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  Lavender Love

  December 18, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  The holidays can be a rough time for many people; what with the excessive family time (“Yes, Auntie Zelda, as a matter of fact I am trying to scare away husbands”), trauma caused by shattering of previously rock-solid resolve to be healthy, and the complete and utter panic attacks brought on every time you hear a “funky” remix of Jingle Bell Rock, the season of joy can sometimes turn into a nightmare. Well, I know what you need. You need a bunch of latter-day Los Angeles hippies dancing down the street in decrepit party dresses. You need Lavender Diamond.

  The video for Open Your Heart from last year’s album Imagine Our Love is so feel-good it kind of makes me uncomfortable, like I start wondering what kind of sick creep I am that I keep excepting Becky Stark to get hit by a Good Humor ice cream truck as she wobbles down the street like a new-born deer on her vintage rollerskates. But the thing that saves this video from total saccharine cheesitude is that it’s 100% for real. As far as I can tell, Lavender Diamond are total dyed-in-the-hemp A-1 genuine peace-and-love-loving lovers. (more inside…)

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  i listen to bands that don’t even exist yet

  December 12, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  Do you find the music industry’s manipulations and machinations to be as confusing as I do? Do music mags’ “What’s Hot and What’s Not” lists make your head spin? Have you ever showed up at a party wearing a band t- shirt that you were sure was the latest thing, only to be told “That band is more out than Ellen Degeneres”? Well, fear no more, friends! Monitor Mix, the blog Carrie Brownstein (of dearly-departed Sleater-Kinney) writes for NPR, is taking the risk out of music fandom by hiring an astrologer and psychic to predict the trends for 2009. Now you can know what’s happening with the big names and tastemakers before they do! Seriously though, this is an awesome idea, and I can’t wait to see which of these predictions come true.

  What are YOUR predictions for music next year? I especially am wondering what Neko Case‘s “big announcement” is going to be. Here she is (after the cut) talking about boys wearing girl pants, which is one trend I think we all hope will die a quiet death before it’s time to get a new calendar.

  (more inside…)

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  I wish i didn’t have to keep doing this

  December 4, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  By which I mean saying goodbye to folk music and civil rights activist heroes. But only two weeks after we lost Miriam Makeba, we now also have to do without Odetta, the American folksinger who helped generations realize how essential African-American music has been to the development of songwriting, in America and elsewhere. She was also a major figure of the American civil rights movement - she performed at the historic 1963 March on Washington, the same march where Martin Luther King told America that he had a dream.

  I kind of think of Odetta as the taproot of American folk music; her recordings and performances nourished so many people whose fame in some ways exceeded her own: Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, and Harry Belafonte, among others, cite her as an early inspiration and influence. They packed stadiums with songs inspired by her style and throaty voice, and meanwhile she just kept at it, more or less under the radar of pop culture, recording and touring and performing well into her seventies.

  But those who knew her knew her well; I’m proud to say that my hometown, Winnipeg, recognized her for what she was - or at least the Winnipeg Folk Festival did, when they honoured her in 2006 with their Lifetime Achievement Award. My friend’s mom had the honour of being her “driver” that summer, and she said she had never met someone who exuded such warmth and graciousness.

  This video of her performing Water Boy is heart-shakingly powerful.
  

  Tributes here and here and many other places too.

  We’ll miss you lady.

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  lederhosen who?

  November 28, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  Krista Muir has been a mainstay on the Montreal music scene for more than a decade now. She’s probably best known for her off-the-wall, food-obsessed, fashionista Teutonic alter-ego Lederhosen Lucil, a blonde-braided German uber-hostess who’s been known to bust out songs that sound like a cooking show set to Casio keyboard sample tunes. But of late, we’ve been getting a chance to see the woman under the wig and hosen; Muir has just released an album under her own name called Accidental Railway, and it’s full of tender songwriting gems.

  This sweet video for the track Leave Alight, from the new album, was directed by Kara Blake and features Muir’s skills on the baritone ukelele. It’s kind of a masterpiece of simplicity, IMHO.

  And oh, just for the heck of it, here is a video for Lederhosen Lucil’s Semi-Sweet after the cut.

  (more inside…)

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  goodbye Mama Afrika

  November 15, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  Global warming just got a little worse on November 10th… we lost someone pretty damn cool.
  
  Miriam Makeba was a South African singer and civil-rights activist who spoke out against apartheid and injustice in the strongest, sweetest, most melodic voice you could imagine. She was exiled from South Africa after she left to pursue a musical career in the US and found her passport had been revoked when she tried to return. But she was no less active (or controversial) a voice in America - she testified to the U.N. against apartheid, recorded an incredible canon of protest songs, appeared in documentaries and films (and on The Cosby Show!), and was married for a while to future Black Panther Stokely Carmichael.

  As a person who grew up in a North American urban middle-class milieu, I am accustomed to a certain kind of protest song - that is to say, the kind that comes with screeching guitars and four-four beats and lots of angry yelling. Preferably with ponytails and fishnets and liberal doses of raging against The Man. But listening to Miriam Makeba makes me remember that anger and protest can take other forms and reach other audiences. What’s even more important is that Makeba makes the experience of people living under unjust conditions visible and palpable through her music, and that’s about as valuable as art can get, IMHO.

  She collapsed after performing her hit song Pata Pata in concert last week, and died shortly thereafter. I know it’s cheesy to point out, but she really did die doing what she loved.

  Here is Miriam Makeba in what I would guess to be the late 60s, singing Kilimanjaro.

  Read obituaries for this exceptional human being here and here.

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  stern warning

  November 6, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  Okay, it’s November, it’s getting dark at 4:30, I have to think about things like storm windows and Thinsulate, and Proposition 8 is making me want to eat my face. But! Today it’s 18 degrees outside, I have reason to feel optimistic, and Marnie Stern has a new album.

  Stern has gotten a lot of buzz since her first release In Advance of the Broken Arm, with accolades like Greatest Female Guitarists of All Time (Venus Zine - no relation to my radio show) and Best New Music (Pitchfork) dropping on her left, right and centre. So I don’t need to tell you she’s hot. But I will anyway. She can shred. Good LORD can she shred. She could probably make coleslaw with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.

  I love this video for Transformer, from her latest album-with-the-mouthful-of-a-title This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That. It makes me think of everything I love about both Annie Lennox and Flight of the Navigator. Thanks, Marnie… long may you shred. (MAN she can shred!)

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  diamanda is forever

  October 30, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  I said it last year and I’ll say it again: Halloween is the time of year when everyone lets their hidden fantasy loose, their inner demon out, their freak flag fly… and the next day we wipe off the eyeliner and fake blood and shaving cream and go back to business as usual. But for some people, grappling with the dark side is what they do every day of their lives.

  You can bet Diamanda Galas is one of those people. She’s an American singer who was trained classically but has put her three-and-a-half-octave range voice to making records that will more or less make your blood run cold, in a good way. Some things you should know about her:

  Galas publicly criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not caring about AIDS victims in her performance Plague Mass, and she has spent much of her artistic career speaking out against general indifference to the epidemic. She has we are all HIV+ tattooed on her knuckles, okay.

  Her songs deal with murder, genocide, the death penalty, and Aileen Wuornos. You really can’t get any heavier than that, and I’m not surprised that she’s not better-known… after all, I’d rather dance than have a panic attack most days. Still, once in a while it’s good to light some candles, drink some wine and put on a record that will frighten you to within an inch of your life, and then bring you back with its beauty. More or less.

  Here is a video of her performing Billie Holiday’s Gloomy Sunday; the video begins with a pretty righteous commentary on both pop music and Galas’ disposition.

  Happy Halloween!

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  yo, it’s about time

  October 17, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  If, like me, you sorely miss the tuff-as-Lee-Press-On-Nails attitude and music of mouthy, unabashedly sexual 90s rappers Salt ‘N’ Pepa, this news will make you wanna Shoop. (Ouch… sometimes I kill me.)

  

  see them destroy Captain Misogyny… with… lazers?

  Yo Majesty, Florida’s electro-crunk rap ladies, have just released their first full-length album, called Futuristically Speaking… Never Be Afraid. They’ve been tearing up dancehalls and The Internet for years now, but this is the first time you can have a full sixty-ish minutes of gay feminist hip-hop that’s also super dirty and catchy all to yourself. You will dance. You will blush. You will smash misogyny.

  Here’s the video for Hustle Mode, from their last EP. I’ve also put the video for Club Action, from the same album, after the cut; it’s frankly a better song, and frankly full of filthy lyrics. If you want more Yo Majesty, and I know you do, their Myspace page is really the place to go - they have a bunch of new songs and videos up, including an interview done by their tourmate Beth Ditto of The Gossip(!!!).

  (more inside…)

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  sweet soul queen

  October 9, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  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…)

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  sometimes

  September 25, 2008 • Anna Leventhal

  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)

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