Matt Lee is a musician, writer and bon-vivant based in Montreal, Quebec. He divides his time rocking out in DIY spaces around the Northeast Canada and USA while running his micro label Talking Skull. He writes about music as well as publishing the odd short story and lives with a rabbit of surprising character named Walter Matthau.
The protracted nature of this album perhaps weighs it down, melancholy is easier to receive in fits and starts, the ear and soul are easy to load down to the point of inertia. But, that too is something I’ve learned to respect in Odd Limbs. They are NOT inviting, they are simply dwelling within the somber and beautifully colored temple and it’s up to us to enter. Not being chased after by an aesthetic is refreshing, it’s brave and deliciously subjective.
If this is what “emo” has become, praise the fucking music gods that these kids really know how to turn their emotions into living, breathing beauty in song. Beauty that can only come from pain and crushing struggle, you hear the tears, joy, depression and hope in every well placed line.
Gratifying and disorienting, like any challenging music should be, the musicality on display giving fucked up wings to the mutant children of punk and no-wave. Sacral Nerves could be the soundtrack to a stabbing… or the best night of your life.
Many people may hold their ears and run from that, as they might from Crabe, but those that remain are like the first 5 people that thought Primus was the shit and bought a tape. The prescient among us might twig to what obvious genius and true punk sorcery is being offered in the oeuvre of this phenomenal band.
Notta Comet has so much music in them I doubt that many could even survive a full length from this disgustingly talented new band.
A truly and authentically fucked up album with stunning artwork by monsters of the considerable Quebec psych/garage/punk/whatevs scene that lingers in the mind’s ear like it’s been branded there.
There is a gift at work in the songs that you have to squint to see sometimes, but damn if this album isn’t something that should be considered an underground legend, a sun-damaged Love Tara for this generation.
The trio make assured and destructive steps with every crushing track on this album, a new watermark in menacing, cathartic neo-doom.
When free jazz met the moshpit, Shining Wizard was born, it’s a powerful first offering by two musicians ascending to the peaks of their wizardly powers, perfectly in step.
There is a gorgeous hue to this album, a very conscious shading and nuance that draws equal inspiration from Rick White era Can-rock as it does the angelic harmonic layering of Harmonium.
The music of Weed gives the mind and soul wings, as if you were soaring high above the glaciers and mountains.. a real triumph and excellent addition to the renaissance of Canadian DIY music.
There is magic at work here, a very organic kind that transcends the wood, steel and electricity of the instruments. The guitar, the drums, they are more lightening rods for the spirit world than mere instruments.
Feet planted firmly in a base of shoegaze, the vocals are appropriately muted and understated and the guitars in a layered, fuzzy sheen.
Univox are a brilliant quartet of players who have always provided creative, complex and challenging music while never compromising the baseline of total abandon and rock and roll.
The effect overall of Only Friend is a very deep aural experience, you can either intently lose yourself within it’s folds or allow it to shimmer in the background of a midnight drive or a hazily intimate evening.
Arrington is one of those artists (like his obvious compositional hero Captain Beefheart ) whose work must be taken in as an arc, a traveling trajectory moving through different spaces and examining the muse from myriad angles, some down and rock n roll, some more hypnagogic and trance-worthy.
Oriented squarely at devotees of the noise/improv scene, The Jazzfakers Here Is Now culls from a mercifully diverse sonic bag of tricks so the ear never quite gets worn out by one set of elements stretched to the point of over-endurance.
Veteran Montreal pop rockers return with a sparkling new collection of sweaty tunes.
Slouching sideways out of the backwater town of Valleyfield, just west of Montreal, Crabe is a fantastically unpredictable duo of dudes laying down some of the freshest tunes that defy any attempts at categorization
The Yips’ first EP is already a triumph, managing to infuse older sounds with new attitude and succeeding fiercely while achieving the rare feat of being a party band with depth and complexity.
I’ve been eagerly dancing around this stunning li’l number from Cambridge’s Hands and Knees, enjoying it as heartily as I would a great huge fucking sandwich.
Taken as an album, “Sparcity Blues” does not smack you about the face with immediate gratification, but instead invites the patient, the worthy and the intrepid among us into it’s heady, sensual and darkly shaded world of wonders.
A work of singular beauty that triumphs in it’s ability to evoke deeply archetypal allegories out of relatively simple imagery and opening perception in it’s glyph-laden but still easily epistemological view of the “natural” world as it scrapes trippily across our human need for compartmentalization and supreme control.
There is so much to love on this tape, it bursts with bright and diverse color and a totally original and exuberant take on psychedelic roads previously traveled by similar visionary heavies.
Downtown Boys , one of Providence’s most exciting bands emerging from an already rich scene has just dropped a raw piece of timelessly intense and exuberant punk in their debut, self-titled release.
When I heard about Northern Haze , a metal band from Igloolik (a tiny town in Nunavut) who’ve been making stoner-y heavy rock with lyrics sung in Inuktitut I was appropriately intrigued.
Unabashedly earnest, while maintaining an aura of strength and barely constrained power, these four songs roll out before the ears like a dark and complex diorama.
Pulling liberally from every good genre of rock, N.N. really sound like true believers, paring down the riffs and songs to a gloriously sludgy essence, the drums and bass a pillar of stone, the guitars burned and rough, the vocals dangerous and full of pathos.
A comfortable punch in the face that reeks of basement tours and beer, Nubians , though sloppy and no-fi, can’t hide the fact that there are some capable-ass musicians behind the murk, ready to party and make plenty more gratifying and edge-kicking punk tapes.
Just a tick on the “fi” side of lo-fi bedroom beats, the songs weave a dark and seedy path through the various stages of urban concern and pathos.
There’s a way to pull off a sweatily awkward sense of the icky and inappropriate, and P/DO P/DRO are easily masters at elucidating the profane, from their live satanic invocations to their trashy and irreverent circuit-bending sound.
This nicely packaged gem of a 7” is a real mind voyage laden with some tasty concrete/actuelle treatments just this side of “too cool” for serious electroacoustic chin-strokers.
Though closer to the Mississippi River of Eastern Ontario than that of the Southern Delta region, catl have that muddy water in their bodies and souls, and that’s what makes their newest album shine.
Philly’s sunny sweetheart Shorty Boy-Boy drops some grit into his pop machine with an auspicious single, a debut from the maverick party animal culture explosion that is BITBY.
Gleeful lo-fi pop-punkers Rabbit Troupe are from New Jersey and are the breezy and fun summer high kick of 2012.
Astral Gunk are four Sackville-based musical miscreants blazing out of New Brunswick and just being totally fresher than anyone.
Jawdropping new cassette-only release from all around badass Nashville label Jeffery Drag. Ghost Dance, from small town Missouri are captured here spitting blood and starting fires in the infamous confines of underground Nashy venue, Mt Swag.
This album is loose enough to feel human, yet tight enough to please the IDM nerds, bangers and post rockers alike.
Ottawa has a surprising amount of great bands, and has contributed mightily to the collective Canadian tinnitus in it’s generous offering of seriously heavy bands. One band I’ve been enjoying for a few years, Biipiigwan, have perfected the sludgy viking side of things but injected with a very uniquely Canuck vibe, speaking to the hugeness of vast empty space, the inherent doom-feel of the frozen expanse of our ravaged, snow-covered wasteland.
Having talent and creativity to spare, this new album shows a new level reached, a plateau where Crunk Witch have reached a commanding zenith of the electronic rock drawing in everything around it like a giant, rock and roll tornado.
It was with a sense of great revelation and mystery that I unpacked this simple, spartan new CD from iconoclastic Cleveland songwriting legend Bill Fox .
Every time I think I’ve plumbed the depths of this city’s wellsprings of great music, something like cassette labels Kinnta and Hobo Cult pop out, all explosions and rainbows with a whole batch of amazing.
Shape Shifter is truly a jewel in the craft of Komodo’s (nee Matthew Burton) oeuvre. Originally known as Subluna, Burton’s established a global reputation for roof-raising live sets and enjoys a local rep for nurturing an aspect of the dubstep/bass scene since it’s inception into the Canadian east coast scene.
Identical twins from Ottawa, Rob and Peter Johnson wove a heavy duty tapestry on this tasty little four song 7” EP as Shahman. Occupying and interstitial space between math-y and slow paced Shellac dream-time and burned out early Mogwai post-rock, the corona of cathartic but eloquent screaming and metallic breaks in each song drive this boat over the proverbial mountain.
This exhaustive compendium of prolific punk weirdness documents 25 years of uncompromisingly off kilter songs by The American Devices.
Le Chelsea Beat are are welcome new band of bad-ass fuzzed out pysch rockers that slay in both official languages.
On Mesdames et Messieurs.. , this gang of crack musicians have created a pared-down half an hour plus slab of mod, psych and freakbeat influenced tunes that carry a wide range and obvious love and capacity for the genre.
Earnest, hardcore and totally driving, The Speaking Tongue’s first full length carries with it all the weight and grit of the Mississippi Delta where it was recorded.
Where does one even begin trying to offer a glimpse of the huge, planet-destroying force that is the band Natsumen. An Orchestra of joy. A free rock orgasm of sheer playing prowess and compulsive sound masses and melodic breakdown. This band hypnotizes, overwhelms and scintillates. That, added to their own self-descriptor, “Progressive HardCore JAZZ Aggressive Improvisation ROCK band.” and we’re getting close.
A heavy duty rock n’ roll cyclone of an album, full of piss & vinegar that carries the Cramps, Stooges and MC5 genome with authority.
From Fukuoka Japan, Hyacca are an incredibly exciting band. Their most recent effort Hanazono is a perfect high-kick of ripped rnr and driving psych-punk. There is, like many recent bands emerging from the Japanese underground, a whirlwind blend of genres at play that end up transcending the idioms into something sublime, earnest and tight as shit.
Evil Farm Children have made a beauty of a 7” that plays well with anything Norton. Throw in a rad black & white hand-drawn sleeve and this is exactly the kind of candy that rock and rollas like me love to get wired on.
Awkward I is the moniker of a Djurre de Haan , a young songsmith from Amsterdam who’s mined a fresh new talent to emerge clutching a ream of engaging and mature tunes in his newest offering Everything On Wheels.
I think my ass bones are just healing from bailing flat out in the moshpit at Scarlet Beast ‘s last show. That’s because I’m getting old, tabarnac… but I’m still moshin’ at least!
This dangerous slab of flesh-covered vinyl is a visceral, punch-packed screamer of a tour through a morphing blend of dancepunk, noise-rock and a haze of shoegaze.
Vincent’s Keep It That Way EP is another jewel from one of our country’s best songwriters and a must-have for fans of ballsy Canadian lit-rock.
Don’t let the Rolling Stones album art reference fool you, this EP by hoe-down kings and queens of Montreal, Lake of Stew is more “down home” than 2000 light years from it.
Blasting outta dank basements and crusty nooks of Montreal, Tightrope is a snappy, heavy and tight fist of fury, their self titled 7” packed with breakneck speed limblifters.
Crabe is a band that is always pushing their edge while enticing the listener through tongue-in-cheek humour that skeins the album, a welcome release valve or contrast to the almost frightening display of pure musicianship and warped edge-defining songwriting.
Cryin’, Dyin’ and Fourth of Julyin’ ‘s triumph is not only the obviously skilled musicians that crafted this bad-ass masterpiece, but in how it captures the vivid spirit of the blissfully druggy but focused ferality of rock and roll, drawing deep from the dark inheritance of that northwestern nook of Louisiana.
A brilliant, dank and essential album that achieves the pinnacle of what Sourvein has been able to give to the world: the sheer essence of heavy music, shorn of pretentious fuckery that weakens the broth like long solos or overproduction.
High Gospel is really a stellar, dark and majestic album that travels at it’s own measured pace and makes no apologies to anyone in it’s singularity of vision.
Philly’s Cannons ‘ newest release Cuddled By Giants is a tumultuous slab of awesome jams that sets a slightly more accessible tone than their scrappier 2010 release Friendly Muscles .
Montreal’s Bad Uncle are a rough and steamy band of miscreant gypsy-punx held together by duct tape, whisky and mad chops. While there’s a band like this in everybody’s city (right?), Bad Uncle are head and shoulders above the crowd for myriad reasons.
This cassette, a pretty chunk of sick right-brained rock jams, is a tasty lemon-lime work of art. These kids make a lot of deprecating and sly jokes in of and around the tunes, which have a quick-cut basement 4 track feel which is fairly consistent. They don’t take anything seriously (thank fucking god) not even The Beatles .
Napoleon Sodomite is a slab of truly heavy, immediately gratifying, un-fuckwithable riffs that taps the dark roots of unpretentious ‘banger ear-candy.
Hi-kicking and ass-kicking, Philly’s Bandname is a kinetic ball of fun. Their new full length, Breakfast is a rad collection of sun-drenched punk chops for the uncynical.
Uncluttered, indelicate and immediately engaging, the 10 songs on the latest release by D&TW seem planted firmly in a My Bloody Valentine plot, yet their roots and branches extend widely and magnificently.
This first piece of vinyl from fresh Nashville upstart DIY label Jeffery Drag is a really hot indication of the great things to come.
The second release by fuzzy Olympia based K recs group The Curious Mystery slides out the gate with a slow, dark majesty.
This fresh new group of misfit rockers have forged a sound entirely unique out of the sagging genres of punk, garage and metal.
Maxos Le Gervoïde has found in his music both means of poeticizing and channeling his storytelling but also pulling towards something wider than the little slice of province he springs from. But for the language these songs should be universal, as the themes are accessible to anyone.
Rising from the dank netherworld of Delaware, Ape! is an exciting new addition to the ever-expanding tree of Sabbath-genome metal. Any fan of mid-fi doom and deserty shred will love this release.
An incredible slab of searing garage perfection that leaves you totally breathless and wanting a whole lot more!
K Recs continues their magnificently diverse output with a slice of neo-sludge and retrodelia with this burnt offering by Chain & The Gang. Sparse, hiss-laden soul hooks here adorned by poppy and understated male/female vocals.
Everything that you love about completely over-driven garage punk is white hot on The Soupcans first release, a cleverly packaged casette on the tiny DIY Cramped Spaces Cassette Registry label.
Without a scrap of lyric, the songs manage to be incredibly lyrical, singing images pleasantly into the mind’s ear. The attentive listener is transported into splendid harbors of bright and comforting light and shade, to the point where the texture of the music is almost palpable to the touch.
Key of K manages to pack some major dynamics into seemingly simple songs. A beautiful, mellifluous and dark recording that should hold most listeners happily rapt.
The deceptively loose, rambling rawness of The Demon’s Claws ‘ music wraps everything we love about spooky psych rock and roll and sets it all on fire.
In today’s musical climate of regression and huge-fonted neon infantilism, where even the more esoteric labels are trying to put forth vapid beats to please and increasingly ADD audience you have to despair if you’re a music fan with any degree of patience and focus. Luckily the independent composer will never die, and Dora Bleu’s latest CD-R, Earthly Bombs , stands in direct opposition to the fast-food market of ipod commercial ready bands.
From the opening salvo, the ubiquitous Sam Shalabi ’s ELO draws you in to a cloistered, textured world of Egyptian modality and freeform experimentation.
Yet another band emerges to prove that Montreal is still producing real, top notch rock n roll bands. Desert Owls explodes out the gate with this scorching collection of raw, attitude laden tunes.
The Gruesomes blew up on the mid-80s Canadian scene, almost single handedly rekindling the 2nd wave garage revival with their teen beat striped sweater stomp that spliced the fuzz with some ragingly caustic punk maneuvers.
Ottawa, Ontario’s The Polymorphines are holding down the fun tent as part of Canada’s criminally under-appreciated gonzo garage rock scene. Their first album, Transistor Sistor is an unabashedly trashy rocking ode to joy, speed and sex that blissfully shakes a greasy tambourine in the faces of the jaded.
Nashville, Tennessee band Bad Cop ’s auspicious debut on the legendary ROIR label is an inoculating shot in the arm that acts as a sort of psychic painkiller. It’s an elevating, honest and transcendent album.
A crisp and bouncy release by this Montreal band.
One of the most genuine and exciting bands tearing shows up in the DIY scene right now.