EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 1)

I have a soft spot for a great deal of music that comes out of Canada, in case you haven't already noticed, and I posted to this effect recently.
This last weekend I was spoilt rotten. Here are just two of my highlights in no particular order and more will follow on this topic.
I shall start with Timber Timbre. Their world is one of mist and shadows. They shun publicity and certainly would not be found signing CDs in the Rough Trade pop-up shop. This extends to the live show too so luckily, on a glorious sunny Saturday afternoon, they were ensconced in the perpetual twilight of the Big Top Stage.

It was easy for the lighting guys but the unchanging red glow well suited the music too.

I need the album 'Creep On Creeping On'.

Immediately following them on the same stage was a band whose recent album 'Feel It Break' I have been listening to quite often in the last month or two. The prospect of seeing them live therefore excited me but, from experience, such expectation can prove to be a double-edged sword. This time it was not. The band is Austra, its front-woman Katie Stelmanis.
  

Rather electro, rather noir in a slightly Gothic but not-at-all-depressing kind of way and utterly spellbinding. If these had been the only memorable performances by Canadian artists that I saw over the weekend I'd have been just fine about it.
It wasn't quite like that.

New Music 2011 → Canada → EOTR 2011

"My brain is speeding faster than my mouth can move."

  

Strange but, to purloin a lyric from an EOTR artist in 2010 (not a Canadian one as it happens), it currently applies to my writing too. It isn't something that, for better or for worse, happens all the time.   

I'm not sure where to start and have no idea where it might end but here goes anyway. In one sense it is a little like 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party' but, unlike a rather different Tea Party, shockingly liberal-minded.

OK, that's just plain silly so let us start with the act that takes its name from the study of tea leaves, or if you prefer it coffee grounds, as a means to divine the future. From Canada, based in Toronto but raised in Halifax and formerly known as Ghost Bees (2008-10), it is still twin sisters Romy and Sari Lightman. In 2010, reflecting the changed nature of their music to include diverse new influences, they changed their moniker to Tasseomancy (word definition).

  

They release their début album under this name, Ulalume, on Toronto-based independent label  Out Of This Spark on August 30, 2011 in Canada. That it is also the title of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, who was never the most conventional and cheerful of souls, should serve as due warning.  We might well be looking at a 2011 take on 'New Albums For Autumn' here - and quite possibly a premature trip into Halloween play-list territory too.
  

On the face of it this might seem to have little to do with End of The Road 2011 but that may not be the case.  Two bands, both of which I want to see live for the first time, are booked to appear at EOTR 2011. The first of them is Austra, which is touring the electronic-biased album 'Feel It Break'.

  

Creep On Creepin' On - Timber Timbre (2011)

      

The Lightmans are an integral part of Austra's touring line up and Timber Timbre, that produced and also guested on Ulalume, is also performing. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?