Author: vish

Ep. #141: Lights

Lights is a pop artist from Toronto with legions of fans around the world. Born in Timmins, Ontario, Lights was discovered by Jian Ghomeshi when she was 15 years old and is now one of Canada’s most internationally recognized artists. Her latest album is Little Machines and it was released this past September, prompting her to tour and last week, she and I spoke before she played a set at the Halifax Pop Explosion. Here, Lights tells me about performing at the Polaris Music Prize Gala with Shad at the last minute, how Canadian music critics and fans receive Lights, pop music credibility, working with different people in different genres, the Beatles and Supertramp, her connection to Timmins and North Bay and Jamaica and the Philippines and Toronto, home schooling and learning how to play music, being discovered by Jian Ghomeshi at 15 years old, shooting a Wal-Mart ad as a kid, “Hero” by Mariah Carey, signing a management deal with Jian and sending all of her song ideas to him first, writer’s block, the song “Don’t Go Home Without Me” and temporal perspectives, having her daughter in February, re-living life through your kids, the notion of Little Machines and energetic kids, ambient sounds and a classic electronic sound, slapping your pregnant belly for a rhythm track, parental and public life, changing her legal name to Lights, #Pinktober and a breast cancer awareness campaign, an acoustic counterpart to Little Machines and the future, constant writing, lost Lights songs, the song “Muscle Memory,” Kate Bush, Björk and Tanya Tagaq, and then it’s lights out.

Related links: iamlights.com vishkhanna.com

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Tags #Pinktober, Björk, Halifax Pop Explosion, Jian Ghomeshi, Kate Bush, Lights, Little Machines, Mariah Carey, Polaris Music Prize, Shad, Supertramp, Tanya Tagaq, the Beatles

News Podcast

Ep. #140: John Darnielle

Post author By vish
Post date October 23, 2014

John Darnielle is one of the most esteemed songwriters working today. Currently based in Durham, North Carolina, he is the founder and leader of a beloved contemporary folk and rock band called the Mountain Goats who have been prolific over the past 25 years and praised for their infectious, impassioned, and vivid songs. In 2008, Darnielle’s first book, Black Sabbath: Master of Reality, was published as a unique, fictional entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 ⅓ music series and he has also contributed a regular column called “South Pole Dispatch” in the American heavy metal magazine, Decibel. This past September, HarperCollins published Darnielle’s second book, Wolf in White Van, a dark, dizzying novel about isolation and connection and interpersonal impact that was promptly longlisted for a National Book Award. Here, John and I discuss active, entertaining three year-olds that don’t always sleep so well, parent partiality, the unique temporal structure of Wolf in White Van, mapping out the characters and getting to know them and the story, the famous case of Judas Priest being taken to court by parents after their children shot themselves, heavy metal, the fictional role-playing game Trace Italian, sci-fi and D&D, playing games with Jason Morningstar, trying on new identities, collective creative engagement and the life of the mind, typification and sub-genres, formulating the Trace Italian game that’s depicted in the book, why Sean Phillips created this role-playing game while he was in the hospital for doing an inexplicable thing, playing a game where you can only advance via mail order instructions, life and limitations, generating questions, the role music may or may not play in this book, not leaving music behind, Laurel & Hardy get chased by the alphabet, getting a typewriter at six years old, whether or not he might be good at most things, the book not the song, what’s coming up next for him and the Mountain Goats, a book tour might be more exhausting than a music tour, going dancing or seeing Robert Plant live, dad clocks, cooking on the road, coming to Canada and why crossing the border can be an unpleasant experience, how Propagandhi is the best, border guard mind games, other people have it worse, the song “Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes” by Propagandhi, and that was it.

Related links: mountain-goats.com vishkhanna.com

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Tags Black Sabbath, HarperCollins, Jason Morningstar, John Darnielle, Judas Priest, Laurel & Hardy, Propagandhi, Robert Plant, Sean Phillips, The Mountain Goats, Trace Italian, Wolf in White Van

News Podcast

Ep. #139: Greg Cartwright of the Reigning Sound

Post author By vish
Post date October 21, 2014

Greg Cartwright is a prolific and influential musician who originally hails from Memphis, Tennessee. Over the past 20 years, Cartwright has established himself as a key and talented figure in the realms of garage rock, punk, and soul music. He has founded inspiring bands like the Compulsive Gamblers, the Oblivians, Greg Oblivian and the Tip Tops and worked with the Detroit Cobras, the Deadly Snakes, and Mary Weiss of the 60s chart-toppers, the Shangri-Las. Near the beginning of this century, Cartwright emerged with a new R&B-influenced band called the Reigning Sound and this past summer, they released their sixth proper studio album. It’s a love and heartbreak-soaked scorcher called Shattered, it’s out now via Merge Records, and has prompted the Reigning Sound to do some touring, including stops at Montreal’s Bar Le Ritz P.D.B. on October 24 and Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on October 25. Here, Greg and I discuss living in Asheville, North Carolina to appease one set of a couple’s parents, the long state of Tennessee, living in America, being a local and double perks, assembling the version of the Reigning Sound that made Shattered, it’s good to work with different musicians, what Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys is like and whether he’s respectable, lo-fi and garage rock got all lumped together, turning garage or blues songs into Billboard hits, Auerbach’s solid work as a producer with people like Dr. John, writing new songs about things that happened a long time ago, tragedy + time = great songs, romanticizing rock ‘n’ roll love song structures, Memphis music, picking up on contemporary pop song structures, DJ nights, old records aren’t necessarily going to be good, what it’s like making a record at the otherwise closed-to-the-public Daptone Studios, a small room and smart engineers like Wayne Gordon, the joys of working with an eight-track tape machine, Greg’s grandmother and his family’s amazing record collection, putting his first band together at 12 or 13, trying to find a drummer, underground rock music in Memphis in the late 1980s, the Antenna, meeting the older guard of subversive musicians and being part of a small scene, no grunge in Tennessee, navigating the music business in the 1990s, appearing on Late Night on with Conan O’Brien with Mary Weiss, forgetting how to play a song on national television, the good fortune of finding one’s audience, Merge Records is great and smart and made some prescient moves to sustain itself, making a new Parting Gifts record, the Oblivians in Canada, working with Last Year’s Men, figuring out new material for the Reigning Sound, the song “Never Coming Home,” and then we gotta leave.

Related links: mergerecords.com/reigning-sound vishkhanna.com

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