hinterlands: recent discoveries

Happy Friday! Here are some recent musical discoveries that have delighted my ears.

I read an article about Wolf Parade a short while ago. They were formed in Victoria, BC, and now play out of Quebec, as does just about every hip young Canadian band these days. Wolf Parade

I downloaded a couple of songs and thought they were all right. I even played them for Ryan, who though they were all right. This was over a month ago. Then two days ago Ryan was going on about this great new band he'd found who were formed as a warm-up act for Arcade Fire that sounded a bit like Victoria band Hot Hot Heat. He'd found their entire album "Apologies to the Queen Mary". He couldn't remember what they were called but hearing one of the tracks was enough to jog my memory and I started yelling that I'd found them first. Like it matters; I'm still on the "at least one year behind everyone hip" path of musical discovery. Anyway, thanks Ryan! The whole album is pretty great.

some videos and things here

One of my co-workers is crazy about all kinds of music and every so often he puts a few mp3s on our server (ssh). The next two offerings were discovered this way:

Calexico: I knew of them because of their collaboration with Iron and Wine and they're not exactly a new band - they're going on 10 years. "You and Me" off Garden Ruin has the distinction of moving me to tears while at work. Usually only Pat Metheny can do that. Garden Ruin is described as "more mainstream" than their previous work but I found the album quite eclectic, from folk to country to rock to big-band horns to world-music with lyrics in english, spanish and french. It improves with each listen.

the Besnard Lakes are another husband-wife duo out of Montreal (now with some additional band members). Their sound is unlike anything I've ever heard (more accurately, unlike any collage of existing musical styles I've ever heard): imagine a girl and a guy channeling the beach boys in their vocals while riffing in the style of the Doors and then go listen to Disaster (from The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse) on their webpage. It's a fantastic mashup. The main fun of their album is hearing which part of rock n roll history they'll emulate next.

Happy listening!