Category Archives: Burden of Salt

Burden of Salt was an arts and culture blog I operated from 2010 through 2014. Don’t ask me about the name. This also served as an online portfolio for some of the work I contributed as a volunteer (2009-2011), Arts and Culture Editor (2011/2012), and Editor-in-Chief (2012/2013) to The Ontarion (the University of Guelph’s independent student newspaper) as well some reviews and interviews for Aesthetic Magazine and Truth Explosion Magazine.

Kazoo! Fest: Dusted @Guelph Green Party Office, April 5

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Dusted at the Guelph Green Party Office, April 5. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Even though his “old” band Holy Fuck made a triumphant (if quietly promoted) return to the stage at February’s edition of Toronto’s Long Winter series, Brian Borcherdt isn’t putting Dusted to bed. The answers to material by Borcherdt that was otherwise incompletely realized when written between shows with Holy Fuck and his solo work, Dusted sees Borcherdt team up with producer Leon Taheny, who carved a reputation producing Owen Pallett’s Final Fantasy albums and has also worked with Ohbijou and the Wooden Sky.

While Borcherdt sang ran his voice and guitar through some heavy feedback, Taheny, who just had Esther Grey between Dusted and the Rituals set he’d played earlier in the night, took on double duties playing drums and synth simultaneously. For a performance that relies on an equipment list that includes overblown amplifiers, the converted Green Party garage made the perfect setting for Dusted’s atmospherically minded offering of fuzzy post-folk.

Kazoo! Fest reviews: Esther Grey @Guelph Green Party Office, April 5

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Esther Grey at the Guelph Green Party Office on April 5. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Esther Grey have made a tradition of playing Kazoo! Fests, and it’s not hard to see why. Mixing creeping guitar progressions, innocent vocals, and some relaxed drumming that climax in crispy lo-fi jam outs, the group has developed a sound that is both idiosyncratic and self-aware. And here’s a coincidence: Esther Grey played at the Green Party Office garage, and the band began as guitarist Steph Yates and drummer/bassist Tyson Brinacombe’s humble, yard sale-inspired brainchild.

Kazoo! Fest reviews: Rituals @Guelph Green Party Office, April 5

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Rituals at the Guelph Green Party Office on April 6.

Rituals at the Guelph Green Party Office on April 6. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Applying ooh-ah-eee-oos to a post-punk aesthetic, Rituals ultimately serve up a crackly kind of surfgaze. At times hazily atmospheric, and at others laying the sludge on thick, it kind of comes off more as a sound experiment than something you want to sit around and rock out too, but in a spacious setting like the Green Party Office’s garage in Guelph, it’s a force you can’t help but pay attention too and absorb. Even if it gives you a light headache, it’s worth taking in.

 

Kazoo! Fest reviews: Scattered Clouds @Guelph Green Party Office April 5

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Scattered Clouds at the Guelph Green Party Office on April 5. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Positioned somewhere between brooding, jangly no-wave and an artsy kind of horror country, Scattered Clouds are kind of like a falling apart Bauhaus meets the Wild West. While the band boasts a name that echoes weather forecast and they were the second opener to play a five-band show, they shouldn’t be mistaken as anything short of a focal point, lest their peculiar sound should go unobserved.

 

Kazoo! Fest reviews: The While @Guelph Green Party Office April 5

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The While performing from behind a shadow screen at Kazoo! Fest's Green Party Office pop up venue. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

The While performing from behind a shadow screen at Kazoo! Fest’s Green Party Office pop up venue. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

If you said The While hid behind a screen for their opening slot at Kazoo! Fest’s Guelph Green Party office pop up venue, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Camera tricks, mood lighting, video, and a shadow screen were all called upon by the band of visual artists to blur the line between themselves and infinity. The special effects made them look bigger than they physically are in terms of headcount and equipment stock, but whether that was as a defense mechanism or just a proper representation of their essence was a debate given legitimacy as they looped not just their visual presence but their instrumentation as well. Adding their visual presence to a foreboding brand of indie folk that relies on a sound mix of foreboding contralto vocals, xylophones, organ, and drums, it was surrealism for your eyes and your ears.

 

Album Review: The Besnard Lakes–’Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO’

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The Besnard Lakes–Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO (Jagjaguwar)

On their first three albums, The Besnard Lakes displayed a tendency to diversify their material. Sophomore effort The Besnard Lakes Are the Darkhorse showed off a weepy falsetto from Jace Lasek, whose vocals were otherwise reserved to a buried mumble on the band’s debut,Volume 1, and The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night granted listeners permission to listen to Lasek’s co-songwriter and wife Olga Goreas’s own vocals – silky and ethereal in their languid wandering – mixed heavily into the foreground for the first time (it also added 12-string guitar, flute, omnichord, and mellotron sounds into the mix).

With Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, The Besnard Lakes make a welcome return to their brand of jangly shoegaze-heavy indie rock, but the effort is a little underwhelming when set beside a back catalogue of albums exhibiting such radically redefining elements.

But it’s still a beautiful record possessing some pretty magical powers.

UFO sends you off to a euphoria-enabling dreamscape that could be kind of nerve-racking at times, but only because it maps out its oasis with a full sound that has the breathtaking tendency to build itself up to overwhelming bigness before collapsing into some comforting spaces cushioned with soothing vocals and ring-out guitar chords.

Album opener “46 Satires” typifies that overall formula. Beginning with a synth note that coasts for 40-seconds, it seems to insinuate a lonely, expansive environment that’s perfect for the connection-longing verses sung by Goreas that soon follow. The remaining bulk of the track is brushed over with at first subtle guitar squeal and synth accents that sound like that of an alien spacecraft and then become more prominent, insinuating an extraterrestrial touchdown of sorts.

UFO obsesses over lyrical themes of discovery and correspondence (extraterrestrial, interpersonal or otherwise), so it’s not surprising that the second half of the record lifts off with the conversational “At Midnight.” Here, Lasek and Goreas toss vocal duties back-and-forth as they exchange perspectives over conspiracy: “All of my files she stole / All to erase a part of me,” Lasek mopes, to which Goreas responds, “Say what you have to say … Too much weird here.”

The familiarity of the relationship-burned situation in “At Midnight” contextualizes the otherwise incongruent pop-leaning “People of the Sticks.”

Another slowburning carver of surreal dreamscapes, if UFO does little more than establishRoaring Night as the album where The Besnard Lakes found their sound, it’s a comforting sign of what’s to come.

3.5/5

(originally published by The Ontarion on April 4, 2013)

Pop Machine: Doors wide open

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Jim Morrison lit his fire with fat and food

A freshly exhumed 1969 interview, indicates there was a time when Jim Morrison less resembled the sculpted image we have been fed through cover art, magazine shoots, posters, and etc. for decades.

Running four minutes and 18 seconds long, the Doors frontman’s interview with director/journalist Howard Smith has been treated with an animated video. It comes as part of a lost interview series from PBS called Blank on Blank.

(article continues after video)

Morrison kicks off the interview by asking Smith and an unidentified sit-in, “Are you hungry? … Maybe we could order out for some sandwiches or some chicken delight or something,” and, met with responses that are less than enabling than he might have preferred, goes on to point out how, “well, it’s lunchtime,” then going on to grill Smith and his partner to ensure they were being authentic in their turning down of his implications.

In what was undoubtedly an effort to mine some quotes out of the banter, Smith points out, “You’ve put on a lot of weight; are you eating a lot?”

Rather than indulging Smith’s articulation of what is now only a shadow of today’s gaze of skinny culture, Morrison lightly probes the fat-shaming culture of the western world, saying, “That’s something that really bothers me. What’s wrong with being fat?”

He goes on to say “fat is beautiful.”

Morrison gets talking about his college days and how he felt cheated out of his money if he didn’t eat big. He says that while attending school, he grew to be about 185 pounds.

“I felt like a large mammal. A big beast,” Morrison says. “When I’d move through the corridors or across the lawn, I just felt like I could knock anybody out of my way, you know. I was solid, man. It’s terrible to be thin and wispy because, you know, you could get knocked over by a strong wind or something. Fat is beautiful.”

When Smith asks Morrison how much he weighs, to the delight of body image warriors everywhere, Morrison responds, “I don’t know to tell you the truth, I guess somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 150.”

It appears the doors of perception were wider than we expected.

(article originally published by The Ontarion on April 4, 2013)

Q&A: Army Girls

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Army Girls at eBar April 3, 2013. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Making perfect sense as the act to open the first (non-secret) concert of Kazoo! Fest 2013, Army Girls is a two-piece garage pop duo that thrives on the do it yourself ethos that defines the annual Guelph concert series and the organization that birthed it. I sat down with guitarist Carmen Elle (DIANA, Donlands and Mortimer, Austra) and drummer Andy Smith (Doldrums) to talk about managing conflicting schedules, their near kitchen-related band name, getting Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook to produce their 2011 EP Close to the Bone, as well as what the future has in store for them.

Tom Beedham: Hi Carmen. Hi Andy. Welcome to Guelph. I understand this is your first show here.

Andy Smith: We’ve both been here many times, but our first show, yeah. Indeed.

TB: Your first show in Guelph as Army Girls, at least.

AS: Yeah.

Carmen Elle: Yeah.

TB: For the people at home reading this, can you just explain what Army Girls is all about?

CE: Yeah! We are a two-piece rock-and-roll band consisting of guitar, drums, and vocals, and we write songs about fear and loneliness, um, pretty much exclusively.

AS: Yeah. All the simple things in life.

CE: All the simple things in life – yeah.

TB: I hear Army Girls was almost named after a kitchen appliance instead.

AS: Really?

CE: Really?

AS: Who said that?

TB: It was in an interview you guys did. You were talking about looking around the kitchen and just putting the word “The” before things.

AS: Fork? Spoon?

CE: Spoon? Fork?

AS: Knife? And then we were ladle.

CE: Ladle. Yeah, it’s true. The act of finding a band name was a lengthy process full of disappointing realizations about the limits of our imaginations.

AS: Yeah. Every time I stop to think about it, it’s always like… you know… whatever I come up with there would probably be something that is 10 times better, and then something that is 10 times better than that.

CE: I feel like everybody thinks that they’re more creative than maybe they actually are. Which isn’t to say that people aren’t creative; it just means that we don’t apply ourselves very often.

AS: Or it’s that fear and we’re self-doubting.

CE: Yeeeah. Especially for bands. “We can come up with a name.”

TB: So how did you end up with “Army Girls”?

CE: I saw someone on the street who was… she was a girl wearing an army jacket, she had a cool haircut, and I just went, “Oh, Army Girls.”

AS: And I said yes. Because—

CE: He said, “I don’t hate it.”

AS: Yeah. “I don’t hate it,” and, “Let’s use that and get it out of the way and continue.”

CE: Yeah. Like try coming up with a band name right now.

TB: Uh, I was going to say Army Ants, but that’s probably because Army Girls is right in front of me.

CE: And I thought The Macaroni and Cheese in my head.

AS: That could work, you know?

TB: More stuff in the kitchen!

CE: Yeah!

AS: It’s all about the kitchen.

CE: It’s hard.

TB: Makes sense. So you’re here for Kazoo! Fest. How did that get set up?

AS: Email, basically.

CE: Well, we got asked to play Wavelength Music Festival in Toronto last February with PS I Love You, um that was a super-super awesome show.

AS: It was a great show, yeah.

TB: Ah. And Kazoo! was a co-presenter with Wavelength this year.

CE: Well, a few of the guys who I guess run Kazoo! were at that show, and they offered us a slot in the festival that year but we I believe were out of town for that. So they followed up this year and we were happy to do it.

TB: You’re both involved in other projects. Can you talk about them and what it’s like balancing being in different bands?

AS: Well currently I’m not too involved in anything else.

TB: Aren’t you still involved in Doldrums?

AS: No, no. I only played the first eight shows back in like 2010.

TB: Oh, my mistake! I wasn’t sure so I’d actually tried to find videos of recent Doldrums gigs, and the ones I did find didn’t really give a clear view of who was on the kit, but it looked like it could be you, so I just figured it was.

CE: But his stage setup – Airick [Woodhead, a.k.a. the mastermind behind Doldrums], who’s a friend of ours – it evolves I would say like every album, but he’s super prolific and his stage requirements change a lot and so he’s always getting cool other players.

AS: Absolutely.

CE: Like our friend Steve [Foster] who I’m also in a band with, is his drummer right now.

TB: Is that DIANA?

CE: Donlands and Mortimer.

TB: Another one?

CE: Another one, yeah. [Laughs]

AS: You can’t keep up with her.

CE: Yeah. I guess I’m in three bands, which is kind of time consuming and it’s kind of confusing. There’s like a Google Calendar that nobody checks. Donlands and Mortimer is a band that I’ve been in for six years and we like to joke that we’re a reverse super group. You know how sometimes famous musicians will get together and they’ll be like, let’s start a band? Like Foo Fighters or whatever. Wait. Queens of the Stone Age.

TB: Well, Foo Fighters, too sort of, but yeah moreso Queens of the Stone Age.

Well Donlands… we all started playing together before we could play our instruments too well, and now Johnny [Spence] the keyboard player is in Tegan and Sara’s band, Steve’s in Doldrums, I’ve got this other band DIANA that’s doing really well… So yeah, it’s challenging for sure—

AS: But it’s to be expected, really.

CE: Yeah, but it’s awesome.

TB: So I was going to say both of you were at this year’s SXSW, but I guess you [Andy] were not.

AS: I was not.

TB: But you [Carmen] were there with DIANA. How was that experience, showing your music off to people that might have never heard of you before?

CE: Oh, it was super super awesome. We were on tour for the entire month opening for Tegan and Sara. We toured down to South by with them, so the entire month was kind of this huge high for us. We were super, super, super grateful and by the time we got down to South by, um… I think we were really tight as well, which, you know, felt really, really good for a band like that. Yeah. I had an amazing time at South by. I like Texas.

TB: So [Carmen], as you were saying, DIANA really took off over the winter and you went on tour with Tegan and Sara. What was that like?

CE: Oh, um, it was kind of a bad first tour to go on, because it spoiled us, and now every other tour we go on will not be as good.

TB: Did you get an extensive rider?

CE: We got a rider. And that was amazing.

TB: Did you put anything crazy on it?

CE: Batteries. Nine-volt batteries. They’re so expensive.

AS: Super Nintendo?

CE: Um, no [laughs]. We put dark chocolate on there – like 85 per cent – the good stuff, one grapefruit…

TB: I’ve actually got a pretty cool story about DIANA. My girlfriend and I went to the Long Winter show you guys played back in November for our first date. So we actually had our first dance during your set.

CE: Really?!

AS: That’s fancy.

CE: To what song? Was it like a slow jammer?

TB: All I can remember is it wasn’t “Born Again.”

CE: Might’ve been the other one, “Perpetual Surrender.” Like with the saxophone solo?

TB: Yeah! That’s totally it.

AS: Saxophone did it.

CE: Well, you’re welcome.

TB: Thank you. She’s probably going to make fun of me. I’m embarrassing. Anyway, Speaking of Long Winter and tying this back in with Army Girls, the two of you wrote and recorded your EP, Close to the Bone in 2011 with Ben Cook of Fucked Up, who presented that series. What was that process like?

CE: I knew of Ben Cook through a friend of mine, Simone TB, who’s in a band called Tropics and another called The Highest Order, and she kept throwing these Young Governor seven-inches at me and being like, “Ben Cook sings like an angel,” so I listened to a bunch of his stuff on MySpace, and agreed with her and also additionally thought that the sonic quality of his recordings was pretty similar to what I though that Army Girls should sound like on recording. So I cold called him, and he said yes, and then four hours later we have this record.

AS: It was a very good chemistry I suppose where we just kind of banged it out super quickly and it sounded kind of how we wanted it to sound.

TB: Any plans to set up some shows with his other band, Yacht Club? That’d be a good fit.

CE: Yeah. [I’d] love to play a show with Yacht Club. Actually we keep trying to book shows with Yacht Club and either we’ll pitch one or they’ll pitch one, and almost always it doesn’t fit with our schedules. But yeah, hopefully sooner rather than later. And I mean Ben Cook’s name is faithfully in every single conversation we have about who to work with in the future. We’re pretty happy with that dude in our lives.

TB: Wrapping things up, what does the future have in store for Army Girls? Any studio time lined up? Tour plans?

AS: I suppose our EP is being reissued by Blocks [Recording Club] with updated artwork—

CE: And two new tunes on it.

AS: And two new tunes. And I guess that’s kind of to-be-determined – the release date – but it’ll be available probably within a month or two, and then I guess just working towards doing our first full length.

CE: We’re writing pretty hardcore right now. We’re taking our time with it so that it sounds nice and shiny.

(first published by The Ontarion on April 4, 2013)

Kazoo! Fest reviews: Army Girls @eBar April 3

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Army Girls opening up Kazoo! Fest on April 3 at Guelph’s eBar. (Photo by Tom Beedham)

Setting garage and pop sensibilities high in their MO, singer/guitarist Carmen Elle (DIANA, Donlands and Mortimer, Austra) and drummer Andy Smith (Doldrums) are a two-piece, but no small force to be reckoned with. The group’s performance wasn’t without some technical hiccups (Elle’s guitar kept unplugging), but where that denied the group an opportunity exhibit to what are really some irresistibly catchy songs that are cushioned by Elle’s vocals – ranging from soothing and soft to passionately unrestrained – the group made up in charisma. Definitely a group (and performers) to keep your eye on.

For an interview with Army Girls, Click here

The Weeknd decided not to sign his $200 “autographed” vinyl sets

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Autographed Trilogy compilation pushes definition of what it is to be autographed

In his latest effort in balancing catering to the drooling maws of fans that want to hear his music as presented through more expensive formats with keeping as much of his private identity out of the public domain as possible, PBR&B artist The Weeknd decided to leave obsessive-compulsive fans and Internet vinyl flippers feeling weak and very small by slapping a pre-printed signature on his newly released “autographed” vinyl sets – a conspiracy for which he will answer to no reporter ever.

Furthering his disposition to dropping things silently on the Internet and then letting them do their own thing, on March 11, The Weeknd announced via his Twitter account that pre-orders for the Trilogy compilation, which includes mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence – all of which the artist also known by regular person name Abel Tesfaye dropped for free on the Internet anyway – would be available for $200, and the six-vinyl set would include “signed” and “individually hand-numbered” records.

The sets were released on March 26, and City Sound Inertia followed up with a report announcing the records were not in fact individually signed by Tesfaye, but instead printed with identical signatures on every copy.

Those expecting not to be screwed by the laws of grammar that only guaranteed the record set would be individually hand-numbered have expressed their discontent through otherwise satisfying vehicles such as City Sound Inertia’s comment section.

One such fan driven to this desperate length was a commenter identified only as “Johnson.”

“It sounds wonderful. But it was such a disappointment to see that the autograph is printed. I did feel ripped off,” Johnson said. “The website shouldn’t have advertised the autograph if it wasn’t really signed. how silly.”

How silly indeed.

Looking past the principle insult like all people with buyer’s remorse do, the injured party undoubtedly also wondered, “What am I reading here? The first name definitely says ‘Abel,’ but the last name could be anyone’s,” a concern that perhaps also led Weeknd worshippers to wonder if Tesfaye even knows who he is or if his identity issues will permeate further throughout his career.

The “autographs” are punctuated with an “XO” that might further fuel discussions between fans debating over whether Tesfaye is cheeky or just a sarcastic asshole. Written with what looks like the same marker as the autograph, the deeper authenticity-probing questions aimed at the enigma’s autograph are probably for naught, though; XO is the name of the set’s designer.