This week’s 4-pick was going to be a no-brainer.20 years ago, 1989: the finest year of the modern music era. Don’t believe me? Check this out–one of the earliest QBiM posts that doesn’t make me wince with embarrassment–and tell me if you think differently. The world was on the cusp of a new decade, rushing [...]
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4 for the weekend 11•07•09: 20 years of Doolittle
Said The Whale
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I’m pretty positive that I wrote a post sometimes back on Vancouver’s Said The Whale, around the time they released the Talking Abalonia EP in 2007. Unfortunately, I don’t have any documented proof of it in my archives, because it was one of the ill-fated posts that was zapped by Blogger prior to moving QBiM [...]
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NEW MUSiC: Digits
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Artist:Digits
A while back, a very unassuming and nondescript email came across my screen introducing me to Digits, a Toronto-based musician who started twiddling knobs in his bedroom (and not those kind of knobs–get your mind out of the gutter!) earlier this year, and has now emerged with–yep you guessed it–his debut album!Same story you’ve heard [...]
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Songs in the public domain
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Julie Doiron is someone I’ve never paid enough attention to in these here pages, but it’s not for a lack of interest in her work. She is perhaps one of the great unsung heroes of the Canadian music scene: an indie pioneer as part of Eric’s Trip, and a consummate collaborator with Mount Eerie and [...]
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Unknown legends
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Everything I seem to read about Ox states that the Sudbury, Ontario band’s debut album was “weed soaked” or “dope-soaked” or up in smoke. I got to tell you: that doesn’t really do anything for me. To each his own, I always say, but when I think of stoner rock, I picture over-aged Deadheads trying [...]
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Leif Vollebekk
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What a treat Montreal’s Leif Vollebekk is. His subtle, supple way with a melody and gentle strumming is a welcome relief from some of the over hyped and hyperactive music that floods my inbox. Vollebekk plays guitar, harmonica, piano and violin on Inland, his debut album, recorded at Montreal’s Breakinglass Studios and released independently in [...]
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4 for the weekend (+1) 10•31•09
Like leaves falling from trees, and smashed Jack-o-Lanterns littering damp and windy streets, the arrival of November is a tell-tale sign that the year is quickly drawing to a close, and we’re in the midst of a season change: year-end list season.Thing kicked off a little early yesterday, but they did so in style and [...]
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Little Girls, Concepts
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I’ve pretty much known all week that I’d be following up my Atlas Sound post with one about Little Girls, but I wasn’t sure (and still am not) about what kind of angle I was going to take on it. Back in June I was totally digging the sonic sound collisions Josh McIntyre was posting [...]
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Ready set glow
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Track:Walkabout
Nothing surprises me anymore. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing this blog is that was passed for magnificence one year can be reduced to muck the next. Conversely, that which at one point didn’t even illicit a yawn let alone any kind of positive reaction can get me jumping up and down in [...]
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Slow Down, Molasses
Things around here have been pretty messed up lately, thanks to the giant mess that DreamHost put me in last week when they pulled my plug (and not in that good way). It feels like the groove I was getting into all summer crumpled like a greasy sheet of tin foil. It was the weirdest [...]
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NEW MUSiC: Everything All The Time
I’ve been kind of obsessed with some “big sounding” music lately, thanks in no small part to my continued infatuation with the TV show Glee. I thought that–based on descriptors alone–Toronto’s Everything All The Time would kind of sound like a school choir (quartet of vocal harmonies, cramming everything but the kitchen sink in, blah [...]
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Hymns of love and spirits
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Artist:The Wilderness of Manitoba
The argument can be made that nothing is new anymore. TV shows are being turned into Broadway musicals, Broadway musicals are being turned into movies, and movies are turning into music videos, and music videos are turning into commercials, while commercials are turning into TV shows. Shit, I can’t believe I actually came full-circle like [...]
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Morrissey collapses on stage
My plan this morning was to sit down and write a couple of posts for later in the week, but I was shocked to find news in my Facebook feed (finally it proves some use) that Morrissey collapsed one song into his set at the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon, southwest England. Reports suggest that [...]
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4 for the weekend 10•24•09
If you’ve spent any significant time ’round these parts, you’d know I’m fond of a certain trans-sexual folk/country singer from Calgary by the name of Rae Spoon. Bryan from Herohill tipped me off to a fantastic collaboration Spoon has done with multi-media artist Alexandre Decoupigny that blends Spoon’s folk sounds with a more European back [...]
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Cosmic wanship avengers
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I don’t know why I never really bothered paying any attention to You Say Party! We Say Die! before now, but it could have to do with that ridiculous sounding name, or the fact that they were described to me as “dance punk”, a term that I have come to loathe as much as “alterna-pop”. [...]
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Spare me from the mold
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I had the opportunity to hear Music For Men, the new LP from Gossip a few months ago, well in advance of its release this week. At the time, it didn’t make much of an impression on me as I thought it might. It was a pretty decent album, actually, and it surprised me how [...]
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Sufjan Stevens’ Highway to heaven
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Track:Movement VI: Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges
Awhile back I came to the realization that I had never posted about Sufjan Stevens, mostly due to the fact that I started QBiM well after the broohaha surrounding Illinois had died down. It was sort of a badge of honour for me, that I didn’t publicly fall all over myself praising him or the [...]
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Hawksley Workman revisited
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Canadians are familiar with the ongoing joke about Americans who ask Canadians they meet if they know their friend/cousin/college sweetheart who lives/moved/was exiled to Canada, assuming every Canadian knows everyone else living in the country. Remembering how many times I’ve been asked if I know Bob/Earl/Jean-Pierre who lives in Toronto/Montreal/Burnaby, I got a chuckle out [...]
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LiVE: Joel Plaskett, Brock University, St. Catharines ON
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QBiM has been out of commission for a few days, but certainly not long enough to rust out my posting gears. Still, this post has been a bit of a struggle, going through revision after revision. I think the reason is not that I haven’t been writing posts for a week, but that I haven’t [...]
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…And we’re back.
It’s been a long, looong 3 days for me, but it looks like QuickBeforeItMelts.com is back and unharmed. Thank you to all those who sent messages of love and support, and thank you to those readers who had never contacted me before–it’s always great to hear from people who enjoy QBiM, to know that it’s [...]
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