces – Junior Boys

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.