Archives : all posts by Sean

I was sitting with Adam Waito several months ago, at a time when there was no ice on the ground and clear black night skies. He had probably just finished playing a killer set with his band, Adam & the Amethysts. Adam released one of our favourite albums of this year, a record that's handsewn folk and brash electric pop and with a faint psych corona skirting its choruses. You should buy it here (CD) or here (digitally).

And so I convinced him to write this, a Preliminary Guide to Vintage Canadian Psych Pop. The music is killer, the curatorship sublime. Most of these albums are out of print. If you dig the post, please leave a comment! (We'll try to convince him to come back.) -- Sean

My preoccupation with Canadiana and with finding new music has led me to discover some rather incredible Canadian acts from the '60s and '70s that range from completely obscure to relatively unknown. Now, I'm no authority on psychedelic music. These are just some bands that have managed to find me (mostly through the Internet) and I've tried to include some tidbits about them.

With reverence for the naturally majestic and decidedly fucked-up colony of Canada, I would like to share a few choice unsung heroes of psychedelic pop from the land North of America with you, the readers of Said the Gramophone. These are some songs that in some way compel or inspire me.

The Rabble - "Candy" (1969)

The Rabble formed in 1965 in Pointe-Claire on Montreal's West Island, and their big break came when, in '68, they got to replace Cream at the last minute at The Paul Sauve Arena in Montreal. "Candy" is playful and irreverent and to my ears anticipates some of the poppier early punk bands that would emerge a decade later. You can party to this song in Montreal quite easily today, let me tell you.

Jarvis Street Revue - "Mr. Oil Man" (1970)

This is sprawling heavy-psych epic that, I'm proud to say, hails from my hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It's the flagship track from a rare environmentalist concept album of the same name, whose heavy-handed eco-message is only matched by its heavy-as-hell acid-guitar. Long before the corrupt oil industry was grim reaping the political consciousnesses of pretty much everyone, JSR was prophesying that there will be blood, and did so with creative, fuzzed-out - if a little long-winded - intensity. So damn cool. It's been bootlegged as well as officially reissued if you feel like grabbing it without paying close to a grand for a rare original LP on Ebay. Me, I've still got my fingers crossed for an original copy in a thrift store record bin when I'm home this Christmas holiday.

Christmas - "Something Borrowed" (1970)

Speaking of Christmas, that's what this next Oshawa, Ontario band was called, and if I do say so, it's one of the best band names ever. Christmas features ex-members of another great '60s band Reign Ghost (formerly of The Christopher Columbus Discovery of New Lands Band, another mind-blowing band name). This is a pretty straight-ahead folky pop rock song from their album Heritage that will stick to your ribs right near your heart.

A Passing Fancy - "Island" (1968)

This song is beautiful and amazing with its organ, church bells, and sad pop melody. A Passing Fancy were a Toronto band that emerged from the '60s Yorkville scene. A career highlight was playing Expo '67 in Montreal. Formed in '65, they released a number of 45s and one LP before disbanding in 1969. One of the members is now the president of a hockey card company. I have to say, this song just really does something special for me."

Borealis - "Old Age" (1972)

Borealis were a psych-pop band from the Maritimes (Newfoundland I think). "Old Age" is a really simple and lovely song from their Sons of the Sea record, with its spinning-speaker guitar, restrained rhythm section, and delightfully amateurish vocals. It's a heartbreaking and cute ode to the singer's deteriorating grandfather. At a time when not a lot of rock albums were being recorded in the Atlantic provinces, the album apparently wasn't too successful, although they supposedly had a track on the St. John's top 10 for a couple weeks. The full title was Sons of the Sea/Professor Fuddle's Fantastic Fairy Tale Machine.

Brazda Brothers - "Lonely Time" (1973)

As recent migrants from Europe (I'm not sure where), they were supposedly inspired by the natural beauty of their new home of Galt, Ontario, and recorded this LP in only six hours in Toronto. It's a really beautiful record, made special by their odd accents and slightly-off vocals, as well as brilliant bursts of organ.

Elyse Weinberg - "Deed I Do" (1968) [buy]

Finally, Elyse Weinberg is an amazing woman whom I had the privilege of meeting during Pop Montreal this year (we sat on a songwriter's panel together at the Symposium). She played this song with members of the Saffron Sect playing sitar and tanpura at her show at the Casa. She was amazed that there were young folks who knew how to play a song from an obscure album she made 40 years ago. Anyway, the live rendition was magnificent and that album is called Elyse and is really heartbreakingly awesome. Hopefully she won't find this and be mad that I posted her song online. She's from Toronto and used to hang out with folks like Neil Young, but who really cares, because she's amazing.

If you want to hear some other great Canadian bands from the late '60s/early '70s, check out Plastic Cloud, The Plague, The Poppy Family, Reign Ghost, Terence, It's All Meat, and duh, the Guess Who. Most of these bands have been reissued or bootlegged or posted online, so have fun!

[Adam Waito is from Thunder Bay and lives in Montreal. He has played in bands such as Telefauna and Miracle Fortress but now leads Adam & the Amethysts, whose Amethyst Amulet is one of the great undiscovered albums of 2008. (BUY: CD/MP3)]

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(Previous guest-blogs: The Whiskers, Silver Jews, artist Ariel Kitch, artist Aaron Sewards, artist Corinne Chaufour, "Jean Baudrillard", artist Danny Zabbal, artist Irina Troitskaya, artist Eleanor Meredith, artist Keith Greiman, artist Matthew Feyld, The Weakerthans, Parenthetical Girls, artist Daria Tessler, Clem Snide, Marcello Carlin, Beirut, Jonathan Lethem, Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)

Gigantic Hand - "SuAnne Big Crow". I wonder if you know this feeling: You're like a building with the foundations blown out, still upright but all the struts and supports weakened, all the everything ready to go, ready to collapse. You feel like that; hollow. You go down to the subway and stand on the platform feeling grey and paper-thin. The ventilation shushes. And then suddenly, thwackkkkkkk, a subway-car slams into the station, slaps into the station, flies past you volatile & violent and it's like you've just been shoved. You rock back on your heels and realise: I'm still standing. You take a breath. I'm still standing. // Anyway I wonder if you know this feeling. (I haven't felt it in a long time.) Gigantic Hand do. "SuAnne Big Crow" is a song of a hundred station-slams, a hundred heel-rocks, four shoves per bar. But you're still standing. [MySpace/buy in February]

Bobby Digital ft. Thea & Monk - "Drama (Spoolwork remix)". Dave Fischoff releases electro-folk music on Secretly Canadian and remixes songs by Jens Lekman and Radiohead as Spoolwork. But I like him best when he takes off his indie duds and makes beats that are practical, just tomato-red rad. Here he recalls Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life" (but happier) - transforming the RZA's "Drama" from classicism to hopscotch, cathedral to playgroup. [MySpace]

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My newest music article for McSweeney's is now online: a piece on the 2008 Pop Montreal festival.

Mayo Thompson - "Dear Betty Baby".

Mayo Thompson grabbed his stetson, his ratty tweed jacket, and he headed to the library. "Hey kitty," he said to the first librarian he found. "Happy Tuesday."

"Can I help you?" she said.

"You know what it is: show me to the phonebooks."

It was 1970 and the librarian showed Mayo Thompson to the phonebooks. He hung up his stetson on the corner of a bookcase and draped his jacket over the back of a chair. He unfastened the top button of his shirt. "Ma'am," he said to the librarian, "I am thanking you." Then Mayo Thompson started hefting telephone directories from the shelves, stacking them on one of the broad tables. He chose the phonebooks for Glasgow, Istanbul, Cannes, Lisbon, Reykjavik, Alexandria, Sydney, Heraklion, Cape Town, Brasilia, Halifax. Set in a pillar on the table they reached to the ceiling. Then Mayo Thompson scratched his knee and sat down. He started going through the phonebooks, one after another, looking for something. He was looking for the mailing address of the dawn.

A little while later the librarian came back. She had fallen in love with Mayo Thompson during their brief encounter. "Hello," she said shyly.

"Yo bluefin," he said, not looking up. He closed one phonebook and extruded another from the stack.

The librarian waited for a while. She was wearing a serious felt dress, blue with faint polka-dots.

Mayo Thompson finally lifted his eyes. "Oh, hey," he said.

"What are you looking for?" she asked. "A long lost family member?"

"Need an address for the dawn," Mayo Thompson said. "Want 'em to play horns on my new album."

"Sorry?" said the librarian.

"It's a solo record," he explained. "Songs by me. Love songs and work songs and not-love songs. Poetry set swinging."

"No," said the librarian, "what do you mean 'the dawn'?"

"Mornings, roosters, light," Mayo Thompson said.

"Is Dawn your sweetheart?"

"Wish she was." He squinted at the librarian. "Oh," he said at last, seeing the lustre in her eyes. "No, not a bird called Dawn, some blondie. No. The dawn. Daybreak. Aurora. Sunrise. Sunup."

"Like, the sun?" she said.

"Yeah. Like the sun."

"I think it lives in California," she said.

"It's for a song called 'Dear Betty Baby,'" he explained.

They found dawn listed at a San Diego address. "Honey!" Mayo Thompson explained. He tore the page from the phonebook. The librarian didn't say anything, just squeezed her fists at her sides.

"I gotta go write a letter," he said.

"I'm about to go on break," she replied.

Mayo Thompson grabbed his hat and jacket and made his way from the reference section, phonebook-page held in his teeth. The librarian scampered after him, grabbing her clutch from behind the Returns desk. She had to run to keep up with his long jeaned legs. He crossed 4th and dashed across 9th and stopped traffic on 1st. She was at his heels. Finally Mayo Thompson headed into a typewriter store. He gave the librarian his hat and jacket to hold. He peered at the Smith Corona "Electra" demonstration typewriter and smoothed out the dawn's address. Then he started typing a letter, pecking each key with his right middle finger.

"What are you doing?" asked the librarian, her arms full of ratty tweed and stetson.

"Writing a letter to the dawn. Asking 'em if they want to play horns on my new album."

"Trumpet?"

"That kind of thing. Trumpet, French horn, trombone."

"Why?"

"'s what the song needs," he said. "Shush a second." He stood staring at the keys. "What's another word for 'sweet'?"

"Sugared."

"Sugared. Dig." He continued typing.

"Couldn't you just get some musicians to play the part?"

"Sure. Session musicians flockin'. But this is different. This needs sunrise on horns. Needs it." He typed a row of x's at the end, just to hear the typewriter go ding. "Sugared," he said. Mayo Thompson unscrolled the letter from the "Electra". He took his hat back from the librarian and tipped it to the typewriter salespeople. Then he winked at the librarian. "C'mon," he said.

"What next?" she asked as they crossed 15th.

"I need stamps."

"I got stamps."

He stopped in the middle of the street. "You do?"

"Yes," she said. "At my flat."

She took him back to her apartment. They rode the tiny elevator in silence. Mayo Thompson smelled of straw and tangerines. Her keys glinted when she lifted them to the lock.

Inside the apartment she pointed at a small armoire. "They're in there, at the top." Mayo Thompson opened the armoire, ran his hand along the smooth of the wood. Behind him the librarian slipped out of her dress.

[buy]

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Elsewhere: A long interview with Spike Jonze about his forthcoming Where the Wild Things Are film, scripted by Dave Eggers.

[photo source]

Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit - "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" (Vampire Weekend cover).
Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit (with Ben Brewer) - "Dinosaur On The Ark".

For a long time I have had an eBay Alert set up for Esau Mwamwaya. So that when he finally releases something, I can buy it. He hasn't released anything, though. And I haven't posted about him. But I love this stuff. It's like the indie rock version of Juluka - joyous, rousing, easy. It's chewing on sugarcane and floating on your back. He sings with such unselfconscious glee, as only a furniture salesman can. But Radioclit's beats (or, Vampire Weekend's, or MIA's, as the case may be) are also responsible for the songs' sky-blue sweetness. Sunbeams bottled, rainclouds fizzed - clean and undistorted glitter, a hundred shades of shine.

"Dinosaur on the Ark"'s Ben Brewer - who was once best known as one of Canada's wealthiest heirs, and is now best known as MIA's fiancé, - sings with an earnesty that is sterling silver, okay maybe stainless steel. Like Phil Collins or Adam Levine it's uncoloured & true, a perfect partner for Mwamwaya's utopian cheer.

"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" has Mwamwaya taking on Vampire Weekend's melody and riff, saluting them at every opportunity, but whereas VW find their feeling in ambivalences, verses, nostalgia, Mwamwaya's version is straight gleeful - in love with life, with dancing, with the squeak yr sneakers make on the floor.

[MySpace/download the entire album]

(Thanks to the reliably keen ears & eyes at Gorilla vs Bear for catching the mixtape release!)

(photo is of Olle Hemmendorff's 'Nike Air Max 90 Burger')

François Virot - "Say Fiesta".
François Virot - "Cascade Kisses".

Can't get enough of Virot's Yes Or No. Whereas Animal Collective are at times too diffuse to soothe your heart, and the Dodos' steady lustre grows into something hard & grating, Virot's songs are both simple and crooked - like gnarled hooks you can hang your coat on. The way he sings radio on "Say Fiesta" - well it's silly, endearing and French but it lets the song's emotional oomph come out of nowhere, like an alleycat sprouting roses. Virot's looped-up strums, snaps, thumps and coos remind me of a paper model city - precisely folded, brightly scribbled, not meant to last.

[buy/MySpace]

[edit:] we're back!

Our mp3s are offline at the moment. Working on bringing them back.

Pretend You're Happy - "The Other Side of the Earth". Pretend You're Happy usher in the Messianic age with rattling drums, whining violins, trumpet, cello, a whack of distorted guitar. It's the sort of Ever After where people carry bouquets like torches, burn their houses down, and everyone's perished pets come blinking back from the dead. Marvelous. [buy]

Dirty Beaches - "In Dreams". Fifteen thousand years from now & every human being is dead. Waves play on an empty sand. Lizards lie on rocks, blinking. Dragonflies weave round raspberry brambles. A cocker spaniel stands knee-deep in saltwater and feels like she's forgotten something important. [buy Horror - $7 - the best dream instrumentals since William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and Vincent Gallo's When]

(painting is Arnold Böcklin's Die Toteninsel)