Hawksley Workman (the stage name of Canadian Ryan Corrigan) experiments constantly, so I’m never sure if his mood of the moment will translate into music I like. “Jealous of My Cigarette” led me to buy his next album, the enjoyable Lover/Fighter, but I didn’t care for his softer follow-up Treefull of Starling. I avoided him for half-a-decade, but, due to a lack of bands I like releasing anything new over the last few months, I decided to give him another shot. He was on the longlist for the Polaris, so I figured he must be in some sort of state of revival. Continue reading
Tag Archives: music
Tyr’s Day Music Review: Hawksley Workman’s Meat and Milk
Sunday Morning Stranger in Your Bed: My Evil Ex
That’s right. You wake up and lying next to you—hogging your pillow—is none other than My Evil Ex! Not your evil ex. My Evil Ex. What is she doing there!? Continue reading
Tyr’s Day Music Review: Pavement’s Quarantine the Past
We all have those friends who are the DJs—the music gurus—of our lives. Mine have committed a crime of omission: a crime of irresponsible neglect. They somehow let me live through my teens and early twenties without ever hearing Pavement. How did this happen?
Pavement was not commercially successfully enough to catch my ephemeral attention when they disbanded in 1999, just as I was developing decent taste in music. But this shoud not have kept them off the radar for the next decade. For shame music gurus. I had to discover Pavement on my own thanks to their 23 track Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement. Continue reading
Tyr’s Day Music Review: Caribou’s Swim
Writing a positive review for an electronica (or “indietronica”) album after slandering Rogue Wave’s repetitiveness makes me feel slightly guilty…but only slightly. The nine songs on Swim develop with a precision that keeps me nodding my head and pacing my elliptical machine strides to match. I didn’t buy this album for the lyrics (and a good thing too considering that several tracks have none); I wanted ethereal funk, and it delivers.
Dan Snaith (using the stage name Caribou after all-but being sued out of using Manitoba…by an American band) won the Polaris Prize¹ in 2008 for Andorra. Continue reading
Tyr’s Day Music Review: Rogue Wave’s Permalight
Remember that really cute song from a few years ago by Rogue Wave called “Eyes”? I know, right!? Awesome. That’s these guys!
The above was what my brain told me when iTunes recommended Permalight based on my then-recent Athlete purchase. So I bought it at the same time not realising the cruel joke iTunes had played on me. It, in its infallible wisdom (praise be to iTunes), obviously thought that if I was buying one mediocre album that would make me crave similar works by better bands, I’d want another. Just a simple misunderstanding, and I’d be happy to forgive you iTunes if it had not cost me money.
Do you like Stars, the Decemberists, and Death Cab for Cutie? Continue reading
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