We say ‘semi-solo’ because, while it’s being released under Samson’s name, the album involves The Weakerthans members Jason Tait and Greg Smith, as well as Samson’s partner and collaborator Christine Fellows, and was recorded by The Weakerthans sound tech Cam Loeppky. Either way, the record looks to explore Samson’s favourite themes of contemporary loneliness and isolation in his uniquely warm manner, his characters not ready to give up hope that connection (that is, real human connection) is still possible in our digital world.

For now, we have the first single, ‘Postdoc Blues’ as a taster. In many ways, the track is a spiritual sequel to Provincal‘s ‘When I Write My Master’s Thesis’, the protagonist no longer neck deep in study, dreaming of the Glorious Change that the completion of a degree always seems to offer, but instead floating in thin post-degree air, struggling through the mind-numbing, monstrously pathetic and utterly normal world of Powerpoint presentations and publishable research (“Saw your presentation went terrible / all wrong dongles, sweat stains and stares”).

The narrator acts as a kind of cheerleader, dragging the other through what David Foster Wallace called “the day-to-day trenches of adult existence”, before offering something different in the closing third, switching attention to wider societal and ecological issues, hoping that working toward a morally important higher calling might transcend the banalities of much of TV and the internet. You can stream the song now (via A.V. Club):

“So that that laminate
out of your wallet
and read it,
and recommit yourself
to the healing of the world
and to the welfare of
all creatures upon it.

Pursue a practise that
will strengthen your heart”

Winter Wheat is set for release on the 21st October via Anti- Records and you can pre-order it from the John K. Samson website right now.

Photo by Cory Penner

The post New solo album from John K. Samson of The Weakerthans, Winter Wheat appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Oh, and there’ll one a month from now on, which will give us plenty of time to have a think of a new idea before we catch up to present day.

The year 2000 was remarkable for lots of reasons. We got to be the first people to see a new millennium in, well, a millennium, Putin took over within the Kremlin, Bush Jnr. all but made it into the Oval Office, films such as Gladiator, O Brother Where Art Thou? and the indomitable Chicken Run thrilled the public, and, most importantly, Roberto Di Matteo won the cup (again). There were also some pretty notable musical releases, and we’ve cherry-picked some of our favourites (admittedly in retrospect) for your listening pleasure below:

Tracklisting:

1) Shellac – Prayer to God
2) The New Pornographers – Letter From an Occupant
3) Pedro the Lion – Simple Economics
4) Johnny Cash – I See A Darkness
5) Bratmobile – It’s Common But We Don’t Talk About It
6) Elliott Smith – Son of Sam
7) Cat Power – Satisfaction
8) Sleater Kinney – You’re No Rock ‘n Roll Fun
9) Lifter Puller – Nice Nice
10) At The Drive In – One Armed Scissor
11) Dillinger Four – Who Didn’t Kill Bambi?
12) Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven…
13) Yo La Tengo – Everyday
14) Múm – Asleep On a Train
15) Sigur Ros – Staralfur
16) The Weakerthans – Left & Leaving
17) Damien Jurado – Johnny Go Riding
18) Songs:Ohia – The Ocean’s Nerves
19) Ryan Adams – Come Pick Me Up
20) Smog – Permanent Smile

The post Millennium Mix: 2000 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

‘List of People Buried at Arlington National Cemetery’ kicks things off with a bang, opening with emo/hardcore-style ranting delivery before morphing into the anti-folk territory of Defiance, Ohio. “I get so alone that I start to drink,” they shout, “I’m usually fine then I start to think / an atom bomb leaves nothing in its wake / do I survive for everyone’s sake?” The instrumentation is slightly off-kilter which, coupled with Lightning’s delivery, gives a sense of cathartic energy, as if the music is arriving to your ears unfiltered in its ferocity and strangeness.

“Purge me of my sins
now I’m friends with my demons
screaming, ‘it’s in my blood
it’s in my blood
it’s in my blood”
it’s in… ‘”

Sounding like Fugazi meets Young Jesus, ‘Wicked & Divine’ details slash-and-burn attempts to escape psychic pain, the ill-fated self-destruction-as-a-narcotic routine acting as a vicious circle from which respite can only be gained through further revolutions of the cycle. This self-aware entrapment triggers further feelings of self loathing and suffering, leading to further entrapment, then self-loathing, then entrapment etc. etc, so that while the narrator dreams of going back to reseed the charred ground, in reality they just keep on blazing the same earth over and over again.

“I can take the heat
Icarus got nothin’ on me
baby, we’ll burn out brilliantly
where’s the fun in fading out quietly?
As the sun melts our wings
your arms around me
I’ll kiss you goodbye as our bodies
plunge into the sea

It all starts out the same on Resolution Day
take me back to your room and say
‘kiss me, I want to feel right’
but I’m too busy getting high”

‘Fade to Black’ continues this idea (“The insanity of doing the same thing over and over til I collapse”) and, although the sound is more restrained, the sense of immediacy remains. A departure from the other two, the track unfurls into something akin to The Weakerthans meets Small Wonder, ending with a determined crescendo of militaristic drums that Titus Andronicus would be proud of.

“I started to tell you
you were in a dream I had
all our friends were in the backyard
everyone was wearing black
then right there you stopped me
you asked ‘did anyone have sex?’
I stammered ‘no I-I don’t think so.’
You sighed, ‘then keep it to yourself'”

With all this talk of pain and trauma and its inescapable bind, you might get the impression that this is a bleak record. The funny thing is, that couldn’t be further from the truth. What emerges in Lightning’s first lines (and in every word and note thereafter) is that the music is the very thing to break the Kekuléan knot they had gotten lost in. Survival punk is not a creative descriptor so much as an ethos, a way of life. CUTTERS exists so that it’s band members feel more alive. How can that be bleak? Bleak would be to sing happy songs about Hollywood love stories you could never believe. Bleak would be to say nothing at all.

As brief as it is brilliant, both//neither ends just as you get hooked, leaving you thrilled and short-changed and baying for more, like some musical equivalent of the best episodes of Lost. This feels like the beginning of something, so let’s sit and wait patiently.

You can buy both//neither now from the CUTTERS Bandcamp page, or grab a vinyl from Jam Eater Records.

The post CUTTERS – both//neither appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We had originally planned for 15 songs each but found it was too difficult to fit in all the artists we felt needed to be included and decided to go with 20 each. Luckily, HI54LOFI included some of our favourites and I think we had some of his on ours, so we helped each other out a bit.

Granted, there are far more than 40 noteworthy Canadian artists out there and there were some hard decisions. Any disappointed acts crying into their maple syrup or taking out frustrations on their teamates on the ice, please don’t despair, there is always next year.

We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making them. These songs certainly haven’t helped banish our romantic view of Canada.

Wake The Deaf side:

1.Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
2. Drop It – NEEDLES//PINS
3. Flyingshot Lake – The Flaming Moes
4. Ask Me Something – Wind & the Wild
5. Left and Leaving – The Weakerthans
6. Snow Ghosts – Paul Stewart
7. Voyageur – Doug MacNearney
8. The Future Of Tradition – Frederick Squire
9. Bruises – Dusted
10. Ben – Tyler Butler
11. Warning – Postdata
12. Margaret Downe – Aidan Knight
13. Coming Back Home – Zachary Lucky
14. Sask – Donovan Woods
15. Young Glass – Hey Rosetta!
16. Lightshow – Plants & Animals
17. And I Thank You – Pink Mountaintops
18. Cloud Of Evil – Blackout Beach
19. Sing! Captain – Handsome Furs
20. Continuous Thunder – Japandroids

HI54LOFI side:

1. Welcome To The Heart – Eamon McGrath
2. Broken Knees. – Different Skeletons
3. Sunset – Two Bicycles
4. Brook and Branch – The Weather Station (featuring Baby Eagle)
5. Skinny Ghost – HAPPY TRENDY
6. Deny, Deny, Deny – Joel Plaskett
7. You’re Cool – The Joe
8. Oh My God (It Still Means A Lot To Me) – The Wooden Sky
9. Necromancy – Jessica Jalbert
10. Scared – The Tragically Hip
11. Family Tree – Evening Hymns
12. Wind Driving Dogs – Chad VanGaalen
13. Were You In Love With Me – Andy Shauf
14. Big Bird In A Small Cage – Patrick Watson
15. I Need You Closer – LadyFace
16. Where are you? – nick everett
17. The Very Best – Mike Tod
18. Vapours – Islands
19. Sugar Mama – The Deep Dark Woods
20. Road Regrets – Dan Mangan

You can find both mixes here as a collection.

EH? – A Canadian Mixtape (Wake The Deaf Side) from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

EH? – A Canadian Mix Tape (HI54LOFI Side) from HI54LOFI on 8tracks Radio.

If anyone can think of any more Canada-themed cliches or stereotypes then please don’t hesitate to let us know for next year’s mix. Going by this collection of songs, being insanely talented might just be one more.

The post EH? – A Canadian Mixtape Complied By Wake The Deaf & HI54LOFI appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The album builds upon the band’s two previous albums (2008’s Orion Songbook and 2010’s Deadmalls and Nightfalls – both of which I would highly recommend), and confirms the ability to make sun-soaked Americana with a literary lyrical bent. Indeed the album’s lyrics are extremely dense – coming in at over 5,500 words – and paint a vivid picture of growing up in suburban Detroit during the 90s. The album artwork serves to capture the themes on display and does a better job than I could possibly hope to with words. The era evoked will certainly hold greater appeal to those of a certain generation and I’d guess that if your birthday falls between 1980 and 1990 then you will identify with a lot of the lyrics, from sun bleached VHS tapes to sports coaches to the birthday parties of friends and school mates. This is not simply a chronicle of childhood, however. A lot of the lyrics are tinged with nostalgia and a sort of wistful sadness. This is probably best illustrated by sampling a few of the lines from the album:

There’s a dead world locked in a Nintendo 64
In some divorced friend’s mom’s apartment bedroom drawer

(From Open It Up)

Or:

The shrink-wrapped cosmetics and cardboard aesthetics of department store picture frame inserts that my 
Mother keeps under a sink in a cupboard with her high school diploma and it hurts to try
To keep all our treasures intact for forever

<a href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships” data-mce-href=“http://music.frontierruckus.com/track/dealerships”>Dealerships by Frontier Ruckus</a>

I would advise that this brand of folk or Americana is not for everyone. Frontier Ruckus have not attempted to jump on the bandwagon of popular contemporary folk acts and tried to make foot-stomping, sing-a-long choruses that could grace huge venues and festival headline slots. But this is not a criticism, in fact I mean it more as a complement. There is remarkable restraint and real feeling here. I found it very difficult when listening to the album to draw direct comparisons, although I think that it would be fair to cite  The Mountain Goats, particularly The Sunset Tree, with it’s evocation of coming of age and being a teenager in America. Other artists that come to mind are John K. Samson’s The Weakerthans and Will Sheff’s Okkervil River (particularly their earlier albums) and Decemberists, mainly because of the literary style lyrics, which you could almost read as poetry from the liner notes.

The band have also released a video for the closing track, Careening Catalog Immemorial, which was directed by David Meiklejohn and again captures the album’s aesthetic pretty nicely. Watch it below:

Europeans can pre-order the album from Loose Music, while North Americans can get the album in a beautiful double vinyl package, on CD, or by digital download via Quite Scientific. The band are also about to embark on a European tour, including several stops in the UK. Check out the dates below:

01 Mar – Windmill, LONDON
02 Mar – Burgerweeshuis, DEVENTER
04 Mar – Stengade, COPENHAGEN
05 Mar – Pustervik, GOTHENBERG
06 Mar – Debaser Slussen, STOCKHOLM
07 Mar – Debaser, MALMO
08 Mar – Kulturhaus 73, HAMBURG
09 Mar – Underground, COLOGNE
10 Mar – Fachwerk Gievenbeck, MUNSTER
12 Mar – Rote Fabrink, ZURICH
13 Mar – Cardinal, SCHAFFHAUSEN
14 Mar – Silencio, PARIS
16 Mar – Start The Bus, BRISTOL
17 Mar – Whelans, DUBLIN
19 Mar – Ruby Lounge, MANCHESTER
20 Mar – Bloc Bar, GLASGOW
21 Mar – Fibbers, YORK
22 Mar – Jericho Tavern, OXFORD
23 Mar – The Borderline, LONDON

The post Frontier Ruckus – The Eternity of Dimming appeared first on Various Small Flames.