You’ve gotta hand it to Oasis. Nowadays critics and fans wouldn’t let a band get away with lyrics like “I’ve been driving in my car with my friend Mr. Soft” or ““I got my hee-bee-jee-bees in a hidden bag” but for Oasis we’ve always cut them slack as their strength lies in the music itself. After giving their latest release “Dig Out Your Soul” a spin, I think Noel G. and Co. have also come to realize this.

Lyrically DOYS is what we’ve come to expect: Simple enough to memorize so you’ll be able to belt out every track word for word the next time Oasis hits your city. Liam does sing about ‘the rapture’ on more than one track and it makes me wonder if he knows something we don’t. But let’s focus on the music here. From the beginning Oasis has been known to have a Beatles influence and with ‘Definitely, Maybe’ being released in Madchesters heyday, they will always have the Britpop stigma attached to them. But since 2000’s Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, Oasis seems to have been leaning towards more of a psychedelic rock sound and Dig Out Your Soul feels like a culmination of this.

The album starts with ‘Bag it Up’, a typical sounding Oasis track, which makes sense as the lead-in. Keep the listener intrigued. As the album progresses, influences become more relevant. The dirty bass on ‘The Nature Of Reality’ and bluesy stomp-and-clap of ‘(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady’ sound like they took notice of 2002 tour mates Black Rebel Motorcycle Club where ‘The Shock of the Lightning’ sounds like Kasabian had thier hands in it. Of course The Beatles influences are ever-present throught - the closing of ‘The Turning’ sounds exactly like ‘Dear Prudence’ and Liams’ ‘I’m Outta Time’ is the usual Lennon-esque plink, plink on the piano and La, La La, La, La vocals. Although Liam is usually hailed as a great songwriter I feel that all of songs sound exactly like ‘Little James’. Stick to vocals Liam, thats where you really sheeeeeiiiiiinnnne. If I had to name the defining track for DOYS it would have to be the Gem penned ‘To Be Where There’s Life’. Complete with sitar, groovy bass, thumping beat and Liam belting ‘dig out your sooouuul, cos here we go’ it makes you want to get your Mancunian swagger on. This song is ripe for a proper remix. Take note Chemical Brothers.

It’s been almost 6 years of experimenting and tweaking but I think Oasis has finally the sound they’ve been searching for. Former Oasis manager Alan McGee sums things up perfectly by saying “…the notorious Oasis brothers have found their mojo. It’s back, without a doubt.”

4.5/5

Here’s a preview taken from the ‘Gold & Silver & Sunshine’ documentary, a look behind the scenes of the recording of the new album, the full-version will be available on DVD with the Limited Edition album.

 

 Oasis - To Be Where There's Life: Play Now

Toronto - The first week of October is known for a few things..mainly, the start of the NHL season, which results in many fantasy hockey drafts, and the start of MLB playoffs. Why do I keep making sport references in a blog whose demographics clearly do not care about sports? I have not a bloody clue. For music fans, the first week of October also means Pop Montreal, the annual music festival that celebrates both French and English music. This year marks the sixth time that Pop Montreal has occurred.

So if you are heading to Montreal this week, here are some of my suggestions for today and tommorrow. I don’t tread in the Canadian Indie Pop waters as much as Wade does, so he’ll probably know better acts to see. Hopefully he’ll provide a list too.

Hot Chip (Wednesday, Metropolis, 9:15) - Hot Chip is awesome live. Review of Toronto’s show will be up shortly. Not really a Pop Montreal band per say, but they are still awesome.

Dirty Chinese Thieves(Thursday, L’Escogriffe, 1:00 am) - I don’t even know anything about these guys, but they have ‘Chinese’ in their band name. That can’t be that bad.

The Chinese Stars(Thursday, Le Divan Orange, 2:00 am) - Ditto.

Why are these bands with the words ‘Chinese’ in them playing so late? probably so you can go grab yourself some Chinese food after. Do they have 24 hour noodle shops in Montreal? I don’t really know.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds(Thursday, Metropolis, 9:15) - If you don’t have tickets to this show, you probably aren’t getting in. Fresh off the successes of Grinderman and Dig Lazarus Dig, Nick Cave is strangely, riding a wave of momentum about 10-12 albums into his career.

I’ll keep this short. The Polaris Music Prize is announced on Monday. My prediction goes to Plants And Animals. Why? Because they don’t give a shit.

And if they don’t win, then I’m giving it to Holy Fuck. Why? Because they don’t give a shit either.

Discuss.

Toronto - Apparently, break-dancers need to listen something more than 300W ghettoblasters right beside their ears. They need rhythm, straight from the auditory canal. That’s the way they do things and there aint any substitutes. In comes Coosh with the solution - some silicone padding to replace those ear hangers, and voila, you have the Coosh headphones.

Ok, I was only joking. They built these things because yours truly hates 99.9% of the earphones out there that exercises his pinna like it’s Rocky Balboa trying to get back into shape. Most of them hurt your ear after you awkwardly fit them onto your ear, and the moment you begin to nod your head to the tunes, they fall off. So I reasoned - you can’t go wrong with $20… worse come to worst, you miss lunch (but mine was kindly provided to me by the guys at Coosh). And it does come in a tub-like package a la tuna paste. Cool.

There’s really not much else in the package - headphones, silicone apendages that were already attached for you, extentions, a minijack that works with everything (not one of those proprietary needles that is made for every new phone/walkman). So yes, this works with your iPod/iPhone. A simple user manual was taped to the packaging cardboard. The build is OK, things feel like they won’t fall apart. But who cares as long as it works, right? And yeah, it works. It does stay on my ears a lot more comfortably than other headphones. Yes I tried and couldn’t (easily) shake them off. And there was (initially) no irritating pain from my cartilage that comes with using other phones. Having said that, I went back to my Sony in-ears after using it for around 4 hours. Why? First, you do still feel your ears stretched, especially around the canal opening. I stay on headphones for 12+ hours a day, the Coosh wasn’t an Earth-shattering alternative. Your mileage may vary. The other bad news: the sound is hollow. I tried classical music, jazz, indie rock, Enya, etc, but pretty much across the board I felt that I was listening to youtube videos. Bass feel like additional volume. Maybe I am too conditioned to in-ears, but the added background noise and re-bound really puts me off. For the first time in years I was hearing my laptop’s fan along with my tunes. Not cool.

My verdict: if you’re on the move all the time and really just need some solid sound, get these. They work as advertised. If you care about sound quality and need to hear everything with a killer bass, stay home, listen to your bookshelf speakers, and don’t bother. Or get them for A) the packaging because you are an industrial design student, B) the cool moulded silicone, so you can DIY your own ear-hanger. That’s a thought.

*The Burning Hell
(Toronto) This Friday night another installment of the Steam Whistle Unsigned charity concert series for the Artists’ Health Centre Foundation is happening. If you can manage the trek downtown, the lineup includes The Framework (new-wave rock), Lioness (soul-punk quartet) and The Burning Hell (electric-ukulele orchestra). We wrote about the Burning Hell earlier this year when Mathias Kom released his latest, Happy Birthday on Weewerk. The Burning Hell features Mathias on his electric ukulele and up to 12 people on stage. Has potential.

Friday, September 19th
Steam Whistle Brewing
(255 Bremner Blvd, across from the Skydome and CN Tower)
Doors at 8:00, tickets $5
19+

I other beer news, here is a pretty useful how-to video I found lurking on the brewery’s site. Hey, if they don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

Toronto - People on the internet have really short attention span. You could be the greatest thing since sliced bread one day, then the next day, you don’t even exist. This applies to the whole internet music-blogging community as well. One day, you are the most hyped band on the web, everyone will proclaim you are the second coming of Joy Division - and then the next day, you are the Kaiser Chiefs. So I guess it comes to no surprise that Los Campesinos! is releasing their second album in a year, in their mind, they gotta get the money while they can. That cash be going to someone else soon enough. They say it’s not a cash grab, whatever, people gotta eat.

For those not in the know, Los Campesinos! is 7 Piece Welsh band on the Canadian label Arts & Crafts. Yup. Seven. They excel in making a lot of poppy noise, with gang lyrics and a cheery disposition. For more details on what their sound is, read Wade’s song-by-song analysis of their first album - Hold On Now, Youngster. Normally, I think Wade would probably write another song-by-song analysis of this second album, but by the time he finishes that, I think Los Campesinos would probably have released a third album, and that’s just not fair. So here is my uber short review on it.

So how is this second album? It’s pretty good. It doesn’t really stray much in sound from the first album (shocker) but I would dare say this album sounds a bit tighter and the songwriting has improved. It’s less raw, and the hooks are better constructed. I think the song “You’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing” might be the best Los Campesinos song so far. It’s not as cheery as the other ones (say..you me, dancing), but it’s got a great hook in it.

So in conclusion, after three listens of the album, I can say - if you like the first album, you will definitely like this one. If you did not like the first album, you probably won’t like this one either. If you have never listened to the first album - then give it a shot if you like poppy music explosions that’ll put you in a decent mood.

 

 Los Campesinos! - You'll Need These Fingers For Crossing: Play Now