Toronto - This has got to be moderately embarrassing
Archive for January 2008
Vancouver - I’m still trying to figure out this band. Formerly known as The Lovekevins or ‘The Lovekins’ as I called them until 3 days ago, The LK Formed in 2003 in Malmö*, Sweden as an art/music collective. They released 2 EP’s of jangly indie pop reminiscent of The Lucksmiths and early The Acid House Kings (their gem of a song ’soviet.se’ has been featured on a bunch of compilations, I’ll post it below so you can listen). After a shuffle in the band line up in 2006, they felt they needed to change not only their name but their sound, focusing more on an electropop sound or ‘musique concrète’ as they mention on their myspace bio.
Much like Postal Services’ ‘Give Up’, Vs. the Snow combines lo-fi melodies and hi-tech beats and bloops, which to be honest was a genre created and killed by the Postal Service. There’s nothing original about The LK’s latest…but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad record. If there are hipsters reading this post (and you know who you are) you must have already heard the sure fire floor stormer ‘Private Life of a Cat’. You could play this track back to back with ‘Such Great Heights’ and not notice the transition. ‘Tamagotchi Freestyle’ (and my personal favorite) sounds like a track made just for their Japanese fans, not because of the name but if you close your eyes whilst listening you could can actually see Hello Kitties going about their cutesy colorful existence. The rest of the album follows the same formula and for what it is, it’s worth at least one listen, pick your favorites, play them ad nauseum and put the album on the shelf until you meet that special hipster dude or dudette…with a hello kitty backpack.
*I had visited Malmö that same year to try and catch a Soundtrack Of Our Lives show, under the assumption that if not on tour, a band must play a show every single night in their home city. I instead was stalked by a group of hoodies after leaving a shwarma shop on my way back to the hostel.
3.5/5
I’m going to post 2 tracks - ’soviet.se’ from their earlier Max Léon EP and ‘Tamagotchi Freestyle’ from Vs. The Snow
Toronto - If I were to ask you about a few good things to come out of Sweden a few years ago, all you would say is probably ‘blond girls, meatballs and ikea’. You might say Peter Forsberg or Mats Sundin too, but point is, nowadays you can add ‘great music’ to this list. Most of us already know about the Shout Out Louds, Sambasassdeurs, Radio Dept, Club 8 and many others as bands from Sweden we know and love. Well, theres a newish band I am quite excited about. They are called Lacrosse. Props to Gary for pointing me towards this band. Young padwan has done well. Anyways, here is the bands myspace intro:
“Lacrosse Lacrosse is the national game of Canada. It is also the hometown of serial killer Ed Gein. But above all, Lacrosse is five boys and one girl making fantastic pop music. From a basement in Stockholm, Lacrosse brings you love and happiness in songs so catchy that you can’t help singing along! ”
It’s quite true, the songs I’ve heard have all been fantastic. Give it a listen. You can also listen to more of their songs off their website, although it is all in Swedish. Here is the link to that site (you can download another good song - sunshiner off there as well)
Toronto - Who are the Teenagers you ask? Here is a link to my last post, so I don’t have to write again. I am just writing to you about how the concert was. First of all, the show got moved to ‘The Great Hall’ which was right across the street. This place is great for concerts, honestly. The second floor of the place had nice comfy seats that I was able to rest my ass on. It reminded me of a church or theatre of some sort with balconies and everything. Furthermore, drinks were 5 bucks across. I suspect you need to apply for liquor license and have your own bartenders at this place, otherwise I am sure this venue would be more popular. Seriously, if Churches sold drinks for 5 bucks across, I might attend more.
On to the show itself, well, this was only the second show of the year and I think if I were to have yearly awards for shows i go to, this one would take the cake for
a) most overdressed (yet underessed) crowd
b) most guys wth eyeliners at a show
c) most girls with ridiculously short skirts on (distracting)
d) most amateur photographers
e) feeling old at a concert
To my surprise, the Teenagers were actually a 5 piece set. My friend D thought that they’d be a couple of goof balls fiddling around with knobs and buttons. However, they actually had two guitarist, one bassist, a drummer and the singer. My my, a real band!. They started off with either track 3 or 4 off their album and the sold out crowd seemed to really enjoy their music. They were a lot more prolific with their musical instruments then I had thought they were and I am glad to see that while their act might be a novelty act, they certainly didn’t play the part. The lead singer was kinda funny, and clearly enjoyed the spotlight. The set list consisted of most if not all of their album, and thats about it I think.
Funniest part of the set was for their smash hit homecoming, the asian dude was like ‘okay, this song requires female singer, we don’t have one right now so we will invite a girl on to the stage to sing the part’. Obviously, recipe for disaster. So they drag up this girl who was clearly blitz. Then another girl asks to go on stage and the lead singer allows her. The third girl jumps up on stage too and then the lead, who is clearly a bit annoyed says ‘two is enough’ but the girl doesnt get off the stage. Worse of all, none of the three girls on the stage knew any lyrics to the song and the girl that he didnt allow onto the stage knew it, so he spent the female portion of the song on his knees holding the mic to the girl in the crowd while the three other girls just jumped up and down.
Overally, a pretty good show for sunday night, it was better then I anticipated, the venue was great and the show had some seriously good moments…like..
girl in crowd: “MICHAELLLLLLL”
singer: “do you want to ask michael a question?”
girl: “MICHAEEELL”
singer: “okay ask him a question”
girl: “MICHAEEELLL”
singe: ” ask him a question”
girl: “whats a question?”
3.5/5
* picture was not from the concert.
heres the song with the girl/guy part
Toronto - Every year, the city of Toronto hosts this thing called ‘Winter City’ where people gather around Nathan Phillips Square and do stuff to celebrate winter, and city. What this means is every weekend for a few weekends, theres a free outdoor concert. On the weekend of January 26, the free concert was GTA’s own, Tokyo Police Club. Arguably the most hyped Canadian band at the moment, TPC seems marked for the big ticket and will be releasing a LP off Paperbag records sometime soon. I managed to drag myself (and a few others) to the show.
So how was the show? Well, let me first say, this “Nights of Fire” thing that was going on at the same time was freakin wicked. There was flames everywhere, it was a pyros wet dream. The fire, along with the fog and the snow made for some crazy scenes and I wish I had brought my camera along. Here is some flickr pics that other people put up.
The band came on sometime after nine to a extremely large crowd, half of which seemed to be teenagers jacked on whatever it is they drink these days. The crowd was quite enthusiastic about the show and the band led off with the opening track “Box” off the bands latest EP - Smith. This was my first time seeing them, so I had pretty decent expectations since I really loved the song ‘Your English is Good”, as well as most of the Eps. Tokyo Police Club announced that they have a cd coming out soon and most of the set list consisted of songs from their previous releases and new stuff. I have to say, I was expected more then what I got from the concert. The new music sounded quite mellow and to me, TPC is at its best when they are delivering short, solid upbeat tunes.
Overall, you can’t complain about the free show and the visuals were stunning, with the light show from stage melding in with the snowing. I bet the band members were quite cold wearing just t-shirts and what not while everyone else was all layered up. After hearing the concert, it’ll be interesting to see if TPC loses any momentum when they release their new LP this spring. I think they are very similar to the UK band the Cribs, so if you enjoy TPC, check the other band out too.
2.5/5
+ crazy setup for winter city
+ free
+ these fluorescent tube things they handed out
+ played the songs that I liked
- played songs i thought were meh
- freakin kids
- cold
- could have been shorter, since it was cold
* Props to my friend Gary for taking pictures. He has more pictures up, but you will have to be his facebook friend if you want to see him. That’s quite the commitment.
Here is the song that they started the set off with
