New album reviews in Stylus Magazine (links below)

Molina and Johnson - Molina and Johnson (Secretly Canadian)
The cover is shown above. Probably my favourite album cover of last year - shame the content was such a let down.

Tara Jane O'Neil - A Ways Away (K Records)

On Fillmore - Extended Vacation (Dead Oceans)

Half-Handed Cloud - Cut Me Down and Count My Rings (Asthmatic Kitty)

why Chad VanGaalen should win the Polaris Prize

Today I got to talk to one of my favourite musicians. The interview is scheduled to appear in the next issue of Stylus, which should be out in the coming month. Here's the intro/teaser:

Chad VanGaalen may be many things to many people, but one thing is certain: he embodies the do-it-yourself aesthetic at nearly every level. From self-production and designing his album artwork to building instruments and animating his own music videos, it’s difficult to think of something that VanGaalen isn’t good at. Now after three diverse albums of homespun folk rock, the Polaris Prize nominated Albertan has released his electronic side project, Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz, under the moniker Black Mold (on the Calgary-based label Flemish Eye). Stylus caught up with Chad VanGaalen to discuss his musical alter-ego, his artwork, and why it's unlikely that he'll be invited back to perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival any time soon.

Intrigued? Of course you are. Who get's banned from Folk Fest? Well, you'll have to wait and see. All I'm going to say for now is that it has something to do with "corpse porn."

We also spent five or so minutes discussing the Polaris Prize, for which Chad's third album, 2008's Soft Airplane, is nominated. Now, I realize pretty biased, but I do not see how any of the other nominees (save Fucked Up's The Chemistry of Common Life) should even stand a chance against such a strong, engrossing album from an artist who is (arguably) Canada's best and most original young songwriter. Chad was also nominated for 2006's Skelliconnection, which should have won instead of Patrick Watson's crappy Close To Paradise. Besides, Mr. VanGaalen has also produced one of last year's best records (Women's self-titled debut) and is at work recording their follow up.

Best of all, I recently discovered that Chad VanGaalen was once a guest on David Letterman, but not as a musician. His performance here fits into a segment called "Stupid Human Tricks." Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until 2:34 in the clip until he appears, but, trust me, it's worth it.

this is getting ridiculous...

...in other words, prepare for the backlash.

In a hilarious new post on MBV, Pitchfork's Ryan Catbird laments the pickle they've gotten themselves into with the new Grizzly Bear album, Veckatimest, which hits record stores next Tuesday. As I've mentioned in previous posts, the album leaked over two months ago and has been gaining steady, almost unconditional support from practically everyone who follows new music. Catbird gives us the breakdown:

Here’s the rub: by busting out of the gate this year with that 9.6 for Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, they’ve created a situation where it’s going to be virtually impossible to rate an album above 9 without drawing a direct comparison to Merriweather.

Look at what we've gotten ourselves into. It's a telling problem for current web-gods and tastemakers like Pitchfork. Has popular music criticism always been this contrived, this full of posturing? Probably, but with the internet, it's reached a new level of absurdity. I've always had issues with Pitchfork's rating system. That decimal place drives me nuts, but at least now we have an instance where it's clear why they use it. Damn that Merriweater Post Pavillion! It's caused so many problems.

I'd like to say that Grizzly Bear doesn't deserve this. The music should speak for itself, but these days it often doesn't. Cokemachineglow just offered their review of Veckatimest, in which the writer falls on reactions around the office to contextualize his evaluation. Everyone, it seems, is already bored with it.

Even around the CMG watercooler there are at least as many dissenters as there are proponents. Veckatimest, you are boring Conrad. Chet said “snooze.” Somebody called them “Grizzly Bore.”

Pop music has always been inextricably linked with novelty, but contemporary critics especially seem consumed by this search for the "new" and it bugs me a little bit. I suppose I'm as guilty as anyone, but if I may... Sometimes I think I'm living in an age that privileges the "debut" and has a built-in hostility toward bands with any longevity, artists who actually want to grow and evolve.

Rants aside, I've been saving myself for next week's release. Ever since the follow-up to Yellow House (my favourite album of 2007) was announced, I've been giddy.

Speaking of Grizzly Bear, keep your eyes peeled for the next issue of Stylus, which features an interview of the band by UMFM's Jeff Friesen, host of "It's Okay, We're Lo-fi." I nearly got to do the interview, but Jeff beat me to the draw.

Below is an excerpt from an interview with Bryan Webb of the Constantines. As his music would suggest, he was quite gracious and amicable on the phone. The March/April issue of Stylus will (hopefully) feature our conversation in full.

There's a lot of hopeful sentiment running through Kensington Heights and it's quite striking to compare that to some of your earlier stuff, like your self-titled album.
Bryan Webb: We all grew up in that hardcore punk network in the nineties and that's how we met one another. Those were our formative years as musicians and learning to be a band. And that's how we learned to write songs, being in that world and receiving that style of play. For me, I didn't quite get that songs have to come from a frustrated energy. For a while I wrote from that punk-rock energy of being restless and fed-up or not being able to identify with most of what you face from day to day. So I learned to write songs in that mode and gradually I started to realize that the songs, anything I said from that perspective tended to be really short-lived. The energy that came from anger was productive, but the tension that came from that was more temporary. Whereas anything I said that was in celebration of something was more lasting. I felt like I could revisit it and be happy that I'd written it...something beyond myself. With Shine a Light, I wanted to start writing more loving songs. Songs that celebrated people that were living in a way that was inspiring or interesting. People that we actually knew who were surviving in interesting ways. And there are some songs that we just don't go back to, that were so much in that frame of mind that we can't go back to or identify with. Like some of the songs from the first record or Shine a Light don't speak to me or I don't feel like I can get back into that frame of mind. The songs that we do [play], like "Young Offenders," which we've been playing for nine years or more - there's a kind of good spirit in them that I want to preserve and keep putting out there. That's why they keep being part of the set. That said, we still play "Hyacinth Blues," and that's a pretty angry song, but it's specific enough but continues in popular culture and it's still worth talking about.

One thing that's always puzzled me about the Constantines, is that you guys often use a lot of pretty loaded references, sometimes theological references. You're name for example is kind of ambiguous.
BW: The original reference wasn't anything historical. It was the name of a guy who did ghost recordings of static and it was just [called] the Constantine experiments. His name was Constantine and it was kind of a cool idea. Ultimately I just like the idea of it being a family name, like the Ramones or something. But that name resonates through history in weird ways. The emperor Constantine was the guy who brought Christianity to the Western world. That was a turning point for the West to become what it was to become.

I've always wondered whether that was a sort of ironic move. Is there an ironic intention behind having that name because I think some people see it that way.
BW: It's just that to me that moment in history is an interesting reference, or that character in history is an interesting point. I don't feel like we [the Constantines] identify with him in an ironic way necessarily or an unironic way. It was just a key moment in human civilization. But we're not a specifically religious band.

There are some interesting moments on your new album, like the song "New King," which you wrote as a tribute to your friends the Kings, who had a new baby girl. But when I first heard that song, I thought it had a very messianic quality to it.
BW: Right. I love ambiguity in that way. I like putting out seemingly incongruous ideas, from one perspective suggests something but in actuality suggests something different. I mean, I think that those connections are ambiguous ones, but that ambiguity says a lot. It speaks volumes about how we receive information.

I have a friend who once said to me that you guys sound more Christian than the kind of bands that use it as a selling point. Don't take that the wrong way, but to me that says something about where your hearts are in your music.
BW: Yeah, I like devotional music. I'll say that. I love sacred harp singing and spiritual music like Eastern Orthodox kind of stuff, and like the Staple Singers. And I'm really moved by that, but it's not because I identify with the specific references. I find the devotion to it moving, or the purity of intention [behind] it. As many ambiguous kinds of things as I try to put into songs, I don't ever want to be insincere. The Constantines as a band are about trying to bring a certain amount of humility to rock and roll, you know, which isn't usually that kind of a medium.

March 7, 2009