Songs of the Week: February 03 - 09, 2025

February 10, 2025 by Christine McAvoy in Song Of The Day, Songs Of The Week

“Can We Be Still” by Georgia Harmer

Georgia Harmer is back with her first new single since her debut album Stay In Touch in 2022.

“Can We Be Still” is a chill tune that highlights her incredible voice, and Harmer explains the song is “about lifelong best-friendship and striving to protect it from the inevitable changes that come with time. It’s about having a shared vision of the future and a desire to preserve it, to see the plan for ever-lasting closeness through.”

You can watch the video below (directed by Talvi Faustmann at Rosedale Heights School Of The Arts in Toronto) and keep an ear our for more to come!

Kirk

“10 Feet Tall” by Current Swell

I needed a beachy-vibe track on this cold February morning!

Victoria staple Current Swell is back with a new single, “10 Feet Tall”, from their upcoming EP Peacekeeper.

Of it they say it’s “an anthemic ode to youthful freedom and resilience [that] embodies the unshakable confidence that comes from being surrounded by the right energy and mindset.”

The band is about to head out on tour next month with a stop in Vancouver at the Commodore Ballroom on March 21st and then they’re off to the UK!

Christine

“Television, a Ghost in My Head” by Frog Eyes

We’re less than a month away from the new album from Frog Eyes, and getting the latest tease with the lead track, “Television, a Ghost in My Head”

The frenetic song comes with a video shot by singer Carey Mercer of a seal lounging near a ferry dock in Vancouver, with Mercer explaining:

“A ferry harbour is a bit like airport-space: all energies and commerce centered around that which is departing or arriving, but outside of the reductive human conception of the space, there is another galaxy of personalities and endeavours. My buddy the seal was really hamming it up, like they knew I had a record coming out and that I would sit on a rock and capture their silly energies, like they were ready for their close-up, as they say. So I filmed two vids, delighting in the comic energy and the various intrigues and characters floating in and out of my screen, and then sent them to Derek (Janzen - long-time visual collaborator), who sweetly agreed to line them up and place my words at the bottom of the screen.”

Have a watch below, and mark March 7th on your calendars for when new album The Open Up comes out!

Kirk

“Bang Bang Bang” by Fake Shark

Fake Shark is back with a new one and it’s… a banger.
See what I did there? Because the song is called “Bang Bang Bang”? You get it.

The funky bass, drums and shaker, and call-and-repeat gives me me total Cake vibes and I LOVE IT.

The band say it' “is a song about knowing you’re being talked about behind your back. It’s a helpless feeling, but also kind of freeing. You can find out who are your real people, so in this sense, it’s not a sad song, it’s a positive party song.”

Christine

“You Don’t Know Me” by BAWAH

Last week, BAWAH (formerly known as MAUVEY) released the first part of an incredibly ambitious project, MAUVEY TO A BAWAH — a four-part album series, a film series spanning 48 episodes, and a 48-chapter book.

Spanning the entire year, BAWAH will have new releases every week: new music on Fridays, new episodes on Mondays, and new book chapters on Wednesdays.

All 48 songs will tie in to a film episode, woven into a larger narrative that is “as much about reclaiming his past as it is about forging a future”. The film is directed by award-winning Andrew Huculiak (who you may musically know from We Are The City or Big Kill, or theatrically from Violent and Ash) and shot by long-time collaborator Joseph Schweers (Amazing Factory).

You can watch the first episode (titled Push Ups and a Bathroom Mirror) below, as well as listening to “You Don’t Know Me”, the first single from Part One of the series, MAUVEY TO A BAWAH: THE FIRST 13, which is out May 1st.

Kirk

Songs of the Week: January 13 - 19, 2025

January 20, 2025 by Christine McAvoy in Song Of The Day, Songs Of The Week

“Keep It Coming” by Two Hours Traffic

Holy crap there’s new Two Hours Traffic!!!

Over a decade ago, the PEI band played what was to be their last concert, and while they have come out of ‘retirement’ and played sporadic shows over the past few years, I was definitely not expecting new music from them.

But last week they dropped “Keep It Coming”, a classic THT jam that will instantly get stuck in your head. According to the band, the song was written during a pretty tough year when ‘keep it coming’ became “a bit of a mantra, as well as a reminder not to worry about every little thing in the future and to trust that you will be able to deal with whatever comes your way,” says guitarist Andy MacDonald, with singer Liam Corcoran adding that the song has “the kind of arrangement we’ve tried to develop over the years, with lots of empty space on the recording and a focus on the groove and the rhythms. Our friend Dan Griffin (Teen Ravine) added keys and synths which ended up being the glue that made the recording really work.”

You can check out the lyric video below, and true to the title, the band has promised more to come!

Kirk

“I See The Same Things” by Frog Eyes

Vancouver’s Frog Eyes have dropped another new single, “I See The Same Things”, ahead of the release of their upcoming album The Open Up, which is set to come out on March 7th.

Of the song “taps into a central theme for the band of eschewing digital trappings and convenience culture, and when feeling enclosed by an increasingly fever-paced world, they turn toward their reverence for warm tones, historical rich reverie and storytelling art spaces, like The Western Front in Vancouver.”

Guitarist and singer Carey Mercer continues: “The concept for the video is to show Shyla, our keyboard player, digitizing and archiving performance-art pieces that mostly took place on the top floor in the Luxe Hall. The video then shows us playing in the Luxe Hall. It’s a conversation, as all art is, with the art of the city that you live in. We are all just doing the same things, day in, day out, it’s how the art gets made, I think.”

Christine

“Disco Polo” by Basia Bulat

We’re about a month away from Basia’s Palace, the new album from Basia Bulat, and last week we got our latest taste with the third single, “Disco Polo”.

The gorgeous song is named after a genre of Polish dance music, beloved by Basia’s late father, and honours her parent’s musician influence on her life. Bulat elaborates, “This is an homage to what I feel like is the two sides of my musical lineage–my mother was a classically trained piano and guitar teacher, and my father’s favourite genre was Disco Polo. About the only thing we could all agree on was the oldies radio station that was the peacemaker of our home when I was a child. I wanted to write something that felt like a folk tale about those genres and how they still influence me after all this time–even now every time I sit down at the piano all those different musical worlds swirl around each other and try to dance together in my mind.”

You can check out the fantastic video below, directed by Nora Rosenthal, and pick up Basia’s Palace when it’s out February 21 on Secret City Records.

Kirk

“Time Waited” by My Morning Jacket

It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket, but they recently announced their tenth(!) studio album, along with the brand new single, “Time Wasted”

The new tune is perfectly chill and literally dreamy, as Jim James explains: “I made a loop of that piano intro and listened as I went for a walk, and all these melodies started coming to me. For a long time, I didn’t have lyrics, but then I had a dream where I was in a café and a song was playing, and the lyrics to that song became the lyrics to ‘Time Waited’ – the melodies just fit perfectly. And the lyrics are about how flexible time is, how we can bend and warp time, especially if we are following our hearts, the universe and time itself can flow to work with us.”

The new album, simple titles is, drops on March 21 and you can check out “Time Waited” below!

Kirk

Songs of the Week: November 18 - 24, 2024

November 25, 2024 by Christine McAvoy in Song Of The Day, Songs Of The Week

“E-E-Y-O-R-E (That's Me!)” by Frog Eyes

Vancouver’s Frog Eyes are back with a brand new single called “E-E-Y-O-R-E (That's Me!)”

The song features the frantic pace and distinct vocals from Carey Mercer that we know & love, with the band explaining: “"E-E-Y-O-R-E" has that riff that happens in the middle and end of the song, and it’s rare, and I like it. When we play it live, our keyboard player Shyla will often look at my guitar with enthusiasm and encouragement. The song itself is a bit about loneliness, fear, isolation, the irony that we all are simultaneously bombarded with these isolating emotions, but unable to bust out of these individual spheres. Eeyore: our collective familiar, our beloved daemon.”

You can check out the fun video, directed by Derek Janzen, below!

Kirk

“Peace Of Mind (Morning)” by Leif Vollebekk

I needed a pretty, acoustic song this morning with the grey outside and Leif Vollebekk delivered it.
“Peace Of Mind” is a re-recording from his new album Revelation (no relation to us) and the man himself says of the song: “there’s something about a mountain that always makes you feel at ease. It can inspire the stillness you need to find yourself.”

Leif is on tour right now and will be swinging through Vancouver in February for two shows at The Pearl.

Christine

“Window” by The Weather Station

As we get closer to the release of Humanhood, the next album from The Weather Station, we’re treated with another tease in the way of the latest single, “Window”.

The anthemic new song from Toronto’s Tamara Lindeman is accompanied by a video directed by Philippe Léonard, and features Lindeman’s performance of the song projected out the window of a moving van onto trees, forest, and passing signs. Lindeman says the video was “filmed on the island of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs, Quebec late one night with battery powered projector, with many attempts to get that one perfect take. Philippe’s note to me was ‘you are the window.’”

As well as the single, she announced a huge tour for next year, starting in January in the UK, and winding back to Canada, including a show here in Vancouver on May 16th at the Hollywood Theatre!

Kirk

Songs of the Week: February 07 - 13, 2022

February 14, 2022 by Kirk Hamilton in Song Of The Day, Songs Of The Week

“CANDU” by The Rural Alberta Advantage

It’s been nearly five years since we heard new music from The Rural Alberta Advantage, but last week the trio released not one, but TWO new tracks!

“CANDU” and “AB Bride” are the first in what the band is calling a “distinctly divergent course” for releasing their music. They will be putting out an ongoing series of new songs and EPs, as they're written and recorded by the band, with live shows to support them.

The new songs also see the return of original member Amy Cole, rejoining Nils Edenloff and Paul Banwatt, and if these two songs are any indication, it’s going to be a heck of a year of new music!

Kirk

“When You Turn on the Light” by Frog Eyes

Vancouver’s Frog Eyes announce their surprise return last week, releasing their first new single in four years(!)

"When You Turn On The Light," is the debut track off their upcoming album, The Bees, and features Carey Mercer’s distinctive vocals driving the melocic indir rock tune.

Mercer says: "I never made music when I was 21. I wanted to be a painter. I lived in an apartment with friends in Vancouver, and my room was full of cans of toxic enamel-marine paint. I would wake up at 3:30pm and paint on my bedroom wall, this crazed fresco, a hellish umber landscape that glittered street light reflections from the enamel paint. I had to sleep by my open window because the fumes were atrocious, and I started to deteriorate, but the fresco was really coming along.
Some of the roommates were amazing musicians, some of them passed away. I think the song ‘When You Turn on the Light’ describes walking into my bedroom in that apartment.
One time, I came home from a late afternoon walk and the building manager was standing in my bedroom looking at the painting with a look of wonder but also fear, and the fear turned to anger when I walked in. She kept her food in our fridge because her roommate kept stealing her cream cheese, and we used to dread the sound of her key turning in our lock. But it meant we could eat her cream cheese. When she confronted me about the fresco, I told her I was enriching the apartment and lied about my standing in the world, describing upcoming shows in Milan and Turin. And Toronto, for believability. She left and we were evicted a bit later but I think it had more to do with other things and not just the fresco."

Frog Eyes also be playing the Vancouver edition of the Paper Bag Records 20th Anniversary weekend, along with Frankiie and Gold & Youth at the Rickshaw on March 4th!

Kirk

“Psychic Jailbreak” by Cancer Bats

Need something to wake you up this Monday morning?!
”Psychic Jailbreak”, the new single by Cancer Bats will definitely fit that bill.

It’s the first, and title, track from their new album that will be coming out on April 15th through (their own label) Bat Skull Records. Lead singer Liam Cormier said that they “needed to kick things off with a total banger of a track that makes you want to pump your fist in the air, smash your head to the beat, all while screaming the call to action REJECT THE FALLACY OF TIME!".

Yep. That tracks!

Christine

“90 Days” by Common Deer

Toronto’s Common Deer shared the first single off their debut full-length album, MAXIMALIST last week. “90 Days” sees the band shifting from their indie rock roots to more of a synth-pop sound, but is no less catchy from their previous tunes.

Singer Sheila Hart says the new record tackles a range of raw and honest themes, from mental health, abuse, and addiction, to sexism and obsession, all with an undeniably raw vulnerability, adding "MAXIMALIST is a celebration of excess and a refusal to compromise, however misguided that might be.”

And with song titles like “Negative Thot”, “Fuckboi”, and “LonelyFans”, I am definitely intrigued to hear the full album when it drops April 1st!

Kirk

“Love Ballad” by Combine The Victorious

Happy Valentine’s Day to those that celebrate.
Here’s a little love ballad, conveniently called “Love Ballad”, by Vancouver’s Combine The Victorious.
<3

Christine

Song of the Day: May 23, 2018 - "A Strand of Blue Stars" by Frog Eyes

May 23, 2018 by Kirk Hamilton in Song Of The Day

The good news is, Frog Eyes released a brand new album last week called Violet Psalms.

The bad news is, it is going to be the last ever Frog Eyes album.

Along with the new album, on Friday the band released a brand new video for "A Strand Of Blue", featuring Mercer's distinctive haunting voice soaring over the sprawling indie rock.

The final tour includes a stop here in Vancouver at the China Cloud this Saturday, and I hope to see you there.

Song Of The Day: July 09, 2015 - "Joe With The Jam" Frog Eyes

July 09, 2015 by Kirk Hamilton in Song Of The Day

Ten songs, all written on an acoustic guitar that Carey Mercer inherited from his father, who passed away a couple years ago. That's how the new Frog Eyes album Pickpocket's Locket started.
It's out on Paper Bag August 28th, but you can hear the first single here, "Joe With The Jam".

He'll also be touring this fall with his former bandmate and pal Dan Bejar, opening a few dates for Destroyer (who, coincidentally, has a new album out on the same day).

Oh, and the lush strings on the song? They were arranged by another former bandmate and pal Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Moonface) and played by the award winning Jesse Zubot.