The Nutsak kicks back
Brendan Murphy
bmurphy@hour.ca
|
Nutsak: Never go anywhere without lunch
|
In the midst of a global financial crisis, elections that run the gamut from boringly inconsequential to horrifyingly important, sometimes it's best to tend to your own garden. And my garden, planted with locally sourced music seeds and watered by attentive and knowledgeable audiences, owes a great deal to the hearty show listings that support the showier rant-flowers that get all the attention. This week, we point the sun their way... The grizzled old cooligans of Nutsak prepare for the release of their first seven-inch single for Signed By Force Records. By my calculations, this group has over 12 light-years of musical experience between them. Watch them Manny this thing out of the park at Casa del Popolo on Friday, Oct. 24. The full-length album will be out worldwide in February unless they all die beforehand.
You probably think you don't know the Brooklyn trio Chairlift. But since one of their songs has been featured recently on a certain company's inescapable ad campaign, you may even be sick of them already. They play at Le National on Oct. 24 with some little-known band called... Yeasayer?
Who makes the best soulful doo-wop and blues? The Welsh, of course! Yes, the country whose language still seems to be written by hobbits birthed Duffy, the latest Amy Winehouse pretender. First, she's got a good voice and good songs. But what's the reason for this glut of New Amys? With Amy herself ruining the Amy market, is this an economic void-fill? Merely a naturally
occurring cyclical music revival? But mostly, why are all the Amys white? Duffy says that she thinks that race shouldn't be an issue, but what else is a white girl singing soul music going to say? Oh right, we're "post-racial" now, no problem here. Duffy plays Métropolis on Oct. 24. Fresh from Fish&Chipswitch, rising arrivers Broadcast Radio play Club Lambi on Saturday, Oct. 25. Montreal's artfully minded On Bodies and Toronto's Dinosaur Bones open things up. There are apparently several more B-Radio shows on the way, and since their album Hallways of the Twenty-First Floor has already been launched, these shows are presumably flight trajectory monitoring, undertaken so the whole thing continues to climb skyward without crashing down into the streets in a fiery indie inferno.
Due to his diligence, the fact that I'm pretty sure I saw him wearing an outfit that contained a football jersey, clown pants and knee boots, not to mention the great variety of bands being plugged, I'm going to big-up a couple of shows that Mike from Mixylodian has on the go. Before doing so: Mike, what was the inspiration for that outfit? Ironic afternoon of American sports? A shoplifting session at Drawn & Quarterly? Grocery shopping?
On Friday, Oct. 31, at Lambi, Mixylodian play with excellent local outfit Code Pie (seriously, get up on them), Expo 67 and Hospital Bombers. Cover is half if you've got a costume on.
Mixy follows things up the following night at Friendship Cove (215A Murray St.), which I didn't even know was still in existence, for the warm and wonderful hole-in-the-wall's anniversary show. They've got Paris's Karaocake, Vancouver's Greenbelt Collective and Halifax's (actually, I think they've been sucked up into the 514) post-punks Special Noise, plus film screenings by Guy Maddin, Deco Dawson, Nadia Moss and more.
