Caribou (aka Dan Snaith) is the lucky recipient of this year’s Polaris Music Prize, an annual award given to the best Canadian album, as decreed by a panel of industry judges. Andorra (pictured), Caribou’s 2007 release, has earned Snaith a cool $20,000.

Caribou’s top contenders were Black Mountain: In the Future; Basia Bulat: Oh, My Darling; Kathleen Edwards: Asking for Flowers; Holy Fuck: LP; Plants and Animals: Parc Avenue; Stars: In Our Bedroom After the War; Shad: The Old Prince; Two Hours Traffic: Little Jabs; and The Weakerthans: Reunion Tour.

Indian Jewelry, Mira Billotte, and Lau Nau @ the Knitting Factory, NYC | September 19, 2008

Having just missed Talk Normal’s set, I arrived at the show as Finnish band Lau Nau (Laura Naukkarinen from Helsinki with an accompanying string-player) were setting up for their simple, two-member act. Seated on folding chairs near the edge of the stage, the ground around them was littered with a variety of noisemakers and things that go click-clack. The dreamy, looped out vocals and the consistent twerp and chime of whatever small instruments the two-some were cupping near the mics made me feel like a toy inventor on muscle relaxers; very eerie and childlike but matured with the basic abstract-folk nature of their style.

Photo of Indian Jewelry by Lori Baily

Mira Billotte (of White Magic and Qui*x*otic) literally topped her keys off with pedals and knobbed boxes, playing over pre-recorded drum/piano/various noise tracks. After a few brief moments of technical difficulty, she began singing with her alternately deep and high vocals; at times beautifully improvised and wholly present. She completely held her own sans guitarist and in her satin kimono-esque garb complete with gold sparkly pseudo-cape reminded me of a poor man’s tired Elton John, playing moody ballads to shipwrecked wayfarers. Lau Nau joined her for an epic harmony session that morphed the women into sirens who in turn transformed the audience into a sea of jello’d space-heads. At one point, I was unable to focus on anything surrounding Mira on the stage. It was as if an aura encircled her that forced you to focus solely on her face and voice. Outside during a smoke break, my friend Mike commented that he thought he saw her levitate.
More on Show Review: Indian Jewelry, Mira Billotte (White Magic) and Lau Nau

Hidden Gem:
Smoking Popes
Destination Failure
1997 | Capitol

I’ve never been able to tell which of the latter two Smoking Popes albums (before their mid-aughts revival) was the bigger hit. It seems as though the former, Born to Quit, is the one for the ages: the big hit, “Need You Around” was on the soundtrack for one out of every five teen comedies in 1995. And it’s stood the test of time-go back and watch Clueless, and the Smoking Popes are the one of the only elements that doesn’t sound like 1995.

And there’s a pretty specific sound going on here: the Popes sound an awful lot like a young Frank Sinatra fronting Blue Album-era Weezer, replete with starry-eyed girl songs that sound like singer Josh Caterer wouldn’t try to get to second base until at least the fourth date. Electric guitars intertwine in the tried and true one-lead-one-rhythm fashion. Where it seemed like everyone else at the time was whipping off angular, fret-punishing leads (Billy Corgan, Kim Thayil), lead guitarist Eli Caterer seemed perfectly content to let some air in between the notes, adding a 70’s power-pop element to the Popes’ sound. The rhythm section pounds but doesn’t punish: no matter how aggressive the songs get, everything lays below Josh Caterer’s reasonable croon.
More on Record Review: Destination Failure

22 years of playing over 2,300 distinctly different shows, jamband Widespread Panic has done more than claim their spot in music history- they’ve been given top honor. On Saturday, September 20, Widespread Panic was rightfully inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame at the 30th annual awards show.

Fellow inductee and long time friend, Chuck Leavell of the Rolling Stones, introduced Widespread Panic by applauding their strength as a team and for their ability to uphold principles while making it big in the industry. Leavell said they exemplify that “You can be successful by doing things your own way.”
More on Hall of Famers: Widespread Panic

Fresh Baked:
TV on the Radio
Dear Science
2008 | Interscope
B

The search for something new often leads us to take a turn and eventually lose our way completely. Starting from romanticism we go to realism and then somehow end up in a dystopic science fiction world. And the future, half the time, is the messy world of Blade Runner or Clockwork Orange, a crazy salad of technology, trash culture, glittery luxury and dingy squalor. The world of Clockwork Orange, simultaneously familiar and strange, is ultimately cold, driven by cockeyed theories instead of human feelings. Blade Runner, for all its misery, is more attractive, and not just because of the good-looking robots. It is a violent and brutal world infused with emotion, romance, and style.

And that’s how TV on the Radio is different from other kitchen sink bands. What’s a “kitchen sink” band? It’s Animal Collective, The Bees, Floating World and the growing cohort of groups that jam together a mishmash of musical styles. The results are always interesting but often emotionally bankrupt. You listen once, twice, burn it for friends, but go back to your old favorites because, even if they’re predictable, they move you.
More on Record Review: Dear Science

Photo by Tod Seelie

The Miss Rockaway Armada is a unique art project involving building boats made from trash and floating them down the Mississippi river. The collective’s three main objectives are to create, meet people, and “reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.” Like many good things, the Armada is no more. However, “former crew members have been collaborating on new creative projects that have grown out of the energy of the Mississippi river” and have been “invited to create an installation in Amsterdam for Program Heartland” for which they need money. Enter the music!

Tonight at Surreal Estate in Brooklyn, Dark Dark Dark (pictured), along with The Gamut, Vampire Hands, U.S. Girls, Harrison & Friends, Trillion Gallons of Gas, and DJ Dirty Finger, will perform amongst tacos, beer, and silkscreening to benefit this most noble and adventurous of artistic causes.

Surreal Estate: 15 Thames Street, Brooklyn | 8pm, $5-7

Hidden Gem:
Simon and Garfunkel
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme
1966 | Columbia Records

Most music from the ’60s has been remade and remodeled so much that it sounds like just another sad Oasis imitation. Isn’t that what nostalgia is? Rediscovering the sources of the familiar, even if you were never around to discover it the first time around. Modern folk is less a sentimental journey than a search for something authentic, or something influenced by something influenced by something authentic. Where do you go to find the real music of the untutored peasants, close to the land and unspoiled by big city pretentions? Woody Guthrie? Robert Johnson?

You won’t find it here. But stepping outside the “greatest hits” canon of this peculiarly American duo is worth the trip. S&G’s “folk” dripped with English major pretensions that are funny now but, like a 1930s movie, make you a bit misty-eyed for a nicer time. “And you read your Emily Dickinson/ And I my Robert Frost/ And we note our place with bookmarkers/ That measure what we’ve lost.” “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” is adapted from a 17th century English source. That’s folk, but it’s a long way from Blind Lemon Jefferson. It’s a paler shade of white music: genteel and bookish, introspective and sensitive, given to philosophical fancies – like a nervous gentleman caller who warms up a little once you take his hand.
More on Record Review: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

Hidden Gem:
Simon and Garfunkel
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme
1966 | Columbia Records

Most music from the ’60s has been remade and remodeled so much that it sounds like just another sad Oasis imitation. Isn’t that what nostalgia is? Rediscovering the sources of the familiar, even if you were never around to discover it the first time around. Modern folk is less a sentimental journey than a search for something authentic, or something influenced by something influenced by something authentic. Where do you go to find the real music of the untutored peasants, close to the land and unspoiled by big city pretentions? Woody Guthrie? Robert Johnson?

You won’t find it here. But stepping outside the “greatest hits” canon of this peculiarly American duo is worth the trip. S&G’s “folk” dripped with English major pretensions that are funny now but, like a 1930s movie, make you a bit misty-eyed for a nicer time. “And you read your Emily Dickinson/ And I my Robert Frost/ And we note our place with bookmarkers/ That measure what we’ve lost.” “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” is adapted from a 17th century English source. That’s folk, but it’s a long way from Blind Lemon Jefferson. It’s a paler shade of white music: genteel and bookish, introspective and sensitive, given to philosophical fancies – like a nervous gentleman caller who warms up a little once you take his hand.
More on Record Review: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme