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.
Bruce Springsteen specializes in heart-busting, big-life-moment songs told from the perspective of someone who knows time is short so you better make every second and every song count. Also every concert.
The iconic New Jersey heartland rocker gave us over three hours of total passion and commitment at the AirCanada Centre, in support of his The Ties That Bind: The River Collection box set, which celebrates the 35th anniversary of 1980’s The River, a four-album effort that he and his nine-piece E Street Band played front to back.
The final chords of one song barely finished ringing out before The Boss, looking lean, tanned and handsome in hues of black and grey (and his trademark jeans), counted in the next one with gusto.
Occasionally he offered up an intro. Independence Day, he said, was about being stunned by the discovery of your parents’ humanity, of realizing for the first time that they once had dreams of their own. “It’s a song about adult compromises,” he said, “and the blessings those compromises brought.”
Uplift immediately returned with the familiar opening notes of Hungry Heart, especially when he held back for the first verse and let us sing it on our own.
The continued push-pull between serious and fun, between dark and light, between sprawling “compositions” and lighter-weight fare – Crush On You, You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) – was hugely satisfying.
And after so many Behind The Music-type rock band documentaries, it was great to see seemingly genuine playfulness among the musicians onstage, many of whom have been in the E Street Band since the 70s and 80s. With drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Garry Tallent holding down a steady back beat, the others harmonized and soloed and did cute little moves in sync.
Blazing saxophone is as fundamental to Springsteen’s sound as lonesome harmonica, and Jake Clemons, nephew of deceased E Street member Clarence Clemons, captivated, especially on an epic rendition of The PriceYou Pay, one of the set’s standout numbers. Guitarists Patti Scialfa and Steven Van Zandt turned out powerful harmonies all night, often sharing the centre mic with Springsteen and appearing on the Jumbo screens.
Crowd interaction was also high. Springsteen regularly left the singing to us, lighters came out during gorgeously melancholy The River, and an 89-year-old woman celebrating her birthday got the chance to waltz with The Boss during Dancing In The Dark during the greatest-hits portion of the set as her elated daughter looked on.
Despite the concert already being two hours deep by that point, it was that greatest hits section that offered up some of the most energetic moments.
The Promised Land (requested via a sign held high) hit hard. Patti Smith Group’s Because The Night, which Smith co-wrote with Springsteen, was a mind-blowing surprise, his version more triumphant than Smith’s during her last few visits to Toronto and featuring a dazzling, almost comically lengthy guitar solo by Nils Lofgren that ended with him shredding while spinning around and around in a spotlight.
Brilliant Disguise was gorgeous, with a slightly changed chorus melody. The crowd lost its mind during Badlands, Born To Run and the aforementioned Dancing In The Dark.
We hit the three-hour mark. “Are you ready to continue?” Springsteen shouted. “Are you ready to continue?”
Ready or not, he gave us Rosalita and a cover of the Isley Brothers’ Shout, which he repeatedly extended in an almost compulsive way. “I’m just a prisoner of rock and roll!” he shouted, almost apologetically, as it finally rolled to a close. There was, of course, no need for an encore.
Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live in Toronto on February 2nd, 2016
Concert Setlist:
1. Meet Me In The City
2. The Ties That Bind
3. Sherry Darling
4. Jackson Cage
5. Two Hearts (W/ It Takes Two ending)
6. Independence Day
7. Hungry Heart
8. Out in the Street
9. Crush On You
10. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
11. I Wanna Marry You (W/ Here She Comes intro)
12. The River
13. Point Blank
14. Cadillac Ranch
15. I’m A Rocker
16. Fade Away
17. Stolen Car
18. Ramrod
19. The Price You Pay
20. Drive All Night
21. Wreck on the Highway
22. The Promised Land
23. She’s The One
24. Candy’s Room
25. Because The Night
26. Brilliant Disguise
27. The Rising
28. Thunder Road
29. Badlands
30. Born To Run
31. Dancing in the Dark
32. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
33. Shout
Katie Monks and Liz Ball first moved to Toronto in search of “restless punks and somewhere to go and fuck shit up.” What they found, however, was a crushing disappointment.
“There was this weird indie folk thing going on and it was really boring,” lead singer Monks says of the Canadian scene of 2010. “Our music was way louder – and there were no hand claps or tambourines.”
Having grown up listening to Radiohead and The Libertines (“They were like fuck everything and let’s carve out a place in this world where we can truly be ourselves. There was something very punk about that”), Katie and guitarist Liz eventually found the paradise they craved. “We had to find people who shared the same amount of aggression as we did. That’s when we found Jimmy [Tony, bass] and Ben [Reinhartz, drums]. That was huge.”
Operating under the mantra of “Simplicity is powerful”, Dilly Dally’s music is aggressive and immediate in a way Pixies and Sonic Youth fans will adore. Monks’ voice sets them apart from being mere revivalists, though. Ragged and pained, she howls her way through the songs on debut album ‘Sore’ and writes lyrics like an unfiltered live journal.
“I’m always exploring my voice,” she says. “A lot of women sing very soft and sweet and it feels hard to relate to. Expressing your anger is positive. My influences are male singers: Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, Wolf Parade, Frank Black, Sonic Youth. I like music where I just think, ‘Fuck, this is me’.”
check out ‘Know Yourself’ – Their cover of the Drake hit is monumental, taking it somewhere completely new. It’s a feedback-flecked, punk-rock roller coaster.
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
Sore, is the debut record from Toronto’s Dilly Dally is a dark and fragile post-punk album that deeply concerns itself with gender dynamics and sexual expression. Despite clear feminist underpinnings, all these girls had in mind at the time was making rock music that reflected their experience. “We were really just trying to make a rock album,” lead singer Katie Monks told me in an interview earlier this year. Then her fellow founding member Liz Ball quickly followed that up: “[Sore] is obviously resonating really deeply for both sexes. Which is the goal, and which is quite feminist I guess.” Whatever the intention, the result is clear: Sore is a combustible, seething collection of honey-sweet, venomous rock songs that achieved all the goals Monks and Ball might have had and more. Dilly Dally burned their way to the top, pegging themselves as one of this year’s most exciting bands to watch, and establishing Toronto’s burgeoning rock scene in the process
DOOMSQUAD is a Toronto-based experimental trio formed by Trevor, Jaclyn and Allie Blumas. Self-described as less of a band than an “art project,” their musical creations tend to veer to the abstract, psychedelic and ominous. The group released Pageantry Suite on May 19, which will be sampled as they play dates across North America this summer. Lookout for this band in 2016
Tamara Lindeman is a Canadian folk singer who writes gentle songs that scan more like marginalia a wise reader left on a poem than poems themselves. They are sumptuous enough to recall the sweeping, gilded discography of Joni Mitchell, but only the laziest listener would draw that comparison based solely on nationality and gender. No, Tamara is more her own woman, her music is air-tight, like a study in the art of inverse, or an experiment with passion’s ability to remain austere. Explorations of love aren’t limited strictly to romance, either, but encompass friendships with other women on “Like Sisters” and “Shy Women”–two of the album’s standouts–or parse artistic admiration on “Tapes” and “Life’s Work.” On all of these, the album’s title comes through as a guiding principle, not quite commandment as much as personal chosen tenet. work reminds us that sometimes the quietest voice is the one most worth listening to, the slowest moments might be the most brilliant, and the most valuable qualities are not visible to the naked eye.
Tradition-spanning contemplative folk that captures rare beauty in both lyrics and melodies,On her third album, Loyalty, Toronto-based songwriter Tamara Lindeman’s poetic reflections are set to minimalist combos of acoustic guitar, keys and just enough percussion to add bite to her words. For the album, she worked closely with Feist engineer Robbie Lackritz and Afie Jurvanen (a.k.a. Bahamas). “Lately, I’ve outsourced my boundaries to other people,” she says. “I require someone or something to tell me when to stop.” In the case of Loyalty, she found out with two months to spare that she was going to record at La Frette Studios in France. When she arrived, she was still rewriting, and had to sing scratch vocals on a few tracks. “There were still one or two words, or like one line that I was going to change,” she recalls. “Everyone just loved the scratch vocal. My two collaborators were like, ‘You’re not allowed to sing it again.'” In turn, her low, rich voice brings out the textures of dry grass, the cityscape, and relentless rain in intimate fashion. My style of songwriting is I tend to play guitar and daydream and sorta sing stuff. I tend to record it to remember. In that phase, I tend to sing all the same stuff anyone else sings. I sing about rain and the moon. My tendency over time is to refine that into something that feels really meaningful and I can hang onto it for a long time.”
The Weather Station’s “Loyalty” will be released May 12, 2015 on Paradise of Bachelors.
The Toronto four-piece’s blazing full-length debut, Sore, has earned rave reviews, and their live show turned heads at this year’s CMJ festival. “It feels more natural for me to be onstage than it feels anywhere else in my life — it’s like the opposite of stage fright,” says singer-guitarist Katie Monks, who founded Dilly Dally with guitarist Liz Ball, her best friend from high school. “It’s like an alternate life where you can speak a language that’s a lot more free.” Along with powerful originals like “Snake Head” and “The Touch,” their recent sets have included a memorably surly cover of Drake’s “Know Yourself.” “Nobody here calls Toronto ‘the 6’ at all,” Monks notes. “So there’s a layer of sarcasm to the cover. But it’s still a fucking awesome song! Drake is so honest about being lame that it’s endearing.”
They Say: Monks says her vocal cords are doing just fine, thank you, despite some concern-trolling she’s encountered lately. “I resent the people who wrote about the record, like, ‘Let’s see how her voice holds up on tour,'” she says. “I’m like, what the hell?! I’ve been playing shows for six years. I just do my half-assed vocal warm-up of singing Sinead O’Connor before we go onstage, and that’s it, really.”
“Purple Rage” finds post-breakup liberation in a rowdy mosh pit. “This relationship I was in fizzled out, and I was left with these negative feelings that I wasn’t good enough,” Monks says. “That song is me fantasizing about a new life and a new Katie.”
Guitarist Joanna Lund talks Toronto’s tight-knit music community and gets quizzed on her Britpop fandom.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Toronto’s Buzz Records has become one of the city’s best suppliers of irreverent and incensed rock ’n’ roll. And though the label isn’t purely rooted in it (see the giddy pop of Weaves, or the arpeggiating synth blizzard of Beta Frontiers), the intense guitar-fronted attacks are its bread and butter. So far, some very resounding evidence of this has come via impressive full-lengths by Odonis Odonis, Greys, HSY, and Dilly Dally. Now, it’s the Beverleys’ turn.
Formed in 2010, the trio of Susan Burke, Joanna Lund, and Stephanie Lund have taken their time with their debut LP. But as last year’s self-titled EP hinted, it was worth the wait. Brutal is a beast of an album: scowling vocals, scowling dual guitars, scowling drums. It’s pretty damn scowling – that album cover says it all. But within the barrage are some razor-sharp hooks that make their fuzz-laden “junk punk” jams so much more than a source of anger management. Brutal is pop music at its most raw and unbridled.
The band’s pop sensibilities shouldn’t come as a surprise either: the Lund sisters spent part of their youth growing up in England where they fell in love with the hook-filled mid-’90s movement that was Britpop. And so amongst a series of questions about their own music, I felt the need to grill guitarist Joanna about her Britpop partialities.
AUX: In your new video for “Visions” you have a number of different Toronto musicians making guest appearances. Would you describe the scene as a tight-knit community?
Joanna Lund: Definitely. I don’t think we’d be where we are if it wasn’t for that tight-knit community. When we first started we didn’t know a lot of bands. But when we started rehearsing at our space we would run into people and we ended up getting close with these bands really quickly. And a lot of them are on our label, which is pretty great.
Buzz Records seems to be a family, when it comes to its artists.
It has a lot to do with people who are really passionate about music. I would say that Buzz had a lot to do with it. We knew people in HSY, like Kat the drummer. Jude for HSY does or did A&R for Buzz with Ian Chai. Jude came to see us early on, which was when all we cared about was getting really drunk and playing instruments no matter where we were. He came to see us a few times, but we caught him on a good night. And from there we just got to know all of the bands on the label.
So did everyone that participated in the video shoot know how to play the song? They look very convincing.
We didn’t really know how it would turn out until the day of the shoot. We just put out a call to our friends, a lot of them were in bands. One person in the video we didn’t know until that day. She was friends with Katie [Monks] from Dilly Dally, who brought her. Another girl in the video is a co-worker of mine, but she doesn’t actually know how to play an instrument. It was more, “Just show up, and we’ll find something for you to do.” Whether it was helping Henry, the director, or bringing snacks or beer. And we just ended up getting a great group of people.
The Beverleys have released the second single from their debut album “Sore”!
Susan Burke says, “is about the frustration you feel at the over-and-over-again whirlwind of disappointed expectations and the impossibility of communication.” In 2010 three friends made the decision to start making music together on a whim… three years, countless rehearsals and live shows later, we have The Beverleys, a TKO of a trio dead set on using their impulses to make heads bang while they shake off their troubles. Their dual guitar (Joanna Lund, Susan Burke) and drum (Audrey Hammer) attack recalls the time when punk first broke— their sound is imbued with a grungy heaviness characteristic of the Toronto scene but with the sharper and more defined lines of a band too quick to get lost in the murk. To their credit, it hasn’t taken long for others to catch on: in 2012 The Beverleys recorded early versions of their taut tunes with Fucked Up’s Ben Cook which they then released via their Bandcamp. They’ve also become an in-demand act locally, playing a flood of shows throughout 2013 with the likes of Buzz’s own HSY as well as The Dirty Nil, Crosss and Ice Age.
Guitarist Joanna Lund talks Toronto’s tight-knit music community and gets quizzed on her Britpop fandom.
The Fat Angel Sings 