New music 2010 - a Canadian wants list

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that 2009 new releases had all but ended, which was true, but that was not to say that I had become aware of anywhere near all I should like to have done, let alone hear them. I did also say that I still had a long 'pending list' from 2009...

This is an attempt to deal with a few of them and, because it has proven a treasure trove of new music over the last five or so years during which I have been paying attention, one country has never failed to amaze me. I have thus chosen to start with some Canadian music that I really want to hear...

I mentioned If The Fun and Laughter - Land of Talk (2009) (CD EP) in the side-bar yesterday and it is good indeed. Land of Talk is however not a band new to me. These pretty much all are and, in most cases, I know little except what I have read or otherwise been told.

Years (One Thousand Fingertips) - Attack In Black (2009)

These albums might not be so well known in the UK, and might be a little harder to track down than some, but I'm pretty certain that is going to be worth the effort. Here's another one...

This one shouldn't be too hard to find and it is also available on vinyl.

On a 2010 release promise I can't help but want to hear the 'Kite Hill' début release. Two of the most influential Canadian bands that I heard live in 2009 were Ohbijou and The Acorn, both part of the Toronto music scene, and this project involves members of both.

Spirit Guides - Evening Hymns, which you can get from amazon.ca, is another amongst many and there are indubitably dozens more of which I am sadly unaware...

If you would like to add any corrections, comments or additions please just feel free to do so.

Beacons, Black Ice and crossed-wires

It is autumn here now even though the weather is still remarkably good generally. This evening when driving from work I took the back-route home, which is through some woods, and while there was the faintest drizzle in the air you didn't need that or the slowly changing colours of the leaves to indicate it because you could just smell that it was now autumn. The UK is not a country of great climatic extremes, or indeed climate at all, which is probably why we are obsessed with the random variability of our weather instead.

Now why have I mentioned that you might ask? Well, much music has associations in as much to say it goes better with some seasons or weather or other associations (even if the they actually have to be experienced in foreign climes). If that were not true then surely the attractions of Ibiza would be no more than those of the Isle of Wight. (The latter does, to be fair, however host two major festivals and is thus trying very hard indeed and the sun shone at Bestival 2009, I am told.) I also think that opening a festival is an unenviable task...

It is often like this. There is always an amazing feeling when I come across an album that is show-stopping, which I was quite unacquainted with, but this is it seems even better if it happens live and that is why I waited ten days to order the album. [It arrived today, hence the comment.]

To hear a full set by a band live in such circumstances, and then twice in one day, was something quite new to me and I wondered if the album would then prove a disappointment in some way. Not a bit of it... it is a wonderful album and while much of it has ostensibly weather related themes, predominantly winter ones, they are as much metaphorical as literal.

In fact the album could equally well have been called 'Crossed Wires'. This is the interior artwork on the CD (Bella Union - BELLACD199) but the front cover has a clue to this even though the wires are barely above the snow.

It is very difficult to chose any favourite tracks but Black Ice is an obvious contender.

Black Ice

I took the bus down Bathurst Street and saw where,
all the lonely people meet down there.
I sat on a pile of cigarettes and blew,
icicles with one sharp breath towards you.

There's black ice, no sign.

Temper me and temper this I've tried,
to fit in everything in a small time.
The winter brings a heaviness, this weight,
is a hand over the things I shouldn't say.

There's black ice, no sign.

They are a seven-piece, much given to changing and swapping instruments, so even their festival-opening set on the 'The Big Top Stage' Friday lunchtime was a fairly complicated affair. It was however as nothing when compared to their 'surprise session' appearance at 2am Saturday on the tiny stage in the Tipi Tent, not least because for some of it they were joined by fellow Torontans 'The Acorn'.

That made eleven of them on a tiny stage and it was another blistering performance.

Now try to sort out the out all the wires.