Andy Shauf: Darker Days

Yes, I am Canadian (I wish that phrase, 'I Am Canadian', didn't stir up memories, for me, of an old beer commercial with jingoistic overtones) and I have found yet another Canadian talent worth sharing with you (the last one being Dark Mean).


Andy Shauf makes his home in western Canada, in the city of Regina, Saskatchewan, where he has nurtured a talent for clear-eyed intimate pop. Darker Days is his latest release, a full length on P is For Panda Records, and it is surprising to me that I've never heard mention of his name or music until now. His songs bear the shadows of his influences (he is a young guy, who appears to me, even younger in photographs) and yet they still manage to sparkle with his own personality.


Vocally Shauf has a charming inflection, a timbre perhaps, which almost recalls a drawl, it also brings to mind singer/songwriter Josh Rouse in it's quieter moments. I can also hear the critically acclaimed Luke Temple in a song like the third track "You Remind Me". Highly recommended.

you remind me [mp3 expired]


Darker Days Track List:
Your Heart
Crushes
You Remind Me
In Town
Gone
The Darker Night
The Greatest Moments
Let's Be
Were You In Love With Me
How Long
Give Me Words

"All For The Best": Thom Yorke Video

Dark Mean: Frankencottage EP FREE Download

Dark Mean make their home in the medium sized city of Hamilton, Ontario, right around the corner from Toronto on the shore of Lake Ontario. Hamilton isn't striking in a big city way, there are no majestic towers, towering skyscrapers, or hipster-centric shopping areas, but it does impress with a natural rugged physicality that fittingly matches the working heart of the city, the steel mills. Now you may expect this band to blaze forth a molten slab of metal, but you'd be wrong, very wrong, Dark Mean have their roots in indie rock, with branches reaching into alt country and folk.

What they're offering on their EP, Frankencottage, is four songs that all bear a distinct personality offered in differing moods, or shades. I'm especially enjoying "Happy Banjo" and "Lullaby". Both these songs gain strength from that much maligned instrument the banjo. The banjo being the guitar's forgotten brother. Many of us love the guitar, it's like a nice cold glass of milk, or warm milk, whereas the banjo is a glass of curdled milk, the sound is murkier, veiled, much more mysterious. Yes, the banjo has a sunny brightness to it, but there's something else there, it's like watching a scary film about a haunted house and the scariest scene in the movie takes place on the sun drenched front lawn. That's what the banjo can bring to a piece of music... a sunny menace--and, as I said, Dark Mean use the banjo and use it well.

lullaby [mp3]

Visit the band's website to find a FREE download of the EP, Frankencottage. What you won't find there, or in the band's music is darkness, or meanness.

Arctic Monkeys: "Cornerstone" MP3

The latest release by The Arctic Monkeys, Humbug, takes the young band in a different direction than what you might expect. Working with Queens of the Stone Age leader, Josh Homme, in the producer role, the Brits take a confident step away from their past and come up with something that works for the most part. I can't get enough of a song called "Cornerstone", the only track not attributed to Homme, but to their old producer, James Ford. Any of you familiar with Arctic Monkey singer/songwriter Alex Turner's sideproject, The Last Shadow Puppets, and it's step back into the sound of the '60s, won't be too shocked that his main band have shifted gears a bit... but not so much into the '60s as towards the dry desert throb of Josh Homme's QOTSA.

"Cornerstone" is a lovely song (and my favourite), with the emphasis on melody bolstered by Turner's restrained melancholic vocal. These boys are growing up and looking back, but don't we all?

cornerstone [mp3]

BUY Humbug (2009)