popwreckoning

Block Party is beautiful. Every little thing about it is absolutely fantastic. From security yelling at people to get off the sidewalks, and into the streets, to the endless cacophony of music coming from every direction, it’s all wonderful.

The day started off with a short set by Fucked Up, broadcast by KEXP. There is a lot to be said about Fucked Up, but we’ll get there in a moment. For now, here’s a photo of me with Damian, the singer of the band. Yes, I asked him to take his shirt off for the photo.

Next up, was another KEXP set, this time by beloved Seattle band The Head and the Heart. I hadn’t listened to them up to this point, but I wasn’t going to miss them this time.

It has to be said that the band has an absolutely fanatic following.  The Bean Room reached capacity about fifteen minutes before the set, and there were people milling around in anticipation two hours before they were scheduled to play.  Are they worth the hype?

That depends on taste, but I definitely saw something intriguing in their short set. The band plays enjoyable acoustic music, and I saw enough to understand what the fuss is about. I’ll be watching The Head and the Heart more closely in the future.

Next, it was over to Neumo’s to stand in line for the bathrooms, and to see New York’s Cults. Cults sort of sound like twee pop filtered through Joy Division. The strobe lights hit, the band took the stage, and the sound of dark dance music filtered through the room.

Lead singer Madeline Follin came off something like a Gwen Stefani for the goth set, but the band had a sense of joy around it.  A beach ball hit the stage at least a dozen times during the set, and the crowd seemed extremely happy to be there. The music had plenty of fantastic distortion, and people danced like they were on fire. It was a great show, and up next was the highlight of the evening.

Fucked Up tore the roof off Neumos, in a way that’s rarely seen. The band was noisy, but played extremely well together, even though from the balcony the songs were often indistinguishable from one another. That didn’t matter. Two dozen stage divers cannot be argued with.

Singer Damian Abraham led the crowd in a sweaty, raucous, mess that was absolutely astonishing to witness. At one point he lead the crowd into chanting “I hate summer” during one song, and into “we’re dying on the inside” during the next. It was beautiful. He took off his shirt, and began twirling his microphone during the first song, and the energy did waver for a solid forty-five minutes.

This was punk rock at it’s purest.  Not only did Abraham stage dive but so did one of the guitar players, and the (female) bass player. The latter two did so while they continued playing. The crowd was putty in Abraham’s hands, even when he dove into the crowd during the second to last song, and went to the bar to get a drink.  This kind of ballsy awesomeness is so rarely seen at shows. It was breathtaking to behold, and I cannot wait to see this band again.

After Fucked Up, complete exhaustion set in, but I stayed around for Yuck. The band set up, and by their second song the crowd was enthralled. They played a set of slacker rock that made one nostalgic for the mid-90’s, when bands like Pavement were in their prime.

The set ended, and I struggled my way through the crowd, into the street, and through an exhilarated, completely transformed Capitol Hill. It’s 1 a.m., and I can still hear the drunks partying in the streets from my living room window.

Over the last decade Fucked Up has gone from being a relatively by the number hardcore punk band to being something that is almost impossible to describe. With their new album David Comes To Life, they’ve given the world an eighty minute rock opera.

The album is dense, but accessible, full of giant hooks, and even bigger ambition. Like most concept albums, the story is difficult to follow, but that doesn’t detract from the album. The fact that the album exists is a testaments to Fucked Up’s greatness. The fact that it doesn’t suck makes the band legendary.

Fucked Up will be playing two sets on Friday, and I plan on seeing both. I expect the venues to explode. It will be a joyous, sweaty, and rowdy experience.  Fucked Up has a reputation as a fantastic live act, and they shouldn’t be missed.

Both sets are on Friday, at 5 p.m. in The Bean Room at Cafe Vita and 9 p.m. at Neumos across the street.

So, here we are my musical playmates, at the tail end of 2009 with “Top Ten” lists jamming your inboxes, twitter feeds, and collective unconscious. I find myself overwhelmed when faced with the task of writing down that looming “Top Ten.” In an attempt to narrow down the scope of my list, as well as in taking full advantage of the opportunity to write about what is near and dear, I offer you my humble thoughts on the best music North of the border, 2009. That’s right folks, Canada: home to free health care, equality, and just about the best avant garde, trendsetting, F’d up music around.

10. MSTRKRFT

Hailing from Toronto, MSTRKRFT, pronounced Master Kraft, released their second EP in ‘09, Fist of God. Swooping synths, scratchy white noise, and chunky, electro dance beats landed these guys on my list. The duo has remixed songs by fellow Canadian crew members Metric and Wolfmother as well as The Kills and Bloc Party. In 2009, the boys signed to Dim Mak/Downtown and collaborated with hip-hop heavy weights Ghostface Killah and E-40. Boom! A fan of Crystal Castles? Daft Punk? Check these guys out and be prepared to break out your best robo-moves.

9. GENTLEMAN REG

I had the chance to catch Reg Vermue, a.k.a. Gentleman Reg at The Bowery Ballroom in New York this Fall. His stunning 2009 album, Jet Black, released on “It” Canadian label Arts &Crafts, home to big-ups like Broken Social Scene and Feist, blew me away. It’s not often you stumble upon music that has you aghast and asking, “Why isn’t everyone listening to this?!” Over the past year, Gentleman Reg’s eclectic genre-mashing musings have sort of been my little secret, my go-to album for everything from inky 80s inspired dance to tethered and bluesy, sly, indie chill. He won’t be staying under the radar for long, so I suggest you beat the crowds while you still can.

8. OHBIJOU

Ohbijou is a group of people from Canada who sing and play instruments together and make music, but don’t call them a band. OK? Preferring, “friends, a curatorial movement, familial unit, assembly of musicians, and philanthropic initiative” to the former, Ohbijou are my number eight reason to love Canada this year…and maybe next? I’m predicting an unbearably long line at their SXSW showcase this year. Another great big Canadian collective to fuss over, Ontario-based Ohbijou sound like pillowy exchanges during a late-night slumber party: nostalgic, delicate embroidering of the heart. There’s a certain intimate yet orchestral gleam to lead singer Casey Mecija’s sympathetic choiring. The critically acclaimed, Beacons, was released on Last Gang Records in 2009, and features some of the loudest, feverish rustling I’ve heard all year.

7. K’NAAN

A Somali-born rapper who landed in Toronto at the age of 13, inspired by Eric B and Rakim, and raps about everything from his war-torn homeland to learning ones “ABCs,” K’Naan’s heavily buzzed-about 2009 release, Troubadour, didn’t need much help but certainly picked up steam with guest spots from Damian Marley and Mos Def. On the top of almost every critic’s 2009 watch list, K’Naan offers some of the freshest, most intelligent beats around and boasts an authentic sense of self that challenges the tired, hip-hop stereotypes still being regurgitated in the mainstream.

6. JAPANDROIDS

They hit SXSW last year, rocked CMJ in October, played NYC’s Siren Festival this past summer, and are already slotted for SXSW 2010 return. Beyond buzz, you should be listening to Japandroids if you dig raw, mashed up, cymbal crashing, fuzzed out, beat up, rock with an infectious heart. The emo-steeped “coming of age” tale we know all too well is at the core of this duo, and honestly, it’s what really makes them so damn hard to resist. You know the yearning, bratty chorus by heart: “We used to dream/ Now we worry about dying/ I don’t want to worry about dying,” but this time it’s packaged in a rousing, busted up, pure punk-drunk adrenaline shot.

5. THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE

I have to admit, I just sort of stumbled upon this trio not that long ago, but boy do they deserve to be on this list. Signed to Saddle Creek, in 2009 they released Hometowns, 13 indie rock love letters that pay homage to everything from the beauty of the Alberta wild rose flower to summers in the Rockies to rising towns and hometown honeys. The organic beauty and soil of the rural Canadian countryside is mirrored in this affectionate and nostalgic collection of songs. They are also playing SXSW 2010; stay tuned for my full report.

4. TIMBER TIMBRE

I caught Timber Timbre (a.k.a. Taylor Kirk) at his packed to capacity Arts & Crafts CMJ showcase in October at Union Pool in Brooklyn. It was worth being sardined in a tiny bat cave to witness this rising dark horse summon the souls of many to his hearth. Timber Timbre’s self-titled 2009 release is a chilling folk-blues foray into a strange world of soulful and haunted hymns, acoustic stillness, cloaked and rising choirs and gloomy, hollow pastoral visions…it’s what you would imagine it sounds like as your passing from this life to the next; vacant, washed out coolness punctuated with flashes of recognition—chirping sparrows, leaves rustling, and cinematic last glances. Kirk had produced one of the most original artistic visions I’ve come across in the past year.

3. HANDSOME FURS

There’s no denying that Sub Pop had a big 2009. Celebrating an anniversary and a kick-ass roster which includes Fleet Foxes and my #3 pick on this list, The Handsome Furs. Face Control, the band’s second release garnered a lot of enthusiasm and kept the two touring for the better part of ‘09. The album is punchy, electro boss with a Soviet slink-all the heart and rumble of Springsteen matched with some of the raunchiest keyboard clout I’ve ever heard. This Montreal match made in heaven, husband and wife duo, Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry, are so damn sexy when they perform the music pretty much seeps from their pores. The sweaty kinetics between these two live trumps for best live show of 2009 in my book.

2. FUCKED UP

Whether you like hardcore or not, Fucked Up is a band that you need to know about. Winners of the elite 2009 Polaris prize for their album The Chemistry of Common Life, these Toronto-based breakneckers have pretty much owned top spots on almost every list over the past two years. Some critics have been bold enough to claim that the band’s second release has even “redefined hardcore.” With intelligent, provoking lyrics and melodic subterfuges this isn’t your mama’s hardcore. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re on Matador, played a twelve hour marathon album release show last year which featured drop-ins from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Dinosaur Jr’s J. Mascis, or that they open the album with a wind instrument that has all the indie-kids perched, but one listen and you have to admit Fucked Up is bringing something different to the game. Now we could get all huge with how many overdubs there are on a particular track or the nerdiness and wonder of the atypical instrument choices they’re batting with or I could just tell you that it’s one of the most thrilling, charging, genre-bending, pioneering albums of the past ten years, never mind 2009.

1. TEGAN AND SARA

Tell me you’re not surprised that my favorite Canadians took top honors on my list of reasons to heart Canada 2009. Tegan and Sara are a PopWreckoning favorite and we’ve been all over coverage for the girls’ highly anticipated, stellar sixth album, Sainthood, released in October to wide critical praise. Fans of the twins have been pining for new music since wearing out 2007’s The Con. The new material is a creative push forward for the sisters, one that boasts a heart-wrenching, hyper-analytic, intellectual aplomb and is decidedly more experimental; marking the first time the sisters penned tracks together. I can’t deny my love for the twins’ addictive, power-pop, motives of love and I’m already anxious for new music…most anticipated album of 2012?

It’s a cliché, but sometimes an album just speaks to you. Or, in the case of Neon Creeps, yells at you a lot. But that’s the brilliance of O Pioneers!: these guys sing (er, yell) about real life; about meeting real life head on and how absolutely and insanely overwhelming it is. Over a charging hardcore backdrop, front man “Eric” (assuming he’s the front man, as he’s the one making the posts on their MySpace page) shouts out his frustrations with money, old friends, the city and the various problems that everyone deals with everyday.

O Pioneers! pretty much sum it up in the chorus of opener “Saved By The Bell Was A Super Good Show”, with the howling of “DRAMA! DRAMA! DRAMA!” This repeated exclamation neatly summarizes it all, but in the following songs O Pioneers! elaborate. Our life is a movie, Will Sheff: no maybes.

On “9AM Everyday”, the singer grapples with the very difficulty of just getting up to face another day: “And I’m hoping I can sleep through this / and forget about all of the depression / and all of the debt / all of this stress / it just keeps building up.” On “Chris Ryan Added Me On Facebook”, the lyrics detail finding old high school friends on Facebook…unfortunately: “See I’m older now and I don’t give a damn / if I ever talk to you again / I don’t want to regress to / that stupid piece of shit I was back in / high school.” Then closer “Cool Kid City” deals with a feeling poignantly expressed by the band as “No I’m never gonna fit in / down in cool kid city.”

However, the band always pushes through all the bullshit to offer some small kind of hope. Not only are plenty of “don’t let it get you down” and such offered in their songs, but in “I So Told You So”, the singer gets his way and lets everyone know, “I wish I didn’t have to say / I so told you so but I totally do / and it feels so damn good.” Meanwhile in “The Architect of Disneyworld”, the band offers us the greatest hope in that we can recreate the world as we want to: “So many times / have I wished for a chance / just to make a change / and make it permanent…we can burn down bridges just to tear them apart / we can burn down cities just to tear them apart / but it’s up to us / it’s up to us.”

As great as the lyrics are, they’re dependent on the music beneath them to make them worth anything and in the case of Neon Creeps, it never disappoints. While the basis of the band’s sound is undeniably hardcore, like Toronto’s acclaimed Constantines, O Pioneers!’ brand of hardcore sounds strangely more uplifting than it does abrasive. While in a way it could be argued that the point of hardcore was always more about cathartic salvation than any kind of externally-focused confrontation, few bands, including the aforementioned, have managed to make it all sound as personal and listenable as O Pioneers!.

Neon Creeps is a great debut from a great band. Recent albums from ambitious modern hardcore bands like Fucked Up (also from Toronto) have upped the ante for what a hardcore album can be and while O Pioneers! will have to work their way up to that level over time to really matter, they’re off to a great start with Neon Creeps.

Neon Creeps will be available January 27th from Asian Man Records.

Tracklisting:
01. Saved By The Bell was a Good Show
02. The Architect of Disney Land
03. Dead City Sound
04. 9 A.M. Everyday
05. My Life as a Morrisey Song
06. Stressing the Fuck Out
07. I Have a Weightlifting Problem, Bro
08. Chris Ryan Added Me On Facebook
09. I So Told You So
10. Cool Kid City

O Pioneers!: website | myspace

Written by: Marc Z. Grub

The metal band Fucked Up is indeed a band that is not like most metal bands. Keeping with the traditional grungy metal vocals, they incorporate many different aspects into their music that you normally would not hear in metal music. The first track on their new album The Chemistry of Common Life is quite deceiving to the listener, conceding the song opens with a soft flute that slowly bleeds into a powerful guitar riff.

On “Golden Sea,” it is quite clear that the song is strongly influenced by none other than Pink Floyd. The entire three minutes and thirty-five seconds of the song is an amazing instrumental piece, once again leading into the heavy-metal song “Days of Last.”

Fucked Up is a new age of metal that can be heard through out their whole album which is released on October 7. To commemorate this occasion, they will be playing a 12 hour long show at Rogan on the corner of Bowery and Bond in New York City with the help of some friends like the Vivian Girls, John Joseph, Matt Sweeney, Chain Gang, Mobb Deep, just to name a few. Fucked Up’s experiment in music on this album is quite the success.

Fucked Up: website

Written by: Kyle Thurin