Tag: Sloan

Categories
News Podcast

Ep. #147: TEEN Live at the Halifax Pop Explosion

TEEN is an inventive pop band from Brooklyn, New York consisting of sisters Teeny, Lizzie, and Katherine Lieberson and Boshra AlSaadi. Their latest album is called The Way and Color , which is out now via Carpark Records, and it prompted them to visit the Halifax Pop Explosion this past October to play some shows. We ended up doing a live interview at the HPX and I recorded it somewhat primitively for you to listen to ahead of their show with We Are Scientists at the Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday November 20. Here, TEEN and I discuss three sisters from Halifax who live in New York, Miami and The U, partying, SMU, Syria to Pennsylvania to New York, Halifax is cool, playing Halifax for the first time ever at the Carleton last month, perceptions of Halifax, Americans don’t know much about Canada, Newfoundland time, me and my son’s Ramones haircuts, things get personal, the Halifax pop explosion and Sloan, not going to many shows, when the music scene slowed down, VICE is taking over Williamsburg in Brooklyn, following Teeny, singing Broadway tunes as kids, musical careers, food in New York, Pizza Corner, Jane’s and Edna’s, good Indian food and then a bad room service call, double entrees, going to live boring and fun talk show tapings in NYC, I went to Letterman once, taking NYC for granted, Teeny’s tenure in Here We Go Magic and why it ended, Lizzie interning at a fashion magazine, fashion people are the worst, Katherine and taking up instruments to play in your first band, Boshra is an outta hand amazing bass player, Janka Nabay and the BuBu Gang, why Katherine followed Teeny’s lead, when the Lieberson sisters lost their father and came together in a band, the strength of Jen Turner, inspiring other women to make music, a dude, pros and cons of sibling-oriented bands, Boshra walks away, the road is weird, road managers can be useful, hating the band Live and Katy Perry, Madonna made me ill, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, loving St. Vincent, Tame Impala, Pond, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Brian Eno, Kate Bush or David Bowie, the template is no template, this is TEEN, spelling The Way and Color, what are Foo Fighters, getting robbed of their gear in San Francisco, pledgemusic.com/projects/teen, the War on Drugs bring everything inside, not dying, knowing Islands, writing this winter, the song “Sticky,” and that’s it.         

Related links: teen-nyc.tumblr.com carparkrecords.com vishkhanna.com

TEENZi_Brackbill_2

Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Categories
News

Ep. #117: Charles Austin of the Super Friendz

Charles Austin lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia and is one of the best musicians, producers, and people that I know. Austin has played in bands and projects like Neuseiland, the Lodge, Lost Wax Guild, Aqua Alta, and Psychic Fair and has also collaborated with Buck 65 and Al Tuck among others. He first gained prominence in the mid-1990s when his band the Super Friendz became underground favourites, releasing three killer albums and touring the continent as headliners but also frequently opening for people like Sloan and Guided By Voices. Their landmark debut album, 1995’s Mock Up, Scale Down was issued on vinyl for the first time last year and, after years of inactivity, the band is playing select shows including one at the Hillside Festival in Guelph on Saturday July 26. Here, Charles and I discuss how playing a single show is pretty selective touring, the Super Friendz drummer issues and why Kieran Adams is filling in for Dave Marsh at Hillside, meeting your new bandmate two days before a big show together, Halifax and Hurricanes Arthur and Juan, abandoning your family for Mike O’Neill, the Trailside in PEI, great Halifax bands like Monomyth, Walrus, and the Scoop Outs, local venue issues, recording cool bands like Paper Beat Scissors, Nathan Doucet is a great drummer, Josh Salter is a rocking encyclopedia, the Psychic Fair band and working with the lovely, underrated Jenn Grant in Aqua Alta, reading rock books like Feeding Back: Conversations with Alternative Guitarists from Proto-Punk to Post-Rock by David Todd, the best songwriter is Al Tuck, 1995 and Clive Macnutt, the vile temptress that is music, how to encourage your children’s interest in music, how your kids’ peer groups might ruin the bond you’ve forged with your kid, the Wiggles versus Ramones, American underground music in the 1980s, early Super Friendz jams, learning how to engineer and produce records, noted Nova Scotia producer Brendan Maguire, what’s up with the Super Friendz’s current status and that unfinished new album, the song “Mountaineer,” and then we’re good to go.

Related links: thesuperfriendz.tumblr.com hillsidefestival.ca vishkhanna.com

SFZ-Love-Energy-photo-shoot-Tim-Brennan-8_16x9_620x350

Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Categories
News Podcast

Ep. #115: Jeremy Gara & Samir Khan of Kepler

Jeremy Gara and Samir Khan are accomplished musicians who once played together in an Ottawa-based band called Kepler. For a good chunk of their time together, they were associated with a kind of slow-building atmospheric music that made them a nice fit to open for Godspeed You! Black Emperor for example. Their final album felt like a real departure to fans who heard its pop-oriented, singer-songwriter leanings when it was first released in 2006. The album is Attic Salt and it was just reissued by a German boutique record label called Oscarson. Here, Samir and Jer and I discuss Roncesvalles Village in Toronto, what tambourines are good for, Soho in London, England, the Rolling Stones, Monty Python’s Flying Circus at O2 Arena, how sometimes records are now commissioned by rich people, patronage, why Attic Salt has been reissued, small bands and big bands, podcast stats, tiny defensiveness, Michael Feuerstack is right, Ottawa’s pointed, smart, and possibly under-appreciated music community, Wooden Stars, Clark the band, Yellow Jacket Avenger, Snailhouse, HILOTRONS, Shotmaker, Okara, when Jeremy wrote Samir a fan letter about Samir’s post-punk band Kluane, Kepler and the Constellation Records loft in Montreal, bass is easy, Sonic Youth is easy, seeing the Cure play live when you’re 12, how Samir ended up in Ottawa after living in Winnipeg, Ottawa’s counter-culture and punk scene, the Pit in Ottawa, Sloan and murderecords, local bands stopped getting love, micromanaging the spectacle, I still don’t know what cynicism means, how Kepler started, the change within Attic Salt, Jeremy’s impact on Kepler, rock music and the myth of progress, Kepler weren’t part of the mid-aughts indie-rock renaissance, Kepler might come back and open for Slowdive, when Jer left Kepler to join Arcade Fire, Jer really misses Kepler and wants the band to play together again, Samir sees making music for a living as a deep, meaningless, bleak pit, things get heavily nostalgic when these dudes really start pondering Kepler, old bands finally getting their due, fans not letting go of the bands they loved as kids, the internet and zombie music, Constantines, the Attic Salt reissue and its rather elaborate packaging that makes it sit weird, Slint and June of ‘44, Attic Salt outtakes that Germans can Google, nice racism, Jer is playing Hyde Park, Keith Richards no longer actually plays guitar when the Rolling Stones are on stage, AC/DC and Malcolm Young, Arcade Fire’s going on a North American tour while Samir eats dinner and works his job, Samir is always chipping away at music stuff, his band Tusks, what the crowd might be like if Kepler played some shows, Kepler should play the Hillside Festival, the song “The Bedside Manner,” the Ottawa Millionaires, Dave Draves, and then reward and respite.

Related links: oscarson.bandcamp.com arcadefire.com vishkhanna.com

kepler

Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS