New Release: The Rest - Everyone All At Once

You know how everyone's in search of the next Arcade Fire? And you know how the next brilliant, unheralded Canadian band that puts out the next gobstopping album teeming with lilypads of frog-in-throat tunes will always be hailed as the next Arcade Fire? And you know how if justice reigns in the world, The Rest just might be the next Arcade Fire?

I totally feel it. And so, whenever I hear someone ask me for my thoughts on the next Arcade Fire, that in-bred spirit of selflessness and generosity automatically triggers within, and I have no choice but to become the exemplary helper that I can't help being, and subsequently lead them to the nearest shopping mall, and then to one of the passageways, and then haul in elephants to block all the exits, and then call my pet arsonist to come over and torch the mall. Because I too want people to discover the next Arcade Fire. I'm kind like that. I can't help it.

Track list:

1. Coughing Blood
2. Modern Time Travel (necessities)
3. Sheep In Wolves' Clothing
4. Phonetically, Phonetically
5. Apples & Allergies
6. Drinking Again
7. Blossom Babies Part Two
8. Walk on Water (auspicious beginnings)
9. The Lady Vanishes
10. Everything All At Once

New Release: Intensive Care - All the People Hear With Me EP

So we're a little behind with all the new, good stuff that's been crowding our mailbox over the past month. I blame it on the rising price of linear low density polyethylene. What, you mean you don't know how that matters in the global scheme of things? You're so lucky. Stuff like that affects me deeply, man. Haven't slept for 16 minut...

Zzzzzzzz

Whaa... Oh yes, new, good stuff. Thought I'd start with one of the better ones, the sophomore EP of these lo-fi loving, genre blending Canadians. Yeah, where else? Long live Montreal, and whatever freakin' pills they're adding to those beef bagels. I've already placed my first order of eight bagels. I might end up looking like a fat arse, but I'll also have that Song of the Year Grammy locked up for at least two decades. And nuthin' else matters, y'all.

Track list:

1. Sirenhorses
2. Memorandom

New Release: Scott Orr - Miles From Today

As a penny-wise international student, one of my favourite weekly routines involved heading down to the city markets just before noon. No, it wasn't because the belly dancers came out that time to do the cha cha in a vat of squished grapes. It was because that was around the time when all the grocers started slashing the prices of their goods in an epic effort to get rid of their produce, otherwise whatever was unsold would spoil and go to waste. And in "slashing", I mean 5 kilos of apples for a dollar, or two boxes of watermelons for whatever change I had in my pocket at that moment (never more than 50 cents, miraculously).

Discovering Canadian singer-songwriter Scott Orr and his download-for-free sophomore Miles From Today is like arriving at the market at 11.53am, where all the metal grills have been pulled down and the shelves cleared, and you walk past the fishmonger who is flushing the ice down the sink, and he sees you walk by and chucks three crates of Kangaroo Island rock lobster at your feet and glumly says, "No one buys these anyways", and you take them home and throw a dinner party, with cheese-baked lobster as the evening's mains, and your guests all think you sold your country's entire oil reserves to buy the lobster, and you smile in smug silence, because you're a frackin' genius of a bargain hunter who knows how to con your way towards recreating a dining experience that is the equivalent of a vat full of belly dancing grape squishers.

Track list:

1. Don't Want To See That Again
2. Other Thoughts
3. Wondergirl
4. Hurricane
5. You Know What This Song Is About
6. Love Is A Dream
7. Old Enough
8. Take Them Home
9. You And I Alone
10. Dreamer
11. What A Way To Go
12. I'll Wait For You