Month: November 2016

Portugal. The Man

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Throwback to this epic show put on by Alaska’s Portugal. The Man. Radical lights. Awesome opener (called “Boone Howard”, seriously check them out). They didn’t play anything new- it was a show dedicated to their most loved classics, but it was magical. Here are a couple of the pics I grabbed at their concert at the Commodore last week.

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Shoutout to my favourite of their tunes, paired with the antics of legendary BMXer Kriss Kyle.

Review + Photos: Alli Bridges

Dragonette at The Imperial

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Dragonette comprises Martina Sorbara, Dan Kurtz, and Joel Stouffer. Neither Kurtz nor Stouffer have their own Wikipedia pages, but they are nonetheless good musicians and helped contrive an immensely entertaining show last night at the Imperial. If one could score a show’s entertainment value on how much one drank and how much one danced, we’d all give last night’s Vancouver edition of the Royal Blues tour tens, yeah, tens all round. Our shirts were sweaty and our heads now ache.

But mistake them not: these electro-pop hits are inspired by complex feels. Like the feels probably associated with separating from your spouse yet remaining together in the band and producing another record. That’s Sorbara and Kurtz’s situation and that record is Royal Blues (now you get it, right?? “Royal” because it’s a grand, flashy LP, “Blues” because they were sad while recording).

Sorbara keeps it lit fam. When asked about deciding on a name for the tape she was like, “let’s get real. I’m the boss. If you’re the only girl in the band, you’re the boss.” Fuck the patriarchy tho!

Yesterday she wore a short jacket covered in reflective triangles that looked like shards from a broken mirror. Grooving concertgoers were allowed glimpses of themselves in the shards and so reminded that they are an integral part of the Dragonette experience, as with any live experience.

If you feel like listening to one song and one song only from the album, “Darth Vader” is my pick, yeah, cos of how dirty the synth is. If you took a synth sound and left it under the supervision of pigs in their pigpen, likely it wouldn’t get as dirty.

Also worth checking out livetronica band The New Deal, Kurtz and Stouffer’s other project.

c u on the dancefloor

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Review: Torben Robertson

Photos: Mikhail Din

The Drugs

I’ve always been in love with Mother Mother. The way they sound, the way they look, the way they everything…

From Ghosting to Modern Love, they’ve gone through an array of sounds, all of which I’ve taken a liking to.

It has been a while since I’d heard anything new from these local rockstars, I was starting to get a bit antsy! Finally, here we have it, their new single The Drugs.

 

Hometown Sweetheart, Hannah Georgas

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It’s been around 6 years since I’ve seen Hannah Georgas…and oh my how things have changed. She’s evolved from the little indie-folk singer that I once knew and loved, into this deep, rocking superstar that I love even more! Not that I didn’t like her music before, but I found myself dancing a lot more this time around.

Don’t believe me? Have a listen for yourself! This one’s been on repeat for some time now.

 

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam

An interesting collaboration of Rostam Barmanglij, former producer and instrumentalist of Vampire Weekend, and Hamilton Leithauser, the former front man of the Walkmen, is “I Had a Dream That You Were Mine”, the first album from the duo.

The album is remarkably diverse. I’m getting reminiscent vibes of Gregory Alan Isakov (“In a Black Out”), the Papas (“a 1000 Times”), and even Bob Dylan (“Peaceful Morning”). It’s weird how every song sounds like a different album…But I think it’s in a good way.

Here’s my favourite of the bunch.