“Call Me Out” was written in 2017. It’s an acknowledgement of the need for open listening, active learning, inward study and accountability towards personal and social change. It’s an owning of our privilege and responsibilities. We’re not looking to take up a lot of space with this release, but thought it might do some good to put it out now, rather than hiding it away any longer.
It won’t be available on spotify, applemusic, etc, or as a physical release. Please don’t post it on youtube. The purpose of this release is to raise money for the folks All $ from the sale of this song will be donated to Black Lives Matter Toronto: blacklivesmatter.ca
and Unist’ot’en Camp Legal Fund for Land Defenders: unistoten.camp/support-us/donate/
Like Psychic TV before them, Crack Cloud have a philosophy and one that they are not afraid to wear on their sleeves – while their anarchic, phantasmagorical visuals, heavy use of symbology, and seemingly never-ending cast of colourful collaborators have often invited cult comparisons, this really does the collective no justice. There is no apocalyptic death drive here; no cult of personality; no hierarchy of power. While frontman and lyricist Zach Choy is in many ways the face of the group, the collective is one founded on equality and in his cryptic lyrical blending of poetics, polemics and personal experience, Choy is truly the mouthpiece of something far larger than himself.
Nowhere else is this more apparent than on the album’s first single, ‘The Next Fix.’ What begins as a caustic, claustrophobic account of addiction swells into a sprawling, euphoric hymn as Choy is joined by a choir of seemingly endless celestial voices. Less a cult then; more a church. Listening to this song or watching its accompanying self-directed video is a truly spiritual experience, and in its building, jubilant movement it offers a glimpse of Crack Cloud’s most vital message: using community to turn adversity into hope.
This isn’t just bravado; its a story born of deep, personal experience. Crack Cloud operate on the frontline of Canada’s out-of-control opiate crisis, mobilising and organizing in Vancouver’s harm reduction programmes. The group themselves have had their fair share of trauma and the collective offers its members a vital vehicle for rehabilitation and recovery. As the tagline on the album’s back cover makes clear then, this is absolutely “based on true sh*t”.
Vancouver five-piece Blessed unveiled their debut album “Salt” last year, and it’s a moody, shape-shifting album with a treasure trove of interesting sounds. Pulling from psych, krautrock, industrial, math rock and post-punk, Blessed are intense and evocative, and every time you think they’ve played their final sonic wild card, they present another. Formed in the early winter months of 2015 in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, Blessed were born from a shared creative objective. From the start, its original four members found themselves naturally amalgamating elements of Post-Hardcore, Minimalism, New Wave, Krautrock, and Punk. To date, Blessed has released one single with Toronto’s Buzz Records (Weaves, Dilly Dally, Greys), and two critically lauded EPs. The Fader wrote of the EP II: “Dominated by the high-fructose riffing pioneered by Deerhoof, giving way to a darker, propulsive jam that’s just as chaotic, yet well-controlled.”
From this marginal yet supportive scene, Blessed built connections with a broader community. Their unparalleled work ethic took them on a set of tours that was ambitious for any band, but mostly unheard of for one without a full-length release. Together, they played 225 shows across North America, including stops at Sled Island, SXSW, and supporting slots with acts ranging from Preoccupations, The Courtneys, Chastity, and The Austerity Program. Meanwhile, individual members found time to tour Europe, and start side projects touted by The Needle Drop.
Band Members:
Mitchell Trainor,
Drew Riekman,
Reuben Houweling,
Jake Holmes,
Matt Mckeen,
Blessed’s single “Disease” off their debut record “Salt” coming out on April 5th.
Alexandra Levy makes music for maximum intimacy: Augmented by acoustic guitars, she frequently sings in a weary, tortured whisper. But her deeply reflective breakup songs crackle with tension and life, thanks in part to arrangements that lean on found sounds and field recordings. All that quiet clatter helps lend a diaristic quality to songs that aren’t heard so much as listened in on. Appropriately enough, her debut album is titled What We Say In Private.
Less than a year after the release of her highly-acclaimed debut album, What We Say In Private, Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy – who records and performs as Ada Lea – returns in early 2020 with a new four-song EP which acts as a bridge between what’s come before and where she means to go next.
A mix of both the old and new, the woman, here EP takes its name from a brand new composition recorded recently in LA with Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Better Oblivion Community Center). Perhaps her most direct work to-date, the new song offers a beautiful glimpse into the bold new chapter of Ada Lea. “I went to LA and recorded the song in a day and a half with Marshall,” Levy says of the song. “The writing and recording of this song happened like magic.”
Aside from the title-track, which is shared here alongside a raw and captivating demo version, the woman, here EP also offers two previously-unheard recordings from the What We Say In Private sessions, in the form of the reflective and melancholy ‘perfect world’, and the sparse and dream-like ‘jade’, which was inspired by a John Updike short story.
Ada Lea – perfect world from the EP woman, A fascinating glimpse behind the curtain, Levy says that the new EP should be seen as being “like a second cousin” to what we say in private. “We included the songs that we still felt close to,” she explains, “but didn’t seem to have a place on the album.”
Ada Lea – “Wild Heart”
from the album “What We Say In Private – Out 7/19/19!
Debut EP from new Fat Possum signing, Ellis and a Rough Trade Shops tip for 2019. Canadian bedroom dream pop, The six-track release presents an uncommonly fully-realized aesthetic to match the strength of Siggelkow’s songwriting. Built from simple instrumentation, but deftly arranged to lend a grandeur and devastating scale to Siggelkow’s skillfully rendered laments, the release is a resounding statement from a young artist who is poised for a reception that equals the scope of her remarkable gifts. Ellis, who, after generating buzz in her local scene on the back of opening stints with the likes of Soccer Mommy, Gabby’s World, Chastity, Palehound, and Free Cake For Every Creature, garnered international acclaim with the release of a series of singles, earning comparisons to Mazzy Star, Alvvays and Slowdive from outlets like Pitchfork, Noisey and Stereogum, who marked her out as one of “a new generation of exciting songwriters.”
official video for ‘the drain’ by Ellis, from the ‘the fuzz’ EP
Jenn Grant is a multi-award-winning Canadian artist. Consequence of Sound called out Grant’s “majestic vocals” on her latest release “Love, Inevitable.” Stereogum noted she created “something that’s both a bit familiar and a little otherworldly. “Music is the connector that binds us all”, says Grant. “To be able to create music, and share the power it can hold is one of life’s greatest gifts.” This is the very essence behind the voice and songs of Jenn Grant.
A heralded singer and songwriter from Prince Edward Island, in Canada’s Maritimes, Grant has four albums and one EP under her belt; she is about to embark on a brand new journey with her best collection of songs to date.“The time is here and now, I’m over the moon.”
Now living in Lake Echo, Nova Scotia with her husband and producer Daniel Ledwell, the wilderness of the forest and eastern seas helped them to settle into creating a new body of work based on time, courage, healing, wonder, and of course love. Jenn has has numerous Juno Award nominations and is widely regarded as one of the finest songwriters to come out of Canada.
Canadian seven-piece Crack Cloud make an arresting spectacle. As well as playing conventionally, the four guitarists strum their guitars’ headstock, creating a high-pitched “ching” sound. Their furiously intense post-punk also takes in two keyboardists – one of whom is a tall, Canadian-Pakistani man with a beard, dyed blond hair and gold nail varnish who also plays a penny whistle.
Stage-front, founding member Zach Choy is their hypnotic, shirtless drummer. He has “laughing at the system” tattooed over his bellybutton and plays left-handed on a drum kit set up for a right-handed person. Why doesn’t he swap the kit around? “I have a hard time following the rules,” he says the next day, to much laughter, as the band mill around the house where they stayed after the gig, drinking coffee and dyeing their hair.
Crack Cloud are certainly unconventional: a multimedia collective of musicians, film-makers, artists and designers, made up of recovering addicts and people who work with mental health patients and people with addiction. Their influences stretch from Gang of Four and Talking Heads to Fela Kuti, Malcolm X and hip-hop. Thus far, the band have recorded two excellent EPs (on Coventry indie label Tin Angel, after the label owner, Richard Guy, flew to Canada to meet them) and are recording an album that will be more informed by hip-hop, with “less post-punk tropes and more storytelling,” says Choy.
Onstage and off, they are unmistakable; their dense videos and screen-printed outfits have the paramilitary chic of anarchist punk collectives Crass or Chumbawamba. “We all live together and some of us are siblings,” Choy explains. “If people think we look like a cult, then we are making our mark.” But living Crack Cloud 24/7 goes deeper than clothing. “The band is our recovery programme,” keyboardist Mohammad Ali Sharar explains. “Pouring ourselves into it is a way of staying alive, or at least sober and together. So we can’t do anything by half-measures.”
Choy was born in Canada to immigrant parents – a Welsh mother and Chinese father – but when he was 11, his dad died of leukaemia three months after diagnosis. Unable to process the grief, he started drinking, which “accelerated and escalated” into serious narcotics. “I was very unpredictable, volatile. Addiction wasn’t the issue. That was my way of avoiding the trauma.”
Sharar’s own deeply rooted issues had sent him down “deep, dark paths”. The son of Punjabi immigrants, he grew up in Red Deer, Alberta, experiencing racism and what he calls a “stunted youth in a very Islamic household, and a lot of domestic abuse and violence”. A hard line at home meant he had to choose between following the rules or living on the streets. “Fall in love with a white girl? You’re done,” he explains. “So then you have to choose love over family.”
Is that what happened? “Oh yeah,” he chuckles. “Weird traumas at a young age. Sleeping outside high school for days on end, then having to submit and think: ‘I’ll never see this person [his girlfriend] again.’” Artistic and punk communities initially seemed inclusive and welcoming, but Sharar soon felt tokenised. Choy says that if you strip away the “multicultural facades” from many DIY scenes, you are left with a lot of privilege. “We didn’t have that. We’re not art students. We’re coming from a different place.”
Thus, the pair plunged off what Sharar calls “the deep end. Every substance. Meth. Downers. We never really injected, but it was … speed, ketamine.” He ended up feeling suicidal.
Choy’s rock bottom and turning point came in his early 20s when he realised he felt too messed up to call his mother, who had always been supportive despite having her own addiction issues.
Music became “an obsession that replaces the substance abuse”, says Choy. His father’s huge record collection was still at home. After initially connecting with the fury in punk, grindcore and powerviolence, he later enjoyed the calm of Brian Eno albums. The idea that Eno, a non-musician, could facilitate musicians gave Choy the spark of the idea for Crack Cloud, and the band congregated around people who were “fundamentally about recovery and taking care of your mental health”, rather than making money.
Sharar funnelled his intense demeanour into the band’s idea of “creativity with no rules”. Guitarist Jon Varley is also moving on from addiction, while multi-instrumentalist Daniel Robertson met Choy when working in a homeless centre; he was recreating his “whole world view” after growing up a devout Christian. Although seven members have come to the UK, the Crack Cloud community now consists of 20 people. “We spend all our time working on stuff,” Sharar explains, “so anyone who spends time with us kinda gets dragged in.”
Their work in low-barrier care (care services that try to be as accessible to users as possible) and overdose prevention is as much a part of their operation as the band. Vancouver is in the midst of an opiate and fentanyl crisis; people with addiction issues migrate to the Downtown Eastside’s specially provided safe spaces for drug use. “It’s basically a shoot-up zone,” Choy says. “The appearance is terrifying but once you immerse yourself, as we do with our work, you realise it’s a very inclusive community that are dealing with their own traumas.”
“You see horrific things, but also beauty,” says Robertson, who hasn’t experienced addiction. “As an artist, that’s really inspiring.”
Crack Cloud is a recovery and survival mechanism for its members and a means of processing their experiences so that they can help others tackle similar issues. They are a fearsome live band-cum-high-functioning support network, but, says Sharar: “I don’t want to forget why I was angry. It was meaningful and it came from a real place.”
Setlist; 00:00 Post Truth 3:00 Bastard Basket 6:38 Time Unsubsidized 9:12 Graph Of Desire 10:40 More Of What 13:00 Ouster Stew 15:50 Empty Cell 19:48 Image Craft 23:48 Tunnel Vision 27:55 Drab Measure 33:23 Swish Swash Live at Moers Festival 08-06-19
Crack Cloud’s two EPs are available on a single album, Crack Cloud, out on Tin Angel.
One of Canada’s most accomplished singer-songwriter, Ron Sexsmith has returned with new music. The single ‘You Don’t Wanna Hear It’ is the first single from his forthcoming album ‘Hermitage’, Ron’s first album since his move from his longtime home of Toronto to a more bucolic life in Stratford, Ontario. Ron partnered with producer Don Kerr to create ‘Hermitage’; the two set up in Ron’s living room to record the album, with Ron playing all the instruments except the drums. This album marks Ron’s 25th year as a recording artist.
Describing the new single Ron says, “It’s a song about someone who has their nose all out of joint about something and are not in the mood to hear the truth.”
Ron Sexsmith is one of Canada’s greatest singer songwriters. He has collaborated with the likes of Daniel Lanois, Mitchell Froom, Ane Brun, Tchad Blake, and Bob Rock. His songwriting appears on albums from Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris and Feist. He has been awarded 3 Juno Awards, having been nominated 15 times including 8 nods for Songwriter of the Year.
“You Don’t Wanna Hear It” from Ron Sexsmith’s upcoming April 17th album “Hermitage”.
Wolf Parade the Montreal band’s 2005 debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, became a ubiquitous indie radio staple. The band Wolf Parade – Dan Boeckner, Spencer Krug and Arlen Thompson – release ‘Thin Mind’, the group’s fifth album for Sub Pop. their heart, panache, and synthesizers on display through their next few albums, 2008’s excellent At Mount Zoomer and 2010’s Expo 86, and after a lengthy hiatus, they showed more growth on 2017′s Cry Cry Cry.
Their new album “Thin Mind” still comes as an unexpected new peak for the band this album scratches a very specific and satisfying itch for indie guitar music in 2020. Now a trio, the group has only deepened its talents and personal musical aesthetic, while their lyrical themes have taken on both a newfound maturity and optimism.
Wolf Parade seem more comfortable commenting on the world around them on Thin Mind, but they sound just as interested in having a good time making music. The songs bounce and zip with the sort of kinetic energy that’s hard to find in blogosphere success stories still making music in 2020. As can be heard on standout tracks such as “Julia Take Your Man Home” and “Forest Green,” everything sounds sharper and more direct, without being aggressive or in-your-face, as any art-pop sprawl has been replaced with glammy arena rock tendencies. The panoply of synthesizers on display across the entire project, especially on “Wandering Son” and “Against the Day,” are also a fine addition. This full turn away from being Wire disciples to New Order and Duran Duran acolytes provides a resplendent edge. for Wolf Parade to kick off 2020 with a ten-song album bursting with mature perspectives and emotional heft, it makes even jaded assholes like me sit up and take notice.
Thin Mind is packed with straight-up fun music that overflows with a danceable sensibility, infectious melodies, and overall good vibes. The songs here find Wolf Parade openly encouraging their listeners to make a difference in the world, to work to make things better. As they put it, during the chorus of album highlight “The Static Age,” “I don’t want to live in the static age staying in a place where nothing changes. We can begin again.”
Canadian indie-folk musician Andy Shauf has already released a few charming singles from his forthcoming concept album “The Neon Skyline”, including “Things I Do.” Shauf’s captivating storytelling lays out a crumbling relationship on the single, one piece of the bigger tale told across the record. “Things I Do” opens with a laid-back groove highlighted by a soft chorus of saxophones that give way to Shauf’s anecdote. “Seems like I should have known better / Than to turn my head like it didn’t matter,” he sings at the beginning. In a similar fashion to Shauf’s 2016 record, The Party .
The Neon Skyline’s structure follows a storyline that takes place over the course of a night, according to a press release: “The interconnected songs on The Neon Skyline, all written, performed, arranged and produced by Shauf, follow a simple plot: The narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up.
“Things I Do” by Andy Shauf from the album ‘The Neon Skyline,’ available January 24th, 2020
The Fat Angel Sings 