Week 9
Soccer Mommy – Up the Walls
Kiwi Jr – Waiting in Line or Maid Marian’s Toastv
Beach Slang – Future Mixtape For the Art Kids
Nick Ferrio – The Dam
Car Seat Headrest – Fill in the Blanks
Aviva Chernick – Ti Espanya
Angel Olsen – Intern
Jon and Roy – Runner
James Clarke Institute – Should I Tell Her
Allison Russell – Persephone
This is the Kit – Coming to get you nowhere
Also live here on VoicEd Radio at 7:30 PM Saturdays
This week’s notes
Soccer Mommy
A nice slice of pop perfection.
Kiwi Jr – Maid Marian’s Toast
Kiwi Jr. is from the PEI North Shore – CBC Grant Lawrence recommends this as his new favourite band. Album Cooler returns – was released January 2021
Kiwi Jr. is Jeremy Gaudet (mic, guitar), Brohan Moore (drums), Mike Walker (bass), and Brian Murphy (guitar).
This is a very cool video that I watched as I prepared the show this week.
Directed by Sean Egerton Foreman, who also shot Kiwi Jr videos for “Cooler Returns”, “Maid Marion’s Toast” and “Gimme More”,No Trace Evidence is a short mini-documentary of Kiwi Jr’s recording process during the Summer of Covid 19, a candid peak into the recording studio as well as al fresco out-door mixing, isolation booths, temperature checks and black cats crossing their path.
No Trace Evidence
Here is the Pitchfork review of their latest album.
Beach Slang – Future Mixtape For the Art Kids
Beach Slang formed in 2013 as a vehicle for Alex James’ noisy teen anthems. We featured his song “Future Mixtape For The Art Kids.” In 2017 he did an offshoot called “Quiet Slang “ where he rerecorded his songs as chamberpop using just vocals, piano and cello.
Nick Ferrio – The Dam
2021 single Sutton Ontario album Television of Roses releases June 18, 2021 heard first on CBC Radio 3
Performed by:
Nick Ferrio Tanner Paré Lewis Parker Nathan Truax
With: Jonas Bonnetta Evangeline Gentle Caylie Runciman
The album was recorded and co-produced by Evening Hymns‘ Jonas Bonnetta and features contributions by Said the Whale‘s Nathan Truax, Heaps‘ Tanner Paré, Boyhood‘s Caylie Runciman, Evangeline Gentle and For Esmé‘s Lewis Parker.
From an Exclaim! Magazine article – March 21, 2021 – this is a pretty incredible story
Georgina, ON-based folkster Nick Ferrio has shared plans for a new record titled Television of Roses. The artist will deliver the goods on June 18, but today he’s offering up a glimpse of what’s to come with a new single titled “The Dam.”
The new track is a response to a letter sent to Ferrio by his late mother, in which she asked if he remembered her from “before her struggles with alcohol began.”
“It explores those early years of my life, the poverty we experienced, but also my mother’s resilience and strength,” Ferrio explained of the track. “We were estranged from each other at times in our lives and she passed away a year ago after being diagnosed with leukemia. But, I played it for her before she passed and we made amends.”
Ferrio said: “When I grew up there were a lot of people in my household and not everyone was a fan of my constant singing and guitar playing, so I would go to the cliff in the woods near our house and sing out to the lake. We recreated that in the video. It was cool to go back there and explore. Brought back a lot of memories.
Here is the video – watch this.
There is also a good article on his indigenous roots and advocacy for local music in Peterborough
Car Seat Headrest – Fill in the Blanks
Car Seat Headrest have been around since 2010. We featured a song from 2016’s Teens of Denial but they are still making waves as seen in this NY Times article from April discussing their latest release..
Will Toledo, the founder and principal songwriter of Car Seat Headrest, sat in his Seattle apartment, looking into his iPhone camera through the eyes of a modified gas mask.
His face wasn’t visible, but somehow he still seemed a little sheepish. Months ago, Toledo made up his mind to wear a costume, including the mask, while promoting his indie-rock band’s first album of new material since 2016, an atypically concise and beat-driven collection of songs called “Making a Door Less Open.”
NY Times By Alex Pappademas April 23, 2020
Aviva Chernick A Ti Espanya –Album 2019 La Serena
This is a beautiful singer who has collaborated with a range of artists. From the Bandcamp page:
Singing in Hebrew, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Yiddish and English, she has had the pleasure of making music with many wonderful musicians including Frank London, Yair Dalal, Jackie Richardson and Flory Jagoda. Aviva’s collaborative recordings have garnered several nominations and awards, including Juno nominations for Jaffa Road’s albums Sun Place (2010) and Where The Light Gets In (2013), a Canadian Folk Music Award for Where The Light Gets In(2013), a Canadian Folk Music Award Nomination for When I Arrived You Were Already There(2012)as well as for Under the Canopy (2008). for her albums La Serena (2020) Aviva and her co-writers from Jaffa Road won the John Lennon International Songwriting Grand Prize for their rendition of “Lo Yisa Goy”, a prayer for peace.
Pocket Performance: Aviva Chernick with Joel Schwartz
Another incredible performance on the Aga Khan Museum YouTube site
For you, Spain, my dear one.
Our mother, we love you
and throughout our whole lives
your sweet language we will never let go of.
Angel Olsen – Intern
Angel Olsen performing “Intern”. In her words, “A sarcastic take on synthpop.”
Jon and Roy 2017 Runner
Yet another band I have never heard before, but out west they are popular and well known. After 8 albums, this makes sense.
From an article Five things to know about Here by Jon and Roy in the Vancouver Sun
Jon Middleton is blessed with one of those perfect old-timey folk voices which quavers with just the right amount of blues, croons like a classic country singer, and can flow like lubricant over quiet fingerpicking (That Is You) or uptempo horn riffs (Headstrong) alike. It’s a pretty special sound, and brings all the material a sense of spirit that it might not otherwise possess.
Vancouver Sun
James Clarke Institute – Should I Tell Her
A single from the the just released album “The Colour of Happy” This wonderful melodic powerpop. Like Big Star, Badfinger and the Beatles? This is right up your alley then. James is also a talented artist as ably demonstrated in his “Clartoons”
Allison Russell – Persephone
Credit…
Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times
Album – Outside Child release May 21 2021
Really, for me this week, the stories are just as important as the music – this is another example. I learned about Allison Russell through the New York Times feature about her last Sunday:
Her solo debut, “Outside Child,” speaks bluntly about sexual abuse by her adoptive father. She spells it out, over a steadfast Memphis soul beat, in the first song she wrote for the album, “4th Day Prayer”: “Father used me like a wife/Mother turned the blindest eye/Stole my body, spirit, pride/He did, he did each night.”
The singer, songwriter and folklore explorer Rhiannon Giddens invited Russell to join Our Native Daughters along with Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla — all four of them Black female banjo players — to make a 2019 album, “Songs of Our Native Daughters,” for Smithsonian Folkways that celebrated the banjo’s West African origins and encompassed narratives of slavery, perseverance and resistance.
The article is really worth reading and speaks to her Montreal roots and how she has overcome the terrible legacy of abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother’s partner and also how she was able to eventually get him arrested and put in jail.
Like always, the NY Times version of the article adds lots of great video material.
This is the Kit -Coming to get You Nowhere
album 2020 – Off Off On – (found on BBC playlist on Spotify)
This Is the Kit is the alias of Paris-based British musician Kate Stables, as well as the band she fronts
This Is The Kit were a long-time favourite among various BBC Radio 6 Music DJs, which is where the musician and presenter Guy Garvey discovered them, playing their music frequently. Fellow 6 Music DJs Lauren Laverne, Radcliffe & Maconie, Cerys Matthews, and Mary Anne Hobbs have also been major supporters; DJ Marc Riley has hosted the band for three BBC live sessions to date.[2] BBC Radio 1 has offered the band spot plays via DJs Huw Stephens, Jen & Ally, and Phil Taggart.
Next week we will be going to an 8-song format to get the show down to 60 minutes. We will still be working to broadcast the show live on SoundCloud, Wednesday at 7:00 PM and it will be broadcasted on VoicEd Radio at 7:30 PM on Saturdays. We really appreciate the support of both of these great organizations for encouraging and supporting our weekly efforts!
Whole-Hearted 