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Music Quickspins

Migos – Culture 2

Migos – Culture 2 (Quality Control Music)

Culture 2, the Atlanta rap trio’s followup to the Grammy-nominated album Culture, is a bloated attempt at recreating its predecessor’s success. With 24 tracks totalling one hour and 45 minutes, there just simply aren’t enough quality jams to justify the length. With tracks like “Narcos,” the intro “Higher We Go,” “Bad Bitches Only (BBO),” “Walk It Talk It” and “Too Playa,” the album is filled with songs that either sound too much like Migos’s previous album or are just completely unfinished. For instance, the song “Open It Up” is an exact melodic rip-off of the song “Deadz” from the first Culture. Another glaring problem is that the songs are mixed poorly. For a group as big as Migos, poorly mixed tracks are a big no-no. Sure, there are some great songs to jam to, but realistically, this album would have been average at 10 tracks. At 24, this album is a chore.

Trial Track: “Narcos”

Score: 5/10

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Music Quickspins

No Age – Snares Like A Haircut

No Age – Snares Like A Haircut (Drag City)

Snares Like A Haircut is the latest offering from manic noise producers No Age. The duo has spent the better part of a decade plotting and refining a cognitive paragon of punk escapism, unraveling polarities that represent a finessed vision of rock music. Drawing from these tendencies, No Age construct a sound that challenges whether dichotomies can coexist. Short answer: they can and with absolutely masterful results. Combining drilling distortion with crisp, ambient textures, the record is a sharp turn from the complex pop that permeated the band’s previous efforts. Rather, the album lands feet first toward cohesive and romping guitar rock. No Age have perfected their propensity for extremes, coalescing their intuition through remarkably imaginative sounds. Across these 12 sprawling tracks, Snares Like A Haircut tugs and pulls with leverage.

Rating: 8.3/10

Trial Track: “Soft Collar Fad”

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Music Quickspins

Porches – The House

Porches – The House (Domino)

New York-based songwriter Aaron Maine is an auteur driven by his own seclusion. Channeling the delicate chords of new wave and funk, Porches weave songs rooted in impulses that evoke natural responses. Thrust by an impetus of its own, The House, though hollowed-out in sound, contains a gamut of realized musical ideas. The album locks into grooves that are somehow catchier and more instantaneous than Maine’s debut breakout, Pool. That album pondered the state of the human condition through anxiety-ridden imagery, and The House is an album very much informed by that tension. It constructs heart-wrenching melodies that pull at the very seams of human emotion. Though not entirely halting in its structure, The House lays down some of Maine’s most gripping melodic excursions. The album’s best track, “Now the Water,” is propelled by an icy beat that narrates the social and psychological costs of isolation. The album sparks with a wilting flame, familiar to digest but not enough to get the blood flowing.

Rating: 8.1/10

Trial Track: “Now The Water”

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Music

Taverne Tour promises fun, booze and plenty of noise

The festival’s third installment will bring 43 bands to 15 different venues

It’s late January, the holidays are over and the snow on the ground has begun to turn into a thick sheet of ice, promising the eventual—albeit, grudgingly slow—end of winter. For Montreal’s local music scene, however, this particular time of the year brings an equally optimistic occurrence: the return of the annual Taverne Tour.

Entering its third edition, the festival takes place from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3 and boasts a lineup consisting of local stalwarts such as Anémone, Solids, Mara Tremblay and Bloodshot Bill, and international acts like A Place to Bury Strangers, Spaceface and many, many more.

Taverne Tour is far from your average music festival. Structured akin to Austin’s famed South by Southwest—minus the excessive corporate branding known to bog it down—the four days of festivities see 43 bands playing 27 shows in 15 different venues. The venues mostly line Mont-Royal Boulevard in the heart of the Plateau, turning the busy street into a hotbed of rock and roll and sonic diversity for the weekend.

Not only does the festival support local artists in their quest to make a name for themselves internationally, it also shines a spotlight on lesser-known venues in Montreal—venues such as Le Ministère, located in an old bank building on St-Laurent Boulevard. With its interior recently renovated, the venue opened to the public in September 2017. After hosting events for Pop Montreal and M for Montreal, it rapidly rose to the upper ranks of the city’s nightlife. The large venue is hosting three events for the festival, and Xavier Auclair, the venue’s programming director, said he hopes to be part of the festival in the future.

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Music

Revived and ready to go

Japandroids sound refreshed on their latest record

It had been five years since Canadian duo Japandroids graced the world with a new record, and fans of the heartland revival band were more than eager. After fusing classic rock bombast and punk urgency on their 2012 record, Celebration Rock, the band aimed for an even bigger, crisper sound on their latest album.

“We were pretty silent on social media,” said Japandroids drummer Brian King. “People are like, ‘Now that your hiatus is over, are you excited to be back?’ and it’s like, what hiatus? We played 250 shows and then wrote and recorded a new album.”

Following that short break, the band released 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life, a record that feels more polished, yet somehow contains the gratifying immediacy of their last album. Compromising that rawness may register as a cheap trade-off to some, but the record is just as successful in retaining the fast-paced, youthful energy of the band’s early work.

The Concordian spoke to King about his writing process with bandmate David Prowse, and how they found inspiration to release their first bit of material in five years.

Over the phone, King said the process as a whole was very overwhelming. “When you’ve spent the last four years working on an album, you’ve just got to go at your own pace,” he said. “But once it’s finished and out of your hands, you try to make the most of it.”

Though daunting, this process wasn’t a new undertaking for Japandroids. “We went very quickly from being a local band to an internationally touring one,” King said. “With each album, it just gets a little bigger each time.”

To a lot of people, it seemed like the Vancouver legends had vanished into thin air. And in indie rock, that can either make or break a career. “We weren’t on social media updating a lot of the time. David was busy with his girlfriend, and I had met mine. We’ve actually been very busy in that time,” King said. “We released the last record in 2012 and toured all throughout that year. We toured almost all of the next year. When we got home at the end of it, we were just totally burnt out, both physically and mentally. It came to the point that, despite how much we love playing in the band, we just needed a break.”

According to King, the band hadn’t taken a serious break in five years. The initial recording sessions for the new album started after the band’s last tour. They took about six months off to detox before writing and putting new ideas to work.

“It’s hard to lead a normal life when you’re in a band. After six months off, we both really started to miss it, and that’s when we started writing again,” King said. “We probably spent about one year writing and then recorded the whole thing by the end of 2015.”

Working with producer Peter Katis on the new record was a good move for the band, as he is well-known for his work with groups like The National and Interpol. Mixing the record turned out to be a long and arduous process, but the end result undoubtedly sounds more polished. And apparently, it’s more polished by design. According to King, when the band started about 10 years ago, they aimed to replicate the raw and untutored sound of garage rock bands emerging from Vancouver at the time. “That’s the kind of band vibe we were going for,” he said. “That’s the kind of record we wanted to make.”

The band achieved that vision on their sophomore record, Celebration Rock. “Of course, we could have just continued doing the same thing, which I know a lot of our fans would have liked,” King said. “We really like that record, but it didn’t interest us artistically anymore.”

With that in mind, it’s clear the band made a conscious effort to execute something different. The transition from self-recording to making a real studio album wasn’t a matter of trying to sound more professional. Those aspects became an afterthought. But considering how much better they sound in the studio, expect nothing but improvements from here. “It’s uncharted territory for us,” King said.

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Music

Upcoming albums of 2018

Some of the best records to look forward to in the new year

Migos
The famed Atlanta trap trio released the companion piece to last year’s smash-hit Cultureon Jan 26. Members Quavo and Offset stated last year that the album would be released in October 2017. Now that the album is out there, the shaky details are crystal clear. The album is a veritable who’s who of rap, including guest spots from Drake, Big Sean, Gucci Mane and 21 Savage. “MotorSport,” an October collaboration with Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, was included among the cuts on the album. Expectations are undoubtedly high, as a followup to the group’s platinum career-maker “Bad and Boujee” is what’s really on listeners’ radars.

Porches
Porches’s 2016 debut on Domino Records, Pool, mingled minimal synth beats with colourful production flourishes. Released on Jan. 19, Aaron Maine’s full-length, The House, features a plethora of gold-standard guests, including (Sandy) Alex G and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes. In terms of the album’s sound, Maine told Pitchfork he wanted to capture the quality of a home-recorded demo. The record’s lead single, “Country,” is a true testament to this approach, gentle and drenched with reverb.

My Bloody Valentine
According to front man Kevin Shields, shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine will release an album in 2018. “A hundred per cent,” Shields confirmed to Pitchfork last year. As both a followup to 2013’s mbv and a rare release from the group, the project will reportedly be “more all over the place” than its predecessor. According to Shields: “This one is like if somebody took that and dropped some acid on it or created a dimensional clash or something.” The band also released analog remasters of Loveless and Isn’t Anything on Jan. 18.

No Age
More than a decade ago, Randy Randall and Dean Spunt emerged from the grimy gutters of  Los Angeles’s DIY punk scene, releasing five EPs and two albums of noisy, hyperactive rock music. After regular stints at legendary DIY venue the Smell, they secured a record deal with Matador Records. This gave them the professional backing to hone their unique hybrid of nihilist punk energies and ambient noise across a decade-spanning career. On “Drippy” and “Soft Collar Fad,” the first two singles from their upcoming record on Drag City, the band sounds revitalized, tapping into vibes that made them a formidable force to begin with.

Sky Ferreira
Following a series of cryptic tweets and hushed word-of-mouth hype, Sky Ferreira’s followup to her excellent 2013 debut album, Night Time, My Time, has been in a stagnant state of production hell. The release has been delayed for several months to make room for Ferreira’s budding acting career. Her acclaim as a singer has been put on the backburner in exchange for film and TV roles, including appearances in Baby Driver and Twin Peaks: The Return. Though Ferreira opened up about the album’s progress, teasing in April that new music would be released “very soon,” this is one we’ll have to see to believe.

FKA twigs
In February 2016, still fresh off her 2014 debut masterwork, LP1, FKA twigs released “Good to Love,” a somber single that further expanded the reaches of the singer’s experimental sound. This year will see the release of the singer’s first set of material since 2015’s surprise-released EP, M3LL155X. Recently, she has teased “Trust in Me,” a new collaboration project with ambient producer Oneohtrix Point Never. With this release, the prospect of new material in 2018 isn’t too much of a stretch.

Frank Ocean
The reclusive Frank Ocean released a small number of singles in the middle of last year. And after vowing to release a followup to 2016’s Endless and Blonde, Ocean went to Tumblr to clear the air. In a post, he indicated he has two mixtapes in the vault that would count as his third and fourth full-length albums. “I JUST AIN’T PUT THAT BITCH OUT!” he posted in November.

Earl Sweatshirt
Earl Sweatshirt’s last album, the spacey I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, was the rapper’s last public release. Aside from sharing a guest verse with Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul on Danny Brown’s menacing “Really Doe,” Earl’s activities in and outside the music industry have been few and far between. He has also been performing a fair share of new songs live. The idea of a new LP could point toward a proper return for the Odd Future provocateur.

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Music Quickspins

Jonny Greenwood – Phantom Thread

Jonny Greenwood – Phantom Thread (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Nonesuch Records Inc., 2018)

Jonny Greenwood, known for his work with Radiohead, composed the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson movie Phantom Thread. Similar to the film, the soundtrack has an old-school vibe reminiscent of the 90s. Greenwood uses the dynamics of a large orchestra well. From percussive strings to the emotional violins and expressive cellos, the sound is impeccable. My favorite track off the soundtrack is the slow “Never Cursed.” The track manages to be atmospheric and express emotions just through the orchestra’s performance. Watching the movie is not required to fully enjoy this soundtrack; the work stands on its own. This album is perfect for a stroll out in the countryside on a brisk day.

Sample track: “Never Cursed”

Rating: 8.2/10

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Music Quickspins

Maxo Kream – Punken

Maxo Kream – Punken (TSO/Kream Clicc, 2018)

A skim through Punken, Maxo Kream’s first mixtape since 2016, listens like a comprehensive autobiography. Laced with expert storytelling and southern-fried production, the record holds a variety of aggressive instrumentals over which Kream delivers some of his most compelling bars. The narratives here aren’t shaded by cocky assertions or hyperbolized brags; rather the Houston rapper divulges a series of dark revelations with blunt sincerity. It’s an uncompromising peer into Kream’s life, chronicling his ascent from an amateur drug pusher to occupying a position of power before his incarceration in 2016. This is a project also informed by communal bonds, between friends and family. The rapper treats loyalty like an ancient proverb. His approach is unflinching, as is his faith to the hustle and his glock.

Trial Track: “Grannies”

Rating: 8.5/10

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Music Quickspins

CupcakKe – Ephorize

CupcakKe – Ephorize (CupcakKe, 2018)

Rapper CupcakKe has come out with a steller third album, Ephorize, filled with exciting, vibrant wordplay and creative beats. CupcakKe covers a wide range of topics, from sex, acceptance and support for the LGBTQ+ community, to sexism and self-analysis—all with confidence and self-assurance. One of the best songs off the album is “Self Interview,” a reflective song about the double standard women face, played over a soft-sounding piano beat. Her commentary isn’t anything I haven’t heard, like: “Females have sex on the first night, they get called a hoe for that one-night stand / Men have sex on the first night, ‘Congratulations, you got around her bands.’” However, her performance really amplifies and enhances the lyrics. The album is lively yet sharply written, and mixed with danceable beats.

Sample track: “Self Interview”

Rating: 7.9/10

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Music

Igloofest helps Montrealers brave the cold

Photo by Mackenzie Lad

The premier electronica music festival is a favourite amongst partygoers

Each winter, Igloofest brings thousands of eager festival attendees together in a shared space to celebrate decades of electronic music—a genre which has defined Montreal’s underground culture for years.

Taking place from Jan. 18 to Feb. 3, the festival features electronica acts such as a Bonobo DJ Set, Izzy Vadim, Joachim Pastor, Kaytranada, N’to, NIGHTMRE, The W4rriors and Worakls, to name a few.

Ice-themed furnishings decorate the space, creating an overall vigorous, worry-free vibe. You’ll hear this every year, but it rings oh-so true—the biting cold temperatures are an afterthought. Though it might sound exaggerated, the festival’s consistent raving energy really gets the blood pumping. With beats on constant blast, you can easily lose yourself in the trance of the performances.

The 2018 Igloofest lineup consists of premier local and international DJs. Always a surefire way to kick off the new year, it’s an added benefit that the festival takes place in arguably the foremost party city in the world.

Photo by Mackenzie Lad
Photo by Mackenzie Lad
Photo by Mackenzie Lad
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Music

What it takes to put on a Lumineers show

A behind-the-scenes look at the band’s live concert

Held together with suspenders and a range of feel-good folk songs, The Lumineers are the Denver-based band everyone just knows—but where did they come from? And what makes them great?

At their show in Ottawa earlier this year, Wesley Schultz, the band’s frontman, recounted a time when they went unrecognized in the parking lot of one of their sold-out shows. That night, the band had gone outside to greet people who couldn’t get tickets. As the band approached the parked cars, drivers abruptly closed their windows and ignored them. Schultz expressed gratitude that the people were in it for the music.

The Lumineers’s first single, “Ho Hey,” unexpectedly thrust them into the spotlight in 2012. The song is a blend of catchy melody, hearty shouts and lyrics that make you reflect on the withering flames of old friends and past lovers—evoking both sadness and serenity at once. It’s gut-wrenching and enthralling. Perhaps that’s the draw.

“So, show me family / All the blood that I would bleed / I don’t know where I belong / I don’t know where I went wrong / But I can write a song / I belong with you / You belong with me / You’re my sweetheart.”

The first components of what would eventually become The Lumineers came together in the mid-2000s. After meeting to collaborate and write songs, Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites played gigs in New Jersey as a duo until 2010. Schultz operated as the lead singer and guitarist. He also wrote all the lyrics. Fraites wrote the music and plays piano and drums.

After 2010, the duo decided to take on another member, inviting Neyla Pekarek to join them as a cello player and backup vocalist. Pekarek joined the band after responding to a Craiglist ad posted by Schultz and Fraites. On tour, the group also brings additional musicians who specialize in a broad range of instruments to complete their signature folksy sound.

Stelth Ulvang, for example, doubles as a solo-artist and the full-time barefoot member of The Lumineers. Yes, that’s right—Ulvang can easily be recognized on stage as the one without shoes. He has been adding to the group’s sound and keeping audiences thoroughly entertained since 2011 with backup vocals, guitar, piano and bare feet.

When asked about the unusual habit, Ulvang said it’s for comfort.

“I used to [do it] in my old band, Dovekins, and I developed a habit I love,” he said. “I really like playing piano barefoot—at least with an un-shoed pedal foot. I will usually kick my right shoe off sitting at a grand piano even in the fanciest places.”

The band has released two albums so far, the first being their self-titled debut that thrust them into the mainstream music scene and their second called Cleopatra. The album’s standout track, “Ophelia,” earned the band their first number-one hit. The song is about a taxi driver from the Republic of Georgia who was inadvertently hardened by time and circumstance. This song is one of five tracks on Cleopatra branded by a woman’s first name—each detailing a narrative that leaves you feeling inspired, defeated, in love or betrayed.

“While the church discouraged / Any lust that burned within me / Yes my flesh / It was my currency / But I held true / So I drive a taxi / And the traffic distracts me / From the strangers in my backseat / They remind me of you.”

While many of their songs explore the topic of love, the ones that don’t are equally blissful and honest in nature. With two albums full of raw emotion, it might be difficult for someone on the inside to choose a favourite song. Ulvang, however, didn’t hesitate to identify his.

“I love playing The Lumineers’s tune ‘Angela’ for the sincerity and surprising intensity it holds,” he said. “Angela” follows the tale of a woman who has been running away from her demons her entire life and concludes with her arriving in a place where she feels at home.

In a world where music has become very repetitive, The Lumineers find the true substance of the stories that become their songs. The resulting product is compelling, raw and, above all, it’s honest. Just ask former President Barack Obama, who included The Lumineers’s song “Stubborn Love” on one of his Spotify playlists and invited the band to perform at the White House twice in 2016.

“We were all pretty stoked to meet the president,” Ulvang said. “[We] dropped everything when we had a second chance to play at the White House—it’ll be at least four years until we do that again,” he added with a wink.

The Lumineers spent the past year juggling their tour and opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When asked about the weirdest thing he witnessed on tour, Ulvang described a time when a crowd got a little handsy in Norway.

“I had never experienced that, as a man,” Ulvang said. “This old sailor who was helping put on the festival sees the discomfort in all of us and just starts linking everyone’s hands in the crowd […] Then we just had a ring of people around us holding hands.”

Max Lenox, who worked as the sound engineer for The Lumineers’s opening band, Kaleo, during their year-long tour, spoke highly of the group.

“The Lumineers’s production design was one of the most fluid and well-executed shows I have ever experienced,” he said.

Though they haven’t been around long, The Lumineers have managed to establish a fan base amongst a considerably wide audience. Their success so far indicates they are likely to continue on this path for years to come, and rightly so. In their own words, “I don’t gamble / But if I did / I would bet on us.”

The Cleopatra World Tour ended on Dec. 13 back where the band is rooted, in Denver, Colo.

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Music

The top 10 songs of 2017

The Concordian music staff reflects on the year’s best offerings

Last year was marked by triumph, defeat and outpours of optimism, and artists across the globe relayed this the best way they know how—through song. Here are the best tracks of 2017.

  1. “Love Galore” – SZA (ft. Travis Scott)

After spending half a year in our collective psyche, SZA’s sultry collaboration with Travis Scott secured a tight spot in the canon of timeless breakup songs. In the span of three minutes, the duo swap bitter kiss-offs and dissect past relationships while maintaining remarkably complex emotional maturity.

 

 

  1. “Magnolia” – Playboi Carti

Named after the infamous housing project in New Orleans, “Magnolia” is a stunning crystallization of Playboi Carti’s best assets—his natural ebb and flow on the mic and his critical sense of next-generation sounds.

 

 

  1. “The Bus Song” – Jay Som

“The Bus Song” not only introduces Jay Som’s excellent Everybody Works, it’s also a staggering reflection on love, friendship and the gratifying solace of trudging from desolate street to crowded bus stop, only to repeat the cycle on a daily basis.

 

 

  1. “DNA.” – Kendrick Lamar

“DNA” is a hip-hop masterpiece. Kendrick Lamar takes aim at a culture of misrepresentation and the long-standing effects that have perpetuated such divides. With mesmerizing production coming from Mike WiLL Made-It, “DNA.” is a disarming reminder that Lamar has plenty left to contribute to the zeitgeist, and then some.

 

  1. “The Story of O.J.” – Jay-Z

With a Nina Simone sample as its main hook, “The Story of O.J.” tackles traditions of racial discrimination and the diaspora of African culture in America, past and present, all delivered with some of Jay-Z’s sharpest writing in years.

 

 

  1. “123” – Girlpool

Girlpool’s sound hovers in its own innocuous space, where high school fantasies and dreamlike imagery act as a guiding beacon. On “123,” the duo peer through the looking glass with a sense of hyper-curiosity that reminds you of how powerless you really feel in this world we call home.

 

 

  1. “LMK” – Kelela

Kelela’s “LMK” is a nocturnal blow-burner that asserts the singer’s dominance as one of R&B’s most interesting forces. The singer pairs lavish R&B with pop accessibility and complements it with a backdrop of earth-rumbling bass, ornate synths and unwavering confidence.

 

 

  1. “tonite” – LCD Soundsystem

After laying dormant for six years, LCD Soundsystem’s core sound remains very much untouched. But that’s exactly where “tonite” draws its energy. Perhaps the year’s most proper return to form, the track pumps with the flashy tongue-in-cheek irony and existential musings LCD is known for. And after nearly two decades, they still sound as fresh as ever.

 

 

  1. “Bank Account” – 21 Savage

One of 21 Savage’s best standout tracks, “Bank Account,” continues the sinister trap persona the Atlanta rapper cultivated on his first few mixtapes. The nonchalant cadence of 21’s flow lurks with a cold and natural prowess, imitating the feeling of being watched without even knowing it.

 

 

  1.  “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe) – Power Trip

Power Trip’s “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” embraces a platonic passion for heavy metal reverie. The track is a sneering plea for the arrival of judgement day, where the only means of escape rests at the feet of the reaper’s axe.

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