Nobody (except maybe Roy Orbison) knows crying like Irma Thomas. If you wanted, you could make a mixtape exclusively of songs she’s recorded that are about crying or tears - Cry On, In Between Tears, Cry Cry Cry, Hold Me While I Cry. And, you know, it would still make me happier than most bubblegum pop. Okay, Aretha has a bigger voice, and Otis Redding is more enjoyably melodramatic, but for my money Irma is the soul singer I want with me when the chips are down. Her songs are heartfelt, but also complex - heartbreak isn’t the only danger in Irma’s world… or, okay, it is, but leading to heartbreak are things like gossip, long-distance relationships, forgiveness, and too much rain. It makes ya think, and it rhymes. Plus, she’s been at it for about five decades, so you know she means it. Fun fact: She, and not the Rolling Stones, was the first to record the I’ll-get-you-yet classic Time Is On My Side.

Irma recently played the Pop Montreal festival, and my co-conspirator Angie Wilson caught up with her and interviewed her for our radio show. You can download the Venus podcast and hear her chat about getting older, hurricane Katrina, and bein’ a sweet soul queen here; just click on Venus and follow the download instructions. The interview is in hour 2.

After the cut is one of the most awkward fan videos of all time featuring my favorite Irma Thomas song, Two Winters Long. There are better quality recordings out there, but the hand! The awkward hand! You know you love it.

(more inside…)

Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes your bike doesn’t work right, and the people you love are far away, and don’t return your phone calls, and there is a weird smell coming from under your kitchen counter that’s probably not going to go away, and you stay up at night worrying about things like the Hadron particle accelerator creating a black hole that will swallow the earth before you have a chance to say you’re sorry. Sometimes it’s like that.

And sometimes a pair of Swedish teenagers go into the forest and record the MOST BEAUTIFUL SONG YOU’VE EVER HEARD.

(what I do know: The band is called First Aid Kit, and they are covering a song by Seattle’s Fleet Foxes)

Picks from Planet Venus is going to be on hiatus for a bit due to my aforementioned book tour. So until it resumes, please enjoy the video for Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield. Oh Pat, when do I get to join your gang of rebel taxi-dancing girls?

According to those who care about such things, in Arizona and New Mexico there is a geological phenomenon known as the “crystal vortex”. Underneath the desert, such people claim, is the largest growth of crystals and gemlike things on the continent. Because crystals are known for their properties of vibration, aura-mending, and general healing, this area has a disproportionately large amount of, well, good vibes. This is why so many new-age type people are drawn to the place, and why so much strange rugged individualism and “alternative lifestyles” flourish there.

For a long time I was obsessed with wanting to visit the crystal vortex. But then I realized that all I had to do was listen to Black Mountain.

This video is for the song Wucan, off their latest album In The Future.

My first post ever for Picks from Planet Venus was about Sarah Mangle, the singer-songwriter who plays the mini-ukulele and writes curious, queerious campfire songs for city kids.

So it pleases me to no end to announce that, one year later, she’s acquired a terrific backing band of string-players and they will be launching their album, congratulations ha ha ha, tomorrow night. Here’s an idea of what said band, Wet NOSE Hero, is like:

Imagine you’re watching a string quartet. I don’t know enough about classical music to tell you the shape and colour of their skill, but I can tell you they are drawing sweet and urgent strains from their instruments. Standing in front of the string quartet is The Little Prince. She is wearing a sailor hat and holding a ukulele that is barely bigger than a toy. (Maybe you remember that, like Peter Pan, The Little Prince is always played by a young woman.) She bounces up and down on the balls of her feet and yells into the microphone like she’s enormously frustrated. Then she’s singing in a voice that’s startling clear and melodic. She’s singing about construction sites and bad ideas and how her mom taught her to write love letters. You start thinking that the last time you saw your dear and far-away friend she was doing karaoke - she jogged on the spot and looked like an adorable pony, and you forgot to tell her. Okay, I lied. That’s not what Wet NOSE Hero is like. That is Wet NOSE Hero, plain and simple.

Here they are playing Congratulations at Burritoville in Montreal.

The launch takes places tomorrow, Friday the 29th at 9 PM, at the Eastern Bloc, 7240 Clark Ave. In Montreal. $6 gets you in the door, or pay $15 for the door and the album together, which is obviously the more sane option.

Astute readers may have noticed that I’ve missed a few installments of Picks from Planet Venus over the past few weeks, things being what they are. So to make it up to you, here is something epic in scope and length.

Jazz saxophonist Matana Roberts has started a video blog to address some ideas about feminism and creativity that have been buzzing around in her head (and cropping up in interviews) for a while. Like a written blog, she meanders casually and candidly around and through topics like distinctions between black and white feminism, the definition of gender, and the development of her own voice. It’s like she’s giving you the interview of a lifetime and you don’t even have to ask her any questions.

Roberts is involved in a veritable panoply of amazing endeavours, like teaching at the School for Improvisational Music, and working on Coin Coin, an ongoing musical project based around her ancestor Marie Thérèse Coin Coin, a Louisiana woman who, after being freed from slavery, became a businesswoman and founder of one of the earliest communities of freed black people in the United States. She’s also an incredibly engaging storyteller, and has hung out with Alice Coltrane!

Learn more about her continuous investigations of the links between her history and her art at her blog, Shadows of a People.

Watch parts 2, 3, and 4 of her musings on gender and creativity after the cut.

(more inside…)

It’s been two years, give or take a few days, since one of the best rock bands of all time decided to call it quits. Sleater-Kinney gave the world about a decade of music, and for that I respectfully pour out a virtual forty for them on the curb. A few key S-K points and/or moments:

- No one has heard a voice like Corin Tucker’s, before or since (though a friend once said that her distinctive warble reminded him of Buffy Ste-Marie). The combination of her punk-rock yelp with Carrie Brownstein’s more melodic counterpart - often with both women singing completely different lines - never fails to stop my heart.

- They rock so hard, man. Carrie Brownstein is a babe, and her stage presence is amazing, all Pete Townsend windmills and leg-kicks.

- In a Punk Planet interview, Carrie Brownstein once said

“It’s like they think they’re paying you a compliment by taking you out of the ‘girl-group ghetto’ and saying that you’ve transcended gender. But that’s never been our goal. I mean, how could we possibly transcend something that’s so experiential and part of who we are? And why would we ever want to be ‘Men in Rock?’ It’s not a history that we’re part of, nor would we like to emulate it.”

Did I mention she’s a babe?

- They never seemed content to rest on their punk-rock laurels, and each album was a step forward into new sound; their last album The Woods took envelope pushing to the next level.

- At their last show in Montreal, the opening band didn’t make it over the border, so S-K entertained the crowd by inviting people up onstage for Sleater-Kinney karaoke, with the band playing live behind them. So delightfully awkward.

This video for the song Get Up was directed by Miranda July, and it’s totally creepy and weird.

Ladies, I salute thee. The world is just a little less cool without you.

What do you remember?

Ah summer, season of the construction project. No matter where I go, no matter how idyllic the park or peaceful the rooftop, there’s always some tool (and some person using it, har har) razzing up the neighbourhood. Oh well, all the more reason to stay indoors trolling YouTube for videos.

Some of the most curious and intriguing music I’ve heard in a while is being made by Montreal’s Elfin Saddle, a duo whose stage set-up could probably double as either a kitchen or toolshed - you got yer pot lids, saws, duct tape and what-all and somehow it all adds up to beeyootiful music.

Here they are playing live in Montreal at a showcase handpicked by music fans extraordinaire Said the Gramophone. I especially love Emi Honda’s skills on the singing saw; if only my neighbours’ backyard projects could sound so sweet.

You can also buy mp3s of Elfin Saddle and many other fine bands from the website Villa Villa Nola, an innovative “store” that releases rare recordings on the internet, meaning there’s a lot of opportunity to get a hold of stuff that may be too ephemeral or small-scale for a record label or large-scale distribution but still really ought to be heard. They cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to you! Um, okay, now that the spirit of Ikea has left my body, I leave you to your listening. Enjoy.

Kansas City art-punk brats Ssion (pronounced “shun”) set out to make what singer Cody Critcheloe describes as “the gayest record ever”; what resulted was Fools Gold, an album that is maybe more pomo-hop than homo-pop. But let’s not mince words - it is pure disco-punk dance party mania. Man, I wonder what Sid Vicious would think about how it’s now possible to use a term like “disco-punk” without batting an eyelash. But I digress.

Here’s the video for Street Jizz, a (slightly satirical?) song about the sexual and class dynamics between middle-class men and the street-culture youth they cruise for. Look for the various popular (and unpopular) culture references the band drops - Leonard Cohen (think the album cover of I’m Your Man), Tom of Finland, Sonic Youth, and others I’m probably too dense to notice. Also, when Critcheloe is reading a book called “Women In Rock” in the very first part of the video, it’s more than a cute name-drop - in an interview, he cites female musicians like Courtney Love and Kim Gordon to be among his biggest influences.