Though a bright and bouncy in melody, the song is a personal reflection on disenchantment in young adulthood. Laughed the Boy began as an outlet for honest and unpretentious 90s nostalgia inspired songs. After having more songs written than he knew what to do with, Chris Panacci guitar, bass, vocals , brother Sean Panacci drums together brought their bedroom project to life when he went into the studio to record the EP “Out of the Blue.“
The two of us added our friend and bass player Brennan to the lineup and began playing the songs live. While rehearsing for shows, we ended up with an album’s worth of fresh material and headed into the studio once again to record 9 new tracks that will make up our debut full length LP this new track from Toronto band, Laughed the Boy, is oozing with summer chill. This relaxed new single comes from the band’s new full-length album coming out late this year.
The Ontario band Dirty Nil’s Higher Power offers punk with high-end production values meant for big stadiums. However antisocial they may get, the music here is intended to be a communal experience.
As the name suggests, the Ontario band Dirty Nil are profoundly aware of their emptiness and impurity, and the only thing that rouses Luke Bentham and Dave Nardi out of their self-loathing is despising someone else even more. They’re professed classic rock fans and gear snobs and it shows, as HigherPower is an album that sounds like it expects to be paid for. However antisocial Dirty Nil get, the music is intended to be a communal experience.
Dirty Nil released a 7” on skate-punk stronghold Fat Wreck Chords and played the Warped Tour—both tend to be a point of no return for bands deciding between a captive pop-punk audience and critical credibility. But it’s all rock’n’roll to Dirty Nil: They boast equal facility with PUP-style beer bongin’ with the devil (“No Weaknesses”), Dilly Dally’s knee-buckling dynamics (“Zombie Eyed”), and the hectoring sing-speak of tourmates Single Mothers and Greys. Higher Power serves as proof that the boundaries separating “indie,” “pop punk” and “alt-rock” have collapsed as they’ve been drawn into closer quarters, and to send this point home, they do all of the above just within the first four tracks.
There isn’t really an original note here, but the massive hooks of “No Weaknesses” and “Zombie Eyed” are delivered with enough conviction that they end up sounding fresh anyway. As Higher Power progresses, Dirty Nil continue to expand their range, yet the sequencing makes it sound like a retreat. The satisfying brutality of “FugueState” starts a run of three songs crammed into less than five minutes; the highs of Side A were bound to make Higher Power sound frontloaded anyway, but Side B practically vanishes before get-in-the-van anthem “Bury Me at the Rodeo Show” ends the record with the closest thing to a Dirty Nil love song.
Even when the music intentionally plays dumb, Bentham and Nardi are clever lyricists, and Higher Power could almost be a narrative concept record about salvation if you play it out of order. Throughout the album, Dirty Nil search for redemption in the usual places: sex (“Wrestle Yu to Husker Du”), drugs (“Zombie Eyed”) and rock’n’roll. But they have too much fun with it all to even pretend that hitting rock bottom is actually a bad thing. “Friends in the Sky” aligns Bentham with Satan against Jesus, and it’s as close as he gets to divinity
The Ontario Toronto-via-London, singer songwriter released his sophomore album,“Huntsville”, last week and with it came the first single, “Roll me on Home.” The track, which features guest vocals by Amanda Rheaume, is a perfectly crafted folk song about love as Yates sings, “I’ll be your rock, if you roll me on home.” This kind of alt-country song works perfectly with the weather getting colder and the leaves starting to change. He reminds me at times of Jackson Browne.
This quirky pop band from Toronto reminds me of Micachu or tUnE-yArDs but less weird. Their debut EP is really good but they are even better live where charismatic singer Jasmyn Burke’s personality shines through. They were the best new band I saw last year. Also check out their 2016 self-titled LP on Buzz/Kanine/Memphis
One of the best things about Weaves is the way their music seems to deconstruct and rebuild standard rock tropes on the spot — “bent pop,” they call it. So it’s especially exciting to hear the Toronto take on straightforward hits, like their cover of a true classic, the Beatles’ “Help!” It’s a similarly fractured collection of squelches and sighs, one that exudes a different sort of desperation than we’re accustomed to from the Fab Four. They are a must see live catch them at Nottingham Bodega this saturday
The night before his Harvest Picnic headlining set, Ryan Adams gave some hints that he was working on “a set list so dark for tomorrow it makes Love Is Hell sound like a Nintendo commercial.” The man kept his word, but no amount of advanced warning could have fully steeled the southern Ontario crowd for the onslaught of feels that poured forth from stage on Friday night (August 26th).
Walking on stage and taking his seat between the two acoustic guitars that he would switch back and forth between all evening, Ryan Adams introduced himself to the audience by simply stating: “I’m as excited about sad music as you are.”
Proving his point, he opened with Heartbreaker songs “Oh My Sweet Carolina” and “My Winding Wheel,” before delving deeper and darker into a one-man rendition of his Cardinals cut “If I Am a Stranger.”
As heavy as some of Adams‘ extensive song catalogue is, there are still moments of levity when he performs. Quick to joke and improvise, he’s comfortable and charming when bantering on stage, whether dedicating “GimmeSomething Good” to a Twitter troll or wondering “Why didn’t I just buy a mandolin?” out loud as he struggled to tune a guitar with a capo on the fifth fret for “Let it Ride” or simply praising Canadian weed and TV shows.
But his M.O. for the set was obvious the moment he lost himself in song, instantly transforming from a jovial stoner dude into the solemn singer-songwriter responsible for “Ashes and Fire,” “Why Do They Leave?,” “Tears of Gold” and “Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman that Rains),” which were each made all the more poignant by Adams‘ solo acoustic setup.
The stripped down nature of the show also served to showcase Adams‘ stunning vocals. Often buried beneath the buzz of a full-blown band, the simplicity of last night’s setup let his voice shine — rising, falling, breaking and twanging at precisely the right moments to pierce its way into the ears, then hearts of everyone in attendance. Jacksonville City Nights highlight “The End” was particularly striking. From its introduction as a story Adams wrote about his “beer-amid”-building father at a time when the pair were estranged (“I suspect he fucking hates this song”), to the refrains of strangled wails directed at his North Carolina hometown, to the final echoing repetition of the title phrase, the song sent chills through the crowd that were completely unrelated to the rapidly cooling night-time air.
In addition to the classics that have been tugging at fans’ heartstrings for years, there were a few unexpected but welcome surprises, like a cover of Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell” and a rarely — if ever (Adams couldn’t quite recall) — played “Sweet Illusions,” from the Cardinals’ Cold Roses, which was prefaced by what turned out to be a totally unnecessary “Sorry if I fuck it up.”
The show eventually ended on a familiar note for anyone who’s seen the guy live before — after curfew, and with “Come Pick Me Up” because, as Adams put it, we’re masochists.
It’s not our fault he makes pain sound so goddamn beautiful.
Ryan Adams performs as the opening night headliner of the 2016 Greenbelt Harvest Picnic in Hamilton, Ontario
The debut EP from Canadian trio Basement Revolver a new band from Hamilton Ontario. The Canadian’s have been teasing the release via a series of ever improving tracks and earlier this week they shared another snippet of the record in the shape of new single, Lake, Steel, Oil.
Whilst the bands previous output had already shown they could do energetic, and somewhat introspective indie-pop; on Lake, Steel, Oil they showcase a completely different side to their music. With nods to the likes of Lanterns On The Lake or Waxahatchee’s more recent output, it’s a gentle swell of musical ideas. Building around a lone guitar line and pulsing bass-line, eventually singer, Chrisy Hern’s vocal enters with a heartbroken tone reminiscent of Alvvay’s Molly Rankin, joined latterly by echoing, grandiose percussion. Dramatic and expansive, without ever falling into clichéd “here’s our big song” territory, it’s far better than a band so new to this musical game have any right to be. Another string in the band’s bow, and one that suggests there’s far more to Basement Revolver than they’re currently letting on, a very exciting prospect indeed.
Hamilton, Ontario’s Basement Revolver plays introspective and emotional indie rock music, reminiscent of The Pixies and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The drone of the city haunts frontwoman Chrisy Hurn: stories woven with factory skylines and gritty streets are sung in a voice pure as water, flowing down high escarpment walls. The heavy lines of bass/synth player Nimal Agalawatte and drummer Brandon Munro are bedrock for Hurn’s ethereal and immediate guitar work. Developed songcraft and infectious rhythms will have you following Basement Revolver into feelings you never knew you had.
Basement Revolver has shared the stage with We Are The City, Highs, Dave Monks and Evening Hymns, among others. They are set to release their debut EP this week in July of 2016.
The Dirty Nil’s Luke Bentham once said that his whole life has been spent trying to capture the essence of a photo of The Stooges he saw as a kid. In it, Iggy Pop is about to dive into the crowd while the rest of the band pounds their instruments in front of an endless wall of amps. That pretty much says it all about The Dirty Nil. Were this any other era of rock, the band would be the most famous band on the planet. They’ve got a style that could easily translate to any time period, any audience, and any venue. After years of skating by on singles and EPs, the hard-touring and outrageously likeable Canucks finally dropped their long-awaited debut, Higher Power, and it blows the fuckin’ lid off of everything else you might have heard this week.
Macabre millennial nightmares, softened by dream-pop tranquilizers, reverberating from a casket-shaped music box. For Fans of: Lana Del Rey, Elliott Smith, the films of Harmony Korine
Nicole Dollanganger’s gothic folk songs detailing mental illness, guns, sexual violence, poverty and death are as beautiful as they are brutal. After exploring abandoned buildings growing up in Stouffville, Ontario — a small town near Toronto — the taxidermy enthusiast studied film at Ryerson University and started posting her dark, cinematic songs on Bandcamp. Soundbites and grisly themes from horror movies, Welcome to the Dollhouse and school shootings amplify these lo-fi bedroom recordings. Backed by acoustic guitar, Dollanganger’s winsome cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” off 2013’s Columbine EP strips away the original’s party vibe to its chilling lyrical core. A demo of her latest album, Natural Born Losers, eventually reached her countrywoman Grimes. “It blew up my brain so hard that I literally started Eerie [Organization, a new artist collective] to fucking put it out,” the art-pop experimenter said in a press release. They performed together opening for Lana Del Rey in June and Dollanganger is supporting Grimes’ fall tour.
“I really enjoy hitting record on GarageBand. For an hour and a half I’ll just freestyle. I’ll get a chord progression going and start singing. I’ll record everything. Most of it’s trash, but usually there’s a line at least — like ‘drinking a cup of alligator blood’ — then I’ll build around that.”
Hear for Yourself: Echoing the pulse of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” Dollanganger sweetly toes the line of bruised love on “You’re So Cool.” Reed Fischer
taken from the debut album “Negative Qualities” Single Mothers from London, Ontario have been compared to the Hold Steady they play American tinged Post Punk on Swami Records,
The Fat Angel Sings 