Joel Plaskett

I’m going to blame the small side stage at the Corner Hotel. Back in early 2007 I was all the way at the other side of the band room facing the main stage. The sound coming from the side stage was awful, and I couldn’t see a damn thing because of the hundreds of tall punters blocking my view. So I really didn’t pay close attention to the lanky Canadian opening for Augie March. It’s a shame….

Joel Plaskett was born and raised in around Halifax, Nova Scotia and still resides there today (making him a lifelong Haligonian). He’s been making waves in the Canadian alternative rock scene since the early 90s when he started the now defunct Thrush Hermit. Once Thrush Hermit broke up in 1999, Joel Plaskett launched his solo career and positioned himself as one of Canada’s most beloved musicians. His most recent album Three, with its 27 songs ranging from folk to country to alternative rock and horn-driven soul, has put Joel Plaskett on the shortlist for the Polaris Music Prize, which will be given out tonight in Toronto. So what better time to find out more about Joel Plaskett and give him the attention he obviously deserves.

Why I love him, and you should too…

Joel Plaskett released his first solo album In Need of Medical Attention in 1999. Since then he picked up backing band the Emergency and has released six other albums either solo or with the band. The Joel Plaskett Emergency was nominated for two Juno Awards (the Canadian Grammys) and won Rock Recording of the Year at the 2005 East Coast Music Awards for the album Truthfully, Truthfully. In 2008 Joel Plaskett Emergency were nominated for seven East Coast Music Awards for their 2007 release Ashtray Rock. They won six of these awards including Group of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Single of the Year and Video of the Year.

Plaskett’s latest solo album Three was released on March 24, 2009. It was recorded in Plaskett’s home studio and then mixed in Texas with Gordie Johnson at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studio. The result is an ambitious triple CD with each disc consisting of nine songs many of which contain three-way titles. Written when he was 33 years old (are you seeing a theme here?), Plaskett deftly depicts the three phases of travelling on this album: departure, separation and return. Disc one focuses on the idea of leaving or being left behind and is the most soulful and rock n’ roll, while disc two is about being alone, both physically and emotionally. This sense of isolation is captured by the stripped back, somber folk feel of the music. Finally disc three portrays the slow return home.

Three was also the first time Joel Plaskett recorded with his father, Bill. Plaskett Senior is a longtime musician who used to sing and play guitar semi-professionally. Growing up, Joel Plaskett would occasionally play a song or two with his dad at local folk nights. So now it’s Bill’s turn to tour as part of Joel Plaskett’s backing band.

In the random file, Plaskett even finds inspiration in White Fang, the cat that he and his wife took in on September 11, 2001. Now deaf and arthritic, this adored cat features in songs, is the subject of sing-a-longs at Plaskett live shows and is even the mascot of New Scotland Records, Plaskett’s new record label.

Listen Up!

Here’s Joel Plaskett’s video for the song, “Through & Through & Through.” Unlike many of the songs I’ve profiled thus far, this one is pure fun. You can tell Joel Plaskett had a blast making the video, and you can’t help but smile watching it.

And here’s “Heartless, Heartless, Heartless” recorded at McDougall United Church in Edmonton, Alberta with his dad, Bill Plaskett.

The Drones

Now the Drones aren’t for everyone – I’ll state that up front. You have to enjoy your music dark and hard, and you have to be an active listener to truly appreciate the evocative lyrics that spew out of singer-songwriter-guitarist Gareth Liddiard’s mouth with such urgency. His gravelly voice, all squashed vowels and lazy diction, can make the task even more challenging, but it’s well worth the effort.

Convicts, colonies, cannibals, politics and poverty – these are just a few of the weighty subjects tackled by this Australian indie rock band, and they do it deftly. You see, Liddiard takes his inspiration from writers such as Flann O’Brien, James Joyce, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and William Butler Yeats, and over the course of four studio albums, he’s positioned himself amongst some of today’s top songwriters.

The Drones’ music doesn’t fall into the drone category as their name suggests. Instead, their material is an ever-changing mix of conventional rock, noisy, atonal, blues-based music with a dash of traditional folk thrown in for good measure.

This is certainly not music to hold hands to, but hands down the Drones are one of the best bands around today. Their energy, passion and intelligence are traits to which many younger bands can only aspire.

Why I love them, and you should too...
The Drones formed in Perth, Australia in 1998, but it took four hard years before they released their first album, Here Come the Lies, in August 2002. During this period, the band relocated to Melbourne where they briefly lived out of their van before enduring an extended stay in a dodgy caravan park filled with drunks and ex-cons. This grim and squalid existence of their mid 20’s has ended up shaping the tone and subject matter of all frequent Drones albums.

In 2004, the band completed their second album, Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies will Float By. (This, by the way, happens to be one of my favorite album titles ever….) But the album’s release hit a snag due to some unforeseen legal problems. Thanks to the folks at the In-Fidelity record label, the album was eventually released over a year later, and 2005 saw the Drones’ luck change. Wait Long…. received critical acclaim throughout the country and ended up topping many end-of-year Top 10 lists. The highlight of the year, however, was when the Drones won the inaugural Australian Music Prize -- beating out Ben Lee, the Go-Betweens and Wolfmother.

“I’m recording, shut up!” So begins Gala Mill, the Drones third album, and that’s where the lightheartedness ends. Recorded in an old mill in Tasmania, the album both draws on and challenges the history and mythology of white Australia. It’s a harrowing yet brilliant album that captures the Drones at their fiercest and most subdued. It opens with the 8-minute epic “Jezebel” – a song named after a cow that ate nuclear fallout during Australia’s period of nuclear testing that was originally going to called something along the lines of “Death and Only Death.” It’s suffocatingly bleak, containing horrific images of radiation poisoning, war and the murder of WSJ journalist, Daniel Pearl.

There’s still no optimism to be seen by the time you reach the end of Gala Mill. The album closes with a sparse 9-minute folk song called “Sixteen Straws” that was inspired by the convict ballad, “Moreton Bay.” Over 30 verses with no chorus, Gareth Liddiard – using only vocals, acoustic guitar and harmonica – tells the sad tale of a group of convicts who overcome Catholicism’s stringent prohibition of suicide by drawing straws to decide which of them will kill another and get them all sent to the gallows. And when you see this song performed live, it’s hard not to be in awe of Liddiard as both a song-writer and a performer.

This brings us to my favorite album of 2009, and no this latest Drones release won’t make you want to run out and slit your wrists. Havilah was recorded at the Liddiard/Kitschin residence in the foothills of Mt Buffalo. With no electricity, the band had to rely on a diesel generator and managed to finish recording in only two weeks. The result is a brilliant indie rock album that is musically the Drones most accessible while continuing to showcase their lyrical prowess and unique political perspective. Highlights include “Penumbra”, a haunting song about Apollo 11 and the first moon landing, and “I am the Supercargo”, a song about cargo cults and the John Frum movement on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.

And what’s a post without a bit of random trivia? On a recent episode of the music quiz show, Rockwiz, it was revealed that Gareth Liddiard is a fan of war memorials and has been known to drag his band mates to many while on tour. What’s his favorite? Apparently the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin's Treptower Park because “it’s depressing for all the wrong reasons”…

Listen up!
Here are the Drones performing Kev Carmody's “River Of Tears” at the Cannot Buy My Soul concert in January 2008. Yes, it’s a cover, but it’s the best capture I’ve found of one of the Drone’s electric live performances.



And here is an acoustic version of "Oh My" -- one of my favs off Havilah.



Check them out!
Over the next week, the Drones will be playing a handful of dates around the US since they are over here for this weekend’s ATP Festival. At the end of September, they will then embark on another extensive tour of Europe that will take them through early December.

Timber Timbre

As we settle into the fifth month of the interminable North Florida summer, I find myself dreaming of late autumn and winter. I’d abandon the sunshine, tropical drinks and flip flops in a heartbeat for long, cold nights huddled in front of a fire sipping a heavy, full-bodied red and listening to the haunting music of Timber Timbre…. I’ve still got a few months before that dream comes to fruition, but I’m definitely keen to tell you a bit about this artist who captures the aural sense of frigid isolation so beautifully.

Timber Timbre (a.k.a. Taylor Kirk) is a gothic folk-blues project from Toronto, Canada that I discovered while on holiday up there this past April. I was instantly struck by his ghostly vocals atop such sparse yet darkly atmospheric music. At the moment, there isn’t a great deal of information about this rather reclusive musician (yes, this will probably be a short post), but I’m willing to bet that’s going to change very soon!

Why I love him (and you should too)

Taylor Kirk studied film at the Ontario College of Art, and throughout university, he played in bands mostly as a drummer. Upon graduation, he discovered that he enjoyed writing songs more than making films. So he began his music career recording a series of lo-fi, acoustic songs in his bedroom in Toronto.

In 2006 Kirk released his first album, Cedar Shakes, under the name Timber Timbre. This stage name was a play on the sound quality of his beat-up guitar (timbre) and his father’s yelling “Timber!” when trees crashed on the family farm in rural Ontario.

For his self-titled third album, Timber Timbre once again recorded in his home studio. But this time he called on the help of other artists to fill in strings, banjo, accompanying vocals as well as a few screams. The album was finished at the Lincoln County Social Club with producer Chris Stringer (Rush, The D'Urbervilles, Ohbijou, David Wilcox) and released on indie label, Out of this Spark, in January 2009.

The result is an eight-song masterpiece where the transitions between songs are seamless. This is not an album to be broken apart and shuffled amidst 800 other songs on your iPod; it’s an album to be savored in its entirety from start to finish. And it’s obviously grabbing the attention of some industry heavy weights. Early this summer Timber Timbre signed a global record deal with the Arts & Crafts label (the Stills, Constantines and Broken Social Scene), and the CD was reissued on July 28, 2009. The album was also named as a long-list nominee for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize.

Over the summer Timber Timbre toured with the Great Lake Swimmers and Final Fantasy, and this autumn will see him headlining a handful of shows in the US. These shows are bound to be spellbinding especially if Taylor Kirk has his choice of venue. He has been known to choose specific venues that accentuate his atmospheric music.

Listen Up!

 

Discography: Timber Timbre (2009) * Medicinals (2007) * Cedar Shakes (2006)

Dawn Landes

I love the thrill of finding a new band that moves you so deeply you rush to find their entire catalogue and listen to it incessantly, wondering how life was complete without this wonderful music. If I’m lucky, this happens maybe one or twice a year. This year I was fortunate enough to fall in love with Kentucky-bred, Brooklyn-based Dawn Landes.

It all started back in March when a friend sent me the video for a quirky, blue-grass cover of Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks.” It featured a female singer switching between guitar and accordion conducting a backing band of “old folks”, who happened to be the WST (We Sorta Tried) Bluegrass Band from Austin, Texas. Charmed by her voice and the irony of this low-budget production, I visited her myspace page to hear more. What I discovered was an extremely talented multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and recording engineer whose music is a lovely blend of folky ballads, country-tinged rock, and electronic loops.

Why I love her….
Dawn Landes actually started out as an assistant and freelance engineer at various recording studios in New York City, where she’s worked with such respected artists as Phillip Glass, Ryan Adams, Joseph Arthur, the Earlies, and Josh Ritter (to whom she’s now married). And it was in these studios that she began recording and producing her own songs.

You’re probably starting to see a trend with my profiles – I’m a sucker for literate songwriters. And Dawn Landes is no exception. Her influences are both traditional and literary with her first song being a musical adaptation of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

As a Francophile, I was fascinated to learn that France has played a big part in Dawn’s musical career. She landed her first record deal with the little French label, Ocean Records, and her first CD, Dawn’s Music, was released in France in 2005. Since then she has divided her time between Paris and Brooklyn and has even started writing some songs in French. None of these songs have been released yet, but hopefully they’ll make it on one of her upcoming albums. To tide us over, there’s always Dawn’s cover of Francoise Hardy’s “Tous Les Garcons et Les Filles” that she frequently plays live. It was added to her set as a way to introduce guest drummer, Olivier de Chateaubourg, who apparently is a French count....

On a different note, Dawn Landes doesn’t have an official second album. Her apartment was burgled, and the robbers stole her laptop containing the completed second album. Instead of re-recording the lost album, she wrote the song “Bodyguard” about the robbery. And this song became the first track on Dawn’s critically-acclaimed third CD, Fireproof. For the record, Fireproof was recorded live to tape, a much more cumbersome medium for potential robbers.

And now for some trivia – Dawn’s cover of Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” was used for a Human Rights Campaign video supporting the repeal of Proposition 8. This cover is a hidden track on Fireproof if you’re looking for a copy.

Listen Up!
First up is the lovely “Twilight” from Fireproof.



And here is the utterly adorable “Straight Lines.”



Check her out!
Dawn Landes’ new album, Sweetheart Rodeo, will be released on September 7th in Europe and January 19th in the US. Lucky for us, a new album means more tour dates. Dawn will be hitting Europe this September with my all-time favorite band, Okkervil River, and Elvis Perkins. Then a US tour will follow this October.

Discography: Sweetheart Rodeo (2010) * Fireproof (2007) * Dawn’s Music (2005)