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

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Woodhands – I Wasn’t Made for Fighting

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PS I Love You – 2012

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Full lineup after the jump…

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Recently I managed to get my hands on Hometowns by The Rural Alberta Advantage and it has been on high rotation ever since.So when I was perusing the interweb and found an article describing a band I had never heard of before as a cross between the RAA and The Postal Service (another one of my all time favorites) I just had to check it out.My efforts were rewarded with a wonderful little jem of an EP called frankencottage by the Dark Mean.

Frankencottage – Dark Mean

Frankencottage – Dark Mean

Dark Mean are a couple of high school friends who initially scored a play for a local artist Rebecca Nada-Rajah and in 2008 “The Constant K Determines the Fate of the Universe” debuted to excellent reviews. This spurred the band into sitting down and recording the following four songs at Vibewrangler in Hamilton.

While the similarities between the RAA and TPS may be a bit overplayed, there is little doubt that this band has a certain je ne sais quoi and are worth keeping an eye on.

They will be touring Southern Ontario extensively this summer and if they are in your neck of the woods make sure to check them out. Also their EP is available from their website so check it out.

PS, sorry this post took so long, lets never fight again…

Torngat is one of many groups, including Belle Orchestre and formerly the Arcade Fire, of which horn-player Pietro Amato is a member. This instrumental trio caught my attention back in 2007 at a show they played at Kingston’s Grad Club, where I had attended based mostly on my love of all things horn related. Despite a very intoxicated young Kingstonian lady dancing distractingly provocatively and yelling such witticisms as “Torngat? Pfft… more like TornGUT”, the show definitely was worth checking out.

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Being born and raised on the East Coast of Canada, to me Alberta was where you went to pay off student loans or make cash money to send back to your defeatist-have-not fellow Nova Scotians. A concept album about rural Alberta sounded about as appealing as the latest Nickleback effort. Torontonian group, the Rural Alberta Advantage, have made such an album work with Hometowns. I haven’t managed to get a copy of it yet (it’s available on their website: www.theraa.com), but from what I’ve heard at their recent concert in Ottawa at Cafe Dekcuf and in the songs I have managed to track down, they manage to combine oil, wild roses and the Rockies with a good dose of heartbreak (and  drumming well beyond your average alt-country fare) to craft what I can only assume is an accurate portrayal of life in the Texas of the North.

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Don’t Haunt This Place

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The Rural Alberta Advantage – Frank, AB

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The Rural Alberta Advantage – Sleep All Day (Green Go Remix)

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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)

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RiP: A Remix Manifesto is a fairly illegal documentary about copyright and remix culture whose filmmaker is and isn’t, Brett Gaylor. Essentially, hundreds upon hundreds of copyrighted sound and picture bits have been mashed up to support and sometimes indulge the fancies of Gaylor’s thesis: Remix culture should be embraced, not restricted.

As an open source film, it has undergone (and continues to undergo) more than just revisions, but remixes of itself. These mashups are made possible and encouraged by Gaylor’s posting of the source files online. The film was first dropped in Montreal at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma last October. Since then, I was lucky enough to snag a seat at the sneak preview (although it was a slightly different version than the official one to be released) in Vancouver this past Sunday, which ended in a half hour discussion with the filmmaker. For Torontonians, RiP will be gracing Royal Cinema on March 13th. Read more…

Even though the Apple Crisp Music Fest is a ways away (March 18th), if you were at the Grad Club on Friday night, you were one lucky enough to experience some premature crispiness straight out of the chilly Niagara region. Performing just before David Martel (MySpace) and The Wooden Sky, Matt Sajn set an evening precedent of lush musical prettiness, prettiness that reminds us that music is most universal when it’s downright specific. And Matt makes no excuses: he’s operatically in love with Fenwick, Ontario. Experience more of this haggard love affair here, or drop by ENGL386 every other Thursday – he’s the one copying off my quiz while I pretend not to notice. There’ll be a song about it someday. -Robyn

I first saw The Wooden Sky last semster opening for The Acorn at The Grad Club, along with a Toronto favourite of mine, Ohbijou. Even as an opener The Wooden Sky, formerly Friday Morning’s Regret, easily outshone my favourite Ohbijou numbers and supposed heavy-hitters, The Acorn. But they didn’t do it by out-muscling them, after all the latter rock a lot harder and the former pack some breathtaking string arrangements. The Wooden Sky simply commanded you to listen closely, with stripped down ballads where down-tempo melodies were perfectly matched to the tragedy of lead singer Gavin Gardener’s lyrics and the power of his voice. Now months later in March, headlining the show, they drew a larger, and more attentive crowd than their former tour-mates. It seems that their following is finally picking up, perhaps not with a lot of speed, but with a kind of unstoppable momentum reminiscent of the force of the material on When Lost at Sea. These guys might not ever be Indie starlets, but with the quality of their songwriting they are sure to at least become a Canadian favourite. -Justin

From the album When Lost at Sea: The Wooden Sky – The Wooden Sky

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The Wooden Sky – This Bird Has Flown

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Photos courtesy of Jess Swift and Robyn:

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

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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

To start off I just wanted to bring to everyone’s attention a very good piece Sal has over at Ca Va Cool about Kingston’s very own Grad Club. It has been nominated for best live venue on by CBC Radio 3 listeners, and now it is in the top ten, you can help it out by voting for it. I was conducting an interview with Julie Fader today for The Queen’s Journal and since she’s playing at the club on Friday this fact came up over the course of our conversation, she told me how great Virginia and the staff are, stuff that as an avid Grad Club frequenter I already know of course.

What I didn’t know, was that Julie, previously unbeknownst to me, actually makes a part of a network of many artists very familiar to me. I can’t divulge too much of the rest Julie’s story before I write my Journal piece, which I will link to when it’s up, but I can update you on a few of the band’s in her universe, a universe mostly centred around acts affiliated with the Hand Drawn Dracula imprint.

A couple members of Holy Fuck are helping out with the album, and since they are a perennial favourite of mine I will grace you with one of my perennial favourites of theirs.

Holy Fuck – Lovely Allen

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Brian Borcherdt is the main guy behind Holy Fuck and has a long history in Canadian music dating as far back as acts like By Divine Right, that’s, like, before blogs existed. His album, Coyotes, released last fall is his first release under his own name. Although, he previously released material under the moniker The Remains of Brian Borcherdt, I suppose that makes Coyotes the first-helpings of Brian Borcherdt.

Brian Borcherdt – Coyotes

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Mike Bigelow, a former/guest member of Holy Fuck, has gone on to a project known as Contrived. I have not yet determined whether the name or the band itself is a joke. To make matters worse their third album is dubbed Blank, Blank, Blank, perhaps indicative of the expression on a listeners face after the first listen. There’s nothing technically wrong with this album, but it just doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, and better by another of Bigelow’s projects: Wintersleep.

Contrived – Firing Squad

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This track by that same Halifax Band recently evoked spontaneous singing and dancing from a small group of us gathered on the second floor of the Grad Club so even though it’s not quite fresh, it is at least topical.

Wintersleep – Weighty Ghost

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Finally, no tour of this corner of Canadian indie would be complete without a checkup on Great Lake Swimmers, Fader has toured with them extensively in the past, and will be continuing to do so on the lead up to the release of their new album, Lost Channels, which she also guests on. The album is due for release March 31st on Nettwerk, but they’ve made one track available on their website. There’s nothing new here exactly, but the strange blend of down-tempo folk and hushed choir refrains remains somehow compelling.

Great Lake Swimmers – Everything Is Moving So Fast

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UPDATE: Here’s the online version of my piece for the Journal, also another writer did a great piece on Brian Borcherdt.

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

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Bits and Pieces – Junior Boys

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