Polaris Prize 2009 shortlisterChad VanGaalen announced today that he was letting the Soft Airplane B-Sides EP up for free download on his site. (Sneakily close to the award’s decision next week).
There are nine tracks, all of which were hopefuls for the album but didn’t make the cut. They’re a bit more bedroom-made of course, but it’s charm. And his fans will eat anything up, really.
Photo by Marc Rimmer
While waiting to see if he’ll win the Polaris Prize, you can also check out his instrumental side project, Black Mold.
So if you’re not a fan of The Line of Best Fit’s Oh Canada compilations yet, well, get on that. Ro Cemm has done it again with a brilliant playlist featuring Two Hours Traffic, Ohbijou, Evening Hymns, Fox Jaws, Carbon Dating Service, Jenn Grant, Young Galaxy and more.
Two awesome Canadian bands have recently been featured on the Daytrotter sessions – a website that features a band every day with hit tracks and occasionally some that you can’t find anywhere else. You can download or just listen to these tracks, along with reading a nice intro by creator Sean Moeller.
Yesterday, Junior Boys were featured as a brilliant and energizing start to September. It makes it quite easy to at least ward off the autumn blues a little bit longer. Moeller writes, “They grab us softly by the wrists and glide us out onto the floor as if we were on rollers and caught up in some kind of tailwind that was gently affecting our stance to remain stationary and just get a respectable buzz on, moving us slowly out into the night of abandonment, into an evening that won’t likely get us into any form of trouble that couldn’t be corrected or blotched out.”
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
You can read more and download tracks “Bits and Pieces,” “Birthday” and “The Animator” here.
Today, Moeller is repping the much-talked-about band-around-town[Toronto] these days, Rural Alberta Advantage. They coax the leaves to fall early, but in a way that will bring a sweet release, as front man Nils Edenloff sings “the air is unbearably hot for the night” on “The Air,” the first track available for download/listen. Moeller says, “He writes songs about the dead, for the living, as if to slap them broadly across the unsuspecting cheeks to remind them that they’re still able to wake up in the mornings and that alone is a very fine thing, an advantage that allows for feeling the blood go through you, for feeling the pain course (not always so horrible) and for feeling any kind of feeling you’d please or wouldn’t please.” Sounds incredibly right for a changing of the seasons, doesn’t it?
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
You can read more and download tracks “The Air,” “Two Lovers” (unreleased), “In the Summertime” and “Barnesyard” (unreleased).
Read after the jump and you’ll find other popular Canadian Daytrotter sessions:
A new team of the National Posts’ The Ampersand and Dose.ca brings us a 22-track long playlist of great international musicians – including Canadians: Thunderheist, Hey Ocean!, Crystal Castles, The Cliks, Metric, Patrick Watson, etc.
You can find the free code on Dose – the free playlist is courtesy of iTunes.
You must be in Canada (or be signed up in the Canadian store) in iTunes. I learned this the hard way. I am still in the U.S. store (as, I hate to say it, the best promos are there) so I’m feeling the loss of this playlist! Thankfully I do own music from a good amount of the artists, so I’ll have to make up my own version.
Here is the setlist:
“Too Fake” by Hockey
“Gone Too Far” by Dragonette
“Quicksand (Demo Version)” by La Roux
“A Song About California” by Hey Ocean!
“Gimme Sympathy” by Metric
“Furr” by Blitzen Trapper
“She Don’t Wanna Man” by Asher Roth & Keri Hilson
“Dreams-Come-True-Girl (feat. Karen Black)” by Cass McCombs
“Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” by Florence & The Machine
“Now We Can See” by The Thermals
“Stillness Is the Move” by Dirty Projectors
“Alcoholics Unanimous” by Art Brut vs. Satan
“Nothing2Step2″ by Thunderheist
“Animal” by Miike Snow
“Courtship Dating” by Crystal Castles
“Miracle (Radio Edit)” by Sally Shapiro
“Beijing” by Patrick Watson
“Get Crazy” by LMFAO
“Dirty King” by The Cliks
“Percussion Gun” by White Rabbits
“8th Wonder” by Gossip
Two great compilations have recently been released for download on the internet, and they are two that should not go unnoticed.
In the third installment, Brighton-based Ro Cemm from the Line of Best Fit has released another compilation of great Canadian music for the end of summer. It includes artists such as Dog Day, Bahamas, Amy Millan, Julie Doiron and The Paint Movement (all artists that have been mentioned on RoundLetters!). You can download it here.
A fabulous non-profit that RoundLetters happily promotes (and writes about in the latest issue of Broken Pencil) is Montreal/London’s the Yellow Bird Project. Recently they released their project with illustrator Andy J. Miller, the Indie Rock Colouring Book. This compilation is to commemorate the release. Blogger the Middle Distance Runner makes tons of mix tapes for Baeble Music, titled T.G.I. Mixtape, but this time the talents are turned towards YBP. Now, it appears you cannot fully download this compilation, but it is for full listen here. Artists include Stars, Broken Social Scene, Of Montreal, Au Revoir Simone, K-Os feat Murray Lightburn and Elvis Perkins.
This is one of those great moments – when an artist lets their entire album be streamed before it actually comes out. I believe that’s great, anyway. Especially in the case of Imogen Heap, who will release Ellipse come August 25.
And another good thing – you can stream it while on RoundLetters with her handy portable player.
I’ve been reading Imogen Heap’s tweets for months now on each and every update to her new third album, Ellipse (which finally has a release date for August 25 in North America!) I can’t take my impatience anymore! Imogen will always have a soft spot in my musical heart, especially after she was one of my first concerts I went to here in Toronto, at Massey Hall in November 2006. A friend and I couldn’t see so we were allowed to stand behind a glass barrier on the second level and it was so beautiful that we just bawled like babies into our scarves.
If you want to see Imogen Heap’s new black and white video (*which was filmed mainly in Newfoundland!*) for “Canvas” all you have to do is go to her website and submit a tweet. (This is when the people that have stuck with Twitter shout a big “ha ha” to those who ditched it or don’t get it!)
It’s getting harder and harder to be patient waiting for the release of Monsters of Folk’s debut self-titled album. A collaboration turned supergroup of Conor Oberst, Jim James, M. Ward and Mike Mogis have released their first single, “Say Please,” for streaming on their website as well as a free download (password is “please”). All you have to do is go here.
The full album will be released on September 24. Can’t wait!
A few posts back I mentioned The Soundmen and their Veckaflyest EP, a mashup of Lil Wayne and Grizzly Bear.
Well, they’re at it again already with Glasvegas and The Soundmen: Home Demoliton. ALREADY.
This time it’s just reworkings of songs from Scotland’s Glasvegas paired with your typical beats and press snippets of British people recommending the band’s album, all “Glasvegas. Glas-glas-glas-vegas.” Sounds pretty good so far. If you’re a fan of the band and you love to party, you’ll be sure to love this new form.
California thoughtful rockers The Dodos are releasing their third album, Time To Die, in North America come September 15 (or digitally July 28) and in the UK on August 31 (digitally July 27).
But you don’t need to worry about these confusing dates right now. Even though that may seem a long time to wait for an anticipated record right now, the Dodos are being quite generous by supplying the album online to listen to for free for a short time.
Unfortunately, this streaming comes from a bad background: it’s a mature response (cough, Jack White, cough) from the band to the fact that the album has leaked. They’re upset, but they know there’s a way to at least lesson the flow of said leak.
If you go to TimeToDie.net, you can see a video statement from the Dodos, listen to the album, and download a free track of “Fables.”
The Dodos recently played what I heard to be a very successful show with Beirut in Toronto at the Phoenix, but they’ll be back in the city on October 17 at Lee’s Palace. They’ll play Montreal October 16 at La Sala Rossa, and Vancouver October 26 at The Biltmore Cabaret.
For any RoundLetters updates that came before May 09, go here.
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