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By Simon Howell - A Listening Ear - 05/13/2008

2008 appears to be the year Canada goes prog. Seemingly, no major Canadian indie-rock release can get by without at least one ten-minute opus: we’ve already had Ladyhawk’s incendiary “Ghost Blues” (Shots) and Black Mountain’s 17-minute “Bright Lights” (In the Future). Not to be outdone, Wolf Parade’s forthcoming At Mount Zoomer caps off in spectacular fashion with a “Kissing the Beehive.” Before long we’ll be seeing a return to side-long epics that characterized album rock in the late '70s.

The first to try that on for size will doubtlessly be Islands’ Nick Thorburn, whose latest opus is entitled Arm’s Way -- and make no mistake, it’s an opus. It runs sixty-eight minutes, and boasts expansive orchestral arrangements on most of its tracks. It’s also almost impossible to traverse from beginning to end -- a fact that is undoubtedly lost on Thorburn, old-school champion of The Album that he is. Even if you can make it past the incredibly bloated opener, “The Arm” (which lies somewhere between a theme song for a late-90s Xena-esque TV show and a Vampire Weekend reject), you’ll be subjected to a cavalcade of sonic blunders on an epic scale. “Pieces of You” relies on its empty titular phrase like a hollow pirate leg ready to snap (the sort of cartoon metaphor Thorburn could get behind) even as its grandiose-yet-predictable string arrangement tries in vain to embiggen the track. Briefer pop tunes like “Creeper” and “J’aime Vous Voire Quitter” fare better largely due to their, well, brevity, but of course they take up less than a tenth of the total runtime, and even “J’aime” manages to squeeze in an awful, kitschy Graceland breakdown.

Besides the bloat (which only grows worse over the course of the record, with its last seven tracks all meandering past the five-minute mark), Arm’s Way isn’t aided by Thorburn’s bizarre insistence on loading his prog-lite tunes with lyrical references to physical trauma and tough-guy dilemmas. He’s plagued by attacking/invading forces (the “Arm” and the “Creeper”) and mentions being stabbed on at least two tracks, as well as pondering a “Life In Jail.” On the latter track, Thorburn complains that he’s “lost his way.” He seems intent on countering his aimlessness by throwing around random images of violence, but they ring false given the weightless nature of the arrangements. If the listener manages to make it all the way to the cloying Godspeed build of the 11-minute closer “Vertigo (If It’s A Crime)” and still feel convinced of Thorburn’s genius, then he’s precisely the auteur they deserve.

There’s more than one way to meander, though, a fact Vancouver’s Young And Sexy seem privy to. Their third full-length, Panic When You Find It, featured three-minute pop songs that seemed to float effortlessly through their thick harmonies and mellow guitar tones, with quick reprises and perfect sequencing making for one of the best indie-pop records to come out of Canada in the last decade. With The Arc, they take a turn away from the tangible pleasures of that record into an altogether different realm, not entirely unlike the one explored on sophomore album Life Through One Speaker’s more expansive tracks, but without the sense of punctuation provided on that album with songs like “Herculean Bellboy” and “Ella.” Instead, The Arc spends the entirety of its 42 minutes inhabiting a hallucinatory space, often employing unpredictable melodic turns, off-the-cuff vocal lines, and fluid guitar lines.

At first the approach is entirely successful -- the first four tracks effectively define the album’s mood and pace, while packing enough memorable progressions to maintain our interest. “The Poisoned Cup” boasts a great chorus that reflects the track’s hazy atmospherics (“I stole through the garden and fell to my knees / the air is thick, my time it’s gone to shit”), and opener “Saucerful of Fire” takes full advantage of the group’s trademark vocal harmonies. They let themselves drift a little too far, however, with a shapeless middle section characterized by songs that elude memory even after multiple listens (particularly the “Ella” sound-alike “Step Inside” and the pretty but shapeless “The Fog”). “Demon Dreaming” briefly resuscitates the record with its attractive rush, but ultimately “The Echo” and closer “Up in the Rafters” are little more than great bedtime music, which might be charming if they weren’t separated by a tuneless, half-speed Comets on Fire psych dirge called “Spill the Sky.” The Arc, appropriately enough, carries a certain narrative weight in its leaden movements, but can’t help feeling like a disappointment considering the group’s unerring focus in the past.

Tune in to A Listening Ear with Simon every Friday from 2pm - 4pm

By Jake - The Incinerator - 05/03/2008

This was my first time seeing polyrhythmic thrash legends Meshuggah perform live, and the show was exactly what I expected: flawless. The musicianship that these guys display on stage is astonishing. Keeping track of all the permutations the rhythms and structures go through is difficult enough without having to also concentrate on executing them; it's a wonder they can play any of this stuff live at all. Apparently, songs off Catch 33, the album preceding this year’s ObZen, were too complicated to even think about trying to execute in a live setting. Although in various recent interviews the band has stated that one of their main goals for ObZen was to create something that was more straightforward and "playable" live, you wouldn't know that they'd succeeded from listening to the album, which is anything but simple.

The band’s set list for the night consisted of three tracks each from the albums ObZen and Nothing, with one each from Chaosphere and Destroy Erase Improve. I was expecting the best song of the night to be “Bleed,” my favorite from the new album and according to drummer Tomas Haake the song which he spent the most time practicing for this tour, but it was “Electric Red” from the same album that blew my mind and was most certainly the highlight of the show.

The sound and mixing were both great from where I stood in the crowd (at the front and slightly left of centre, which situated me directly in front of both Tomas and my favorite of their two guitarists, Fredrik Thordendal). Tomas' kit sounded perfect, and each of his drums were audible over the guitars such that you could clearly hear every note he played. Fredrik's guitar tone was thick and even more punishing live than on the albums. The vocalist, Jens Kidman, also sounded great, but was most notable for his stage presence and his intense, scowling stare. If you've seen the recent promo photos you have a small idea of what it's like to see this live and have him glare directly at you. It's also really interesting to watch the band headbang live -- since they're playing polyrhythms and complex time signatures, they're often headbanging at different rates. It might seem easy to pick an instrument and headbang along to it, but you'll quickly find that you've gone out of sync.

Needless to say, the crowd went completely nuts for this show. Despite the high ticket price and the fact that Meshuggah was only a supporting band, there was a huge turnout of rabid fans, and the people closest to the stage took a lot of hard hits from moshers, crowd surfers, and various flailing lunatics. Bizarrely, the crowd was probably worse in that regard than any death metal show I've been to, and was probably only eclipsed in brutality by the Megadeth crowd at the 2005 Gigantour and the drunk crust punks who tore up the 2006 Sodom and Finntroll show at the Medley. My advice: if you plan to see this band live show up early to get a spot along the railing, otherwise you stand a good chance of getting hurt if you stay up front.

Songs played:

“The Mouth Licking What You've Bled”
“Bleed”
“Electric Red”
“Perpetual Black Second”
“Pravus”
“Rational Gaze”
“Straws Pulled At Random”
“Future Breed Machine”

Though this set list speaks for itself, I’d like to mention a few points about the opening band, Hemlock, of Las Vegas. Based on the songs posted on their Myspace, I thought this band was going to be pretty bad, but to my surprise they rocked hard. Metal Archives calls them heavy/thrash, but they had definite groove and also played a few songs that were full-out sludge. The singer took a nu-metal approach to performance, repeatedly punching himself in the face and pulling his hair. I thought this was pretty incongruous with their vibe, and not likely to appeal to the night's audience (a mix of technical thrash and gothy industrial fans), but it made sense when I found out most of the bands previous major tours have been supporting bands like Slipknot and Otep. Nevertheless, the frontman had a good voice and was great at getting the crowd excited and generating quite a few sing-alongs and big (but friendly) circle pits. In between songs, he told us to stay positive and never give up on our dreams. These guys are out to have a good time and make people happy with their music, and they definitely succeeded at this show. For an opening band, it was pretty solid.

As a final note, rumor has it that Meshuggah will be coming back to Montreal as a headliner sometime in the fall. Don't miss it.

Tune in to The Incinerator with Jake every Saturday from 8pm - 9pm

By Angelica Calcagnile - BVST - 05/03/2008

Saturday was an extremely trying day for me, and while I generally face my problems head on, I decided it was in my interest to seek some solace elsewhere instead. Four hours later, after watching a barely clad Johnny Knoxville get hit in the balls in ever more inventive ways, I was feeling a whole lot better about myself, but hunger was nagging. I carbo loaded quickly, and as the sugars, starches, fats and chemicals surged warmly through my system, I knew the trifecta had to be completed. After all, what are sex and drugs without rock'n'roll? Luckily for me, The Reverend Horton Heat and the inimitable Nashville Pussy were bringing their brand of rock'n'roll revivalism to Saints that night, so I braved the rain and long faces in the rouge-blanc-bleu to catch openers, Grady. Or at least that was the plan.

The show supposedly started at 9:30, and while I realized that Montreal rock shows stopped being fashionably late ages ago, my Jackass-and-pizza stupor kept me bolted to the couch for longer than intended. I rolled in at quarter past ten to the sound of Pussy. Turns out that the whole thing started an hour earlier, which is a shame, since I've been looking forward to a second shot at Grady since I caught them with Nashville Pussy and Nebula down in NYC for CMJ 2007.

If you've ever listened to the local-classic-rock-station-that-shall-not-be-named for longer than five minutes, chances are that you've heard the plunderin', thunderin', honky-tonkin' instant classic "Diggin' A Hole" by Big Sugar. Well, front man Gordie "Grady" Johnson gave up on the Canadian music scene and moved down to Austin, TX a few years back to form the eponymous three piece Grady. He's still rockin' that fat double-necked guitar, only now the riffs are even more unabashedly bluesy and southern fried and topped off with a ten gallon hat. In any case, the show postmortem reveals that they were a great success, and I don't doubt it, despite not having witnessed it myself.

I did manage to catch a glimpse of the man later, as Gordie came out to play harmonica on a new and sacrilicious Nashville Pussy track with the catchy refrain... lemme see if I can get this right..."Lazy Jesus! Raise ye Jesus!" or something to that effect. Turns out he also engineered their new record, of which quite a few new tracks were previewed for the Montreal crowd that night. Thematically, not much has changed on Nashville Pussy's new stuff, but that's to be expected from a seasoned rock'n'roll band. After all, AC/DC and Motörhead have been essentially rerecording their greatest hits for decades, but only because rock'n'rollers understand that there's no sense in fixin' what ain't broke. Among the new songs was a catchy ditty about being higher than the sky or something to that effect (not to be confused with “High As Hell” from their second album of the same name). Seeing as the new album was recorded at Willie Nelson's studio and Willie knows a little about mood-altering drugs, I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of "influences" the new album will incorporate when it's released in the fall. As for the rest of the set, the band stomped through a bunch of oldies and some newly minted classics from the last record Get Some!, including my personal favorite and daily inspiration, “Hate and Whisky,” but clearly they're looking forward to coming out swinging again with this new album.

Performance-wise, however, it saddens me to report that I was less than impressed…Ordinarily, Nashville Pussy are a band that keep it together, even under extreme duress. I've seen the band more than half a dozen times, and in various states of inebriation, and they still managed to blister through without a hitch. Hell, lead singer Blaine has been so fucking high at times that his eyes were swelled shut, but the performance was still note perfect. This was the first time that I've ever seen them sloppy, and Blaine's "creative" delivery on some of the lyrics left me wishing I had been willing to brave the lineup for beer beforehand. In any case, the band left the stage to heavy applause, and I must admit, I wasn't ultimately disappointed with the set. Nashville Pussy are a true workhorse rock band, in the vein of Motörhead. I know I'll be seeing them tear up the stage for a few more decades yet.

The crowd really started to jump as the lights went down for his holiness the Reverend Horton Heat. Now, rockabilly is not my thing. At all. Yet I've seen The Reverend Horton Heat twice and wouldn't really hesitate to make it a hat trick. Musically, the Rev transcends genre with sheer musicianship, and the man himself is a sight to behold. He's casually Satanic, the way I envision Beelzebub would look if he actually walked the earth. He has the damp grey pallor of a decomposing corpse, the slick hair and sharp suits of a televangelist and the guitar chops that only the devil himself hands out at the crossroads. The ease and grace with which the Reverend's guitar sings gives this band such broad appeal, and the tongue-in-cheek songs and high energy just add to the package.

Alongside Jimbo on upright bass and Paul on drums, the Rev ripped through a slew of favorites to a wildly appreciative crowd, but the real surprises came during a set of covers further along in the show. Presented as an abbreviated musical history, the band started off with “Greensleeves,” and touched on some Bill Haley and The Stray Cats, but the real surprises came with a surprisingly faithful cover of Nirvana's “In Bloom” and an ambitious yet note perfect rendition of Sabbath's mighty “Paranoid,” sung sweetly by the drummer, who still managed to beat the skins while sounding like a less nasal Geddy Lee. What's not to like?

Well, the rock was hot, but the crowd was not, and my friends and I left early to avoid the fights, brewing and breaking out all around us. The atmosphere was tense and violent, people were being tossed out by the unreasonably unsympathetic bouncers by the boatload and quite frankly, the freak show was detracting from the action onstage. Certain concerts attract the kind of crowd that only go to one, maybe two live shows a year, and subsequently act like animals let out of a cage. Strangely enough, Saints seems to attract that kind of crowd on a regular basis, even for heavy rock shows. This is the second Nashville Pussy show I've seen there where a disconcerting percentage of the crowd was composed of dirty hippies in Che Guevara t-shirts swaying off tempo, greasy bejeweled club kids that quite possibly haven't left the club since the days of previous tenant The Dome, pregnant women, frat boys in Dockers and plaid button-downs crowd surfing and extraordinarily drunken middle-aged couples who finally found a sitter and have decided to celebrate by flopping like belligerent sock puppets all over the "dancefloor."

Saints has a bad reputation in Montreal, and while I've long defended its subterranean charm, I was disappointed once again by the sub par show-going experience. As with their last appearance, Nashville Pussy was forced to play in semi-darkness, and their sound was curiously subdued, The Reverend rocked while the ceiling above them dripped rain onto the stage, and the lines for bathrooms and beers were comparable to the Bell Center, for a venue with a fraction of the capacity. My friend attributes the generally bad vibe of the evening to the grievous hockey loss, but that doesn't entirely justify the less than stellar show-going experience. Saints is a venue that books rock'n'roll, but it's not quite a rock'n'roll venue, and it left me reminiscing about the last time I saw the Reverend and Nashville Pussy join forces, all the way back in 2002, right around the corner at Club Soda...

I'll stop writing now, but feel free to "say something nasty" to me about these bands, the show, shitty local venues, or anything else in the comments on the CJLO forums...

Tune in to BVST with Angelica every Wednesday from 7pm - 9pm

By Adrian “A-Dubs” Warner - Eclectricity - 09/11/2007

I discovered Substantial a few years ago when I saw his name on a 12” single posse cut. I found him and the others on the track to be typical, talented underground rappers. When I heard he released a full length CD, I was very intrigued. Then, when I heard the first few tracks of Sacrifice, I discovered he was perhaps a bit more talented than I thought. He has a track named “That Damn Good” and I am inclined to agree.

The CD begins with “Let It Go,” a brief but potent example of lyricism where Substantial rhymes for nearly three minutes with no chorus, hook or pause. After that display, I realized that Substantial has the skill and lyrics to deliver on any track.

There is a danger for some rappers to want to challenge themselves and demonstrate versatility. An MC as talented as Substantial should be cautious of recording tracks like “Chain Reaction.” The beat is not that spectacular and it is difficult to distinguish his lyrics. If his vocals were more clear and the focus of the track, it could have been one of the best songs on the CD. He returns to form, though, on “Resurrection of the House Party.”
Midway through the CD, Substantial gets sentimental and shows other sides of his personality and abilities. Up to three tracks pay tribute to hip-hop itself as he presents his view on the current state of the art form. If he had to resurrect the house party earlier on the album, he gets the chance to express more of his reflections on times past.

Aceyalone's “Greatest Show on Earth” flow came to mind when I heard “My Favorite Things.” Substantial delivers his rhymes in the melody of the John Coltrane jazz standard and song Julie Andrews made famous in The Sound Of Music. It would have been very clever had Acey not done something similar nearly fifteen years ago. However, the jazz influenced ode to hip-hop is still an interesting listen.

After multiple listens, I learned to appreciate what Substantial has done with Sacrifice. It is a very good effort; in this age of disposable music, it is good to hear music with substance. The production is not stellar, but that is a good thing -- Substantial's lyrics need to be heard. With the rare case in “Chain Reaction,” we learn what happens if Substantial's lyrics take a back seat to the beat (it should never happen). One can only wonder what will happen when production nearly matches Substantial's skills. I'll be waiting for that day.

7.5/10

Tune in to Eclectricity with A-Dubs every Sunday from 2pm - 4pm