Song of the Day: July 01, 2016 - "Love Song to Canada" by Jason Collett

Happy Canada Day! 

3am Playlist #39 - Tall Tree Music Festival Playlist

Tall Tree Music Festival is upon us once again - June 30 to July 3rd.

Taking place on top of Browns Mountain, in beautiful Port Renfrew, the 3 days of shows will feature tons of BC and Canadian musical acts.

We've put together a preview playlist for those heading over today, and those missing out. Check it out above!

Song of the Day: June 30, 2016 - "Book It To Fresno" by Brendan Canning

Brendan Canning is back! The founding member of Broken Social Scene recently announced a brand new solo album called Home Wrecking Years, out August 12 via Arts & Crafts.

The first single is a rocker called "Book It To Fresno" and gives us a tease of the album, which will be his first full band recording since Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record. And if the song is any indication, what an album it's going to be.

Song(s) of the Day: June 29, 2016 - Nice As Fuck

I really wanted to write something about Nice As Fuck, the new band from Jenny Lewis, Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Forster and The Like’s Tennessee Thomas who surprisingly dropped a new album a week ago. But Father John Misty wrote their bio and nothing I can say will be any better than this: 

“Gather ‘round ladies, I am God’s favorite evolved male music journalist! This is my resounding endorsement of Nice As Fuck! Damn, this is a good look for me! I can feel my incomplete chromosome regenerating as we speak! Not so much a crass “bio” engineered to cynically exploit the no-shortage-of-sexy-talking-points-that-have-little-to-nothing-to-with-the-actual-music (THEIR EYES ARE UP THERE JESUS), this is in reality more a tacit referendum on the most successful PR campaign of all time: selling you on the indispensability of the male gender. Which I totally get, and am all-to-well-aware of my complicity in that. It sucks. I am the “post-modern man” [eye roll]. But seriously, I am the new tyranny, like, the sole bearer of the new injunction – as in wow that looks heavy, please, allow me to carry that millennia old baggage for you – but I do think I know what you’re trying to say. Realistically, as a man I am more qualified than you to tell you the ways in which I am radically inferior to every other life form on Earth or elsewhere. Let me explain (at the risk, I know, of going a little “woke bro”): You see, at the dawn of the typographical age, we males, cursed with a right hemisphere orientation, decided that our weaknesses (symbolic thinking, intuition, empathy, etc) were weakness in general. So instead of doing the unthinkable, namely: deferring to anyone else’s vision of the world, we made the way we see things law, and then we wrote them down on traditionally masculine substances like stone, marble, etc, so anytime things got a little fuzzy, we could just mindlessly recite our laws, and in case anyone said, “Hey, that’s just some shit you wrote down!” we’d invent a God (a MALE one) and say, “Hey, don’t look at me! He said it!” and that was that.
So, look, along those lines I know it’s a little ironic, not too mention hypocritical, for someone who obviously knows better, to declare (“declaring” being clearly symptomatic of entitlement) from the tower of the patriarchy that Nice As Fuck (aka NAF aka Jenny Lewis, Tennessee Thomas, and Erika Spring aka The Tame Guys) is objectively the best all-female band in the last 25 years (like that should even matter, you know, do you describe RADIOHEAD as an “ALL OPPRESSOR BAND NO YOU DON’T”) so I just won’t. I won’t blatantly man-splain their musical DNA, play spot-the-influence, or condescendingly take you by the hand and patiently reduce their sound to a bunch of “if blank hetero-married blank and then blank subjugated her sound to blank’s sound for the sake of maintaining the relationship”’s (classic), and go on to tell you – so you, presumably, never have to actually listen to it for yourself and (God-forbid) draw your own conclusions which would naturally be that NAF sounds like if the Clash made Rumors and King Tubby produced it.
And, I gotta say, it’s high time for a conscious band to come along and talk power dynamics, talk love, talk guns, talk cookie lips, talk fear, talk fantasy, talk reality (enough with the pizza punk about cats). It isn’t even worth bringing up the crisis of imagination in the lamestream – when I look at some these pop stars that serve as “role models” for these little girls, I just think wow, really great, that’s definitely the message these kids need to hear. Don’t they know that being smart and independent is actually way sexier to me than boop-boop-be-dooing around in garter belts? I mean, I’m trying to liberate these women and they just go and objective themselves! That’s my job! Haha, but really, smart women just really get me going.
Off to find some retail counterfeit of the rituals of antiquity designed to bring me into authentic manhood! Good luck with that, you know?
Haha!
HAHAHA!
H-ha!
Hahahahaha!
Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Ha.
– FJM”

Song of the Day: June 28, 2016 - "Just Because (for Gord Downie)" by Joel Plaskett

I don't know if I have many words for this poem-turned-song that Joel Plaskett wrote for Gord Downie.

It's an excellent rock song written by a great Canadian musician for another one...so just do what Joel says: "Crank it for the man with love."

Song of the Day: June 27, 2016 - "Bad Boy" by Rykka

Vancouver's Rykka is on her way back to our city from competing in the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest (for Switzerland)! 
The songstress has released another single, titled "Bad Boy", from her upcoming album Beatitudes.

No word yet on any shows while she's here, but we can keep our fingers crossed. You'll definitely be able to see her later this year after the new album is released (July 8) on her fall tour. In the meantime check out the electro-pop track "Bad Boy" below!

Song of the Day: June 26, 2016 - "They Don't Make Anything In That Town" by Donovan Woods

Donovan Woods has released a new video for the song "They Don't Make Anything In That Town" off of his Polaris Prize nominated album Hard Settle, Ain't Troubled.

The musician is taking his show on the road this summer, but won't be in Vancouver until November (11th at the Fox Cabaret).

Check out the video and song below and be sure to give the album a listen too.

Song of the Day: June 25, 2016 - "Lay Down In The Tall Grass" by Skye Wallace [Timber Timbre cover]

If you've seen Skye Wallace perform live in the last little while, you may have seen her cover Timber Timbre's "Lay Down In The Tall Grass". In fact, I saw her play a solo set this past weekend for Car Free Day, where she admitted the song almost made her new upcoming album, but it was cut because she was recording with the drummer from Timber Timbre, and that may have been a bit weird.

Anyway, you can hear the cover below in a session she did with Southern Souls, or you just might be able to hear it tomorrow (Sunday) night at the Rickshaw Theatre, where Skye is playing a show with David Newberry!