I should be writing an essay on Barack Obama…

The countdown to Canadian Music Week (March 11-15) is on, and for Toronto music lovers, this year’s event is set to go down as one of best editions of CMW this city has ever seen. With over 500 bands scheduled to play at 45 different venues, there’s guaranteed to be something for everyone. I’m not going to list all the bands/artists playing here, but just look at this list: Bloc Party, Sloan, The Ting Tings, Matt Mays & El Torpedo, The Trews, Holy Fuck, Chad Vangaalen, Arkells, Sebastien Grainger, Slim Twig, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Hexes & Ohs, Hooded Fang, Josh Reichmann Oracle Band, Crystal Castles, USS, Hey Rosetta!, $100, A-Trak, Basia Bulat, Birds of Wales, Brian Borcherdt, CFCF, Cuff the Duke, DJ Sega, Duchess Says, Elliott Brood, Gentlemen Reg, Green Go, Handsome Furs, Holy Fuck, Jenn Grant, Lioness, Lights, Malajube, Mansion, Mother Mother, Nasty Nav, Pas Chic Chic, Quest For Fire, Rebekah Higgs, Jokers of the Scene, Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees, The Bicycles, The D’Ubervilles, The Golden Dogs, The Novaks, The Hood Internet, The Waking Eyes, Two Hours Traffic, We Are Wolves, Young Galaxy and so, so, so many more! For more details on the above shows and the rest, you can check out the CMW’s official website here or Eye Weekly has a pretty goodguide for you to plan your perfect week of seeing live music.

I’m not one to promote or partake in illegal downloading of leaked albums – but if I were, I’d say that the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album is shaping up to be one of my early favourites for the year’s best album. You’re going to have to find them yourself, but tracks like “Dragon Queen” featuring TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and “Hysteric” (which has serious potential to become the new “Maps”) bode well for It’s Blitz!. If you haven’t marked April 14th on your calendar yet, you should probably do that now.

Speaking of upcoming releases, does anyone else think the hype for the new Handsome Furs (March 10th) and The Decemberists (March 24th) albums has been under-whelming at best? These are two marquee-name bands and yet it seems like there hasn’t been much media attention being paid to either of them. In this month’s issue of EXCLAIM! (which features Malajube on the cover wearing Crayola-coloured outfits), reviewer Dan Sylvester said that compared to the Handsome Furs’ debut album, Face Control is “much leaner, sharper, cleverer and more rewarding.” From the tracks that I’ve heard, including “Legal Tender” and “Talking Hotel Arbat Blues” (which can listen to on the band’s MySpace or here expect more of Wolf Parade guitarist Dan Boeckner’s tight vocals over electronic soundscapes, created by Boeckner’s wife Alexei Perrei on snyths and drum machine. You can catch Boeckner and Perrei in Toronto when they play the Horseshoe on March 13th during CMW. As for The Decemberists

Death To The Throne is one dude from Phoenix, Arizona who has been turning out some shit-hot remixes lately of everyone’s hipsters favourites, including M.I.A., Chromeo, Lykke Li, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My favourite track however is a reworked version of “Pop Bottles” (a song that I admit is a guilty pleasure of mine) to which he adds an electro back-beat and alters the vocals so that Birdman and Lil Wayne’s voices sound almost unrecognizable.

So for the most part, the soundtrack to the upcoming Watchmen movie (which hits theatres on March 6th) is pretty respectable. For a comic book movie (albeit an untypical one) to have a soundtrack that includes such classics as Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, is an impressive feat. However, there’s one track that’s a black mark on not just the album, but possibly all of music itself. I’m referring to this: My Chemical Romance covering Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”. I mean it’s one thing to cover Bob Dylan (The White Stripes did it and their versions of “Love Sick” and “Outlaw Blues” are now staples in their concert repertoire), but c’mon, from the band that fucking once wrote a song called “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”? Seriously? Goddamnit, now I’m depressed.

Kings Of Leon have a new music video for their second single “Use Somebody”, which you can watch here. Maybe it’s just the chorus (“You know that I could use somebody/You know that I could use somebody/Someone like you.”), but this song is heart-wrenching for me everytime I listen to it, and it makes me want to give lead singer Caleb Followhill a hug to make him feel better.

I’m going to leave you with some new music, from a band called Japandroids. Hailing from Vancouver, Japanther is the duo of Brian King and Dave Prowse (see photo above), and are living proof that “Japan” bands (see: Japanther, Japanese Motors, etc.) are the new “crystal” bands (see: Crystal Stilts, Crystal Castles, Crystal Antlers,etc.). In fact, with their style of energetic, garage rock (think No Age hooking up with Death From Above 1979 at a Red Bull and vodka-fueled dance party), it’s only a matter of time before this guitar and drums two-piece that sounds like a five-piece is hailed as the new “it” band of the moment. But just listen to songs like “Young Hearts Spark Fire”, and tell me that there isn’t more to this band than an upcoming onslaught of hype. Japandroids will be playing not one, but three shows during Canadian Music Week at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, Trash Palace and Sneaky Dee’s (with respective dates being March 13th, 14th and 15th).

Cheers,
Max