OFF THE RECORD: Sam Roberts - Love at the End of the World

(Courtesy of Universal Music Canada.)

Some people believe that Sam Roberts is the heir apparent to the The Tragically Hip, ready to step in as the artist of choice for the beer-swilling Canadian everyman. But those people clearly didn’t listen to 2006’s Chemical City, Sam Roberts’ second album release, and first album recorded with his full band. With it, he showed a willingness to go beyond the radio-friendly hits of his critically-lauded debut, and infused his music with an earthy psychedelia that felt perfectly natural paired with Roberts’ passionate lyrical plea for respect of the natural world. In short, he was showing signs of artistic growth.

It’s a shame therefore, to see him retreat to the more basic sounds and song structures of We Were Born in a Flame for this year’s Love at the End of the World. That’s not to say the Sam Roberts Band is courting commercial success (only “Them Kids”, the album’s leadoff single, really sounds like a potential hit), but it does make for a less experimental, more predictable listen.

Case in point, the title track, unable to decide whether it wants to be a howling rave-up or a bluesy shuffle, splits the difference between the two and in no way lives up to the excitement its moniker hints at. It’s a strange way to start an album. Luckily, “Stripmall Religion”, “Oh Maria” and “Lions of the Kalahari” (which follow in rapid succession) more than make up for that. “Stripmall Religion” in particular shows Roberts, if not snarling at the commercialism of twenty-first century life, then at least baring his teeth at it, with a chorus of “Yeah your stripmall religion / Is making me a belligerent man / In spite of TV confessions / Oh I still do the best I can”. Unfortunately though, Roberts’ attempts to rail against society are often as superficial as what they seek to critique. In the second verse of “Stripmall Religion”, Roberts is content to describe the shootings at Montreal’s Dawson College with lines like “Now there’s bloodshed in my hometown / And there was bloodshed / There were kids shot down” rather than risk providing any controversial insight on the tragedy.

Overall, Love at the End of the World is at once mellower and more biting than its predecessors. The organic sound that suffuses the album provides a nice counterpoint to the more caustic lyrical explorations such as “Stripmall Religion” and “Them Kids”, but smothers the lesser material such as the meandering six-minute-long “Waking the Dead”. It all makes for very pleasant, non-threatening listening, but it’s hard not to feel that Sam Roberts has backed himself into a corner musically.

In “Sundance”, Roberts sings “And even the Sundance Kid / Would find it hard to shoot his way out / Of the hole I’m in”. That may be so, but I certainly hope that Sam Roberts comes out guns-a-blazing on his next album.

LIVE WIRE: Gaye pride comes to Vancouver.

(When told to make love to the mic, Jamie Lidell insisted on foreplay. And as we all know, there's nothing sexier than impersonating a trout. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

The turnout was surprisingly high at Richard's for a Sunday night, and opening DJ James Pants did a reasonable job of pulling people out onto the dance floor despite doing nothing more than throwing on miscellaneous golden oldies. It’s difficult to hate someone who appreciates decent music, but there’s still something to be said for originality. When he was finally done, and the house lights had gone up and then down again, the entire room was itching to dance. Knowing this, soul singer Jamie Lidell adroitly built up anticipation by allowing his four-piece band (guitar, drums, keyboard and sax) to casually saunter onstage before him. When he finally appeared, it was like a landmine going off.



The room erupted in cheers and right into “Another Day”, he had no problem opening up to us. Lidell swung and swayed like a Motown Elvis with Buddy Holly looks. Enlisting the crowd to sing falsetto backup for “Out of My System” and armed with what appeared to be a modified radar gun that worked like a shotgun mic, he recorded beats, chants from the crowd and saxophone arpeggios, and mutated them into ambient Powerbook techno-pop before us. An improvised scatting session slowly took shape, but it rapidly became a bore and went on for about five minutes longer than it should have. Coming back in on “The City” (from the days when Lidell was less funk and more fucked up on his 2005 album, Multiply) didn’t quite save the groove, but “Little Bit of Feel Good” did. Sounding as though Marvin Gaye were twenty years younger (and alive, for that matter), Lidell’s magnetic presence onstage and what seemed to be a palsy-influenced brand of twitch-and-clap dancing had every woman in the place ogling him with bedroom eyes. Continuing on the theme of Gaye Pride, “Green Light” may as well have been written by Marvin himself and the explosive finale of “Wait For Me” ended with Lidell thrashing around and losing his glasses in one last bout of foot-stomping mania.



This was Lidell’s first show on his North American tour. It can only multiply from here.

Jamie Lidell's Vancouver Set List:

• Another Day
• Figure Me Out
• Out of My System
• The City
• Little Bit of Feel Good
• Green Light
• Where'd You Go?
• Wait For Me
• Game For Fools*
• Multiply*

* Songs marked with an asterisk were played during the encore.

This article will appear in the July 2008 issue of Discorder. Special thanks to Brock Thiessen and the other good people at Discorder who put up with my dumping these articles on ThatRockBlog.com so people can read about it while the world still cares.

To see more photos of Jamie Lidell rocking Richard's on Richards, hit up the archives here.

Coming soon: Pearce's review of Sam Roberts' new album Love at the End of the World!

LIVE WIRE: Living well is the best revenge.

(Michael Stipe of R.E.M. lectures on the importance of proper gang sign usage at Deer Lake Park on Friday. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

Oh please, like I really need to introduce R.E.M. seeing as how even men on the moon have heard "The One I Love". I mean, they've been around since 1980! But following the less-than-awesome release of Around the Sun back in 2004, the band knew that they needed to come back with something stronger and more cock-rockin' or they'd be lost forever with all the other 90's rock acts that are all washed up. (INXS makes me want to bomb a daycare.) But then, on April 1st, 2008, Accelerate hit North American store shelves as R.E.M.'s fourteenth studio album and shortly after that, they announced a tour. A throwback to classic 'highway rock' (the kind of music that, when you're driving, suddenly renders all stop signs and pedestrians invisible), Accelerate's an album that plunges immediately into the depths of booze-soaked college party memories and doesn't come up for air until everybody's pregnant just over half an hour later. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that most of that album was recorded here in Vancouver, BC.



Thanks to Live Nation chucking an extra photo pass at Discorder (despite us never actually requesting one), I suddenly found myself in the R.E.M. photo pit with the likes of Steve Bosch and Rebecca Blissett Friday night. With about ten other photographers in the pit, not to mention an entire video crew complete with HD cameras and a long stretch of dolly track, Michael Stipe was all smiles. A true performer and a seasoned frontman, you could tell that he loved the cameras and that he loved his audience even more. Greeting the crowd with a mic stand salute, the forty-foot-high screens behind him lit up like The Matrix, Peter Buck started noodling away and with a crash, Stipe rocketed forth into the opening track from Accelerate, "Living Well is the Best Revenge". As the song closed, before the cheers from the crowd had even begun to die down, Stipe was already into "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" with all the swagger of a gay Frank Sinatra. While Stipe mimed the removal of several rings from his left hand (which was probably greeted by numerous displays of public flashing), we watched Peter Buck and Mike Mills play off each other with a tightness that only a band that's been together for three decades can pull off. There was no stealing the show from Stipe though, especially not with his ironic cries for more "defense, defense, defense..." in the political hit "Ignoreland".

R.E.M.'s younger fans were all at the front, crowding in, jumping up and down and singing along to "The One I Love" and "Supernatural Superserious", but as a testament to R.E.M.'s far-reaching musical stylings, all their present middle-aged fans (one of which was Douglas Coupland) were moving to the beat too; just away from the throng of kids and more towards the towels and blankets laid out on Deer Lake Park's expansive green field. Having only gone to small indie shows recently, I had forgotten what it was like to be in an atmosphere of thousands of adoring fans, with stadium lighting and pot being freely smoked between strangers. It made me wish that I'd been a bigger fan of R.E.M. before and that I'd never wasted my time with Green Day in my early teens. (Idiot Club, indeed.) As R.E.M. closed on "Man on the Moon", I then found myself realizing that anyone who's ever seen how charismatic Michael Stipe can be onstage doesn't really have an option of loving them and wanting to see them again. Simply put, it's automatic for the people.

Special thanks to Brock Thiessen of Discorder and Jessica Dunn at Live Nation.

OFF THE RECORD: She & Him - Volume One

(Courtesy of Merge Records.)

"Think of all the beauty that you've left behind you."

~ She & Him

She & Him clearly have. That line is a direct quote from “This Is Not A Test”, the third song off their remarkable debut album Volume One, and provides an explanation as to why these twelve songs sound like they were made in 1965 rather than 2008. Indeed, Matt Ward, the producer and the male half of She & Him, readily confessed in a recent Pitchfork interview that “[his] greatest inspiration has always been older records”.

So yes, first and foremost, this record is an exercise in nostalgia, from a time before either She (Zooey Deschanel) or Him (Matt Ward) were born. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Being a fan of Oasis, I’ve never given much credence to the philosophy that music has to be innovative to be worthwhile. Still, all you lovers of knob-twiddling electronica or melody-deprived noise rock supposedly engendering the future of music should probably leave the room.

Volume One gets it right straight from the opening. “Sentimental Heart” begins modestly with only a piano accompanying Ms. Deschanel’s tender and innocent vocals, yet by the end of it, her voice is soaring and strings have come in to lift the tune up to the heavens. The next four songs are all highlights as well, with “This Is Not A Test” being the album’s standout track. It brings to mind great mid-60’s songs like The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” or The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, and comes within spitting distance of matching them. It’s readily apparent when listening to “This Is Not A Test” that Zooey Deschanel is a singer who possesses not only a great set of pipes but also distinct character. However, it’s her ability to write memorable and contemporary sounding melodies like the best on Volume One that will set her apart from the current pack of female indie darlings.

Regrettably, and perhaps naturally, this debut album does have some flaws. The most notable of these is Track 11, where She & Him take The Beatles’ “I Should Have Known Better” on a trip to Hawaii and forget to pack all the things that made the original such a great song in the first place (Lennon’s harmonica intro, Ringo’s swinging drums and, uh, the tempo). But then, covering classics is always a dodgy proposition for an artist. She & Him fare much better with their own compositions, such as with their closer “Sweet Darlin’”, which takes a simple chorus, pairs it with sublime production and confident lyrics and winds up being a hell of a finale. It’s a shame they deflated its effect somewhat with an ‘untitled’ bonus track (which is really just a thoroughly bewildering cover of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”).

But when taken as a whole, Volume One is a very tight and well-sequenced album, and even if most of the tracks don’t reach the heights of their best songs (“This Is Not A Test”, “Sweet Darlin’”), at least they don’t detract from the 60’s vibe that is so believably conjured here. And, perhaps most importantly, it leaves me looking forward to Volume Two.

General update #3.

(We are happy to report that once the car was surgically removed from Ali's ear, her hearing was restored, along with her perfect pitch. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

So as you may have noticed, we've finally been making some changes to the site to make it more functional as a whole. Pearce and Kaleena are both contributing on a semi-regular basis now, and you can see who's posting what by simply taking note of whose name appears at the bottom of each article. We each have our own departments too: Pearce handles the album review articles ("OFF THE RECORD", and the soon-to-come "FROM THE VAULT") and Kaleena and I grab what we can out of the live shows we attend ("LIVE WIRE", "LOCAL EXPOSURE"). We anticipate some new articles to come too, so stay tuned as we do our best to keep our shit in the mills. Thanks to some help from local concert shooter Rebecca Blissett, we're just now starting to get noticed by the good people at Live Nation. I shot a corporate event for them last Wednesday.

You may also have noticed that we've been too busy with our thumbs up our asses to update the site. I'm justifying that by saying that there really hasn't been anything in town that I give a crap about reviewing, and also that I've just been far too preoccupied with helping out on the set of Ali Milner's music video for her new single "Crystal Clear". While most of the video's being shot on HD by director Kyle Sandilands and company, the rest of the video's going to be made up of still photo sequences. And who's shooting that? That's right; on this shoot, my XTi and I were B Cam.

Here's a sneak preview of what these still photo sequences are going to look like in the finished product. Simply bring up this slideshow, wait a bit for everything to load, then click through all the photos as fast as you can.

What can I say? We make magic happen.

Finally, Ali just so happens to hail from this fine province of ours so support your local artists and if you like what you hear on her MySpace, shell out a bit o' cash and pick up her self-titled debut here. Even if her jazz-inspired pop originals aren't your cup of beer, she's got some mean covers of Nirvana, Neil Young and The Eagles on deck for you to seduce drunk college girls with in the wee hours of the morning. You know who you are.

... I'm watching you, Pearce.

Ali Milner plays The Libra Room this Friday, May 16th at 7:45 PM.

Coming soon: Pearce's review of She & Him's Volume One.

OFF THE RECORD: The Raveonettes - Lust, Lust, Lust

(Courtesy of Fierce Panda Records.)

The name of the group is The “Rave-on”-ettes. However, though it’s possible that some of these songs may cause you to edge toward the dance floor, the tunes on Lust, Lust, Lust don’t remind me of rave; they remind me of shoegaze.

To give you a quick crash course in musical history, shoegaze was a scene that began in the late 80’s, carried over into the early 90’s, and included bands like Ride, The Verve, and My Bloody Valentine. Essentially, the key ingredient for any successful shoegaze band was enough white noise and guitar feedback to bury the vocal track (which was treated more so as its own instrument than as a vehicle for lyrics). At its best, shoegaze can be a brilliant tidal wave of avant-garde psychedelia (see My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless”), but at its worst, it’s a bunch of kids dicking around on their amps to commit the worst lyrical atrocities heard outside of a Good Charlotte song (see Ride’s “Nowhere”). Lust, Lust, Lust falls somewhere in between.

In one sense, I feel like it’s a candidate for album of the year. “Dead Sound”, “You Want the Candy” and “Aly, Walk With Me” are some of the best songs I’ve heard from 2008 so far. The bass line on “Aly” is amazing, anchoring the song, propelling it forward and evoking a menacing atmosphere all at once. The album is also impeccably sequenced, using the monotone vocals and visceral guitar attacks as bridges from one song to the next. But the fact of the matter is, Lust, Lust, Lust already exists and has for the past twenty-three years: its real name is Psychocandy, and the band that recorded it was The Jesus and Mary Chain.

As good as this Raveonettes album is, it’s difficult not to acknowledge the fact that they basically took The Jesus and Mary Chain’s groundbreaking debut album and used it as the sole blueprint for this record. It’s hard not to believe they ripped off “Some Candy Talking” when I’m listening to “I Want The Candy”. It’s also hard not to hear “Blitzed” as anything other than a poor man’s “The Living End”. And it’s even harder to pretend that one of the greatest debut albums of the 80’s never existed.

But ultimately, that’s the only serious knock against this album. The Raveonettes recognize that their strength lies in their melodies and therefore, don’t obscure them with feedback as much as The Velvet Underground or My Bloody Valentine did, which I take as a positive. It’s also very impressive that other than Sharin Foo’s vocals, everything you hear on this album – be it drums, bass or guitar – was all performed by one guy, Sune Rose Wagner.

So while there’s the niggling matter that this band owes as much to The Jesus and Mary Chain as Airbourne does to AC/DC, Lust, Lust, Lust has got one thing right: I want the candy, psycho or not.