Why this video? From Exclaim magazine:
As is Faist’s trademark, the new single comes with an accompanying video, shot on his trusty 16mm film camera. The “Hoodwink” clip features the dancing stylings of cowboy hat-clad Lee Kennedy, who busts some moves outside Toronto’s Dufferin Mall with her trusty scooter by her side.
Said Faist about the video’s star, “The video features Lee Kennedy, who I met in Kensington Market on her scooter one day. She was dressed in pink head-to-toe, and I took her photo while we drank coffee. I remembered her enthusiasm and tracked her down because I wanted to put her in a video. She showed up to Dufferin Mall on her scooter, danced for a minute and a half, and then we went home.”
Songs this week
Bob’s songs
Dinosaur Jr. – I Ain’t
Guided By Voices – Trust Them Now
Yo Le Tengo – Shades of Blue
Teenage Fanclub – The Sun Won’t Shine On Me
Paul McCartney – Winterbird /When Winter Comes
Paul’s songs
Alvvays – In Undertow
Groupie – Thick As Glue
Du Blonde – I’m Glad We Broke Up
Kobo Town – Scarborough Girl
Boy Wonder – Hoodwink
Before we get started, we have to put in a note about John Peel, the legendary DJ we talk about at the beginning of the broadcast. If you want to listen to some, or many of his broadcasts your can download them off this great blog – The Perfumed Garden.
More about John Peel here:
Mairi McGuire has been asking for the Alvvays for a few weeks, so here they are! A great band with deep Maritime roots. I am including a full KEXP session here so you can listen to more of their great music.
Alvvays – Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
The band consists of Molly Rankin (vocals and guitar), Kerri MacLellan (keyboards), Alec O’Hanley (guitars), Brian Murphy (bass) and Sheridan Riley (drums). Their second studio album, Antisocialites, was released on September 8, 2017 and would go on to win the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. Both albums have been short listed for the Polaris Music Prize.
From Wikipedia
I have to give a nod this week to Pitchfork for some of my stories this week. What a great resource for new music!
Yo La Tengo
Bob tells an mazing story about how the band got it’s name – you really need to listen to this on the show.
This is an excellent interview with Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo
This video from 2013 shows the band’s more heavy guitar “skronk”approach
Groupie
I like this song and the story from Pitchfork is really interesting. The song is Thick as Glue and you can read more about this new band below:
Groupie began when Ashley Kossakowski put out a call for bandmates on Craigslist, which was answered by guitarist Johanna Healy. Now a quartet, the Brooklyn band recently released a full-length debut, Ephemeral, an invigorating collection of post-punk leaning tracks about identity, nostalgia, and female empowerment. On the dreamy centerpiece, “Thick As Glue,” they interrogate the myth of the male artistic genius: “Young woman idolizing heroic men singing about heroin/Tried to keep it cool, now it’s my turn too. Who you think you’re looking up to?” –Quinn Moreland – Pitchfork
Guided By Voices
This best of Guided By Voices album is the best way for the uninitiated to approach the band. Solid from beginning to end.
Ever the contrarian, Robert Pollard left their most “radio-friendly” and well known song off this collection. From the TV show Scrubs:
Du Blonde
Song: I’m Glad That We Broke Up from the album Homecoming
More about Du Blonde from the Guardian:
If you want something done right, do it yourself: so Newcastle’s Beth Jeans Houghton resolved for her third record as Du Blonde. Tired of feeling limited by the industry, she wrote, recorded, produced and released Homecoming herself, right down to tie-dying her own merch. Despite this bravura show of self-reliance, she still makes space, in a record bursting and bouncing with fuzzy, pop-grunge hooks, for guests from Garbage’s Shirley Manson (on the heat-hazed, delirious Medicated) to Ezra Furman (the glam-punk scrap of I’m Glad That We Broke Up) and Andy Bell of Ride (the alternately dreamy and hard-rock-anthemic All the Way). Houghton is always centre stage, though, right from opener Pull the Plug, whose sweet, surfy melody and low, scuzzy riffs recall early Frank Black, as does the divinely nonchalant I Can’t Help You There.
The whole album conjures the catchiest moments of 90s Boston indie rock – Pixies, Belly, the Breeders. It’s a style appropriated by many, but invoked by a genuine, dedicated kook like Houghton, those dynamics live and breathe. Smoking Me Out, in particular, is a riot – a campy, monstrously distorted vocal on the verse contrasted with a blissfully sweet, sharp powerpop chorus: DIY at its wilful, weird finest.
Teenage Fanclub
Here’s Teenage Fanclub playing at Reading 1992. This was gig Nirvana blew open their popularity. Kurt Cobain is sometimes credited as calling Teenage Fanclub “the best band in the world”
The “Fannies” were often compared to 70’s cult heroes Big Star. There is an excellent film on Netflix documenting Big Star’s unlucky foray into the music business .
Kobo Town
Kobo Town was played on Frequencies on May 4th. A great song and an amazing episode!
Again from Exclaim Magazine:
Founded and fronted by émigré Trinidadian songwriter Drew Gonsalves, Kobo Town’s music has been variously described as “an intoxicating blend of lilting calypsonian wit, dancehall reggae and trombone-heavy brass” (Guardian) and a “unique, transnational composite of rhythm, poetry and activist journalism.”(Exclaim!) From their home in Toronto, the JUNO-nominated group has brought their distinct calypso-inspired sound to audiences across the world, from Port-of-Spain to Paris and from Montreal to Malaysia.
Boy Wonder – Toronto
Song – Hoodwink – it was hard to get information on Boy Wonder, I went to Exclaim magazine to get this information. You can also go to Revibe Toronto to see a live version of his song – Smile Moma off his 2019 EP
And from Exclaim’s article by Matt Bobkin
Published Apr 30, 2021
Talented Torontonian Ryan Faist is a filmmaker by day, boy wonder by night. The garage rock project is set to drop a new album, Kinda Blue Too, on June 4 via his own Rainbow Land label, alongside a live concert film, Fear In Public. A month ahead of the album’s release, Faist has released new single “Hoodwink.”
The 95-second blast pairs sturdy rock chords with Faist’s reverbed-to-hell vocals, as he raspily howls about a mutually destructive relationship: “Would ya sell your soul for a buck or two? / ‘Cause if you’ve got me, then I’ve got you.”
In a statement, Faist told Exclaim!:”Hoodwink” is about the beginning of the end of compassion and kindness between us. It’s about the ugly parts of the world, the people who benefit off of people’s misery. I feel like that their wave is gonna rip-curl soon though. Kindness will shine.
The song is an ode to my dad’s old Brit garage rock records that I grew up listening to. Three chords. Less than two minutes. No bridge or breakdown. I love how those songs always trimmed the fat. In and out, like your favourite drive-thru.
This week we played an extra track to get us to 90 minutes
I read about Yasmin Williams first in the New York Times.
Yasmin Williams has described her approach to acoustic guitar as a kind of creative problem-solving. Drawn to the instrument after mastering Guitar Hero 2, she dreamed of tapping along the fretboard like rock virtuosos before her. Unable to replicate their style, she laid the guitar on her lap, tuned the strings in harmony with each other, and played it like a keyboard. Drawing from a love of hip-hop, she sought an underlying rhythm throughout her wordless, melodic compositions. Without an accompanist, she attached a kalimba—a type of thumb piano—at the bottom of her instrument, plucking it with her right hand while her left navigated the strings.
“I don’t want my music to be limited by being the ‘Black guitarist,’ but somebody had to start doing something,” Williams said. “With all the horrible stuff in 2020, it seemed like it was time.”
Credit…
Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
Whole-Hearted 