The Osheaga Arts & Music Festival is absolutely one of the biggest events of the summer in a city that is defined by having a million big events in the summer. And this year, it’s going to be even bigger. The last two editions of Osheaga took place on a temporary site that made the best of re-purposed sections of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but 2019 will mark the return of the festival to the original site. By original site I of course mean a newly renovated site that boasts a capacity somewhere over 65,000 people.
So to celebrate Osheaga being even bigger than ever we are making our 9to5.cc podcast specials even bigger than ever. How much bigger? Twice as bigger. That’s right, instead of one episode a day, Sarah and I will be breaking down our picks for each day across two episodes. When are we starting? Right now.
Our final preview episode (we’ll have a “Comedown” episode on Monday August 5th) is a little about romance and a little bit about being a badass lady. Also! Check out Go Plug Yourself on Thursday for our full length episode with We Are Monroe!
Enjoy the show!
Episode 1 (Friday Part 1) is here.
Episode 2 (Friday Part 2) is here.
Episode 3 (Saturday Part 1) is here.
Episode 4 (Saturday Part 2) is here.
Episode 5 (Sunday Part 1) is here.
The Osheaga Arts & Music Festival is absolutely one of the biggest events of the summer in a city that is defined by having a million big events in the summer. And this year, it’s going to be even bigger. The last two editions of Osheaga took place on a temporary site that made the best of re-purposed sections of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but 2019 will mark the return of the festival to the original site. By original site I of course mean a newly renovated site that boasts a capacity somewhere over 65,000 people.
So to celebrate Osheaga being even bigger than ever we are making our 9to5.cc podcast specials even bigger than ever. How much bigger? Twice as bigger. That’s right, instead of one episode a day, Sarah and I will be breaking down our picks for each day across two episodes. When are we starting? Right now.
Our fifth episode is all about guys named Sebastian. Or at least partially about guys named Sebastian. There are also a lot of pro tips. Expect our last episode some time next week because we are just two weeks away from Osheaga!
Enjoy the show!
Episode 1 (Friday Part 1) is here.
Episode 2 (Friday Part 2) is here.
Episode 3 (Saturday Part 1) is here.
Episode 4 (Saturday Part 2) is here.
The Osheaga Arts & Music Festival is absolutely one of the biggest events of the summer in a city that is defined by having a million big events in the summer. And this year, it’s going to be even bigger. The last two editions of Osheaga took place on a temporary site that made the best of re-purposed sections of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but 2019 will mark the return of the festival to the original site. By original site I of course mean a newly renovated site that boasts a capacity somewhere over 65,000 people.
So to celebrate Osheaga being even bigger than ever we are making our 9to5.cc podcast specials even bigger than ever. How much bigger? Twice as bigger. That’s right, instead of one episode a day, Sarah and I will be breaking down our picks for each day across two episodes. When are we starting? Right now.
Our second episode is dedicated to some of our favorite picks with more of a electronic or hip-hop slant. Expect a new episode around the 15th and 30th of each month all summer long right up until the festival.
It’s over! As 45,000 people found their way out of Osheaga yesterday (while being reminded they could buy Perrier Platinum Passes for next year and that there was a surprise waiting for them at the National Bank water stations) I am sure that almost all of them were already thinking about making sure they were free the weekend of August 2nd, 3rd and 4th in 2019.
Oh, and scroll to the bottom to check out our photo albums from all 3 days!
Sarah and I made the most of each day and while we did check out plenty of bands that we talked about in our preview episodes (if you haven’t already check them out: Friday, Saturday and Sunday) there were a few surprises.
So if you are missing Osheaga already feel free to listen to this wrap-up podcast where we relive as much of the last 3 days as possible in 45 minutes for your listening pleasure.
It’s hard to believe that the 2018 edition of Osheaga is right around the corner. Easily Montreal’s biggest music festival, Osheaga is always a highlight of Montreal festival season. This year is no different.
Sarah and I will be around for all three days of the festivities and to get ourselves extra excited we sat down and recorded a podcast for each day of the festival, running through some of the acts that we are most excited to see.
Check out our podcasts previews of Friday and Sunday too!
Check out our podcast coverage of this years’s Osheaga here.
It’s hard to believe that the 2018 edition of Osheaga is right around the corner. Easily Montreal’s biggest music festival, Osheaga is always a highlight of Montreal festival season. This year is no different.
Sarah and I will be around for all three days of the festivities and to get ourselves extra excited we sat down and recorded a podcast for each day of the festival, running through some of the acts that we are most excited to see.
Check out our podcasts previews of Friday and Saturday too!
It’s hard to believe that the 2018 edition of Osheaga is right around the corner. Easily Montreal’s biggest music festival, Osheaga is always a highlight of Montreal festival season. This year is no different.
Sarah and I will be around for all three days of the festivities and to get ourselves extra excited we sat down and recorded a podcast for each day of the festival, running through some of the acts that we are most excited to see.
Check out our podcasts previews of Saturday and Sunday too!
Alice Glass just released a surprise EP this morning. It consists of 6 tracks and starts off with the single “Without Love“.
Two weeks ago at Osheaga I saw Crystal Castles perform with Edith Frances on vocals. It was the first time I had seen them without Alice Glass so I was a little bit skeptical.
For all of their sketchiness, when Crystal Castles consisted of Alice Glass and Ethan Kath (starting late, completely no showing, reportedly being disasters back stage, etc.) and they were on, they were ON.
I had already enjoyed the latest Crystal Castles’ release Amnesty (I) with Frances on vox more than Crystal Castles (iii). Maybe on par with (ii) in my opinion. At the live show I was pleasantly surprised with how much energy Edith brought to her performance. I was also impressed that she managed to kind of find her own thing within the realm of the Crystal Castles’ “vibe”.
A big piece of the Crystal Castles live performance is that the duo always looks like they’re on the verge of having a bad trip, steering the show like an out of control big-rig fishtailing down a rain slicked highway. Without imitating Glass, Frances managed to find an onstage persona that fit the theme.
It was cool. So I put my own personal (whatever that’s worth) stamp of approval on the “new” Crystal Castles. I like the album, and I liked them live.
Now it’s Alice’s turn.
A lot was said during the departure of Glass from Crystal Castles and it mostly revolved around Glass feeling stifled creatively. There was a “he said, she said” about who wrote the lyrics and arranged the vocal melodies, with both members seemingly taking credit for those elements in various interviews.
So here we are, 3 years after Glass’ left Crystal Castles and Alice has finally released a collection of music.
I had already heard “Without Love” when it came out last week and my response was almost immediately “uh oh”. I was not a fan of the high-pitched vocals and the melody was entirely forgettable.
Having just listened to the entire EP I can say that the regrettable adjective “forgettable” applies to the entire thing. I am right now sitting at my desk and actively trying to remember a single tune or chorus from 6 songs that I just listened to and I cannot. That’s not a good sign.
Glass made a big deal about how “dark” she wanted to be with her voice and persona, but the high-pitched squeaking that is employed for most of the EP is sort of the polar opposite. It doesn’t sound dark, it sounds whiney and pathetic. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve got a list of movies to watch that feels like it’s never-ending. In a way, I guess it really is never-ending, because it’s also ever-expanding. That’s the nature of loving movies – you keep finding out about other ones you want to see. Unfortunately, this situation causes some movies to get stuck on the list, and never get watched. So once in a while, I make a point of watching something I heard about years ago.
I remembered hearing Dave Grohl talk about how obsessed he was with his Neve board at some point, and that he was making a movie about it. Being a sound guy, I was curious about this, but I failed to keep up with news of the film’s production. Until yesterday.
Sound City got released in 2013, and watched by me in 2015. It’s a documentation of the legendary Sound City Studios, where hundreds of incredibly important records were created, ranging from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours to Nirvana’s Nevermind. The studio itself would have failed and closed early if not for a few bold investors (and some incredibly dedicated staff) who brought the place to life and kept it afloat for decades, well into the digital age. In 2011, after facing significant financial issues, the studio ceased commercial operations and sold off a bunch of its gear (notably, the Neve board Grohl loves so much), and is now privately run by Fairfax Recordings.
By all accounts, this is a really interesting film, stacked to the nines with recording anecdotes and wonderful insights into specific musicians’ careers and experiences. However, the film changes direction suddenly, without warning, at the time of Sound City’s demise in 2011 – now focusing on Grohl’s personal studios, where the Neve board now lives, and on a series of recording sessions organized by Grohl as some sort of tribute to the studio that no longer was. This segment goes on for way longer than it needs to, and becomes an unnecessary epilogue to an otherwise perfectly fine story.
The movie’s not even that long, clocking in at under two hours, but it could have been done in a cleaner way, and that’s a bit of a bummer. If it’s meant to be a film about one man’s obsession with a particular audio tool, that’s one thing, but if it’s meant to tell the story of one of the industry’s greatest recording studios, that’s another.
Anywho, I’m off to watch more music-oriented documentaries. Got favs?
I saw the video for the Peppermint EP version of “Underwhelmed” on “The Wedge” (A show on Much Music, back when Much Music had music. Amazingly, much of it) way back when it was hosted by Simon Evans.
A side note here; the Wedge was the alternative music show on Much Music. The first time I ever heard bands like Black Flag or Green Jello or Whale or Skinny Puppy was on the Wedge. It was also a terribly produced show, with schizophrenic, seizure-inducing graphics and no flow from one artist to the next. Treble Charger’s “Morale” with lead into “Liar” from Rollins Band, shit like that. Add to the mix that Simon Evans looked like “Cool Dad at a rock concert” just made it that much stranger. He always looked like he was pushing 40, rocking a jean jacket and spiking his hair. But the music was usually good and always interesting.
Anyways, back to Sloan. Sloan was this smarmy, clever, Canadian alternative rock band from the maritimes, and “Underwhelmed” sang about smart pretty girls that they then alienated for reasons they couldn’t quite grasp.
So it’s safe to say, “they really got me”.
Sloan’s early albums, Smeared, Twice Removed and One Chord to Another were all staples of radio and Much Music (they had a song on the insanely popular first “Big Shiny Tunes” CD). A mix of appeal, a pop-grunge scene out of Halifax and Canadian content broadcast laws helped to make the band inescapable for a few years. And I followed them, buying CD after CD, even after their universal appeal faded.
“Action Pact” is Sloan’s seventh studio album, released in 2003 on the strength of the first single “Rest of My Life”, which no one liked. I tried to like it, but I didn’t, and the media seemed to chew it up and spit it out. The rest of the record also fell flat for me. It seemed like my band had gotten old, singing about mature problems that I, at 24 years old, could not care less about. I took the CD and put it in my CD binder next to all my other Sloan CDs and didn’t listen to it again.
Until this week, when I ripped it to my iPhone and have been listening to it all week long. Here’s how the tracks break down:
“Gimme That” – The lead off track is a polished rock ‘n roll song. You can already hear the change in production here since they moved out to California. It doesn’t matter much, as this is decent travelling music.
“Live On” – Again, sounding much more polished than the Sloan I knew. Harmonies are super soft and balanced in the back. These first two songs don’t really say much of anything, but rather seem like they’re just there to rock out to. That’s not bad, they are what they are.
“Backstabbin'” – I don’t get this song. It’s repetitive and shitty. It was back then, and I still think so today.
“The Rest of My Life” – God this fucking song. It’s such a thirty-something’s song. “Am I gonna settle down, am I gonna be someone who has to take the rest of my life to settle down?” Fuck off. It’s time you manned up and figured out your fucking life. This song is written to pander, but it reaches to broadly and slides too far away from alternative rock.
“False Alarm” – This song sounds like the Sloan I like. A little dirty, a little sing-song-y, and chugging guitars and drums that push through. I think it makes me relate to a short relationship I had between the release of the album and meeting my wife.
“Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore” – This song is also such a thirty-something’s song, but it’s not terrible or saccharine. It’s totally about looking backwards, and that’s something I see more now that I’m older in myself, and also a theme I would have dismissed completely at 24.
“Hollow Head” – This one sounds like a Halifax song and not a California song. Lots of feedback-y distortion of the guitar and it could easily have been by Treble Charger or Limblifter.
“Ready for You” – This is arena rock, aping everyone or anyone from KISS to Bon Jovi. Doesn’t even sound like a Sloan song.
“I Was Wrong” – Apology songs just can’t appeal to young people. I’m old enough now to have plenty to be sorry for.
“Who Loves Life More?” – This song opens with the line “Stayed up one night, until late in the evening. I had so much fun.” At thirty-six and with a not-yet two year old boy here at home, I can totally appreciate the joys of finally being able to stay up until “late evening” and not just crashing out at 9PM.
“Reach Out” – This song is about reaching out. Every time they say “reach out”, drink. Then go to bed, because you’ve got work in the morning.
“Fade Away” – Remember 70’s rock? Sloan does. “Everybody seems content to fade away” just screams of being in your thirties, though. It’s not a bad song, but what a weird sentiment to end the record with, especially since this was supposed to be the record that was gonna break you into the big American market.
The members of Sloan are all almost exactly ten years older than I am, so listening to this record eleven or so years later puts me in a head space a little bit closer to the auteurs, here. It also makes me feel fucking old, to realize now that I can identify with music that 24 year old me thought was lame.
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