This week’s list:
Fanclubwallet – C’mon Be Cool
Weyes Blood – Andromeda
IsKwé – Little Star
Margo Price – Learning to Lose
Rich Aucoin – How it Breaks
Joan as Police Woman – The Silence
Junior Varsity – Cold Blood
Julia Holter – Les Jeux to You
Sarah Jarosz – Blue Heron
Gabrielle Shonk – Habit
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Not in Love We’re Just High
You can find all the songs for adding to your own personal playlist here
We also can be heard now on MixCloud – this is a new audio adventure that we are working our way through! We hope to be able to go live on this site once we can figure out the technology. I am thinking we have one or two many things playing at the same time right now to make this work – Audio Hijack, Zencastr, OBS, Rodcaster and eventually Hindenburg. Maybe a bit too confusing right now!
Stuff from the show
Bob mentions Mojo Magazine several times during the show – for more you have to listen to what he says! But, we wanted to include some material for you here so you know what the magazine is all about. Really, you need to look at The Mojo List a be prepared to get lost in their great collection of material.
Bob also mentions Uncut Magazine. Both magazines are British and have options for digital and magazine subscriptions. With Uncut you also get a CD every month with the magazine which is pretty cool.
Fanclubwallet – C’mon Be Cool – single 2021
I had to find out what a fan club wallet is so I found one on ebay and included this below. Hannah Judge, from Ottawa has a great sense of humour and a healthy perspective on life. This comes out in her music and the stories she tells.
Lyrics form C’mon Be Cool
I went to bed and didn’t get out for ten months
I learnt every twenty eight days your skin falls off
Did you get a new set of eyes since we last
talked I don’t see what you see in making all this fuss
Prior to the pandemic, Hannah was in bed for months suffering from Crohn’s Disease. The quote below is from Exclaim! Magazine, I have bolded some of their lines because this musician is really talking about things we all need to take seriously and reflect on after 14 months in a pandemic.
Written during and about the pandemic (with the added stress of a 10-month recovery from an unrelated health flare-up), fanclubwallet’s debut EP, Hurt Is Boring, is a testament to the creative benefits of enforced solitude. Ottawa-based musician Hannah Judge’s five-track release is a deeply-felt — but not necessarily depressing — slice of bedroom indie-pop dealing with experiences many of us are likely familiar with these days, including isolation, boredom and the rehashing of minor events that take on looming proportions in our memories. The specifics may be personal, but the vibes are relatable. Produced by grade-school friend Michael Watson and recorded with guitars and lo-fi synths kicking around the house, Hurt Is Boring is a friendly and unpretentious mix of indie folk and pop sensibilities.
Exclaim! Magazine
Weyes Blood – Andromeda
Weyes Blood (Natalie Laura Mering) took her stage name from the 1952 Flannery O’Connor Southern Gothic novel Wiseblood.
A beautiful song, I really should have come up with a more intelligent comment for this work.
Iskwe – Little Star
This is one of those songs where the story, and the video almost outshine the song. The video for Little Star won a Juno in 2020 for best video.
Iskwē, originally from Manitoba now lives in Hamilton. The story behind Little Star is one that centers on the the continuing sad story of reconciliation in Canada with Indigenous People. Little Star focuses on the media treatment during the murder trails of Gerald Stanley and Raymond Cormier – From CBC Tapestry:
‘They’ in the lyric refers to iskwē’s response to the press coverage of the trials of Gerald Stanley and Raymond Cormier — the men charged for the murders of Colton Boushie and Tina Fontaine.
“Little Star was a direct response to media [reports] and the way they were – in my opinion – being reckless during the trials of Gerald Stanley and Raymond Cormier,” singer iskwē said in an interview with Tapestry guest-host Laurie Brown.
“I felt endangered. I felt angry. I felt hurt. I felt afraid… The way our [Indigenous] bodies are viewed as disposable and how that sentiment seems to be in repetition when we see the way the media represents these stories.”
“It’s not just scary for Indigenous people… if we’re living in a country where we can truly say there is a demographic of people that is considered lesser than others, then we’re not doing very good as a society.”
You can hear her interview on CBC Tapestry here. The interview is a great way to get a good sense of what drives her music. The video is really something you should watch. The story is tragic and compelling.
Margo Price – Learning to Lose
Rich Aucoin – How It Breaks
Rich Aucoin is a really interesting artist from the Maritimes. Apart from the fact that he has written an alternate soundtrack to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, he supported the release of his first EP by riding his bike across the country. On a later tour, he ran partial marathons between gigs.
You can hear his most recent album here on Bandcamp.
I would like to explore the ideas behind his music more. There is no question that this is a very political album.
From a verse in How it Breaks:
Someone will dig it up maybe make em lose their piece of mind
We wanna see it come undone by the picket sign
Someone will call it out maybe when it’s children caught behind
We wanna hear it tearing free from their thin blue line
She was a young American
Opressed by old established men
I heard the news today oh boy
He was a young American
Killed cause the colour of his skin
Junior Varsity Cold Blood – single 2021
This is just a great song and we really need great songs.
From Fader – The best rock songs right now
Junior Varsity, LA-based duo Greg Aram and Zach Michel, load their swaggering pop-punk anthems with a rap production style that makes every beat sound cavernous. Custom-built for big stages, “Cold Blood” is a fearless shot at the moon that emits enough confidence to make you think they might just make it.
Julia Holter – Les Jeux to You
“Julia Holter is Siouxsie Sioux meets Kate Bush, with a matchstick intensity, relighting her own wick by the conversation in her voice, her diaphragm shifting between instruments” – got to love this quote from Under the Radar Magazine.
Sarah Jarosz – Blue Heron Suite 2021
I love this song and Sarah Jarosz’s voice you can see her here performing Blue Heron
The song has a beautiful, healing message in it about hope and recovery, again a message we are all looking for right now.
“2017 was an emotional year for me—my mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer the previous winter and the town of Port Aransas was severely impacted by Hurricane Harvey,” recalls Jarosz. “Those two events caused me to think back to the early morning walks my mom and I would take along Mustang Island beach—we would always spot the Great Blue Herons along the shore… The bird came to be a symbol of hope for my family during a difficult time, and even now, throughout my travels, whenever I spot a Blue Heron, I always think of it as a good omen; a little reminder of the important things in life, especially family.”
Jarosz notes, “Thankfully, my mom is now in remission and Port Aransas is slowly on the mend, but Blue Heron Suite still encapsulates so many of the feelings associated with that time – I like to think of the song cycle as a quiet acknowledgment of life’s many uncertainties; you never know what will be thrown your way, but you can always work to try to face the highs and the lows with grace and strength.”
Gabrielle Shonk – Habit
This is a great video and really shows why people stopped in the middle of what they were doing when she started to play at the Bronson Centre
Whole-Hearted 