expect delay
Wednesday’s post sent me down a rabbit hole of tribute compilations that The Blog That Celebrates Itself had assembled over their lifespan and it’s quite impressive – very much the American Laundromat business model. And while most of the releases had rosters of bands I’d never heard of, every once in a while a familiar […]
There’s not much on Just For A Life, a tribute album to Slowdive curated by now-defunct shoegaze blog The Blog That Celebrates Itself, that would have caught my eye or ear when it was released in 2017 – I knew the songs, obviously, but none of the artists. Ten years later, I still have never […]
Even if she didn’t make lushly icy dreampop that draws as much from the trip-hop scene of the ’90s as the shoegaze, Yndling – the musical project of Oslo’s Silje Espevik – would probably elicit those same sorts of adjectives just from how her Norwegian accent wraps around every syllable she sings. It’s the sound […]
A lot of bands I cover here fit very well into genre pigeonholes, and a lot of those like being in those pigeonholes and a lot of their fans like them in those pigeonholes, and that’s all fine. But sometimes there’s bands who don’t really fit into any kind of strict category, and because one […]
I’d like to think I’ve been reasonably diligent in covering music from non-English-speaking parts of the world, but my attention has been mainly focused on Asia and Europe. I think I’ve gone as far south in the Americas as Mexico so let’s remedy that a bit with a look at Encarta 98. The band, not […]
Luna return to Toronto tonight for the first time in seven years, settling in at Lee’s Palace, the room I saw them in every time before they bid farewell almost 22 years ago. Post-reunion they’ve played bigger and smaller rooms, but returned to Lee’s for their last visit in 2019 and it just feels right. […]
If the return of The Radio Dept. to both the stage and the studio this year wasn’t cause enough for celebration, they’re also returning to record stores this year. Or more specifically, their second album – Pet Grief – will mark its 20th anniversary with a limited edition vinyl reissue on November 13. This isn’t […]
We’ve got a rare foray into semi-self promotion today. The “semi-” because Blue Drops, the forthcoming debut album from Toronto’s Azure Rose, does not feature me in any way, shape, or form. It’s the solo project from Justin Grant, formerly of Toronto bands Fjord Rowboat and Bluescreen, both staples of the local ’00s shoegaze scene […]
The famous may be in Toronto right now for TIFF, but the otaku will be at The Horseshoe for the next two nights as this year’s edition of Next Music From Tokyo kicks off. The four-band lineup of Japanese indie acts is always a mix of new and familiar (assuming your frame of reference is […]
For a discography as long and deep as The Cure’s, there’s surely going to be some missed gems but I’m quite surprised I’d never heard their 2001 single, “Cut Here” before it showed up in my algorithm recently. Okay, maybe not that shocking – I can’t say that I was paying much attention to The […]
