Frank YangSomething of a cold snap hit Toronto yesterday, so I was fortunate to have an invite to what was promised to be a hot and sweaty dance party at the Smiling Buddha bar, soundtracked by Woodhands showcasing their just-released second album Remorsecapade. Granted, it’d have probably been just as warm if I’d just stayed home, but experience has taught me that the odds of dance parties breaking out in my living room tend to be close to nil.

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Photos: Woodhands @ The Smiling Buddha – January 28, 2010
MP3: Woodhands – “Pockets”
MP3: Woodhands – “Dancer”
Video: Woodhands – “I Wasn’t Made For Fighting”

The Vancouver Sun, The Calgary Herald and The Georgia Straight talk to Joel Plaskett.

Pitchfork solicits a list of his current favourite things from Owen Pallett.

Spinner has premiered the new video from Zeus’ full-length debut Say Us, due out February 23.

Video: Zeus – “Marching Through Your Head”

Daytrotter has posted up a downloadable session with The Dears.

RCRDLBL is giving away an acoustic Metric track.

A few more-specific-than-previously-known-but-still-vague album release dates… look for a new record from Land Of Talk this Spring, the next effort from The Acorn come May, which is approximately when Born Ruffians’ Say It should be out.

BBC6, The List and The Times talk to White Rabbits.

Ear Farm has a short interview with Sharon Van Etten.

The Bird & The Bee have announced they’ll release the self-explanatory Guiltless Pleasures Volume 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall And John Oates on March 23, which I personally find quite exciting because having grown up in the ’80s I have a distinctly unironic appreciation for the works of Hall & Oates, and having seen The Bird & The Bee do “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” at SxSW last year, I know they’ll do a fantastic job with them. Yep.

We Are Wolves – “Blue” From the band’s forthcoming full-length, Invisible Violence, out 2/2 on Dare To Care.

The Art Museums – “S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G.”

Bowerbirds
Toy Habit Studios, 2009

Naoko Ito

Sharon Van Etten - “Love More” New music from the woman who recorded my favourite song of 2009. It's a hotter song than she's sung in the past, as if she collected the flaked red logs from a fire, set them glowing around a microphone. The harmonium wheezes happily, a tambourine rings, Sharon sings harmonies with her own voice. She sings of memory, love, and sex, but the steam that fills the room isn't the stuff of parked cars, saunas, breath on cold glass: it's a hothouse, summertime and spring, green things sprouting. It has none of the loneliness of ones and twos. "Love More" is undesolate and peopled. It's fertile. [shared via a new musicians' organisation called Weathervane / buy Sharon's album]

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