Feast of Beast

Dirty Beaches - Lord Knows Best (live Pop Montreal)

I recorded this live via phone, so it ain’t pretty but you get the point.  Alex Zhang Hungtai plays a mean live show.  His material is much more raw and noisy, a world of difference from Badlands in the best of ways.  The experience feels almost intimate and carnal, you’ll just have to catch him live yourself.

Below is my Polaroid Pop Montreal 2011 chronicle.  Enjoy.

Frankie Rose opening for…

Dirty Beaches. Hands down coolest kid, best performance of the festival.  Alex has two band members now deepening his engulfing wall of sound playing drums & percussion and one “sax offender.”

Seriously Alex is just one sweet dude, nice enough to pose for a shot pre-show.

d’Eon jams out opening with CFCF for…

Sleep ∞ Over plays beautiful tunes for us amongst taxidermied beasts and neon blacklite oragomi forests.  Sounds dark and sweet enough to melt your brain and heart into one.

Best after party in town at La Baraque with three more bands playing till 5am.  All local, all French.  Can’t remember the name of these girls ^^^ for the life of me, but the name translation: ridiculous and pretentious dancing girls.

Grass Widow may have put on the best sounding show out of everyone I saw.  These girls rock hard, and play their instruments so damn well all while harmonizing their three beautiful voices as one.  They covered Mannequin by Wire, effing brilliant.  You can pick that up on a their latest Milo Minute 7”

The Raincoats s/t LP from 1979 has fast become a favorite record of mine over the past year on constant rotation.  So a deciding factor of the Pop Montreal migration was to see them specifically.  As I said s/t LP came out in 1979.  Maybe they were in their early 20s at the time of its release…you get where I’m goin.  And yet you close your eyes and their voices and instruments, especially Ana’s voice, sound like its straight out of 1979.  Major props to them for rocking like they always have and will; it was most memorable.

Special treat for the final show of The Raincoats touring with Grass Widow.  Ana invites the girls on stage during encore performance of Fairytale in the Supermarket to sing along.  Super Rad.

Wavves - Nodding Off (feat. Best Coast)

New Wavves Life Sux 12”  up for pre-sale correction sold out.  First bros that ordered got green vinyl Ltd to 420.

hehe.  Oh Wavves you so clever.

Guess if you really want it, you’ll have to resign yourself to scouring the ebay fiends.  Godspeed bros.

Caged Animals - Teenagers In Heat

Bout 3 months ago I wrote about the first physical 7” release from Caged Animals via the most cool Lucky Number label.  Well Caged Animals are back with a slew of new material including a Ltd to 1000 copies gatefold LP and a second 7” single for the non-LP track Teflon Heart, also Ltd to 500 copies on pink vinyl.  These kids make just candy sweet electro pop tracks, and even between the one track streaming from the LP and the single, I can see that they’re most talented with an ability to keep some variety right from the get go. 

Well these Lucky Number kids certainly are on the ball with all their recent releases, between Caged Animals, Friends, and Darin Deez, they’re just oozing with good bands.  

Caged Animals - Eat Their Own is up for pre-sale via Lucky Number’s bndcmp here

Vinyl also includes code to download 5 Bonus Tracks not included on CD or digital releases + the standard 12 track digital album. Ltd to 1000

Starfucker - Dragon Queens (Skeletron Mix)

New Starfucker Ltd 7” split w/ Champagne Champagne to drop on Polyvinyl.  According to Pv, The A-side features STRFKR’s “Dragon Queens” which became a crowd favorite during the band’s Spring 2011 tour in support of their last album, Reptilians. A different version of “Dragon Queens” will be featured on the upcoming STRFKR full-length, slated for release in early 2012.

New Starfucker LP early 2012?!  Hot damn I feel like Reptilians just barely came out, which is a totally solid sophomore release.  In fact much better than I was expecting, which was no followup, after that ill-fated name change debacle.  Well their debut s/t LP was absolutely epic (hint hint for those of you that didn’t know it existed, Ltd to 500 white vinyl), so I’m glad to see they’re goin strong.

Starfucker/Champagne Champagne split 7” Ltd to 100 copies on clear green vinyl is available directly here

P.s. absolutely love Starfucker album art, it kicks!

Sigur Rós - Festival (Live)

hot damn the new Sigur Rós live 3XLP just went up for pre-order.  That be right triple 180gram vinyl. 

3 x 180g audiophile quality vinyl with printed inner sleeves housed within a single outer jacket made from heavyweight board

Also comes with a 75 minute live DVD, in HD in 5.1 Dolby Audio + 4 bonus performances.  I believe it was shot in super 8 or something? Pretty fantastic raw imagery in the video here.  There’s also some super rad tee shirts printed with invisible ink.

Printed in light-responsive ink, the ‘inni’ cover design appears in the presence of uv rays and otherwise intriguingly fades away.

Looks like we have lots of fantastic fall releases already to look forward to!  INNI is out November 7th.

Sigur Rós - INNI pre-order here

Gross Relations  - When You Go Down

more to come…