Richard Laviolette – All Wild Things Are Shy
$16.00
Richard Laviolette wrote, rehearsed, and recorded All Wild Things Are Shy during the last five years of his life, in the time between his mother’s death from Huntington’s Disease and his own. The record is a testament to his unique vision of rock music, a vision which incorporated a great love for traditional forms of rock, folk, country, and gospel music, influenced by a life-long, embedded practice, working within a living community of DIY songwriters and musicians.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a special Pre-order offer. Any orders including All Wild Things Are Shy will ship on or before September 5, 2024. All Wild Things Are Shy is available on 2×12” (45 RPM) vinyl housed in a gatefold jacket, and on deluxe CD. Both formats contain full handwritten lyrics and original artwork by Richard’s partner, the artist sophia bartholomew.
Richard Laviolette wrote, rehearsed, and recorded All Wild Things Are Shy during the last five years of his life, in the time between his mother’s death from Huntington’s Disease and his own. As with much of his earlier work, including two previous releases on You’ve Changed Records, All Of Your Raw Materials (2010) and Taking The Long Way Home (2017), and a large discography of self-released CDs and digital albums, the songs on All Wild Things Are Shy confront death and mortality directly, while also affirming love, life, and a fundamental belief in the ability of music to bring people together.
Richard formed this band late in 2021, working with Ally Corbett (violin), Dave Snider (bass), Jordan Howard (guitar), Matt Reeves (guitar), and Rich Burnett (drums) to develop the album, with long-time collaborator Jessy Bell Smith (vocals) later joining the group. They played their first show in July 2022 at the Heartwood Hall in Owen Sound, and their last show in September 2022 at The Tranzac in Toronto. By the end of October 2022, Richard was unable to continue performing live. The Huntington’s symptoms came on hard and fast, including a loss of coordination and dexterity, loss of vocal control, difficulty answering questions or making decisions, anxiety, overwhelm, and what Richard described as a mental fog or “mental molasses”.
When recording began at Scott Merritt’s the cottaGe in January 2023, Richard believed that there would be more records after this one, but what was planned as a few weeks of recording soon became a slower and longer process. Richard tinkered with each of the arrangements, working to eliminate anything that was not essential and creating an immediate and direct presentation of the songs. The record is a testament to his unique vision of rock music, a vision which incorporated a great love for traditional forms of rock, folk, country, and gospel music, influenced by a life-long, embedded practice, working within a living community of DIY songwriters and musicians.
Milkweed and Motherwort opens the album with a Crazy Horse stomp, anxious verses broken open by agitated electric guitar. Welcome Back is a slowly building tribute to endurance, a song of experience and survival. Side One ends with the stunningly perfect gospel folk anthem Don’t Quit On Me. Florence and Delilah is stark, rudimentary rock and roll, with a group of singers declaring over a minor key “We are going to get through”, offering solace and solidarity in the face of any trouble or stormy weather. Catacombs is a slow, perfectly arranged epic, effortlessly holding a heavy, beautiful life-sorrow. On the gentle title track, Constantines singer Bry Webb and Steph Yates of Cots share lead vocals, finding renewed possibilities in new love, while a lovely, graceful verse describing pulling a copy of Magnolia Electric Co’s Josephine from the shelf reveals one of the major touchstones for this record. The shambling road-trip anthem Carter & Cash further salutes the music of family and community, as Richard, who worked for some time as a bus driver, travels with a large, rambling group to a small-town DIY show. Saved By Rock and Roll is an eerie and ambiguous dirge, featuring droning organs, haunted accordions, and a choir of deathless singers; “A little destruction will make you whole” Richard sings unforgettably, reveling in the “dirty beats and dissonant tones”. For those of us who loved him, All Wild Things Are Shy is a heavy listen. It is also a courageous and generous gift, a cathartic, beautiful work from an artist whose time was running out far too early, far too soon. Train of Death bravely manifests this loss of time, an impossibly stirring countdown, a sing-a-long dance to the edge. The album ends with the hushed and wonderfully distilled Constant Love.
In the last months of his life, his love for his family and his community and his desire to see this album through are what kept Richard going. Working closely with Scott Merrit and Rich Burnett, he was able to complete the recording process and to give clear directions for the mixing, artwork, and final presentation of All Wild Things Are Shy.
With the rapid acceleration of Huntington’s symptoms compounded by complex long-term health issues, Richard chose to receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) on September 5, 2023. We miss him dearly.
Track Listing
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Julianna Riolino – J.R.
$20.00 – $22.00
Previously available only through digital channels, J.R. predates both Julianna Riolino’s 2022 breakthrough full-length All Blue, which was feted by the New York Times, Pitchfork, and Uncut among many, many others, as well as Julianna’s stint in Daniel Romano’s Outfit.For the most part, J.R. omits the county, Americana, and folk influences heard on All Blue though there is a shock of recognition in the always surprising power and pure tone of Julianna Riolino’s already legendary voice. Rich in melody and early confidence, Julianna draws from classic girl-group pop and contemporary indie while establishing a characteristic song-writing template of interpreting foundational texts and iconography to portray uniquely personal experiences and emotional truths.
“It’s like it’s who you are before you grow more” she says of J.R. now.
You’ve Changed Records presents the first-ever vinyl release of Julianna Riolino’s debut EP J.R. as part of the ongoing Archive Series of special limited edition collector’s pressings.
Previously available only through digital channels, J.R. predates All Blue, Julianna Riolino’s 2022 breakthrough full-length, which was feted by the New York Times, Pitchfork, and Uncut among many, many others, and occasioned extensive North American and European touring including appearances at Bonnaroo, End of The Road, Hillside, NPRs Mountain Stage, as well as dates with The Sadies, Kassi Valazza, Daniel Romano’s Outfit, and Royal Alberta Advantage.
For the most part, J.R. omits the county, Americana, and folk influences heard on All Blue though there is a shock of recognition in the always surprising power and pure tone of Julianna Riolino’s already legendary voice. Rich in melody and early confidence, Julianna draws from classic girl-group pop and contemporary indie while establishing a characteristic song-writing template of interpreting foundational texts and iconography to portray uniquely personal experiences and emotional truths.
“It’s like it’s who you are before you grow more” she says of J.R. now.
Singing then in the center piece “Sacred Heart”, “All I wanted / all that I could be / wasnʼt fully realized / so burn the old me” you can hear, in spite of the artist’s protests, her early and immense skill, her ambition, and a shocking ability to convey emotion at a slow burn or with explosive immediacy. “Be My Man” is a quick blast of joyful power-pop, revealing the unexpected influence of the Buzzcocks, which made up a big portion of her listening at the time. “Everybody knew that I was no good back then” she sings on Taming Of The Shrew, shrugging off, easily and with confidence, any limits that might be placed on her. This is a debut collection, and the amount of looking back contained in these songs might come as a surprise, until you realize we’re already past the pivot point, the artist has come into their own, leaving behind the uncertainties of youth for the richer terrain of maturity.
When Julianna sings “I think I know who Iʼm supposed to be right now” in album opener Better Off, her voice pushing thrillingly at the limits of the microphone, it heralds the arrival of an undeniably important artist, and one of today’s greatest singers.
Julianna Riolino – J.R. is available on Black or Yellow vinyl variants.
Track Listing
Credits
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Jon Mckiel – Hex
$15.00 – $26.00
The songs of Jon McKiel are born of the bruised marshlands of remote New Brunswick, from the craggy shores of the Atlantic coast; places where nature is a powerful wonder and the made-world is in slow decay. His new album, Hex, is a bloodshot pop record steeped in our dystopian present, tempered, across its ten tracks, by an existential umami. His lyrics combine natural elements with bits of fantasy and lucid dreamscapes, all tangled with the transmuted horrors of our thoroughly modern present. In his music, what might otherwise be construed as paranoia or pessimism, is softened by a genuine sense of longing and tenderness.
The songs of Jon McKiel are born of the bruised marshlands of remote New Brunswick, from the craggy shores of the Atlantic coast; places where nature is a powerful wonder and the made-world is in slow decay. His new album, Hex, is a bloodshot pop record steeped in our dystopian present, tempered, across its ten tracks, by an existential umami. It’s the follow-up to 2020’s cult favorite Bobby Joe Hope, which Aquarium Drunkard called “an unlikely masterpiece” and Gorilla vs. Bear listed as one of their favorites of that god-forsaken year.
After two solid decades of refining his practice, during the creation process for Bobby Joe Hope, McKiel unlocked new sampling techniques, fundamentally changing the way he makes music. Hex sees that practice extended into even more evocative terrain. Performed and produced again in close collaboration with JOYFULTALK’s Jay Crocker, the duo offer up another collection of songs as disquieting as they are comforting. Expertly evoked by Paul Henderson’s twisted collage on the cover, Hex is equal parts flower field and burning building.
The music moves subtly between moods, carrying themes of fate, doom, family, love and distrust in the digital age. The eponymous lead track is an eerie, subterranean banger whose looped percussion and dirt-nasty bassline bring to mind low fi hip hop flipping early 70s Gene Clark. Elsewhere, on ‘Memory Screen Pt 1’, McKiel’s nostalgia-drenched vocals bring to mind more sounds of the 1970s that appear sonically wider than the largely mono “Bobby Jo Hope”. Then there are moments like ‘Under Burden’, whose skittering drum machine and saccharine synths suggest the cult works of that other Bobby Brown. The album also features McKiel’s first cover committed to tape, a haunting version of a tune called ‘Concrete Sea’, as sung by Terry Jacks (of ‘Seasons In The Sun’ and Poppy Family fame). An earlier version of the cover first cropped up on Aquarium Drunkard’s Lagniappe Sessions wherein Mckiel contextualized the selection: “This is actually a song from my childhood. Jacks was at the forefront of ’60s and ’70s-era musicians who were using their platforms to speak out or sing about environmental issues, eventually leaving music entirely to pursue a more peaceful and natural way of life, something that I deeply relate to. The chorus hook has been in my head for about 25 years…”
Regardless of mood, the songs are all adorned with the world-weary poetics heads have come to expect from McKiel. In his music, what might otherwise be construed as paranoia or pessimism, is softened by a genuine sense of longing and tenderness. His lyrics combine natural elements with bits of fantasy and lucid dreamscapes, all tangled with the transmuted horrors of our thoroughly modern present. When McKiel sings of “memories cooked down into usernames” or how “the color of time has gone from green to grey”, the listener is carried to the heart of our grim realities. When he suggests that “one song could kill the king”, we’re reminded that there may just be some dusty magic out there worth believing in.
Track Listing
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Daniel Romano’s Outfit – Too Hot To Sleep
$15.00 – $24.00
Too Hot To Sleep is simultaneously a transcendent document of the spirit, and a swaggering, street level blast of power-pop and Stone’s derived rock ‘n’ roll; a surprisingly direct shout down of the corrupt politicians and techno fascists that police our bodies, pollute our world, assault our connections; a reason and occasion to dance, to sweat together at one of The Outfit’s legendary live shows wherein everything comes faster than the next, no breaks, no outside, there is only now, there is only all of us here together, alive. A public offering of each to each.
Can you describe your song-writing process?
DR: In order to bring about the good song there is a certain amount of magic to be summoned. Though there are a variety of ways to achieve it, allow me now to break down one of my favourite methods: Without food, take to your post with the hungry wonder of the morning. Getting down to it, allow everything to begin slowly– thought, breath, moment– until you’re buried, little by little in a celestial blackness where all common ideas dissolve into ash and all that didn’t serve you is gone. It’s in this original darkness that the virtues of your heart begin to ignite.
Come hither dialecticians! Come into the darkness to discover light! Creativity is technique, study, and process, and above all, a commitment, to the self and the self’s relationship to the world. So, too it is an opening, or the result of an opening, to the gifts the world and the world cosmos bring. One conceives as one receives. Magic, yes, but magic summoned actively.
Daniel Romano has been busy. Count the many hungry mornings at the post. Since the release of the massive, singular, La Luna in those long ago days of autumn 2022, full brilliant albums have been made and set aside (maybe two, maybe more), vast landscapes have been crossed and re-crossed, the maps redrawn, songs remade nightly with passion and gusto.
Now here, in the depths of northern winter, arrives Too Hot To Sleep, simultaneously a transcendent document of the spirit, and a swaggering, street level blast of power-pop and Stone’s derived rock ‘n’ roll; a surprisingly direct shout down of the corrupt politicians and techno fascists that police our bodies, pollute our world, assault our connections; a reason and occasion to dance, to sweat together at one of The Outfit’s legendary live shows wherein everything comes faster than the next, no breaks, no outside, there is only now, there is only all of us here together, alive. A public offering of each to each.
Count the many hungry mornings. Count the many and the one. Here the rock band is a self-contained creative unit: making music, design, art, and film. Making image and sound at its most primal, immediate, and sophisticated. A synthesis of influences from in and out of time. See the videos the band has created, for Field Of Ruins (wigs and costumes), Chatter (props and close-ups), Where’s Paradise (skateboarding and landscape), State Of Nature (symbol and story). See the icons and emblems emblazoned on T-shirts and jackets, secret signs for those who know, declarations of membership and understanding. Hear the blend of voices in service of the song.
See the darkened barroom. The stage lights rise. Here we are, together, go!
Track Listing
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Spider Bite – The Rainbow And The Dove
$22.00
Warmongers run the newspapers, the daily podcasts, the social media feeds. Capital creates and harvests our despair. Cultural heroes are as money-mad as bankers, standing on corpses, wearing diamonds. The songs of this age are hopeless. In this world of lies, Spider Bite celebrate truth: raw, ragged, and full of brave energy, bravely dreaming of possible futures in the immediate and active now, in this exact and ever active present: after the flood, in the ruins of love.
Warmongers run the newspapers, the daily podcasts, the social media feeds. Capital creates and harvests our despair. Cultural heroes are as money-mad as bankers, standing on corpses, wearing diamonds. The songs of this age are hopeless. In this world of lies, Spider Bite celebrate truth: raw, ragged, and full of brave energy, bravely dreaming of possible futures in the immediate and active now, in this exact and ever active present: after the flood, in the ruins of love.
Spider Bite is the sound of Daniel Romano (The Outfit, Ancient Shapes, Attack In Black), Ian Romano (Daniel Romano’s Outfit, Career Suicide) and Steven Lambke (Constantines) returning to their roots in the thriving pit of DIY punk with a perspective, skill, and energy that can only be gained from long experience in music, art, and stubborn cultural creation. Spider Bite began in the depths of the first COVID-19 lockdown, a world poised between protests and rebellions, when a fearful silence held its breath, twitching the curtains, and strange imaginations ran unleashed through dark streets. Long-time collaborators Daniel Romano and Steven Lambke, who together established the artist run record label You’ve Changed Records in 2009, and monster drummer Ian Romano chose this moment to indulge their shared love of energetic street punk, releasing the self-titled debut as a Bandcamp-only release in May 2020. The album was enthusiastically embraced and even cracked the best of lists on some of the more adventurous independent music blogs. But still. Time passes. More wars. More storms. More ruin caused by greed. Spider Bite reconvened in the spring of 2022, recording The Rainbow and The Dove, an album that assembles the wisdom teachings of punk elders into a passionate rejection of settler-colonialism, environmental racism, and the general exploitation of the world by monarchs and resource extraction companies. Every moment is historical. Spider Bite celebrate a continuity of protest and refusal, and the communal joy of loud energy. Animated by a surprising humor and immense instrumental power, Spider Bite create a vibrant portrait of living in violent times.
This is our music.
This LP collects both the self-titled release and The Rainbow and The Dove onto a single black vinyl LP record.
Track Listing
SIDE ONE (2020)Spider Bite:
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Daniel Romano – “Dandelion”
$22.00 – $40.00
“Dandelion” blooms a previously undiscovered and unknown sweet spot between 60’s psychedelia and 70’s power-pop, equally pastoral and street-wise, every note tuned to moving and astounding melody. “Dandelion” offers lush arrangements of unforgettable, legend-making songs, performed entirely by Daniel himself.
PLEASE NOTE: The combo option includes both new Daniel Romano Archive LPs: Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Forever Love’s Fool” (YCA-003) and Daniel Romano – “Dandelion” (YCA-004).
YOU’VE CHANGED RECORDS LAUNCHES THE ARCHIVE SERIES, OFFERING FIRST EVER LIMITED-EDITION VINYL PRESSINGS OF ALBUMS PREVIOUSLY RELEASED ONLY ON “BANDCAMP”!
In 2020, Daniel Romano and his increasingly exalted band “The Outfit” were forced home, faced with the cancellation of tours and all live engagements at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Almost immediately, Daniel instigated a near legendary run of new albums, releasing 10 full-length albums in the span of nearly the same number of weeks. Genre-spanning, astoundingly distinct artistic achievements, these albums were originally released exclusively in digital only formats on Bandcamp. They were direct and immediate missives from one of the most talented, prolific, ambitious, and exciting artists of his generation. We are thrilled to release these albums now in very special limited-edition vinyl pressings.
——
“Dandelion” blooms a previously undiscovered and unknown sweet spot between 60’s psychedelia and 70’s power-pop, equally pastoral and street-wise, every note tuned to moving and astounding melody. “Dandelion” offers lush arrangements of unforgettable, legend-making songs, performed entirely by Daniel himself.
“In the spring of the year, God-like bodies imagine themselves into existence. Sprouting from crust and seed into the rich meats of reality. They speak not and know not, and yet they dance and sing inside the warming wind. A song too is born of this improbable metamorphosis. From the abyss around the prism and then summoned through it into light. This is the mystical posture of life. The reaction of nothing against nothing to form “something” — beauty or savagery — it becomes ours to delineate. But in its essence it is us and we are it and neither are either or anything. These songs are the offerings of spring. They draw breath apart from breath. In you and in me, parallel and reversed, true and false, bloomed from the mists of mystery and held only by what cannot hold.” – Daniel Romano
Released simultaneously with the limited-edition LP – YCA-003 Archives Vol 4 – Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Forever Love’s Fool”
Track Listing
- If You Don't Or If You Do
- Novus
- Maybe Today Will Be Curious
- Cornelius
- Plum Forever
- Silent Spring
- She's In A Folded Wing (But Flying)
- The Farther Side Of Love
- Ain't That Enough For You
- The Patience Of A Kiss
Credits
- Recorded, produced, and mixed by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Kristian Montano
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Daniel Romano’s Outfit featuring Danny Carey – “Forever Love’s Fool”
$22.00 – $40.00
At the heights of ambition, Daniel Romano’s Outfit deliver a wandering spell of melodic backbone, accompanied by percussionist extraordinaire Danny Carey (of TOOL fame). Rising in union with the first pounding hearts of dawn, up and down the arcades of devotion and on through the sunset, where the earth-life fades, Forever Love’s Fool is a single hard-edged, complex, multi-part epic (an approach the band would later develop even further on their 2022 masterpiece La Luna). It is intricate, precise, energetic music tied to a progressive rock inspired universal vision. Onward into the furthest reaches of love eternal.
PLEASE NOTE: The combo option includes both new Daniel Romano Archive LPs: Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Forever Love’s Fool” (YCA-003) and Daniel Romano – “Dandelion” (YCA-004).
YOU’VE CHANGED RECORDS LAUNCHES THE ARCHIVE SERIES, OFFERING FIRST EVER LIMITED-EDITION VINYL PRESSINGS OF ALBUMS PREVIOUSLY RELEASED ONLY ON “BANDCAMP”!
In 2020, Daniel Romano and his increasingly exalted band “The Outfit” were forced home, faced with the cancellation of tours and all live engagements at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Almost immediately, Daniel instigated a near legendary run of new albums, releasing 10 full-length albums in the span of nearly the same number of weeks. Genre-spanning, astoundingly distinct artistic achievements, these albums were originally released exclusively in digital only formats on Bandcamp. They were direct and immediate missives from one of the most talented, prolific, ambitious, and exciting artists of his generation. We are thrilled to release these albums now in very special limited-edition vinyl pressings.
——
“A red rose absorbs all colours but red;
red is therefore the one colour it is not.
What we have in love, when we truly love, is the absence of hate.”
– Daniel Romano
At the heights of ambition, Daniel Romano’s Outfit deliver a wandering spell of melodic backbone, accompanied by percussionist extraordinaire Danny Carey (of TOOL fame).
Rising in union with the first pounding hearts of dawn, up and down the arcades of devotion and on through the sunset, where the earth-life fades, Forever Love’s Fool is a single hard-edged, complex, multi-part epic (an approach the band would later develop even further on their 2022 masterpiece La Luna). It is intricate, precise, energetic music tied to a progressive rock inspired universal vision. Onward into the furthest reaches of love eternal.
Released simultaneously with the limited-edition LP – YCA-004 Archives Vol 5 – Daniel Romano – “Dandelion”
Track Listing
- Forever Love's Fool
- Side One (11:17)
- Side Two (11:22)
Credits
- Daniel Romano - Vocals, Guitars, Melotron, Organ
- Dany Carey - Drums, Percussion
- Ian Romano - Drums
- Roddy Rossetti - Bass
- David Nardi - Guitars, Saxophone, Synth
- Julianna Riolino - Vocals
- Written, composed, recorded, produced, and mixed by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Kristian Montano
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Status / Non-Status – Surely Travel
$22.00
Exploring their expansive, sky-sweeping folk rock from a fresh angle, Status/Non-Status drive head-on into a natural complement to the earth-shaking sonic landscapes they’re known for. A loose concept album written as a travel log of animals in flight, the record brims with open air reflections, while gazing out of a blurry window and acknowledging what it can’t see clearly. Blending the melted psychedelic gauze of distorted Americana, with thundering flashes of post rock, Sturgeon implements softness generously. At the core, remembering that lyrics that break through universally sing with clarity about experiences that “chop at the knees.”
Surely Travel is pressed in black vinyl. Includes printed lyrics and a 12×14″ poster featuring original collage artwork by Adam Sturgeon
What’s revealed when you archive the quiet moments during time spent on the road? For Adam Sturgeon, the result is a crystalline glimpse into the unseen — and gratifying — moments of personal renovation we rarely pay attention to; where a blown out tire incites calm rather than rage, and moments of frustration invite grace instead of judgment. This is the vantage of Surely Travel, the newest album by Status/Non-Status, the evolving musical project of the Anishinaabe artist and community worker, and a close-knit group of collaborators.
Exploring their expansive, sky-sweeping folk rock from a fresh angle, Status/Non-Status drive head-on into a natural complement to the earth-shaking sonic landscapes they’re known for. A loose concept album written as a travel log of animals in flight, the record brims with open air reflections, while gazing out of a blurry window and acknowledging what it can’t see clearly. Blending the melted psychedelic gauze of distorted Americana, with thundering flashes of post rock, Sturgeon implements softness generously. At the core, remembering that lyrics that break through universally sing with clarity about experiences that “chop at the knees.”
Recorded over 10 days at Deadpan Studios in Sudbury, the goal was to chisel things down down to the bone. Where past records built atmosphere out of heavy swaths of sound, overlaid with harmonies, the band opted for a single vocal take, a Wurlitzer, and ran a $100 classical guitar through an amp. Written in the company of others, whether from the back of a van, or with a baby on the other side of the door, Sturgeon wrote sections of the record in near silence — whispered lyrics and muted bass riffs that started as lullabies, only to be blown out later. It interlaces the album’s material composition with its central inspiration: the inconsistent perception of glamorous associated with life on the road, and the reality of over-indexing on time spent in an unreliable, stuffy van; the wrenching sacrifice of time away from loved ones, in favour of only seeing a gas station and vacant roads for hours on end.
Where the acclaimed, Polaris Prize Long Listed album Warrior Down (2019), and its celebrated follow-up the 1,2,3,4,500 Years EP (2020) required a mighty sonic landscape to fit its lofty reckonings of nationhood, trauma and familial memory, Surely Travel tightens its scope, but not its ambition. Instead, peering inward to examine the self within its surroundings, and to underscore identity and indigeneity from the smallest spaces or ordinary experiences. Conjuring the awe of sunshowers through the rearview mirror, Surely Travel intentionally doesn’t over-promise optimism, but rather celebrates the small wins of a human-sized approach to resilience and healing.
Track Listing
Credits
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Daniel Romano’s Outfit – La Luna
$24.00
Consisting of a single massive song in 12 individual parts, plus pulse quickening overture and truly grand finale, La Luna is an unprecedented artistic achievement by one of contemporary music’s most ambitious and consistently surprising practitioners. Daniel Romano sets his visionary poetry to exuberant tune – it is epic, immaculately and extravagantly arranged, and truly cinematic.
La Luna is a single LP in a gatefold tip-on jacket. It is a thing of beauty. Like the moon. Full lyrics included.
Come poet, contemplate the moon, here at the end of day, in this timeless moment be timely, awaken the spirit, and sing….
Consisting of a single massive song in 12 individual parts, plus pulse quickening overture and truly grand finale, La Luna is an unprecedented artistic achievement by one of contemporary music’s most ambitious and consistently surprising practitioners. Daniel Romano sets his visionary poetry to exuberant tune – it is epic, immaculately and extravagantly arranged, and truly cinematic.
Through close observation the observed is drawn near. Identification becomes possible. A sympathy indistinguishable from grace. Are we not like the moon? the poet might ask. Yes, does ask. In the long song. La Luna is a hymnal or scroll for modern seekers, brought to life by the impeccably skilled Outfit, (Julianna Riolino, Roddy Rosetti, David Nardi, Carson McHone, Ian Romano) with swagger and joy. Transcendently melodic, undeniably classic and shockingly contemporary, La Luna synthesizes teachings from the sacred texts of rock and roll and psychedelic-folk (Beatles, Fairport Convention, even the Stones, Queen…) into a new testament for a new time. It was recorded in a blast of radiant activity at the band’s own Camera Varda studios.
Uploading this record to the digital void, the algorithms suggested a classification of “Progressive Rock”. These programs seek to know the present, to characterize the moment, by what is known of the past. Remember that these inhuman programs were made by human minds: these are our ways of knowing. Haven’t progressive tendencies always drawn from the past, through reinvigorated traditions, through recontextualization, through creative mimicry, through the mis- or new-interpretation of fragmented texts? The modernists stole from ancient myths, or extracted techniques from cultures not their own. Revivalists send electricity through old practices, corrupting ears and original intent, eliminating meaning. One may dream of a clean start, a clean and genuine light. And in the exuberance of beginning it can feel possible.
Side 1 of La Luna is experienced as a document of first asking: musical themes are introduced, lyrics, later to be repeated, are given first voice. There is a lightness, not of illumination necessarily, but of feeling. The Outfit, the ever-masterful Outfit, giving collective voice to the poet’s words. Yes, close followers of Daniel Romano’s may well know his poetry oft bends to the Romantic, to the Mystical. You have read it in the collections of his poetry (Weaker Animals Too, At Last There Is No End); you have heard it sung in the psychedelic folk masterpiece Finally Free. These words gain new weight as Julianna Riolino, David Nardi, and Carson McHone weave their own voices around Daniel’s, taking lead on individual verses, joining in immaculately arranged harmony. It is, in accumulation, a collective voice – a liturgy, an act of public worship. And like all worship, it is seeking an understanding of our place, of the very nature of our existence. A seeking that, despite moments of ecstatic clarity, given great musical voice throughout, ultimately discovers its own limits, discovering a place of ultimate unknowing: discovers “true wisdom in seeking”; discovers “Memory and Fate / And all that we create / Pale against the weight / Of the keeper”
And so, with Side 2, we begin again, of course, more troubled, beginning again with all the unsolved riddles and questions of existence, down in the deep black groove. Where once the lyrics measured our closeness, now they measure our distance (“Prayer is but a personal obsession”). Side 2, haunted by echoes, crossed by shadows. If this is perhaps true of Side 2s everywhere, La Luna strikes me as unique in its brave acknowledgement of the facts. One must reckon with the past, the Grand Preceding; personal history of course, but also the harrowing recognition that the individual is born of collective histories.
Original light. The moon is a mirror, and so the poet too is a mirror, inheriting language, reflecting in words the world that passes their consciousness. The world of great complexity, of an infinite and incomprehensible, ungraspable, abundance of things and history, of pasts. And from those shards of ideas and sounds and lyrics form finally a shining truth, a life. We are not born of the original light, of the void, we are born of the great heaving complexity – and there is our joy and our freedom and our beauty, to recombine, to reinvent – Sing it out to me!
“Everything is truly what you are
See, how sweet mystery brings about everything”
I offer this thought to any who have criticized Daniel’s work as pastiche, as costume, as being casual or tossed-off, of insincerity. Who have judged his rambunctious, genre-traversing productivity cynically. What you hear is the play of life. What you hear is the skill and inspiration to rejoice, to build, to make family. To make great light of the questions of the spirit. I admire this light. “What of us if we deny love?”
All poets before have contemplated the moon. One makes their own offering. One offers their song from the moment to the eternal, one sings the eternal to the moment. Both.
And so, we end at the beginning (“In the end we appear as a dream…”) to ask again the same questions, but knowing perhaps the song a little better, knowing better the voices we sing along with, happily anticipating the chorus and our joining in the chorus.
Turn the record over. Play again. Sing again. The moon rises.
Track Listing
Credits
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Julianna Riolino – All Blue
$14.00 – $22.00
Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. She spent her days running up to the release of her solo debut helping restore the stained glass windows at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. Surrounded by symbols configured in bits of 19th century French glass, Riolino couldn’t help but reflect on her own past and the memories of pains, healing, and love strewn through it. “It made me think about life as a balancing act, and we’re all just trying to do our best to navigate it,” she says. That focus on morality and the stretch of time seeped naturally into Riolino’s Americana-indebted songwriting, resulting in the golden, fluid All Blue. “If I was a painter, this would be my blue period,” she says. “I’m looking at my life, all my decisions lined up, and either atoning for them or laughing them off.”
Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. She spent her days running up to the release of her solo debut helping restore the stained glass windows at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. Surrounded by symbols configured in bits of 19th century French glass, Riolino couldn’t help but reflect on her own past and the memories of pains, healing, and love strewn through it. “It made me think about life as a balancing act, and we’re all just trying to do our best to navigate it,” she says. That focus on morality and the stretch of time seeped naturally into Riolino’s Americana-indebted songwriting, resulting in the golden, fluid All Blue, due October 14th from You’ve Changed Records. “If I was a painter, this would be my blue period,” she says. “I’m looking at my life, all my decisions lined up, and either atoning for them or laughing them off.”
The true religious fervor both in Riolino’s life and in the LP is directed towards icons like Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and The Band. Inspired by those artists, Riolino asked for a guitar as a child, and began teaching herself how to bring similar life to the melodies in her head. And while she honed her voice by participating in school musicals, songwriting remained a deeply personal venture. “I sang at every opportunity, but I didn’t share my songs with people until I was 18 or 19,” she says. The first song she decided to play for friends was “Lone Ranger”, a reimagining of which now acts as the lead single for her debut solo album ten years later.
That track perfectly encapsulates Riolino’s ability to reenvision the warmest strands of musical sepia and put her own individualist stamp on them. “I’m a lone ranger in this lonely world,” she repeats, Thomas Hammerton’s honky-tonk piano romping over the rippling rhythm and buzzsaw guitar. The song’s urgent independence plays throughout the record, Riolino for better and worse taking sole ownership of her place.
The stories are told with a hefty dose of wit and wordplay mixed into pitch-perfect representations of classic Americana tropes. Riolino has shown that same duality in her role as a member of cult favorite Daniel Romano’s backing band, The Outfit, here utilizing Romano as a guitarist and putting a tighter focus on her powerful vocals. The sway and twang of “Queen of Spades” veils references to the other three suits in a deck of cards, Riolino rewarding closer listens though even the surface level is downright Parton-esque. “And it breaks my heart in two/ Pieces of a portrait be/ Happiness and fragility,” she sings, pedal steel guitar gliding through her tight harmonies, the song a musical middle finger to an insincere lover.
Second single “You” brings Roy Orbison tinges into the mix, charging headlong between girl group harmonies repeating the title and nimbly dense verses–as if Riolino is attempting to convince herself that she doesn’t need someone, even if she hates to see them leave. “Oh retroflex the feeling/ Of thoughtful micro-needing/ Of my mind and soul/ I don’t really need you,” she insists, her voice soaring majestically into the upper register.
Recorded in August 2020 at the now-shuttered Baldwin Street Sound, All Blue was produced by Aaron Goldstein and largely features a cadre of musicians playing together in the room. “Recording live made for some long days, but it was a lot of fun and I had the benefit of working with some really talented people,” Riolino says. “It helped create this feeling of glimpsing a moment in time. It’s like therapy: I could just let out this period of life and then move forward.”
Leaning more heavily on emotional reality than diary details, the kernel of truth and experience always shines through in Riolino’s songwriting. That duality rings like a lovesick bell on “Isn’t It A Pity”, a track lodged somewhere between AM radio breeze and the florid wash of Waxahatchee. Trilling organ and Roddy Carlyle’s rangy bass play the perfect complement to Riolino’s sweetly strummed acoustic. “Isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame/ The flowers in our garden have bloomed and shed their fray,” she bounces, before adding lines about astral projection, bringing a modernist edge to the vintage proceedings.
Blending past and present musically represents Riolino’s own experience as well, the songs written over a period of years, their meanings picking beyond that stretch and pulling lessons forward. And in that process, her philosophical lyrics bring that complexity forward to the listener in surreally sweet melodies, pouring growth and healing directly through the ear and into the heart. “For me it was about looking into a reflection of who you once were, letting go of that idea of who you thought you needed to be, and being okay with who you are.”
Track Listing
Credits
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The Burning Hell – Garbage Island
$15.00 – $22.00
Garbage Island is an album about what we lose when things fall apart, and what we can gain from collaborative regeneration. It takes place in a crumbling near-future world that bears a distinct resemblance to our own, beginning with the violence of collapse, loosely narrating the escape of the album’s unnamed protagonists on a pedal-boat swan, as they trade doom for danger on their way to a future home built from the detritus of the old world. Along the way, the band narrates both the need for action and the joys of refusing to hustle, nostalgically pines for the days of post-apocalyptic touring life, celebrates escape and solitude, and ends with the hesitant suggestion that the end of the world can’t last forever. Garbage Island showcases songwriter Mathias Kom’s irreverent, surrealist lyricism, but while there is humour, there are few jokes. It’s either the darkest record The Burning Hell has made, the most reassuring, or the most fun. It might be all three.
THIS ITEM IS FOR NORTH AMERICAN ORDERS ONLY! FOR EUROPEAN ORDERS PLEASE VISIT https://bbislandmusic.com
Gatefold LP with art by Emmie Tsumura. Ecovinyl — random colour splatter from reused off-cuts at pressing plant.
As a companion piece to the album, the Garbage Island Ornithological Society is proud to announce the publication of the first edition of the Illustrated Field Guide to the Birds of Garbage Island, edited by Mathias Kom and featuring work by Shary Boyle, Toby Goodshank, Booboo Tannenbaum, Jeffrey Lewis, David Ivar ‘Yaya’ Herman Düne and many more.
The first 100 Garbage Island LP orders will receive a free copy of this groundbreaking ornithological study of future imaginary birdlife.
During that first pandemic summer, I walked down to the shore every morning and watched the seabirds shriek and dive. Despite their constant scavenging and my own beachcombing, the ocean was always redecorating the rocks with more old lobster traps, buoys, plastic water bottles, bits of rope, and other ambiguous treasures, like a broken claw machine spitting out knick-knacks at a child who had already claimed her coveted stuffed dinosaur and didn’t want to play anymore. I was reminded of Garbage Island, imagining a volcanic mountain of trash rising from the ocean, perhaps playing host to colonies of screeching gulls or harbouring post-apocalyptic pirates. Also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, Garbage Island is, in reality, an enormous mass of floating marine debris, mostly microplastics, trapped in an endless gyre by ocean currents. There are no pirates living there.
The image of Garbage Island wouldn’t leave me alone, and somewhere in the dark, soupy brain-place that songs come from, a world began to emerge. A world made from the flotsam of our lives, the ultimate repository for the human race’s epic collective moulting season. A world where birds reasserted their prehistoric dominance, a world where new forms of plant life sprung up, leaves veined with translucent plastic. There were humans in this world, too, but not many. Those that survived relied on endless improvisation, the ingenious repurposing of whatever physical scraps of the old world they uncovered in the elastic soil of their island refuge. Their main pastime: birdwatching.
Garbage Island is an album about what we lose when things fall apart, and what we can gain from collaborative regeneration. It takes place in this crumbling near-future world that bears a distinct resemblance to our own, beginning with the violence of collapse, loosely chronicling the escape of the album’s unnamed protagonists on a pedal-boat swan, as they trade doom for danger on their way to a future home built from the detritus of the past.
Along the way, the album narrates both the need for action and the joys of refusing the hustle, imagines a futuristic nostalgia for the days of post-apocalyptic touring life, celebrates escape and solitude, and concludes with the hesitant suggestion that the end of the world can’t last forever. The songs feature the omnivorous genre-bending and rapid-fire surrealist lyricism the band has been known for in the past, but while there is humour and playfulness in abundance, there are few jokes. It’s either the darkest record The Burning Hell has made, the most reassuring, or the most fun. It might be all three.
Making a record about a future world of disintegration and renewal while the real world seemed to be collapsing around us felt right. Ariel Sharratt and I were locked-down on our farm on PEI, forced to embrace the slowness, patiently collecting sounds and ideas, orienting ourselves toward process. With tours perpetually cancelled, rescheduled, and cancelled again, we reconnected with the primal urge to simply make music, rather than perform or manage it. Our collaborator Jake Nicoll was stuck in Ontario, where he had been visiting his dad’s farm when the pandemic was declared, but he was able to cobble together some forgotten recording gear in an abandoned sheep pen, and we started sending tracks back and forth.
This is the first record the band (Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt, and Jake Nicoll) has engineered, produced, and mixed entirely by ourselves, and time and distance allowed us to revel in the slow joy of collaboration and discovery, a joy that leached out onto the tapes and circuit boards. Our comrades in St. John’s (Darren Browne, Jud Haynes, Kelly McMichael, Krista Power, and Mara Pellerin) contributed musical brilliance, and cameos from Ariel’s brother Jesse and her dad Steve enrich the album. We painted over our usual canvas of bass, drums, and guitar with a homemade dulcimer and glass harmonica, ASMR-inspired breakdowns made from the sounds of actual garbage, watery synthesisers, harmoniums, woodwinds, and field recordings of oceans and bird sounds contributed by supporters all over the globe, which stitch the songs together as the album transitions from the end of the world to “The End of the End of the World.” As the first snowdrops emerged in the spring of 2021, what was becoming Garbage Island was mixed in a 1970s camper trailer Jake had spent the winter converting into a mobile, solar-powered recording studio.
– Mathias Kom
Garbage Island will be released on June 24, 2022, through You’ve Changed Records in North America and BB*Island everywhere else, with artwork by Emmie Tsumura. A companion comic book, Illustrated Field Guide to the Birds of Garbage Island, will accompany a limited first edition, with contributions by artists including Shary Boyle, Darren Hayman, Shotgun Jimmie, Booboo Tannenbaum, David Ivar Herman Dune and more.
Track Listing
Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Content To Point The Way”
$21.00
“Content To Point The Way” offers fans the long-awaited return of the traditional timeless country that Daniel Romano became known for on albums such as Sleep Beneath The Willow, Come Cry With Me, and If I’ve Only One Time Asking, but here elevated by his current group The Outfit, world’s finest purveyors of musical skill and vibe. Stunning wordplay, timeless songwriting, and musical brilliance combine on one of Daniel Romano’s most popular releases.
YOU’VE CHANGED RECORDS LAUNCHES THE ARCHIVE SERIES, OFFERING LIMITED EDITION VINYL PRESSINGS OF DANIEL ROMANO’S RENOWNED 2020 “BANDCAMP” ALBUMS!
In 2020, Daniel Romano and his increasingly exalted band “The Outfit” were forced home, faced with the cancellation of tours and all live engagements at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Almost immediately, Daniel instigated a near legendary run of new albums, releasing 10 full-length albums in the span of nearly the same number of weeks. Genre-spanning, astoundingly distinct artistic achievements, these albums were originally released exclusively in digital only formats on Bandcamp. They were direct and immediate missives from one of the most talented, prolific, ambitious, and exciting artists of his generation. We are thrilled to begin releasing these albums now in very special limited-edition vinyl pressings.
“Content To Point The Way” offers fans the long-awaited return of the traditional timeless country that Daniel Romano became known for on albums such as Sleep Beneath The Willow, Come Cry With Me, and If I’ve Only One Time Asking, but here elevated by his current group The Outfit, world’s finest purveyors of musical skill and vibe. Stunning wordplay, timeless songwriting, and musical brilliance combine on one of Daniel Romano’s most popular releases.
Released simultaneously with the limited-edition LP – YCA-001 Archives Vol 3 – Daniel Romano – “Vision Of The Higher Dream”
Track Listing
- If Words Can't Express
- Bits And Pieces
- They Haven't Got A Word For That Yet
- You'd Think I'd Think
- You've Always Been With Her
- A Pig Is A Pig Jig
- Diamonds And Dogs
- Little Shirley Melrose
- I'm So Lost Without You
- Make Believe Love
Credits
- Recorded by Daniel Romano
- Mixed by Kenneth Roy Meehan
- Mastered by Kristian Montano
- THE OUTFIT:
- Roddy Rossetti - bass
- Julianna Riolino - vocals
- Ian Romano - drums
- Daniel Romano - vocals, guitars
- David Nardi - vocals, guitars
- with:
- Mark Lalama - piano
- Aaron Goldstein - steel guitar
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Daniel Romano – “Visions Of The Higher Dream”
$21.00 – $40.00
“Visions Of The Higher Dream” is an expression of rich, visionary psychaedelia, powerfully arranged and immaculately performed, and thoroughly beautiful in its scope and in its details. It is as complete a statement, and as fully executed a vision as the famously restless Daniel Romano has offered: a timeless and timely evocation of the higher dream.
PLEASE NOTE: The combo option includes both new Daniel Romano Archive LPs: Daniel Romano – “Visions Of The Higher Dream” (YCA-001) and Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Content To Point The Way” (YCA-002).
PLEASE NOTE: This is a special pre-order offer. Any orders containing “Visions Of The Higher Dream” will ship on or before May 20.
YOU’VE CHANGED RECORDS LAUNCHES THE ARCHIVE SERIES, OFFERING LIMITED EDITION VINYL PRESSINGS OF DANIEL ROMANO’S RENOWNED 2020 “BANDCAMP” ALBUMS!
In 2020, Daniel Romano and his increasingly exalted band “The Outfit” were forced home, faced with the cancellation of tours and all live engagements at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Almost immediately, Daniel instigated a near legendary run of new albums, releasing 10 full-length albums in the span of nearly the same number of weeks. Genre-spanning, astoundingly distinct artistic achievements, these albums were originally released exclusively in digital only formats on Bandcamp. They were direct and immediate missives from one of the most talented, prolific, ambitious, and exciting artists of his generation. We are thrilled to begin releasing these albums now in very special limited-edition vinyl pressings.
“Visions Of The Higher Dream” is an expression of rich, visionary psychaedelia, powerfully arranged and immaculately performed, and thoroughly beautiful in its scope and in its details. It is as complete a statement, and as fully executed a vision as this famously restless artist has offered: a timeless and timely evocation of the higher dream.
Released simultaneously with the limited-edition LP YCA-002 Archives Vol 4 – Daniel Romano’s Outfit – “Content To Point The Way’
Track Listing
- Where May I Take My Rest
- I Cannot Be More Lonely
- Girl In A Bath Full Of Tears
- Lilac About Thy Crown
- Nobody Sees A Lowered Face
- Boy In A Crow-skin Cape
- At Times The Fools Sing Freely
- Nothing Is Still (In A Shaken Heart)
- Visions Of The Higher Dream
- Paper Rose
Credits
- Recorded, performed, mixed by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Kristian Montano
- Raha Javanfar - Violin
- Joseph Shabason - Saxophone, flute
- Aaron Goldstein - Steel Guitar
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Steven Lambke – Volcano Volcano
$20.00 – $42.00
Volcano Volcano makes songs and poems and worlds out of the rudimentary, ordinary, everyday things at hand. There are parts of Volcano Volcano that are an excavation into the evils that engulf us, into the mess we’ve made of life and the world, but with the purpose of dreaming together a new world “re-ordered from below”. There is a cast of characters in these songs that provide the sustenance for this: high tides, worlds filled to the brim, full moons and shooting stars, sunsets, daybreaks and twilight, reconstituted truths and love anyway, sidewalk-crack flowers, sparks and moons in the ocean, a living, a singing anyway. A sort of way of living that mines the everyday for surprise, tiny burst of joy and a dedicated practice of hope.
Volcano Volcano lets us all be “fear-filled dreamers, joyful, tall, and brave”, and within those dreams, we learn new possibilities.
NOTE #2: The Steven Lambke 3-Pack is a special offer that includes all three full-length Steven Lambke albums: Volcano Volcano, Dark Blue and Days Of Heaven at super-duper discounted price!
VOLCANO VOLCANO
album notes by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
I’d describe Steven Lambke as a working musician – that is, someone who is embedded in, responsible to, and who holds space for a community of artists that create against the odds of the music industry, without contracts, awards, and acolytes. Lambke is the sort of person that you can go to with nothing but an idea, and he’ll do whatever he can to support you in actualizing that idea. That’s rare.
I first met Steve several years ago in a park in Peterborough, ON. He was dressed in his own humility, apologetically selling his own merch. I bought a copy of his chapbook “Lyrics”. He seemed embarrassed at the very transaction. I liked that.
He’s seen the music world from all angles – as a singer-songwriter performing as Baby Eagle, as a touring boy-band rock-and-roller as a member of the Constantines, as the Creative Director of Sappyfest in Sackville, NB and finally, as a co-founder of the artist-run label You’ve Changed Records. These experiences have led Lambke to create on the margins of an industry driven by sales and a particular kind of recognition, and to think carefully about how he embodies his practice of art-making, and the work his music is doing in the world.
I’m writing this in the dreariness of the end of October in Ontario, while the pandemic continues to crush independent music and art-making. Tom Power is on the radio interviewing Ed Shereen on his new record. Shereen is talking about his worst nightmare – which is releasing a record into the void, with little engagement from the public, without radio play and without as Shereen says, being part of the conversation.
Maybe that sounds reasonable to the audience of CBC’s q.
This sounds absurd to me. Not only is Shereen’s worst nightmare the reality most musicians live within, but our reality is one that despite dismal bank accounts is a reality that is also full of joy, richness, community, and meaning if you know where to listen. Lambke’s new release, Volcano Volcano is the evidence.
Volcano Volcano is an invitation, an exploration of potential, an opportunity for listening and thinking and relating that holds space for otherwise thinking and shared meaning-making. The making of this record, from its sonics and aesthetics to its lyrics and composition communicate a vital potential to communally re-order, re-invent and re-connect to something beyond ourselves. This requires something out of the ordinary from both performer and audience. It asks us to think of music and performance in an open and expansive way, beyond the normal separate enclosures wherein the performer turns up the volume demanding to be heard and seen, basking in applause, before selling merch side stage, and then driving away to a sad motel somewhere. It requires us to meet.
Written over the past few years, not specifically during the pandemic, and recorded at Camera Varda (the studio built by Daniel Romano) in Welland in January 2021, the album’s approach spilled out of the studio and into the real world. Lambke took the basic studio-quality bed tracks home, taking responsibility over the rest of the process, experimenting with singing, mixing, and utilizing a series of (in his words) “junky instruments” – $30 guitars from Goodwill, a recorder and a melodica/melodion, dollar store shakers and the cheapest tambourine – sound making vessels that in the hands of an amateur might be cringe worthy heavy-handed metaphor. In Volcano Volcano, these are the moments where practice braids together sound and lyrics – and those are the moments that feel most alive, stretching one’s expectations of the very act of recording and listening.
It seems clear to me that the aural was a foundational methodology of the making of this record. In “Brave Thoughts”, the time is played loose, and playing like that requires a commitment to listening to the other sounds in the band and allowing the lyrics to become embodied in sound. That deep practice of listening then becomes a meditation on meaning making. Lambke’s lyrics are coded, layered, and full of multiple meanings, and yet free of symbolism for the sake of symbolism. Lyrically the album is specific, and an affirmation of the natural worlds around us. These songs are filled with tiny moments that daily life can gloss over, but where minds like Steven Lambke’s find abundance. Both lyrically and musically, this album makes songs and poems and worlds out of the rudimentary, ordinary, everyday things at hand.
There are parts of Volcano Volcano that are an excavation into the evils that engulf us, into the mess we’ve made of life and the world, but with the purpose, I think, of dreaming together a new world “re-ordered from below”. There is a cast of characters in these songs that provide the sustenance for this: high tides, worlds filled to the brim, full moons and shooting stars, sunsets, daybreaks and twilight, reconstituted truths and love anyway, sidewalk-crack flowers, sparks and moons in the ocean, a living, a singing anyway. A sort of way of living that mines the everyday for surprise, tiny burst of joy and a dedicated practice of hope. Listen to the chorus of the title track, “Volcano Volcano” and you’ll be whistling it around the house in your jogging pants for hours after the record ends. In “April, May, June” the choir of junk is a having a spoon fight, naked under the moon. The final track, “Dream with Me”, is the perfect summation of the record. It invites us, and compels us, creators and listener, to dream together, through sorrow, doubt and fear.
Volcano Volcano lets us all be “fear-filled dreamers, joyful, tall, and brave”, and within those dreams, we learn new possibilities.
Track Listing
- Volcano Volcano
- The World Filled To The Brim
- April, May, and June
- Brave Thoughts
- Bats In Blue Twilight
- Every Lover Knows
- Truth Marks
- Sea Level
- Turn The Planet Over
- Sorrow And Doubt
- Dream With Me
Credits
- Performed by:
- Steven Lambke – vocals, guitars, percussion, melodion, recorder
- Daniel Romano – drums, organ, vocals
- David Nardi – bass
- with:
- Carson McHone – vocals
- William Kidman – guitar solo on “Sorrow And Doubt”
- Recorded by Daniel Romano at Camera Varda and at home in Toronto by Steven Lambke
- Mixed by Steven Lambke
- Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering
- Written by Steven Lambke
- Artwork by Shary Boyle
- Layout and Design by Paul Henderson
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Apollo Ghosts – Pink Tiger
$24.00
Pink Tiger is a 2-part, 22-song epic by Vancouver’s DIY superheroes Apollo Ghosts! Part 1, “Pink” (LP 1, tracks 1-11), is an intimate home recorded acoustic based cycle that grapples with loss, illness, death, and memory. Part 2, “Tiger” (LP 2, tracks 12-22) is an exuberant indie-garage rock celebration of the persistence of friendship, music, and hope. Apollo Ghosts draw on a long history of independent and locally focused music making, from Flying Nun to K Records to their own Vancouver scene, to reinvigorate indie guitar rock songwriter with ambition and poise.
Pink Tiger is the 2-part, 22-song epic return by Vancouver’s beloved DIY champs Apollo Ghosts!
Part 1, “Pink” (LP 1, tracks 1-11), is an intimate home recorded acoustic based cycle that grapples with loss, illness, death, and memory. Part 2, “Tiger” (LP 2, tracks 12-22) is an exuberant indie-garage rock celebration of the persistence of friendship, music, and hope. Apollo Ghosts draw on a long history of independent and locally focused music making, from Flying Nun to K Records to their own Vancouver scene, to reinvigorate indie guitar rock songwriting with ambition and poise.
—-
“About seven years ago, I stood around a makeshift fire pit in a clearing on a small gulf island with a group of my best friends. We burned a beer can and made jokes. When I started recording the first half of this record, I thought everything was falling apart. For six months, I could only hear from one ear and the doctor said it could be something quite serious. The cedars were still dying. My dad was still dying.
A year later, we recorded the second half of the record on Gabriola Island. My ear finally cleared up after the sessions were over. We listened to the final masters in the middle of the heat dome summer during the Perseid meteor shower. The heat dome eventually ended. In the fall, Amanda and I planted dozens of trees (Garry oaks, willows, alders and maples) around that fire pit. Our bass player Robbie’s having a baby this spring. Amanda’s started restoring hand-crank sewing machines. She says everything can be mended. It might be too late, but I’m going to keep planting trees every year going forward anyways.
Apollo Ghosts joked that this was a feeble attempt at making our own ‘Tusk’. Some influences this round: The Bats, Dear Nora, Little Wings, Tom T. Hall, The La’s, Beverly Glenn Copeland, disco beats, ocean swims, trees, Lucia Berlin & Lydia Davis, and as always…. the local music scene.”
— Adrian Teacher.
—-
Apollo Ghosts are a band formed in Vancouver, B.C. Canada in 2008 (founded on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh). Apollo Ghosts live currently feature Amanda P. on bass, Robbie N. on bass, Adrian Teacher on guitar and Dustin B. on drums.
Pink Tiger was recorded by Jordan Koop (Orville Peck, The Courtenays) at the Noise Floor on beautiful Gabriola; a gulf island located in the unceded traditional territory of the Snunéymux First Nation. Additional production and mixing by David Carswell (Destroyer, New Pornographers) at JC/DC Studios in Vancouver.
Track Listing
LP1 “PINK”- Pink Tiger
- Melatonin 5G
- Cloud Hotel
- But I'll Be Around (Acoustic Version)
- Rookery
- To Set The King Bloom
- Morning Voice
- Deodora
- Anxious Love, Pt. 2
- Dirty Spoons
- Surfer's Ear
- Spilling Yr Guts
- Heroic Dose
- OK Soda
- But I'll Be Around (Electric Version)
- Soft American
- Pink Boys
- Peace Motive
- Acid Jenny
- Gentlemen Go To Heaven
- Golden Teacher
- Island Kids
Credits
- Amanda P.-drums, vocals
- Robbie N.-bass, vocals
- Adrian Teacher-guitar, vocals, piano, midi, synths, drums
- All songs Apollo Ghosts (SOCAN) (c) 2021
- Cover art by Aaron Read.
- Gatefold art by Gil Goletski.
- Layout and Design by Paul Henderson.
- Back cover typeface by Lesley Johnson.
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Julie Doiron – I Thought Of You
$20.00
Julie Doiron is back! Every bit an instant classic as only she can masterfully create, Julie Doiron emanates a radiative force with her guitar and her unmistakably indomitable voice. We live for these moments, when our dearest friends find their way back to the places they love, and we once again hear their voices rise back into our lives. Featuring stunning musical contributions from Daniel Romano, Ian Romano, and Dany Placard.
Julie Doiron is back with I Thought Of You, her first solo record since 2012’s So Many Days. Every bit an instant classic as only she can masterfully create, Julie Doiron emanates a radiative force with her guitar and her unmistakably indomitable voice. Julie Doiron is a maker of songs and a teller of stories, wielding her instruments like a craftsperson would their tools.
In her time away from the solo spotlight she has remained entwined with music, albeit in consortions with others; releasing a critically acclaimed record with members of Cancer Bats and Eamon McGrath under the name Julie and The Wrong Guys, reworking some of her previous work in Spanish for Spanish label Acuarela and returning to her otherworldly collaboration with Mount Eerie for Lost Wisdom pt 2, to name but a few. These are additions to Julie’s long and storied history of collaboration, working with luminaries like Gord Downie, Herman Dune, a split record with Okkervil River, and the unforgettable and iconic Eric’s Trip, the first Canadian band ever signed to legendary American record label Sub Pop.
Ever the bountiful songwriter, Julie had been writing songs in the 9 years since her last solo record, keeping them close and waiting for it to feel right to head back into a studio. When the time came, she enlisted close and trusted friends to collaborate in the process: the uber-prolific and multi-talented Daniel Romano, superstar drummer Ian Romano, and Quebecois songwriter Dany Placard on bass. Together the quartet retreated to a cabin in the woods to record Julie’s first solo offering in 9 years. The resulting album, I Thought Of You, is every bit a return, as Julie Doiron finds her way back with new songs to enthrall our hearts, while simultaneously finding her way back to herself. We live for these moments, when our dearest friends find their way back to the places they love, and we once again hear their voices rise back into our lives.
It’s Julie’s voice that rises to meet us from the get-go. Album opener “You Gave Me The Key” welcomes us in, a quintessential Julie Doiron song where she announces with a joyful resignation “here I am, starting over again”. Title track “I Thought Of You” is a rolling twang-tinged Doiron jam, an instant classic. As we move towards the tail end of the record we share in “Darkness To Light” a soulful ballad ruminating on moving our way out of dark days and into lighter shades. On “Back To The Water” Julie sings over gently plucked strings “I’ve been here before” as she has, and so have we, and we are once again here together.
I Thought Of You is a return of the breath and fire of Julie Doiron and we are lucky to find ourselves back in the embrace of her tender and powerful forces.
Track Listing
- You Gave Me The Key
- Thought Of You
- Dreamed I Was
- Just When I Thought
- Et Mon Amour
- Good Reason
- Cancel The Party
- How Can We?
- Darkness To Light
- Ran
- The Letters We Sent
- They Wanted Me To Say
- Back To The Water
Credits
- All songs written by Julie Doiron
- Peformed by: Julie Doiron, vocals, guitar; Dany Placard, bass; Daniel Romano, guitars, keys, percussion; Ian Romano, drums; Michael Feuerstack, pedal steel on Darkness to Light
- This album was recorded in February 2020 at Studio B-12 in Valcourt, Québec and at Studio La Shed in Montréal, Québec.
- Engineered by Dany Placard with the exception of the vocals for The Letters we Sent which were sung at Studio La Grosse Rose in Memramcook, NB, engineered by Mico Roy.
- Mixed by Kenneth Roy Meehan.
- Mastered by Harris Newman, Grey Market Mastering.
- Photo by Jules Boislard-Gauthier.
- Design by Daniel Romano.
Daniel Romano – Cobra Poems
$12.50 – $20.00
If all the words of joy should shed their syllabic countenance, would they not still resonate at this same frequency? If distillate love made aural and amplified struck every unbidden ear, would it not blossom with this same audible bouquet? Here then is the document – the evidence, the proof, the truth, the real thing, the one thing, the only thing. Daniel Romano’s Outfit, now and always. Call it communion. Call it a rhapsody. Call it Cobra Poems. Go on. Dig it.
The earth is a drum, they say. Shrouded by magnetic halo that beats and oscillates in traceable resonance. All heaven can bear witness to the sonorous vibrance of our globe and mark that claim as truth. Who then is bold enough to strike its batter-head? Who hears the metronomic thrum at the heart of all earthbound life and marking the tempo, plays in rapturous consonance? Who tunes the harps and lyres of all lowing beasts, to blaze euphonic across the glowing firmament? The Outfit, The Outfit, The Outfit, The Outfit. Strum, and strike, and sing, in tune, in joy, in love. Mark well the name. They who lift the bowing head of every grieving flower. They who coo that unvanquished animal hymn to every dog, and ox, and muskox, and muskdog. That well-shod fiefdom of unmatched capacity. That feckful gang beholden to spirit alone. If child is father to the man, then what cosmic nursery sired such pleiadic songsmiths? The trueborn enemies of all tuneless brutality. The wreckers of every false rural minstrel and showboat lout of ill-repute. The Outfit, The Outfit, The Outfit, The Outfit. The crater is rent, and surfeit chasmic beasts quake and roil in naked lust for the spoils of beauty. Who strikes the silver chord that shudders their miasmic vaults? Who heralds the balm of love? If music be the fuel of lungs then pray on this. The Outfit, The Outfit, The Outfit. If all the words of joy should shed their syllabic countenance, would they not still resonate at this same frequency? If distillate love made aural and amplified struck every unbidden ear, would it not blossom with this same audible bouquet? Here then is the document – the evidence, the proof, the truth, the real thing, the one thing, the only thing. Daniel Romano’s Outfit, now and always. Call it communion. Call it a rhapsody. Call it Cobra Poems. Go on. Dig it.
Track Listing
- Tragic Head
- Even In The Loom Of A Caress
- Nocturne Child
- The Motions
- Holy Trumpeteer
- Animals Above Our Town
- Tears Through A Sunrise
- Baby If We Stick It Out
- Still Dreaming
- Camera Varda
Credits
- The Outfit:
- Daniel Romano
- Ian Romano
- Julianna Riolino
- Roddy Rozetti
- David Nardi
- with Mark Lalama, Carson McHone, Aaron Hutchinson, David Romano
- Recorded and Mixed at Camera Varda by Kenneth Roy Meehan
- Mastered by Kristian Montano
-
- Photograph by Carson McHone
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Daniel Romano – Fully Plugged In
$18.00 – $35.00
PLEASE NOTE: The combo option includes both new Daniel Romano LPs: Daniel Romano – Fully Plugged In (YC-050) and Daniel Romano – Cobra Poems (YC-051)
Recorded live in Atlanta in early 2020 in the final hours before the stages of the aching world fell dark, and the wandering, yearnful musicians were sent home to recollect, to reminisce, to plan – or in the case of the famously prolific Daniel Romano to reactive a dedicated studio practice – Fully Plugged In celebrates the sweat filled nights, the communal noise, the profound physical presence at the heart of rock and roll. Together the Outfit bring a classic swagger, an epic, electric, eternal folk, a primal freedom to a setlist drawn from Romano’s rich songbook, (the Kink’s God’s Children sticking around long enough to get a full (and beautiful) run-through). Outfit singer Julianna Riolino, who’s voice blends so perfectly with Romano’s own, steps powerfully into the spotlight at key moments, ripping open the song in surprising opener “Rhythmic Blood” and ripping open your heart in the country weeper “The One That Got Away (Came Back Today)”.
Here, hear – wild sounds, genius song-writing, ebullient drumming, exuberant musicality, and disparate influences are powerfully, uniquely synthesized. Shockingly united. Fully Plugged In.
It’s time to get live.
Track Listing
- Rhythmic Blood
- God’s Children
- Impossible Green
- Anyone’s Arms
- First Yoke
- All The Reaching Trims
- She Was The World To Me
- The One That Got Away
- Gone Is (All But A Quarry Of Stone)
- A Rat Without A Tale
- I’m Alone Now
- The Pride Of Queens
Credits
- The Outfit:
- Daniel Romano
- Ian Romano
- Julianna Riolino
- Roddy Rozetti
- David Nardi
- Recorded Live at The Earl
- Mixed by Kenneth Roy Meehan
- Mastered by Tony Cicero
- Photograph by Carson McHone
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Status / Non-Status – 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years
$14.00
Status/Non-Status is the new name for the ongoing musical work of Anishinaabe community worker Adam Sturgeon (Nme’) and his longtime collaborators (formerly known as Whoop-Szo). The band spent a decade carving a path through Canada’s DIY scene before achieving their widest recognition with 2019’s acclaimed long player Warrior Down (You’ve Changed Records). This album confronted Sturgeon’s complex family history and identity and was long-listed Polaris Prize among numerous other accolades. Here, the band emerges renewed, with more stories to share. 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years was recorded in Mexico and is highlights the band’s unique mix of heavy psychedelia, anthemic indie rock, political story telling, and inter-cultural exchange.
Status/Non-Status is the new name for the ongoing musical work of Anishinaabe community worker Adam Sturgeon (Nme’) and his longtime collaborators (formerly known as Whoop-Szo). The band spent a decade carving a path through Canada’s DIY scene before achieving their widest recognition with 2019’s acclaimed long player Warrior Down (You’ve Changed Records). This album confronted Sturgeon’s complex family history and identity and was long-listed Polaris Prize among numerous other accolades. Today, the band emerges renewed, with more stories to share. 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years was recorded in Mexico and highlights the band’s unique mix of heavy psychedelia, anthemic indie rock, political story telling, and inter-cultural exchange.
Adam is ‘non-status’ as defined by the Canadian government. Adam’s grandfather Ralph made the difficult decision to enfranchise in order to support himself and his family by joining the Armed Forces. Enfranchisement was the government’s term for the legal process of turning in one’s Status Card, terminating one’s Indian Status, and becoming instead a Canadian citizen. It was a pillar of the government’s assimilation policy and a requirement for any Indigenous person who wished to enlist.
In the name of providing a better life for himself and his family, Ralph was required to forsake his Anishinaabe roots, an all-too-common experience for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. Acts of colonial violence such as enfranchisement, the residential school system, and the Indian Act have resulted in disconnection amongst generations of Indigenous people from their communities, languages, land, and identities. Today, new voices are rising up and — through acts of reclamation via art, language, music, and community — taking back spaces that have been dominated by settler culture for so many years.
Who is native enough? Who ‘counts’ as Indigenous, and who does not? These questions swirl through the Canadian arts discourse today, impacting every medium and revealing fundamental inadequacies within our current identity-defining systems. For Adam, the proof is in the work; his commitment to telling his family’s story with integrity and truth informs every aspect of his music and his life. Now a father to his own young son, it is the future that allows Adam to dig further into his roots.
“When we tell stories, we have a responsibility to tell the truth. Do the necessary work to earn trust. Share your experience as one voice within a greater circle … and find a home.”
1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years, featuring lead single “Find a Home,” is out this spring on You’ve Changed Records / Grizzlar Records. It is available as a deluxe single sided 12″ EP with graphic etching on side B.
Track Listing
- Find A Home
- Genicidio
- Untitled Travelogue
- Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
- 500 Years
Credits
- Recorded by Jesus Canibales in Guadalajara, Jalisco province, Mexico, at Rockweiler Studio
- Production and editing by Kyl Ashbourne and Adam Sturgeon
- Mixed and Mastered by Jesse Gander at Rain City Recorders in Vancouver, Canada
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Fiver with The Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition
$14.00 – $18.00
Simone Schmidt is a versatile and thorough craftsman — a distinct vocalist, guitarist, and wordsmith; a rigorous researcher, producer, and designer; a friend to many and enemy to some. Over the past 13 years and 7 full length records, Schmidt has largely rejected the logic of the music industry, employing many aliases in the course of creating a robust discography that engages various strains of North American folk and Country music, from Old Time to Psychedelic Country. In a totally unpredictable follow up to the historical fiction of Fiver’s Audible Songs From Rockwood (2017), Fiver with The Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition wrangles the impulses of a new generation of improvisational musicians toward an unexpected reimagining of Country music and its possibilities.
Do you ever, come evening, in fine freeway traffic,
collide with the fear of your talents mis-used?
You look to the drivers who pleasure in honking,
their noise ill-directed as the prior abuse.
- From “Sick Gladiola”
Simone Schmidt is a versatile and thorough craftsman — a distinct vocalist, guitarist, and wordsmith; a rigorous researcher, producer, and designer; a friend to many and enemy to some. Over the past 13 years and 7 full length records, Schmidt has largely rejected the logic of the music industry, employing many aliases in the course of creating a robust discography that engages various strains of North American folk and Country music, from Old Time to Psychedelic Country[1]. In a totally unpredictable follow up to the historical fiction of Fiver’s Audible Songs From Rockwood (2017), Fiver with The Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition wrangles the impulses of a new generation of improvisational musicians toward an unexpected reimagining of Country music and its possibilities.
Throughout 2017-2018, Toronto-based Simone Schmidt (Fiver) traveled east to a small white house in Scotch Village in unceded Mi’kma’ki, to arrange the music with Bianca Palmer (drums, percussion), Nick Dourado (lap steel, piano, vibes, sax), and Jeremy Costello (synths, bass, voice). Known for their work with Beverly Glenn Copeland, the unit was dubbed the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition for their improvisational tendencies and geographic location. Indebted to Dourado and Palmer’s teacher, drummer Jerry Granelli (Vince Guaraldi trio) and the improvised music community of the Creative Music Workshop, theirs is a practice based in deep listening and presence in the moment. What better players to realize a set of songs concerned with the aggregate experiences that compose the now, the cycles of life and death, labour and political thought borne by the present condition?
Throughout the 8 song album, Schmidt’s characters describe a world on the brink. They sing it into being through Country’s forms and tropes — some rendered intact, some tangential, and some pushed off the road to new historical ends. The album’s first single, “Leaning Hard (On My Peripheral Vision)”, provides the clearest musical touchstone to the tradition, as Schmidt and Costello croon over a walking bass, acoustic guitar, lap steel and creative brushwork. Confronted with the forked tongue of a dynastic power, Schmidt calls for revised strategies of solidarity to confront dishonesty: “The high road once proposed leads only to a negative peace,” references MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he admonishes the white moderate “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” As with most of Schmidt’s writing, from here the song can be read multiple ways, and it should be. “Sick Gladiola” is a wise take on the classic “country-boy-moves-to-the-city-to-make-it-big” song in the footsteps of Waylon, Sparks, Hall (you name ‘em, they’ve done it). Rather than lamenting the loss of innocence, the singer bemoans the parallel desecrations of the human spirit, creative vocation, and the land, as a result of this patterned uprooting. Here Schmidt nods to 80’s Country production, with phaser, piano, synth, sax, all stacked in considered passages.
But the throughlines to Country are not always so central to the sound — Dourado’s chops, Palmer’s voicing, and Costello’s dexterity ensure that the arrangements owe as much to Duke as they do to Deford. Album opener “Yeah But Uhh Hey” employs Roger Miller style nonsense lyrics toward a gig worker’s work song: “That’s one carrion cold only doing what it’s told cuz it’s for money… Yeah-but-uhh.. hey, we’ll find a way to make it right.” Is the chorus a question or an affirmation? The double meaning drives home the precariousness of conviction. “Death Is Only A Dream” responds to a Ralph Stanley’s gospel song of the same name, upending his Christian comfort in heaven with the mournful assertion that, in retrospect, paradise is a moment alive together on earth. This may not be country music at all, but as the dirge builds from mournful minimalism to outright celebration, Dourado’s piano voices the melody of traditional folk song John Henry, a reference to loss, labour and reformation.
Schmidt’s voice is versatile, capable, and always its own. “Jr. Wreck” investigates what new modes of honesty are available through rejection. At once devastating and funny, the Atlantic School’s impeccable timing provides Schmidt’s ancient sadness the space to sing the word “piss” with subdued sophistication. “Paid In Pride” describes a trophy wife’s labour, as Palmer holds a steady four-count on the bass drum and an almost disco groove on the hi-hats. It builds into banger territory — cavernous and paranoid, overwhelming, almost violent — dissolving into the elegant acoustic sounds of its origin. Album closer “For Your Sake” is an achingly beautiful folk song sung over Schmidt’s piedmont picked guitar which arrives out of the wash of Costello’s new age synths and wordless vocal, like the very union described in the lyric: “Come to me in times of trouble / I would be there for your sake / for your sake in mine is doubled / yours and mine in tandem quake.”
From beginning to end, Fiver and the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition remain open and adaptable to sound and natural gestures. The playfulness and virtuosity of their live performance can be heard through the album’s arc, as the songs transition from one to the next or fall apart, sometimes in a racket, more often in a total jam. The result is an album that doesn’t baffle the listener with sonic illusions, sly production, or gimmicks. Rather, it graciously invites us into the wonder of a gathering of people who are getting serious and having fun, who know how to listen to each other, listen together, and tap into the beauty emerging from shared space.
[1] Lost the Plot (Triple Crown Recordings 2011), Audible Songs from Rockwood (Idee Fixe, 2017) as Fiver, Still Holding (Idee Fixe Records, 2016) and If It’s Real (Idee Fixe Records, 2012) with the psychedelic rock band The Highest Order, and Songs of Man (Outside Music, 2011) and Forest of Tears (Blue Fog Recordings, 2008) as the frontman of One Hundred Dollars.
Track Listing
- Yeah But Uhh Hey
- Leaning Hard (On My Peripheral Vision)
- June Like A Bug
- Jr. Wreck
- Sick Gladiola
- Death Is Only A Dream
- Paid In Pride
- For Your Sake (featuring Special Costello)
Credits
- All lyrics by Simone Schmidt
- All songs performed and arranged by FIVER & THE ATLANTIC SCHOOL OF SPONTANEOUS COMPOSITION
- Jeremy Costello – Bass, Synthesizers, Voice & Bird Whistle
- Nick Dourado – Lap Steel, Piano, Vibes
- Bianca Palmer – Drums, Percussion
- Simone Schmidt – Guitar, Voice
- Produced by Simone Schmidt
- Engineered by Gavin Gardiner at Hotel2Tango
- Mixed by Gavin Gardiner at All Day Coconut
- Mastered by Phil Demetro at the Lacquer Channel
- Cover art by Simone Schmidt & Jeff Bierk
- Photographs by Jeff Bierk
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – Theory Of Ice
$14.00 – $22.00
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, artist, and musician who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. The result of an ongoing practice in the poetics of language reclamation and the aesthetics of relationship, Theory of Ice breaks open the intersections between politics, story, and song—revealing a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Theory of Ice is a powerful act of world-building and creative sovereignty by Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
One of the most compelling and important Indigenous voices of her generation, Leanne is the renowned author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail); This Accident of Being Lost (winner of the MacEwan University Book of the Year; finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Quill & Quire); As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (awarded Best Subsequent Book by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association); and the creator of the album f(l)light which combined complex poetry and multi-layered stories of the land, spirit, and body with lush electronic/acoustic arrangements. This new album, Theory Of Ice is the result of an ongoing practice in the poetics and aesthetics of musical relationship, the material originating in written poetry, and worked into surprising, richly organic, song-forms through a collaborative generative process with bandmates Ansley Simpson and Nick Ferrio, producer Jonas Bonetta (Evening Hymns), and producer Jim Bryson.
“I step over watery edges…” The opening line of the album’s first track “Break Up” welcomes you into a world likely not encountered or immediately recognized by the majority of the North American settler population. Imagery circles in fragments, as water moves between forms: ice, liquid, air. We are at the intersection of states, the intersection of ways of understanding, of ways of describing, contemporary science mixing with Nishnaabeg intellectual practices. The language is precise, and surprising in its precision: “there is euphotic rising and falling / orbits of dispossession and reattachment // achieving maximum density: 39 degrees farenheit.” (Disorientation is okay. I too had to look up “euphotic”: “..of, relating to, or constituting the upper layers of a body of water into which sufficient light penetrates to permit growth of green plants” according to Merriam-Webster). Poetry often leans on metaphor for its effect, for its shocks: metaphor as an assertion of likeness, of something shared, it shocks with the newness and unexpectedness of the comparison. This type of language works because a fundamental unlikeness between the objects of the metaphor is understood, and so the distinction between objects is ultimately confirmed. The language here shocks in a different way. This language reveals relationship, embedded Nishnaabemowin appearing as both definition and poetry, a revelation of a way of thinking: “aabawe: the first warmth of spring / aabawe: a loosening of the mind / to forgive.” I hear this as a generous invitation, a reinvention of understanding, the chorus rising beautifully on a melody of “gathering” of “swimming towards light”, “thinking”, “rethinking”, and “thinking otherwise.”
Life is lived within water, we are made of water, we need clean water to live, and water exists in different states: ice, liquid, air, snow. Given a particular set of circumstances (for example where capitalism or settler-colonialism obliterates meaning, connection, and bodies) you might wish to live somewhere solid. You might want to live where you can be held, and where your hope can be held fast. In Noopiming: The Cure For White Ladies, the narrator speaks from within a frozen lake, where “there is solace in being cut off”, and “there is freedom enmeshed within that state”, asserting “being frozen in the lake is another kind of life.” Many of the songs of Theory Of Ice appear as poems in Noopiming. The album and the novel are related but distinct works, two parts of a greater project of thinking, of describing the world, of affirming a Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg existence through story and song and art. I believe “OK Indicts” is sung from this place of holding, from within this ice: “I saved shards of hope”; “I saved drops of light”. A song is a beautiful place to hold a thought, to honour a life.
Viscosity, the property, is a measure of a fluid’s internal resistance, its internal friction. “Viscosity”, the song, rides a thick groove, a reckless darkness of thick bass and drums, as it ruthlessly dissects a contemporary world that celebrates connectivity over connection, taking hard measure of the inherent friction and alienation in our social-mediated society: this “yelling the loudest in the empty room”; this “feeding fish to insecurities.” And then, after an unexpected, disrupting piano solo, rising and falling, another voice enters, and the song rises, less alone, removing itself from that world of digital violence, peeling off from the “blue light.” A remarkable change is enacted and described: building a fire, alert to the coldness of the world, and the warmth of each other, in relationship, “careful moment after careful moment.” The careful, articulate delivery of the poetry, the communal act of playing music, of singing together, of listening to each other, of trusting in each other in the creation and generation of the song – this offers a model of how worlds are generated.
“Surface Tension” arrives in a hush, Leanne dueting with John K Samson (of The Weakerthans), her friend, peer, and, through his work with Arbeiter Ring, sometimes publisher. It’s a quiet, beautiful celebration of the “simple stolen moments” and our ability “to love when we are able.” I hear the song as a gift, making those moments feel more possible, more present.
The continuity of Indigenous resistance, rebellion, and truth is reaffirmed with a powerful new arrangement by Leanne and her band of Willie Dunn’s “I Pity The Country.” Most widely known as the first track on the essential Native North America Vol 1. (Light In The Attic, 2014) compilation, the song’s ongoing relevance and resonance is a powerful indictment of the continuation and persistence of settler colonial violence in North America. The presentation here is completely contemporary and rattling in the caverns of history. It is a song filled to the highest edge with sublimated rage and a profoundly caring humanity in every word: the settler colonial state is not hated, it is pitied, for its smallness, its evil, its perpetual cruelty. I have heard this song sung at protests and marches, against the illegal occupation of unceded lands, in support of water and land protectors, by beautiful voices rallied together, united in a hope for restoration and justice. I heard Leanne and Ansley and Nick sing this song at Native North American gathering in Ottawa, in a room filled with Willie Dunn’s family and his peers, Willie Thrasher, Eric Landry, Willie Mitchell, the great poet Duke Redbird, the film-maker, musician, and force of nature Alanis Obomsawin. Immediately before Leanne’s performance news reached the auditorium that Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley was acquitted by an all-white jury in the murder of Colton Boushie, the 22 year old man from Cree Red Pheasant First Nation. Screaming. Crying. Terrible silence. This is the only song I know that can hold this feeling. It’s the only song I know that’s big enough. I pity this country.
The experience of art is a powerful way of knowing, of learning; it is a gift from the world to the listener. It is an action and a way of being for the maker, it is a relationship with the world. I am thankful for the generosity of the worlds here, the life here. Life goes on in the details, and death too, a part of life. The world is amassed with details. The poet records those details as precisely as she can, singing of blankets, books, plastic flowers, pierogis, and cabbage rolls; singing of the disappearance of kids, of trailer hitches, coffee, spoons. While we were finalizing the master for the album, Leanne was definitive that it was not organized in a linear, narrative manner. It works laterally, non-hierarchically. It works musically. Yet, “Head Of The Lake” offers something like a conclusion. In the face of tragedy and in resistance to ongoing colonial violence, relationship is affirmed: “We made a circle and it helped.”; “Singing broke open hearts.” Here are Ansley and Nick, singing together, singing with Leanne, a moment of surprising beauty, understanding, and peace, and something like a conclusion, however provisional, partial, but also something like an acknowledgement of love: “in realization / we don’t exist without each other / she says: there’s nothing about you / I’m not willing to know.”
– Steven Lambke
Track Listing
- Break Up
- OK Indicts
- Viscosity
- Surface Tension
- I Pity The Country
- Failure Of Melting
- The Wake
- Head Of The Lake
Credits
- leanne betasamosake simpson - singing and speaking
- ansley simpson - acoustic guitar, singing, electric guitar
- nick ferrio - acoustic, electric, & 12 string guitars, bass, synth, keyboards, singing
- tanner pare - drums, percussion
- jim bryson - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals, synth
- john k. samson - vocals
- jonas bonnetta - keyboards, synths, percussion, bass, singing
- music written by nick ferrio, jonas bonnetta, ansley simpson and jim bryson
- i pity the country written by willie dunn
- engineered by heather kirby & jonas bonnetta
- additional engineering by jim bryson, nick ferrio, & john k. samson
- mixed by gavin gardiner
- mastered by heather kirby
- produced by jonas bonnetta
- additional production by jim bryson
- recorded at port william sound in mountain grove, ontario, with additional recording at fixed hinge in stittsville, ontario
- album art by nadia myre
Partner – Never Give Up
$12.50 – $35.00
With Never Give Up Partner has fully developed their “post classic rock” sound, leaving behind 90s rock comparisons, while furthering their celebration of Rock! Crowned with guitar solos and humorous subject matter, Partner remain committed to a radical sincerity: “We talked. We were honest with each other and honest with ourselves. Sometimes it was a lot. And when it got to be almost too much we would repeat to each other, first as a joke and then not as a joke at all, “never give up”.”.
PLEASE NOTE: The Partner 3-Pack is a special offer that includes the full-length albums Never Give Up and In Search Of Lost Time, and the EP Saturday the 14th in your chosen format!
Never Give Up is Partner’s second full-length album, following 2017’s In Search of Lost Time. In the years since their first release, the band has developed their “post classic rock” sound, leaving behind 90s rock comparisons. The new album retains elements that will be familiar to Partner fans, such as guitar solos and humorous subject matter, but with more structurally adventurous songs and abstract lyrics. They have spent the last several years on tour with drummer Simone TB, and this is evident in the looser and more confident performances captured on the album. Never Give Up was recorded by Steve Chaley at Palace Sound in the summer of 2019.
The band described the process of making the album. “In October of 2019 we found ourselves in a dark and quiet rehearsal space. We were practicing for a two person show, the first one we had played in many years. We were at a crossroads as a band, and we had no idea what the future held. All we knew was that we were going to be making music together. We weren’t sure what this music would sound like or who would be playing it with us. And then the songs started to arrive. Some of them fully formed, like the first songs we wrote. It was as much a surprise to us as anyone else when we realized we had the beginnings of our second album.”
Not all the songs came so easily. Some took over a year to complete. Some taunted the band with their elusivity. Some forced Partner to rip them apart and build them back together more than once. Never Give Up was written in rehearsal spaces, in the band’s bedrooms, in a condo, in friends’ and strangers’ houses, Air BnBs, in a cafe and on Josee’s couch and in the studio, and in the booth. “We talked. We were honest with each other and honest with ourselves. Sometimes it was a lot. And when it got to be almost too much we would repeat to each other, first as a joke and then not as a joke at all, “never give up”.”
Track Listing
- Hello And Welcome
- Rock Is My Rock
- The Pit
- Honey
- Big Gay Hands
- Good Place To Hide (At The Time)
- Roller Coasters (Life Is One)
- Couldn't Forget
- Here I Am World
- Crocodiles
Credits
- Guitar & Vocals by Josée Caron
- Bass, Vocals & Keyboard by Lucy Niles
- Drums & Percussion by Simone TB
- Written & Produced by Partner
- Engineered by Steve Chahley
- Recorded at Palace Sound
- Additional Engineering & Overdubs by Katie Wayne
- Mixed by Chris Shaw
- Mastered by Joao Carvlho
- Original Artwork by Paule Guilmain-Langlier
- Layout by Josée Caron & Paul Henderson
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Daniel Romano – How Ill Thy World Is Ordered
$12.50 – $18.00
Let’s list the facts and see which ones hold: How Ill Thy World Is Ordered is the 9th full-length Daniel Romano album to be released in 2020, but the first to manifest in the physical mediums (LP/CD) since the career spanning, era-defining live album “Okay Wow” was released way back on March 27th. This one too, features the mighty skills of The Outfit, the tightest of tight-knit rock and roll bands: Julianna Riolino (vocals), David Nardi (guitar, vocals), Roddy Rossetti (bass), Ian Romano (drums), supplemented here by Mark Lalama (organ, piano), Briana Salmena (vocals), Victor Belcastro (sax) and Aaron Hutchinson (trumpet). The band assembled in studio in a perfectly tuned geometry to record these new songs following simple guidelines and simple rules: play the whole thing, in sequence, 3 takes or bust, with no overdubs; play “the sound of the feel of a snake bite”; play “a heist on horseback for fool’s gold”.
With your left eye closed, Daniel Romano seems a master synthesizer of sound and genre, a collage artist combining the corrupted influences of a century of so-called popular music forms, a chameleonic acrobat with a near-criminal authenticity. With the other, he’s revealed as a sincerely dedicated, passionately motivated songwriter aghast at the injustices of the world, a caring bandleader and generous collaborator, a spirited and shockingly playful artist tapped into a great, unyielding inspiration.
Let’s list the facts and see which ones hold: How Ill Thy World Is Ordered is the 9th full-length Daniel Romano album to be released in 2020, but the first to manifest in the physical mediums (LP/CD) since the career spanning, era-defining live album “Okay Wow” was released way back on March 27th. This one too, features the mighty skills of The Outfit, the tightest of tight-knit rock and roll bands: Julianna Riolino (vocals), David Nardi (guitar, vocals), Roddy Rossetti (bass), Ian Romano (drums), supplemented here by Mark Lalama (organ, piano), Briana Salmena (vocals), Victor Belcastro (sax) and Aaron Hutchinson (trumpet). The band assembled in studio in a perfectly tuned geometry to record these new songs following simple guidelines and simple rules: play the whole thing, in sequence, 3 takes or bust, with no overdubs; play “the sound of the feel of a snake bite”; play “a heist on horseback for fool’s gold”.
What unexpected anthems emerge! ‘A Rat Without A Tale’, ‘Green Eye Shade’, ‘First Yoke’, ‘A Secret Still To Be Betrayed’, ‘No More Disheartened By The Dawn’ shock with the full impact of their melodies, the harmonious combination of distinct human voices, the chromed accents of a perfectly arranged horn section, and more guitar playing, real, honest-to-the-core lead guitar playing than Daniel has previously committed to tape. The two-part ‘Joys Too Often Hollow’ and the beautiful closer ‘Amaretto and Coke’ show the band as adept at the swing and sway of softer sentiments, and as quickly tender as brave.
The always-darkened clubs and the strange and dirtied hovels that offered remote shelter to this particular breed of restless musicians on their long and winding journeys across the continents have darkened more. It’s a different age to ply a trade. Every day reveals new cracks in the artifice, new crimes from the oligarchs and politicians, new types of genocide and dispossession. New visions of contempt. O, how ill this world is ordered.
Yet music can lift the spirit, can, uniquely, restore dignity. To sound together, bringing hope:
No more disheartened by the dawn,
No more a sorrow will I see,
No more shall time go trembling on,
No more will I sing misery,
No more the future will I fear,
No more an ending coming near,
No more the shades forever drawn,
No more disheartened by the dawn.
————–
LP: High quality stereo LP pressing in a beautiful Tip-on jacket
CD: How Ill on a bright and shiny disc. Play it in your old car forever
Track Listing
- A Rat Without A Tale
- How Ill Thy World Is Ordered
- How Ill Thy World Is Ordered
- Green Eye-Shade
- First Yoke
- Joys Too Often Hollowed
- Joys Too Often Hollowed Pt 2
- Drugged Vinegar
- Never Yet In Love
- A Secret Still To Be Betrayed
- No More Disheartened By The Dawn
- Amaretto And Coke
Credits
- Daniel Romano - vocals, guitar
- Julianna Riolino – vocals
- David Nardi – guitar, vocals
- Roddy Rossetti – bass
- Ian Romano – drums
- Mark Lalama – organ, piano
- Briana Salmena – vocals
- Victor Belcastro – sax
- Aaron Hutchinson – trumpet
- Kenneth Roy Meehan – mix
- Dan Weston - master
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Jon Mckiel – Bobby Joe Hope
$22.00
Tell me what you see. A game of hide and seek. A field wears the fog like an ancient argument. Wayward voices take shape just up ahead. Count down from 10 and be alone again. Abandoned to potential. In the green wide open. The rest belongs a mystery.
How do you speak through a stranger? Contain multitudes. And begin to find new kinds of design in accident. True story. In September 2015 Jon bought an old Teac A-2340, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, tapes included. He exchanged a few emails with the online seller while negotiating a deal, but they never met. The first time Jon tested out the machine at home it disclosed a beautiful dream. A single tape of astounding samples from an unknown source. He nicknamed it the Royal Sampler. They began to jam together.
I want to hear you speak. The tape might have been a lost demo for the games of hide and seek that accustom us to evasion. Listening and gathering, the only way out was through. A collaboration constructed in echo. The completed songs seem to start mid-sentence, waiting a little further along the trail. Watch your step the ground gets uncertain by the bend. The maple trees in giggling fits. The shoreline no longer sure. I hear the mourning dove. Hang on a second. You were saying. Sometimes what’s past isn’t prologue it’s blocked. How you have to pause for your mind to work backwards. Not to remember but to unforget. What if something’s missing and you get stranded in “the futureless future”? Distend time? The not-so-distant waves wrinkling. An answer. 1968 isn’t just some numbers. Scraps of an otherwise. Maybe written in another language or maybe…Is that what you meant?
The album was recorded during the summer of 2019 at Jay Crocker’s home studio in Crousetown. Under the watchful eye of Edward Snowden and a Blue Heeler named Judy. Jay and Jon transferred all the material they could excavate from the Royal Sampler along with the dialogic samples Jon had been making since that fateful September introduction. They combined these two samples with the following design principle: even in the songs organized around a Jon sample, the stranger would be woven in. A shared sonic architecture. The rest belongs a mystery.
Tell me what you see. A game of hide and seek. A field wears the fog like an ancient argument. Wayward voices take shape just up ahead. Count down from 10 and be alone again. Abandoned to potential. In the green wide open. The colour of another time. The hammock gets twisted in the wind. Knotting and undoing. A fishnet. Let loose or captured, a life repeated, a life revised. Nothing is effortless. From another era insisting, there all along. I was there all along. These sounds, like truth, can be measured in time. Speak through me. Who can tell you what is real?
Track Listing
- Mourning Dove
- Object Permanence
- Management
- Cold Hand Becomes The Master
- Night Garden
- Private Eye
- Deeper Shade
- What Kind Of Love
- Secret Of Mana
Credits
- Recorded by Jay Crocker and Jon Mckiel in Crousetown, NS and Sackville, NB
- Mixed by Jay Crocker
- Mastered by Harris Newman
- All songs written by Jon Mckiel
- Album art: "Knock Knock", paper collage, 8.5x12" 2019, Paul Henderson
- Design by Paul Henderson
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Daniel Romano – “Okay Wow”
$15.00
In a shocking turn of events, Daniel Romano has decided to give you exactly what you asked for–– He and his unparalleled live band, The Outfit, have decided that you deserved it, that it is in fact already yours––and they want to say “you’re welcome.”
The record is called “OKAY WOW”. Which is probably what you’ll say when you listen to it. It’s all your favourite songs except superior in every way to the versions you’ve exhausted.
In a shocking turn of events, Daniel Romano has decided to give you exactly what you asked for–– He and his unparalleled live band, The Outfit, have decided that you deserved it, that it is in fact already yours––and they want to say “you’re welcome.”
Band attributes of note: They all wear the same size clothing. They take the same vitamins and they love with the same warmth and tenderness. They are an outfit, united in song and banded in vitality. If you have seen them, you know all of this as it is evident. If you haven’t, then close your eyes and set the dial to ten, turn the heat up in your sparse, stuff-less, undersaturated, air-plant filled apartment and drop the needle into The Outfit.
The record is called “OKAY WOW”. Which is probably what you’ll say when you listen to it. It’s all your favourite songs except superior in every way to the versions you’ve exhausted.
“OKAY WOW” was RECORDED LIVE by Kenneth Roy Meehan the 1st while on tour across Scandinavia.
The Outfit is: Daniel Romano, David Nardi, Roddy Rosetti, Ian Romano, Juliana Riolino and Tony “The Pope” Cicero
OKAY WOW special edition LP is limited to 1500 units worldwide. Tip-on LP jacket. High quality LP pressing.
Track Listing
- Empty Husk
- Toulouse
- Hard On You
- Time Forgot (To Change My Heart)
- Roya
- The Long Mirror Of Time
- Hunger Is A Dream You Die In
- Strange Faces
- Turtle Doves
- Sucking The Old World Dry
- Nerveless
- Human Touch
- Modern Pressure
- What's To Become (Of The Meaning Of Life)
- When I Learned Your Name
Credits
- Album recorded live in Scandinavia and mixed by Kenneth Roy Meehan
- Mastered by Ryan Morey
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Transistors Sister Super Package!
Wow! Look at this! It’s the Shotgun Jimmie Transistors Sister Super Package! Features Transistor Sister (2011) and Transistor Sister 2 (2019), two stone-cold all-time classics packed with heart, riffs, good times, and sing-a-long feelings. And now, as never before, the Transistor Sister Super Package includes the bonus LP, Field of Trampolines (2016)!!! A world of Jimmie awaits!
Available in super limited quantities for a super limited time only, it’s the Shotgun Jimmie Transistors Sister Super Package, a perfect compliment to any record collection.
- Late Last Year
- Suzy
- King Of Kreuzberg
- Paper Planes
- Confidence Lodge Stairwell Recording #1
- Transistor Sister
- Too Many Flowers
- Stereo And The Stove
- Swamp Magic
- Piano
- Peace And Love
- Masterpiece
- Haze
- Refrain
- Bar's Open
- Bar's Closed
- Blues Riffs
- Tumbleweed
- Hot Pots
- Ablutions
- Fountain
- Suddenly Submarine
- Piano (with band)
- The New Sincerity
- Sappy Slogans
- Highway 401
- Jack Pine
- Sorry We’re Closed
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WHOOP-Szo – Warrior Down
$16.00
WHOOP-Szo is a blazing force of DIY rock. Fronted by Anishinaabe-Canadian community leader Adam Sturgeon, the band has spent nearly a decade carving out a reputation for themselves, rising on the strength of their musicianship, songwriting, and tireless touring. Thunderous and ground-breaking, harmonious and generative, on Warrior Down, WHOOP-Szo create an emotional weather-storm that dances conscientiously between anger and discipline, frustration, and hope for a concise, focused 35 minute examination of injustice, history, cultural reclamation, and Indigenous solidarity. Heavy and meditative, employing caustic humour, thick sludgy guitars, powerful drumming, and vocals that range from sweet to unhinged, WHOOP-Szo address the poisonous legacies of colonialism and effect positive change in the wider Canadian music and arts community.
“Who is that?”
This is the first question you’ll have when you see the arresting portrait on the cover of WHOOP-Szo’s latest album, Warrior Down.
“That’s my grandfather,” bandleader Adam Sturgeon explains. “Military man and residential school survivor,” he adds, letting that description sit before discussing what it must have been like for the Indigenous men of his grandfather’s generation to be summoned to the defense of their oppressors.
Sturgeon’s experiences as an Anishinaabe-Canadian are woven into the songs on Warrior Down. We learn more about his grandfather in album closer “Cut Your Hair”; a fragile acoustic reflection on his grandfather’s experience in residential school, and the ongoing resonance of that familial trauma.
Structurally fluid and immense in emotional scope, Warrior Down offers a series of dichotomies — pummeling percussion and sparkling gentleness, thrashing distortion and acoustic levity — that give it the dynamic of a creation story. Elemental forces compete and collide even as they seek equilibrium. The driving optimism of “Amaruq” gives way to the dissonant thud of “Gerry.” The forceful chant of “Long-Braided Hair” becomes the serene unison of “2CB.” The sparse and sardonic “6.1 – 6.2” leads to the foreboding and ruthlessly self- examining “Oda Man.” Sonically and thematically, Warrior Down depicts the unfolding of a cultural big bang, in which eruptions of truth activate a succession of healthy confrontations.
The confrontations embodied on Warrior Down take the form of cultural callouts and personal reflections on identity. The record opens with the buoyant romp of “Amaruq.” Amaruq is an Inuktituk word meaning “wolf”. It’s also the name of a school in Nunavik where Sturgeon and Palm worked during 2012. “Amaruq” is an entry point into discussions of the Inuktituk language and multilingualism in Canada, and serves as a dedication to the community that welcomed the band.
After this paean to Indigenous solidarity comes a discordant dirge that tells a tragic true story from Sturgeon’s life. “Gerry” opens with the indelible words: “Well, my cousin Gerry was shot by a cop.” When Sturgeon was growing up, he shared a deep, brotherly connection with his cousin Gerry, who gave Sturgeon his first guitar. Gerry, who moved to Holdfast, Saskatchewan lived a reclusive life, embittered by his family history told throughout the song. It was there that he was shot and killed in his own home by an RCMP officer, in a shocking instance of police brutality that has gone uninvestigated to this day. And so the song violently grieves: “Warrior down in Saskatchewan town.”
This pounding chant transitions into the mournful musing of “Long-Braided Hair” (working title: “Missing and Murdered”). On this track, the national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is posited as a type of cultural insanity: an institutionalized lack of love that encroaches on any sense of hope and connectedness in society. With this song, WHOOP-Szo bear witness to something that is being kept quiet and make it very, very loud, personalizing and amplifying the experiences of marginalized people. “Long-Braided Hair” is an urgent call for accountability, and for justice.
“Oda Man,” is a variant of odemin, the Anishinaabe word for strawberry. The strawberry is often called the “heart berry.” It symbolizes connectedness, and is foundational to teachings about creation and love. Lending still more depth: Adam is the father of a beautiful baby boy named Oda. “Oda Man” is foreboding and fragile, examining an emotionally cut-off version of masculinity alongside one that embraces emotion as a creative force. It is a reclamation of positive male values that relates back to the teachings of the heart, and seeks a form of healing that comes from resisting barriers to connection and learning how to yield to love.
The use of language is an important part of what gives the songs on Warrior Down their shape. Reclamation is an ongoing theme for WHOOP-Szo, who routinely integrate Anishinaabe words and teachings into their art to reassert aspects of Indigenous culture that have been endangered by the forced fragmentation of families and communities.
If listeners translate “Naanan” and “Nshwaaswi,” they will learn that tracks five and eight are titled with … the Anishinaabe words for five and eight. These titles serve as an invitation to think about language, and to contemplate the replacement of English numbers with Anishinaabe numbers as a countermeasure to the replacement of Indigenous names with Euro-Canadian ones that characterized part of the assimilative process in Canada.
If listeners research “6.1 – 6.2,” they will eventually discover the concept of “Indian status” as it is outlined in Sections 6(1) and 6(2) of the Indian Act, which set out the criteria for having a legally recognized Aboriginal identity.
Whether listeners want to engage with the instructiveness of the songs or just sit back and enjoy them, Warrior Down provides.
So, who is the warrior on Warrior Down? Is it Gerry? His grandfather? Or Adam himself?
The answer is not clear-cut. The role of a warrior cannot be filled by a single person, any more than the work of warriors can be performed by any one of us alone. But on Warrior Down, the strength of WHOOP-Szo’s music is made available to anyone whose world has been shocked by new truth; who feels like their spirit is scrambling in pursuit of balance; who realizes it is a fight to try and lead with love, and tries.
Track Listing
- Amaruq
- Gerry
- Long Braided Hair
- 2CB
- Naanan
- 6.1//6.2
- Oda Man
- Nshwaaswi
- Homemade Candles
- Cut Your Hair
Credits
- WHOOP-Szo: Adam Sturgeon, Kirstin Kurvink Palm, Joe Thorner, Eric Lourenco, Andrew Lennox
- Recorded and mixed by Kyle Ashbourne at the Sugar Shack in Deshkan Zibing (London, ON)
- Drums on 1-5 recorded by Nathan Lamb and Adam Sturgeon at the Out of Sound House
- 6.1//6.2 recorded by Dave Trenaman and Colleen Collins at The Quarantine in Port Greville, NS
- "The Noisy Mountain" by Zachary Gray
- Mastered by Stu McKillop at Rain City Recorders
- Typeface and drawings by Bennie Allain
- Design and layout by Alayna Hryclik
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Ancient Shapes – A Flower That Wouldn’t Bloom
$16.00
“A Flower That Wouldn’t Bloom” is the third offering from the flower pop super group “Ancient Shapes”. They have been called “ the best band since computers” and also “incredibly good as hell” when it comes to their live engagements and sock hop shake down events. Inside this heated material you will find such subjects as sadness, happiness, loneliness, togetherness, longing, acceptance, colonial guilt complexes and home town optimism.
“A Flower That Wouldn’t Bloom” is the third offering from the flower pop super group “Ancient Shapes”. In all realities it is the amalgamation of two recording sessions that took place almost a year apart–– in essence this is the greatest hits compilation.
Ancient Shapes is comprised of Daniel Romano, David Nardi, Vee Bell, Roddy Rosetti and Ian Romano. They have been called “ the best band since computers” and also “incredibly good as hell” when it comes to their live engagements and sock hop shake down events. The group has traveled the world over sharing their songs and ideas with others, now they offer us this: A flower that just refuses to bloom.
Inside this heated material you will find such subjects as sadness, happiness, loneliness, togetherness, longing, acceptance, colonial guilt complexes and home town optimism.
There was the first one, and everyone seemed to like that, and the second one people liked too… this is the third one. Odds are good.
Track Listing
- Separation Anxiety
- Piss Coloured Glasses
- A Flower That Wouldn't Bloom
- Glass Curtain
- Audrey
- Welland 2020
- To Be Touched
- Chinese Leather
- Albatross Blues
- Dirty Little Hands
- All The Kids
- Reconciliation Nation Now
- Loose Ends
Credits
- All music, lyrics, recording, performance by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Dan Weston
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Shotgun Jimmie – Transistor Sister 2
$10.00 – $14.00
Are you ready for the new sincerity?! Shotgun Jimmie’s new album Transistor Sister 2 is full of genuine pop gems that champion truth and love. Jimmie focuses largely on family and friends with a heavy dose of nostalgia and hyperbolic takes on the everyday, reconstructing familiar scenarios, from traffic on the 401 (the beloved and scorned mega-highway through Toronto known to all touring musicians as the place where punctual arrival at soundcheck goes to die) to cooking dinner. Here’s the manifesto: renounces cynicism, promote the positive.
Are you ready for the new sincerity?! Shotgun Jimmie’s new album Transistor Sister 2 is full of genuine pop gems that champion truth and love. Jimmie is joined by long-time collaborators Ryan Peters (Ladyhawk) and Jason Baird (DoMakeSayThink) for this sequel to the Polaris Prize nominated album Transistor Sister from 2011. José Contreras (By Divine Right) produced and recorded the record in Toronto, Ontario at The Chat Chateaux and joins the band on keys.
In characteristic Shotgun Jimmie fashion, the songs on Transistor Sister 2 focus largely on family and friends with a heavy dose of nostalgia. Jimmie’s hyperbolic takes on the everyday reconstruct familiar scenarios, from traffic on the 401 (the beloved and scorned mega-highway through Toronto known to all touring musicians as the place where punctual arrival at soundcheck goes to die) to cooking dinner.
The album’s lead single Cool All the Time is a plea for people to abandon ego and strive for authenticity, featuring contributions by Chad VanGaalen, Steven Lambke and Cole Woods. The New Sincerity serves as the album’s manifesto; it renounces cynicism and promotes positivity.
“I decided to make a sequel because I loved making the first one. I value the experience of making records as much as the end product. I know that I’m always trying to make something good, but I’m also aware that the process is the thing that I’ll think about and revisit in the future. With this album, I really wanted to recreate the immersive experience of making the original. The first one was recorded in Nova Scotia in a beautiful little town. The session had the feeling of a destination artist residency. We swam in the ocean and watched scientists cut the head off a shark; they were very eventful days. Maybe I also wanted an excuse to hang out with Jay and Ryan for a week. The three of us are spread out across the country, so being together is a rare treat. On the last day of the session we played a rock show at a tiny Toronto club. We literally went straight from the studio to the venue. It was completely packed with pals from all over; it was the best! I played the first Transistor Sister acoustic, then the full band performed Transistor Sister 2 from top to bottom. The show provided our session a very hard deadline and was probably the cause of some studio stress, but it was a perfect magical ending to the week.”
Track Listing
- Blues Riffs
- Tumbleweed
- Hot Pots
- Ablutions
- Fountain
- Suddenly Submarine
- Piano (with band)
- The New Sincerity
- Cool All The Time
- Sappy Slogans
- Highway 401
- Jack Pine
- Sorry We’re Closed
Credits
- Shotgun Jimmie: Vocals, Guitar and Harmonica
- Jason Baird: Bass Guitar, Saxophone and Flute
- Ryan Peters: Drums, Vocals, Piano, and Auxiliary Percussion
- José Miguel Contreras: Ace Tone Organ and Vocals
- Steven lambke: Wurlitzer Piano
- Cole Woods: Moog Prodigy Synthesizer
- Aaron Goldstein: Pedal Steel Guitar
- Chad VanGaalen: Vocals and Tambouring (Cool All The Time)
- Recorded and Mixed by José Miguel Contreras at the Chat Chateau
- Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering
- Artwork & Design by Paul Henderson
- Produced by José Miguel Contreras
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Steven Lambke – Dark Blue
$14.00
Dark Blue is a celebration of ritual, a series of creation myths, a document of disruption, an attack on colonialism, a lament for environmental ruin, and evidence of endurance and transcendence. It is a product of this time, an album that marks the 10th anniversary of artist-run label You’ve Changed Records with a special collaboration between co-founders Steven Lambke and Daniel Romano. Energy is immediate and harnessed in a collaborative process between poet and muse, inspiration and scribe, guitar and voice and drum.
Tell me a story,
beginning and ending.
Most of what happens,
happens again.
This time I’m listening:
leaves rustling;
feet shuffling
towards the door;
there’s dust and coughing;
“you call that singing?”
I’m always beginning
again.
The weather is changing. Rhythms and interactions that had seemed eternal degrade. The realm of the uncertain expands. Uncertainty inspires fear, fear inspires rage. Points of recognition are shifting, points of return becoming rare. The measure of human meaning and dignity has been reduced to discussions of financial gains and losses.
A song can seem a slight thing. Barely there. Unless it is in the midst of being sung or being heard it could be said to exist only in potential or in memory. What is the form of this potential? A balance of words, chords, melody. Balance implies an interaction. The song is the point of balance that is returned to, potential turned into action with intention. In this way the song is the music of ritual. Ritual is the creation of human meaning through repetition.
With Dark Blue, Steven Lambke builds a visceral swirl of narrative images, dense with allusions and invocations, rich with imagery and scene, into a series of creation stories, a document of disruption, a lament for environmental ruin and the destructions of colonialism, and a stubborn evidence of endurance and transcendence. It is a product of this time, a collaborative process between poet and muse, inspiration and scribe, guitar and voice and drum.
The release of Dark Blue marks the 10th anniversary of You’ve Changed Records, the label co-founded in 2009 by Steven Lambke and Daniel Romano. A collaboration yields its own energy. Evocative poetry and guitar work reminiscent of Lambke’s long career with indie legends The Constantines combine with Romano’s multi-instrumental skill and production talents in a music that is sophisticated and immediate, intimate and expansive.
But what act of creation could ever be called complete? The song reacts to the world into which it is sung, and acts on that world. The outcome is never known and the song is not sung the same way twice as everything surrounding it will have changed. The song moves through the world like a rendezvous of atoms.
My faith had grown thin.
Ribs showed through my skin
like the handprints of the sculptor.
Unfinished thing. Restless wandering.
It’s a beautiful world
until you drop down dead at the sight of it.
Back to back, belly to belly
I remember everything
Lay me down and love me
Back to back, belly to belly
Begin again. Calling equally to the past and to the future, the song has a double existence as an expression of memory and an expression of hope.
Track Listing
- Fireworks
- At The Start Of The Song
- Both Of Me
- I Will Not Lie To You
- Major Rager
- Cut Flowers
- My Love Is Impure But Enduring
- White Horses
- Troubled By The Night
- Back To Back
- Dark Blue
- All My Days Are Light And Gold
Credits
- Performed by:
- Steven Lambke - vocals, guitars, percussion, organ
- Daniel Romano - drums, percussion, guitars, vocals, organ
- Dave Nardi - bass, organ, guitars
- Mark Lalama - piano, accordian
- Ian Romano - drums on White Horses and second drums on At The Start Of The Song
- Recorded by Daniel Romano
- Additional recording by Steven Lambke
- Piano and accordion recorded by Mark Lalama
- Mixed by Graham Walsh
- Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering, Montreal
- Cover Art by Shary Boyle. Swallow, 2015. Porcelain, glazes
- Photograph by Sean Weaver
- Layout and Design by Daniel Romano
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Ian Daniel Kehoe – Secret Republic
$16.00
Ian Daniel Kehoe is a classic songwriter pulling from a seemingly endless supply of hooks, dancing in silver face paint and an assortment of wide shouldered sports jackets, appearing like an emissary from a better world. Secret Republic is an entirely self-assured debut record, ten confident, immaculate pop songs, drenched in analog synth and punchily articulate in their pursuit of love, beauty and rhythm.
It seems now that Ian Daniel Kehoe has been hiding in plain sight. A classic songwriter pulling from a seemingly endless supply of hooks, dancing through his debut video in silver face paint and an assortment of wide shouldered sports jackets, Kehoe appears somewhat like an apparition, an emissary from a better world. Secret Republic, Kehoe’s debut under his own name, is an entirely self assured first record, ten confident, immaculate pop songs, drenched in analog synth and punchily articulate in their pursuit of love, beauty and rhythm. Recorded and performed entirely by Kehoe himself, the record is a introduction to this world, one where melody reigns supreme, every love is a true love, and the singer searches endlessly for “prizes through the mazes of the jungles, prizes at the tips of the poles.”
While Secret Republic may be a debut, Kehoe has appeared on the musical scene in various guises. For the past few years, he has toured extensively as a drummer for Andy Shauf (Anti Records), The Weather Station (Paradise of Bachelors), and Julia Jacklin (Polyvinyl). Before that, he was bassist and songwriter in Attack in Black (Dine Alone Records), while releasing several records as Marine Dreams (You’ve Changed Records). But Secret Republic is something entirely new; the debut of Kehoe as a preturnaturally confident front man and producer, with a tight grasp on every musical weapon at his disposal. Secret Republic is a record made in a home studio, a record where Kehoe played and recorded every note, and yet it doesn’t feel inward looking or introspective. Many of the songs are constructed as crowd pleasers, songs to be played from bleachers, soundtracks to first dances and first kisses, songs that could sit alongside ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ on the radio circa 1983. That isn’t to say though that the record feels universal or ordinary. While being eminently approachable, it would be impossible to see it as anything but the product of a very singular mind, one particularly attuned to beauty, and to the taut magic of a perfect riff.
Those who know Kehoe, know him to be almost mythologically prolific. Secret Republic is one of only four records Kehoe wrote in the last year, all while touring heavily. But while this output may summon an image of the single minded producer, holed up in a home studio, the music itself insists on such vivid ideals as beauty, love, and the spirit. ‘Through the thunder I swear I heard a whisper from the heart of the storm’ he sings on the title track, elaborating on a ‘secret republic, talking downwards’ from the clouds. ‘Fate Gets Closer’ and the dead serious ‘One Picture’ are wildly romantic, speaking to a notion of endless love and destiny. ‘Evil People’ is almost funny, with its ‘Thriller’ esque haunted house sounds and ascending chorus. Live, Kehoe sings in full voice, arms held upwards, disarming the crowd with a curious mixture of seriousness, humour, and showmanship. Kehoe is alive to the joyful and almost comedic possibilities inherent to the role of the pop singer. Witnessing Kehoe stop a set to read an original poem, or lead a brief discussion of an idea of infinity, a curious alchemy is created in the room, as the audience hovers between laughter, curiousity, and reverence. To Kehoe perhaps, these states need not be so opposed.
Kehoe has always been a disciple of pop music, in the most traditional sense of the word. A lover of Nick Lowe and Harry Nilsson, Queen and Michael Jackson, Kehoe adheres to the idea that music should be moved to, danced to, sung along to. To Kehoe, this is both the most serious thing in the world, and also not serious at all. And this is borne out on Secret Republic, a record to soundtrack a love either deep or glancing, a record for dancing or for thinking, a record both heavy and feather light.
Track Listing
- Prizes Through The Mazes Of The Jungle
- One Picture
- Secret Republic
- It's Hard (Livin' Without You Girl)
- Fate Gets Closer
- Evil People
- Crying Again
- What's A Liar Know Anyway
- Doing Fine (Without Your Trust)
- Interlude
Credits
- Written, Performed, Recorded and Mixed by Ian Daniel Kehoe
- Harmony Vocals by Tamara Lindeman
- Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering
- Design and Layout by David Nardi
- Cover Photograph by Rima Sater
Partner – Saturday The 14th
$7.00 – $10.00
Partner is committed to exploring and breaking down the limits of their minds in the name of Rock. Saturday the 14th represents the first steps towards a bold new future as the band question the rules and question themselves, while offering a few tantalizing hints for what lies in store next.
Partner is funny, but not a joke. Gay, but not for each other. Best friends Josée Caron and Lucy Niles confidently harness the infinite power of Rock to explore a variety of niche yet strangely universal themes.
Partner’s debut album In Search of Lost Time was named one of the best records of 2017 by NPR’s All Songs Considered, Stereogum, Noisey, Exclaim, CBC Music, Indie 88 and many more. The album was shortlisted for Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize, and Partner were the recipients of the SOCAN Songwriting Prize in 2018 for their song “Play the Field”.
Partner is committed to exploring and breaking down the limits of their minds in the name of Rock. Saturday the 14th represents the first steps towards a bold new future as the band question the rules and question themselves, while offering a few tantalizing hints for what lies in store next.
Features Long & McQuade, a tribute to Canada’s most popular and ubiquitous guitar store, and Tell You Off which was debuted on the NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.
To purchase a digital copy of Saturday The 14th, please visit our Bandcamp page.
Track Listing
- Fun For Everyone (Minions)
- Stoned Thought
- Tell You Off
- Long & McQuade
- Les ailes d'un ange*
- *featured on CD version only
Credits
- All songs written, arranged and performed by Lucy Niles and Josée Caron
- Produced by Josée Caron
- Engineered by Max Cotter
- Additional engineering by Josée Caron
- Mixed by Chris Shaw
- Mastered by João Carvalho
- Cover artwork by Brandon Celi
- Layout by Colin Medley
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Daniel Romano – Finally Free
$12.50 – $16.00
Finally Free sings like a radical revelation, exploring the concepts of music as a celestial being, flora as a consequential ancestor, and singing, no matter its quality or sound, as the endmost important output of our species. Finally Free contains a vivid religious articulation despite its clear condemnation of a god as a singular ruling white male. New words have replaced old words for new meaning and the definitions have been left up to interpretation. It seems safe to say that Romano has broken the literary soil hard and ferociously to find the remaining repose in our current “danse macabre.”
Finally Free is Daniel Romano’s eighth long playing album in the last eight years, a prolific output of recording, producing, designing and delivering entrancing, poignant and creative records.
Finally Free could stand alone as a being pivotal record if it were only its profound and breathtaking prose on paper. Daniel Romano writes like an agnostic Whitman in his prime, exploring and uncovering new language and meaning for old sentiments grown tired. Finally Free sings like a radical revelation, exploring the concepts of music as a celestial being, flora as a consequential ancestor, and singing, no matter its quality or sound, as the endmost important output of our species. Finally Free contains a vivid religious articulation despite its clear condemnation of a god as a singular ruling white male. New words have replaced old words for new meaning and the definitions have been left up to interpretation. It seems safe to say that Romano has broken the literary soil hard and ferociously to find the remaining repose in our current “danse macabre.”
“FINALLY FREE” was recorded with one single microphone in “sitting vocal position”. The songs were written as they were recorded and the single microphone was surounded by various instrument work stations for Romano to play. The microphone never moved which means the room itself was mixed instead of the individual tracks.” Finally Free was recorded on a 4 track Tascam cassette recorder.
Harking back to Romano’s early studies and obsessions in traditional folk music while simultaneously conveying a surprisingly modern and engaging aesthetic, Finally Free is dense with new wisdom and blissfully encouraging in these end times.
Track Listing
- Empty Husk
- All The Reaching Trims
- The Long Mirror Of Time
- Celestial Manis
- Between The Blades Of Grass
- Rhythmic Blood
- Have You Arrival
- Gleaming Sects of Amiran
- There Is Beauty In The Vibrant Forms
Credits
- Written, Recorded, Performed, Engineered, Produced and Mixed by Daniel Romano
- Piano on Between The Blades Of Grass and There Is Beauty In The Vibrant Forms by Kay Berkel
- Collage by Daniel Romano and Lauren Speer
- Illustrations and Artwork by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Dan Weston
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Ancient Shapes – Silent Rave
Ancient Shapes celebrate and shake with the supernatural under-dogs. Ancient Shapes sing abrasively as the bottom feeders, no-eyed from years of pitch darkness. “Silent Rave” is a collection of raw, lucid poems, exploring various crevasses of love, the natural world, and also more love. Daniel Romano shrieks with immediacy as he never has in his other endeavors, running through a bubble gum power pop landscape with an urgency that can only be described as punk.
The heart-like form in the cracked muddy ground. The faces turned away from the fire. The unwanted flowers of spring – Ancient Shapes celebrate and shake with the supernatural under-dogs, they sing abrasively as the bottom feeders, no-eyed from years of pitch darkness. In this, they bring a new source of light; with an urgency that can only be described as “punk”.
Daniel Romano, (writer, producer, performer, engineer, mixer, mastering engineer, artist) of the group “Ancient Shapes” is also known for his rock and roll and sometimes folk and sometimes country and western act that wears his birth moniker. Romano has been a highly prolific and independent force in today’s un-garbaged musical and lyrical output for the last 15 years. He is reluctantly awarded and renowned. Some say genius others say trash-boy.
Ancient Shapes shift the language of punk. “Silent Rave” is a collection of raw, lucid poems, exploring various crevasses of love, the natural world, and also more love. Romano shrieks with immediacy (as he never has in his other endeavors) over a bubble gum power pop landscape.
Punks and the punk-less together find common ground in these electric folk-tales of smeared foliage. See them live to understand. Listen to the record and fill in the gaps in your creative brain. You’re good at it!
Critics like it.
People like it too.
Disclaimer: (some don’t)
Here’s to another century of ice.
Track Listing
- Giant Coma
- Another Century Of Ice
- Mental Slavery (We Can't Quit)
- Wabash Wreckingball
- Violence In The Mouth Of Age
- My Adidas (Revisited)
- Political Rain
- Black Leather Jacket
- The Girl Of God's Lips
- Blood Orange
Credits
- Written, Performed, Recorded by Daniel Romano
- Cover photo by Sebastian Buzzalino
- Layout by Daniel Romano
- Mastered by Dan Weston
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Ancient Shapes – Across Canada 2018 Photo Book
A collection of black and white tour photos from Ancient Shapes’ cross-Canada January 2018 tour, from Vancouver to Montreal. 120 pages, 147 photos, 6×9” format, includes photos from the stage, the van, the beds, the hotels, the freezing cold road stops and the results of drinking too many Labatt 50s as captured by photographer Sebastian Buzzalino.
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Dan on a couple of tours, but this was the first time documenting his punk project, Ancient Shapes. Huddled in a busted van full of speed holes as we raced across Canada at the height of winter, I captured a more frenetic, urgent side of his music. Between the close quarters, the packed venues and our scrappy camaraderie, these represent some of my most visceral and intimate photos to date.” – Sebastian Buzzalino
“Sebastian Buzzalino is an invisible summer. When behind the camera, he is disguised and blends into even the most vivid scenery. This ability is what makes him able to capture the raw, living, bleeding imagery that he does. Never have I met someone with such a quick response and attention to a subject. Above all this, when the camera comes down, his beautiful smile appears.” – Daniel Romano
To see more of Sebastian’s work please visit Unfolding Creative Photography.
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Nap Eyes – I’m Bad Now
$12.50 – $16.00
I’m Bad Now, the most transparent and personal Nap Eyes album to date, constitutes the third chapter of an implicit, informal trilogy that includes Whine of the Mystic (2015) and Thought Rock Fish Scale (2016). The brilliantly reductive title is something I’ve heard my four-year-old son and his friends announce verbatim when roleplaying the perennial game of heroes and villains, “good guys” and “bad guys.” “I’m bad now,” he declares, but an equivocal binary is implied: it’s only a matter of time or trading places before he (or anyone) has the capacity for good again. Perhaps goodness will manifest in the multiverse, on a different circuit than this faulty, frayed one. Is that faith or fantasy? And what is the difference? The title is also, of course, a sly Michael Jackson appropriation that can also be more simply read. “When you can own your capacity for badness, you can also grow up in some way,” enigmatic songwriter Nigel Chapman said when discussing the album and its themes. “Children can’t be ‘bad,’ because they are children. As an adult, you can — or should — only be bad as little as possible.”
While Chapman composes Nap Eyes songs in their inchoate form at home in Halifax, Brad Loughead (lead guitar), Josh Salter (bass), and Seamus Dalton (drums), who live a twelve-hour drive away in Montreal, augment and arrange them, transubstantiating his skeletal, ruminative wafers into discourses that aim to transcend what Nigel, in the song “Dull Me Line,” self-laceratingly deems “bored and lazy disappointment art.” The band provides ballast and bowsprit to Nigel’s cosmical mind. The nautical metaphor is not just whimsy: Nap Eyes are all Nova Scotians by raising and temperament, acclimated to life on an Atlantic peninsula linked narrowly to the rest of North America. “Follow Me Down,” with its “broad cove” and bay, and “Boats Appear,” with its “steam trails rising from the sea,” both offer an evocative sense of place for these otherwise mental mysteries. We are very many creatures, with innumerable possible courses to explore. So let fly the cosmical mind into the gray night, dear listener.
Track Listing
- Every Time The Feeling
- I'm Bad
- Judgement
- Roses
- Follow Me Down
- You Like To Joke Around With Me
- Dull Me Line
- Sage
- Hearing The Bass
- White Disciple
- Boats Appear (CD / Download only)
Credits
- All music by Nap Eyes
- Lyrics by Nigel Chapman
- "Hearing The Bass" lyrics by Danika Vandersteen
- Recorded and mixed by Howard Billerman with Mike Wright at Hotel2Tango, Montreal, QC
- Mastered by Josh Bonati at Bonati Mastering, Brooklyn, NY
- Cover drawing, caligraphy, and cover photo by Danika Vandersteen
- Inner sleeve collage by Allison Higgins
- Design and layout by Danika Vandersteen, Brendan Greaves, and Miles Johnson
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Nap Eyes – 3 LP package
Get all three Nap Eyes albums at a special discounted price! This package deal includes I’m Bad Now (YC-033), Thought Rock Fish Scale (YC-024), and Whine Of The Mystic (YC-022). PLEASE NOTE: This offer is available to Canadian customers only.
In just four short years, Nap Eyes have made much ado about meaninglessness with rock ‘n’ roll songs that shake just offbeat and smart lyrics wrapped in bemused ennui. – NPR
…songs that are lucid with laser-like focus and freeze-framed detail. – Pitchfork
One of the most fascinating songwriters we have today. – Newsweek
Purveyors of beatific, sun-drenched roadtrip tunes. Nigel Chapman is owner of one of the most beautiful voices I’ve heard in years. – NME
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Partner – In Search Of Lost Time
$12.50 – $16.00
Heavy as a crush, nimble as a thimble, smart as a doctorate, stupid as edible underwear, these 12 songs shudder with wit, melody and the peerless confederation of Josée Caron and Lucy Niles. None of their influences – not Weezer, Ween, Dinosaur Jr or any of the lesbian superfecta (k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Tegan, Sara) – marry Partner’s craft for singles and their willingness to laugh at themselves – at least not with the same smiling candour. In Search Of Lost Time proves that it’s always more freeing, and probably more fun, to be the butt of the joke.
Partner is the “mature” effort of two best friends named Josée Caron and Lucy Niles. Borne of their bizarre and fortuitous friendship, Partner confidently harnesses the infinite power of Rock to explore a variety of niche yet strangely universal themes.
After a freakishly productive year of writing, recording, and touring, Partner are ready to release their debut to the world, titled In Search of Lost Time (September 08, 2017). Their enthusiastic and action-packed live set has led to them being named the “best new band in Canada” in the Globe and Mail, and although “Partner hasn’t even released an album yet, [watching] one of their sets, it’s clear right away that they’ve arrived fully formed.”
Influenced by acts as varied as Melissa Etheridge, Ween, kd lang, and Prince, Partner delivers a refreshing and vital twist on a classic, prompting you to re-think what you thought was possible in Rock.
Track Listing
- Everybody Knows
- Comfort Zone
- Gross Secret
- Angels From Ontario
- Daytime TV
- Sex Object
- Ambassador To Ecstasy
- Play The Field
- You Don't Have To Say Thank You
- Creature In The Sun
- Remember This
- Woman Of Dreams
Credits
- All music and lyrics written by Partner
- Recorded in April 2016 at Candle Recording
- Engineered by Josh Korody
- Assistant Engineered by Dylan Frankland
- Recording supervised by Steven Lambke
- Additional overdubs engineered by Max Cotter and Tynan Dunfield
- Edited by Kevin Brasier
- Produced by Josée Caron and Kevin Brasier
- Mixed by Chris Shaw
- Mastered by Joao Carvalho
- Photography by Colin Medley
- Layout by Paul Henderson
- Art direction by Josée Caron
- Vocals and Lead Guitar by Josée Caron
- Vocals and Rhythm Guitar by Lucy Niles
- Bass by Kevin Brasier
- Drums by Simone TB
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Daniel Romano – Modern Pressure
$12.50
Modern Pressure is Daniel Romano's ambitious and surprising new album, and marks his return to You've Changed Records for the first time since 2010's classic Sleep Beneath The Willow. The twelve tracks boldly ask, “What age is this? What blooming weight do we carry?”. Written in observational scrutiny beneath the overcast atmosphere of 2016, the record vigorously tackles the present-day heaviness we contain in the jotting bones of our guilty expressions. It pleads for the restoration of empathy and resonance, to fill the empty chamber once again.
Modern Pressure is Daniel Romano’s ambitious and surprising new album, twelve tracks that boldly ask “What age is this? What blooming weight do we carry?”. Written in observational scrutiny beneath the overcast atmosphere of 2016, the record vigorously tackles the present-day heaviness we contain in the jotting bones of our guilty expressions. It pleads for the restoration of empathy and resonance, to fill the empty chamber once again.
In this chamber, Romano’s voice leads as a lantern. Prolific and resourceful as ever, the recording phase took place in a minimalistic cabin in secluded Finnsäs, Sweden over the month of August 2