Following the release of a zine/flexi on PUP’s Little Dipper label, Canada’s Chastity are back with a soaring new single on Dine Alone Records that’s like part post-rocky emo, part gospel. Really cool stuff. “Been trying to think of all the good people in the U.S. right now instead of the trippy ones,” main member Brandon William says. “My pal has been telling me that this is the end of a bad era, not the beginning of one. I love that. Hoping for some positive change, hoping that the world is able to drain this bloodbath.”
His first new material since releasing last year’s Home Made Satan features studio vet Makeda Francisco on backup vocals and finds the pair singing about a sense of optimism for the future in the midst of the trash fire that has been the year 2020. “Been trying to think of all the good people in the U.S. right now instead of the trippy ones,” Williams said in a statement. “My pal has been telling me that this is the end of a bad era, not the beginning of one. I love that. Hoping for some positive change, hoping that the world is able to drain this bloodbath.”
Earlier this year, Williams threw his support behind the Ever New charity compilation with a cover of “Now The Struggle Has a Name” by the Tragically Hip. Prior to that, he released a live companion album to 2019’s Home Made Satan.
Whitby’s Brandon Williams has returned with new Chastity material, sharing his single “Drain the Bloodbath” through Dine Alone Records today.
Tokyo Police Club are back and keeping it simple with their fifth studio album TPC through Dine Alone Records. They’ve captured the sound that saved them within the walls of a church and by the hands of producer Rob Schnapf. These are hymns for the young at heart. The single, Simple Dude, vocalist David Monks sings about sensations and simple pleasures as if they are new discoveries, “my skin to your skin, I can feel it coming.” In Can’t Stay Here he asserts “ I don’t know how to grow up/I don’t know how to stay young/ I just know that I can’t stay here” over Josh Hook’s rousing guitar and Greg Alsop’s free-spirited drums. It’s the perfect song for leaving home, a relationship, or your twenties while Ready to Win is a genius ode to failure, which is a lifelong experience, and just as important as success.
TPC is proof that an album can be casual but not careless. There is value in simplicity, and some of the best art isn’t complicated. TPC has a fast tempo swagger, anxious but proud. This an album you can bounce to while you find your way through too many beers and one night stands. These fast times may be fleeting, but they’re worth it.
With Magick Songs, Jake and Jamin Orrall wander deeper into, and at times beyond, the psychedelic labyrinth they opened with Global Chakra Rhythms, while also exploring some of the poppier sensibilities of their early career. Both are fruitful trips. “Camel Swallowed Whole” is a hypnotic rock song that would have stood out on any of their most successful albums. “Locator” is a mesmerizing kosmische foray guided by the saxophone performance of GCR collaborator Reece Lazarus. And everything’s copacetic with album closer “Farewell to the Sun,” which finds JTB and co. simultaneously channeling far-out fantasies and the thunderous riff-rock of their foundation. As a wise uncle would often say, “heavy trippin’, easy rider.”
JEFF The Brotherhood’s “Camel Swallowed Whole” is from their LP ‘Magick Songs’ on Dine Alone Records
If the universe had tilted the tiniest bit, there would be no Tokyo Police Club new album “TPC” – the not-quite self-titled fourth (and best) Tokyo Police Club album. By 2016, singer-bassist and chief songwriter Dave Monks had settled into life in New York City; he made a solo record and did some co-writing. Drummer Greg Alsop was living and working in L.A. Keyboard player Graham Wright and guitarist Josh Hook remained in the band’s native Canada. Tokyo Police Club created songs via e-mail, thinking they had enough natural chemistry and experience to make that setup work. But eventually, the lack of friction meant there was less musical spark, and it dawned on everybody that the end was near. There was resignation, not anger, when Wright, Alsop, and Hook told Monks they were done with the band.
After putting aside the idea of splitting up and back-burnering their commercial expectations, there was just one thing left to do: go to church. Specifically a church in rural Ontario, where the foursome could recapture the energy of their early years by playing in a room together. Songs that Monks had written were abandoned when they didn’t feel right for this new energy, and TPC started to take shape, built on camaraderie and esprit de corps.
Monks’ friends could once again help shape his songs into TPC songs, and the batch that ended up on the record aren’t quite like anything they’d done before. Album opener “New Blues” signals that Tokyo Police Club doesn’t need a racing tempo to introduce themselves; Pigs takes a sneering look at record-business politics; Simple Dude is unabashedly horny. Not giving a fuck—or, more accurately, only giving a fuck about those things closest to your heart—paid off. It’s the channeling of energy, which flows into every song on TPC, that makes the record their best. They’re through being cool, through doubting themselves, and through wasting time on ancillary things. TPC is self-titled, almost, because it’s Tokyo Police Club circa 2018—scarred but smarter, fully re-energized.
In the short time since they released their acclaimed debut record, ‘Sore,’ Dilly Dally toured the world and took the press by storm, only to nearly collapse under the weight of their own success and call it quits forever. Rising from the ashes with more power and conviction than ever before, the Toronto rockers’ new album is, appropriately enough, titled ‘Heaven,’ and it’s a fierce, fiery ode to optimism, a distortion-soaked battle cry for hope and beauty in a world of darkness and doubt. Frontwoman Katie Monks describes the songs as coping mechanisms, and the collection does indeed form something of a survival kit for hard times, but even more than that, it’s a declaration of faith in the power of music and a burning reminder that we need not wait until the afterlife for things to get better.
Recorded with producer Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Beck), ‘Heaven’ highlights Dilly Dally’s rough edges in all their ragged glory, drawing every potent ounce of energy from the foursome’s swampy tones, raspy vocals, and volatile rhythm section. While the music is undeniably ferocious, there’s uplift woven into the fabric of every track. ‘Heaven’ opens with the dreamy “I Feel Free,” which begins as a floating, untethered soundscape before transforming into a soaring anthem for a world that’s ready to finally turn the page on all the darkness and disillusion the last few years have wrought.
The inexorable “Believe” insists on self-confidence, while the driving “Sober Motel” celebrates the lucidity a clear mind, and the lilting “Sorry Ur Mad” makes a case for releasing yourself from the prisons of anger and resentment. Escape is a frequent goal—from the bruising “Marijuana” to the epic queer tragedy of “Bad Biology”—but it ultimately solves very little, at least in any permanent way, and so the album carves out its own atheistic religion to get through the day, a faith that validates our pain as real but responds with a beaming light of hope (and maybe a little bit of weed).
Monks and guitarist Liz Ball originally formed the band in high school after bonding over a shared love for explosive, grungy rock and roll. By the time they recorded their debut, the pair had fleshed out the lineup with bassist Jimmy Tony and drummer Benjamin Reinhartz and hit a blistering stride that floored critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Rolling Stone hailed ‘Sore’ as a “blazing” breakout that “sounds like an unleashed id with a sick distortion pedal,” while Fader said it “hits that ever-elusive sweetspot between total recklessness and sly control,” and Pitchfork raved that the record “oozes with female desire” and offers up “a heavy swagger redolent of some of the best ever alt-rock.” In the UK, The Guardian praised the band’s “bludgeoning bass, gnarly guitars and red-raw vocals,” and The Line Of Best Fit dubbed it “a seminal first album.” The music earned Dilly Dally dates with Grouplove, METZ, and Fat White Family in addition to their first-ever international headline tour and festival appearances from Osheaga to Field Day.
“Doom” from Dilly Dally’s new album ‘Heaven’ out now!
The Dirty Nil play rock and roll. Loud, distorted, and out of control, they play like it’s a fever they’re trying to sweat out. Reveling in the din of distorted guitars, pounding drums, and desperately howled vocals, the Hamilton Ontario three-piece makes music for turntables and hi-fi’s – music for dive bars and house parties – for beer drinking and joint smoking – for road trips and barbecues – for fighting and yelling and shouting and singing and screaming and howling – for sweating and bleeding – trying and failing and trying again anyways. Gravel-in-your guts, spit-in-your-eye, staggering, bloodthirsty rock and roll. They have two 7″s available that capture the snarl and destructive noise they create. The Dirty Nil play rock and roll – cause they couldn’t do a damn thing else if they tried. The Dirty Nil present their second single Pain Of Infinity from their upcoming album Master Volume, out September 2018 on Dine Alone Records.
The much beloved Wintersleep have shared their first taste of new music in four years with the release of in the early part of this year with “Amerika”. The song comes from their upcoming album The Great Detachment, which was announced late last year after the band had just signed with Dine Alone Records. The title to the album is in reference to the band hitting somewhat of a reset button, having recently split with their longtime manager.
“We had a lot of time to slowly collect things. We weren’t rushed into it… there was nobody pressuring us to make a new album because we fired everybody, or we were out of our record contract. We’re doing this kind of fresh in a sense, so we felt like The Great Detachment was a good title.”
A new beginning also features a return to the past, as the band headed back to Sonic Temple studio in Halifax, where they recorded their breakout, and Juno-winning, third album Welcome to the Night Sky. The new album was released last February, but until then watch this session in the Black Box where they performed the new single “Amerika”, “Oblivion”, and the indisputable classic “Weighty Ghost”.
“Amerika” from new album The Great Detachment, available from March 4th, 2016 on Dine Alone Records.
With The Great Detachment, Wintersleep’s sixth studio album, the Yarmouth-bred, Montreal-based five-piece is tighter than ever, delivering 11 new songs that err on the bigger, brasher side of a sound the band has honed for more than a decade. “So gimme the night, tonight/ I’m going to prove to you/ give me some time,” Paul Murphy pleads on standout single “Santa Fe,” but he doesn’t need the length of that nearly four-minute song to hook you: Wintersleep is back, and bolder than ever.
Dine alone Records, Over the course of a decade, our mission has been rooted in uniting fans with one common purpose — an unconditional love of music. With many members of the Dine Alone family now starting families of their own, the journey into parenthood has triggered a desire to introduce younger generations to good old-fashioned rock and roll.
Dine Alone Records is amping things up this summer when the Red Bull Tour Bus hits highways across Canada to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the iconic independent music label. The ’67 GM transit bus that transforms into a ground shaking sound stage will host some of Dine Alone’s best musical acts for select FREE performances from coast to coast.
The month-long series showcases some of the record label’s most notable current artists including Tokyo Police Club, Yukon Blonde, James Vincent McMorrow and k-os, all on the back of the legendary Red Bull Tour Bus as it transforms into a fully operational soundstage for the series of outdoor shows. The Tour Bus heads East after Saskatoon, making stops in Hamilton, and finally Halifax. More event details will be announced as available.
Making its debut on the Bus Tour is Dine Alone’s rolling record store “Wax on Wheels”, an immersive record buying experience on the road equipped with charging stations and wifi. Music lovers will be able to hang out under an awning-covered patio and get a unique opportunity to purchase titles from the Dine Alone back catalogue, as well as rare and limited releases and a special selection of Dine Alone merchandise.
Following a four-day online scavenger hunt, Toronto’s critically lauded four-piece Tokyo Police Club have released their new track “Not My Girl” under the moniker Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness, which also happens to be the name of the band’s newly announced forthcoming EP, set for release on April 8th, 2016 through Dine Alone Records in Canada.
With the 1st installment of a two-part batch of EP’s coming in April, Melon Collie and the Infinite Radness (Part1)marks the band’s first release since their enterprising and vaulting 2014 LP Forcefield, as well as the 10-year anniversary of their debut EP A Lesson in Crime. The new music sees Tokyo Police Club looking back to the energy and spirit of that formative era while keeping an eye on the future. Lead singer/bass player and principal songwriter Dave Monks, drummer Greg Alsop, keyboardist/guitarist Graham Wright, and guitarist Josh Hook have harnessed that primal and instinctual joy to make Tokyo Police Club’s tightest, brightest, and certainly raddest batch of songs to date.
“We knew we didn’t want to work like we did on Forcefield, which was two-and-a-half years solidly writing and rehearsing while holed up in a studio in Toronto,” says Alsop. “And we all live in different places now, so a week in New York was our first attempt at experimenting with what happens if we all fly in to be in the same place and decide to work on music together.” Says Monks, it was “more just capturing the moment and being ourselves. It was this spontaneous feeling of, ‘These songs are rad, let’s put them out.’”
The Fat Angel Sings 