🎶 Notes on Notes (2021–02–24)

You and me have seen everything to see from Bangkok to Calgary.

I’ve got another confession to make, I’m your fool… The Blue Gems - the band I was praising last week - are not, to my knowledge, a band. It’s The Blue Stones. I may need a proof reader.

Ok, enough with that bit. I’m happy this note is getting out as scheduled. I have a bad habit, generally, of getting caught up in the process of doing something rather than actually doing that something and I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week making an iOS Shortcut app to help automate a lot of recurring tasks associated with putting together these notes - adding music to playlists, capturing and aggregating thoughts about the songs as I listen, looking up release dates, etc. It works pretty well but the best part is that it actually helped! Can’t wait to see what other pseudo-productivity tasks I take up in the future!

👀 Goings On About Music

Let us take a look at some new(ish) albums and singles…

💿 Albums

• Kiwi jr. - Cooler Returns ( Apple | Spotify )

  • Unlike UK accents, I’m not that good at placing Canadian bands based on their sound. I might be able to place a Montreal band as long as they sound like Arcade Fire and if I always guessed, “Southern Ontario” I’d have a good chance of being correct a lot of the time. I wouldn’t be able to place Kiwi jr. blind, but if you told me they were from the East Coast, I’d believe you. If I close my eyes, I can imagine a lot of these songs being played live in a small club and sounding a lot like Two Hours Traffic, Paper Lions, or even some Joel Plaskett. I’ve had a few discussions about what makes a band, “Canadian” and to me the defining requirement has always been that they sing about where they’re from. As an example, I think Drake - with his non-stop Raptors fandom, his Back-to-Back diss track repping Joe Carter and the Jays, his popularization of “The Six”, etc, etc, etc - is 100x more of a Canadian artist than Nickelback. So whether it’s The Blue Stones from last week singing about flying out of Billy Bishop airport, or Kiwi jr. singing about taking a photo of the Honest Ed’s sign, I want to hear about places and ideas from north(ish) of the 49th if you want me to consider you a Canadian band, eh.

• Wild Pink - A Billion Little Lights ( Apple | Spotify )

  • I had a feeling about this album based on the album cover. Quick detour - I miss going into music stores (not just during the current global situation, but in general over the last decade or so) and just browsing to look at albums. There’s at least a handful of bands that I’m now a fan of because I took a chance on their music based on a cool album design and a quick listen in-store. If Death Cab For Cutie had a producer that pushed them to release a folk album and they went along with it but couldn’t quite shake their pop instincts, I think you’d end up with an album that sounds a lot like A Billion Little Lights.

🎵 Tracks

• mehro - Chance With You

  • I heard this song on the NPR All Music Considered podcast last week and made a note to go back to it. Thankfully, unlike most of my reminders, I followed through on this one (thanks, Siri). If you thought Bon Iver had the market cornered on slow strumming acoustic guitars, intricate soundscapes, and falsetto vocals with a hint of melancholy and longing well then you are mistaken.

• Alex Little and the Suspicious Minds - Big Lies

  • It seemed like only last week that I was lamenting that I didn’t really haveMetric anymore and here comes this single from the Vancity band Alex Little and the Suspicious Minds. I’m a bit biased so I tend to think that every song in every note is an earworm (as they say in the industry), but I suppose some fit that mold more than others and this might be one of them. Not-quite 80s synths, nice-and-steady drum beat, upbeat - but not too upbeat - energy, and vocals that are bit Emily Haines, and a bit Gwen Stefani. Sign me up.

🎧 In My Queue

I’d like to thank the dont-call-it-a-social-network that is Apple Music along with the people that I follow for some of the tracks in this list. In addition to the songs and albums above, we’ve got a nice mix of singles from upcoming albums that seem to be demanding my attention in the future along with some other tracks that caught my ear. The song by the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets sounds like it would have been a favourite of mine to play on Guitar Hero… not because it’s a cheesy 80s metal song (it isn’t), but because the guitar doesn’t quit for basically the whole song - and when it does, the void is filled with just as riff-ready bass licks. Underneath the Roses sounds like it could have been the song that Rob Gordon tried to sell to his record store patrons instead of The Beta Band, and Katy Kirby wraps it up with some very enjoyable bedroom shoegaze made-up-word pop from an album that I didn’t specifically call out but is worth a listen if this song appeals to you.

1. mehro - Chance With You

2. Terrible Sons - Love Will Make Fools

3. Wild Pink - You Can Have It Back

4. Alex Little and the Suspicious Minds - Big Lies

5. Kiwi jr. - Cooler Returns

6. Cherry Glazerr - Big Bang

7. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Triopolsaur

8. Paul Jacobs - Underneath the Roses

9. Katy Kirby - Portals

Subscribe to the In My Queue playlist on Apple Music or Spotify. It’s updated weekly with the new tracks (hopefully).

You can also find just this week’s playlist on Apple Music or Spotify in a version that won’t change week-to-week.

Check out my profile on Apple Music.

🤘.