Green Eggs and Ham: Rock 'N' Roll With Me

It's no fun dealing with a springtime cold, especially when you have to get up earlier than should be legal to do 2 hours of radio. That's precisely what kept me going this morning, though; that, and some new music from all over the country, some bumpin' electro at 7 and some excellent older jams from Bowie, Janet, and Doug. Take 2 and call me in the morning.
Here's the playlist:

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "Jello and Juggernauts"
Skeletones Four - "Pick Up The Pieces"
David Bowie - "Rock N Roll With Me"
Money In The Banana Stand - "Korean Radio Blues"
Doug and the Slugs - "Opinions"
Ghost House - "Not Everything Ends"
Cass McCombs - "Mystery Mail"
Best Coast - "The Only Place"
Cannon Bros. - "Left in a Hurry"
Siamese Twins - "We Fall Apart"
Lee Ranaldo - "Off the Wall"
Health - "We Are Water" (Azari & III Remix)
Casiokids - "Fot i hose" (Axemax & Big P Remix)
ZZT - "The Worm"
Harvest Breed - "After Dinner Meditation"
Dale Murray - "My New World"
The Ramblin' Ambassadors - "Meat Sweats"
The Wooden Sky - "City Of Light"
Janet Jackson - "Love Will Never Do Without You"
      *this week's Slice Of Cheese
Eight And A Half - "Go Ego"
Pop Etc. - "Halfway To Heaven"
Sleigh Bells - "Comeback Kid"
PS I Love You - "Princess Towers"
Japandroids - "The House That Heaven Built"

Today's Tune: Japandroids - "The House That Heaven Built"

They're back. The Vancouver duo responsible for non-too-few awesome summer nights and quite probably a high amount of hearing loss (concert-go responsibly, folks), Japandroids, return June 5th with their sophomore album Celebration Rock. 

The first single, "The House That Heaven Built" is everything fans of their blistering debut Post-Nothing will find familiar: a bittersweet kiss-off that's equal parts celebratory and mournful; a road-ready jam that will find it's rightful place being belted out by the front row or just pumping from a lonely kid's Beats By Dre; the kind of anthemic nightlife shout-along that makes me use this many semi-colons in a single sentence. Raise a glass.

Japandroids - The House That Heaven Built

Green Eggs and Ham: So you think SOCAN dance

Besides spending a bit of time in the Mammoth Cave, tipping the hat to dancey cover tunes and playing a few brand spanking new blockbusters, much of the show this week was spent playing as many local tunes as would fit (and make sense together in the big picture of the show as a whole). Anything to get those SOCAN-dues-payers a little bit more scrilla for the spring. Here's the playlist:

Bidiniband - "Big Men Go Fast on the Water"
Elliott Brood - "West End Sky"
Bright Eyes - "A Machine Spiritual (In The People's Key)"
Dumb Angel - "Work Of Art"
Red Cedar - "Tsi'los"
Slow Down, Molasses - "Walk Into the Sea" (Factor Remix)
economics - "Neon Love"
Bocce - "Robot Servant"
Eamon McGrath - "Saskatoon, SK"
Ride 'Til Dawn - "Don't Cry No Tears"
Titus Andronicus - "Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With the Flood of Detritus"
Diamond Rings - "Mellow Doubt"
Zapp and Roger - "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
Giorgio Moroder - "Knights in White Satin"
Beach House - "Myth"
Lotus Plaza - "Strangers"
The Shins - "Bait and Switch"
Starship - "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"
     *this week's Slice Of Cheese
TOPS - "Diamond Look"
B.A. Johnston - "Best Day Ever"
Real Boys - "Vacation"
The Famines - "Real Love Is A Sales Technique"
Ketamines - "Ketamine Babies"
Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - "Zombie Compromise"

Today's Tune: Real Boys - "Vacation"

Tags can say a lot about a band. Take Vancouver's Real Boys, for instance. The four-piece, made up entirely of guys from bands with a yen for exclamation marks (Everett Morris of Oh No! Yoko, Stephen O'Shea formerly of You Say Party and at least one person from Abbostford post-hardcore math-rock unit GSTS!), whose bandcamp tags include "fun", "pop", "summer" and... well, that's it.

That says it all, really. Take "Vacation", the band's first single. From the get-go, the straight-ahead guitar riff and plaintive vocals conjure images of hitting the road with your best buds (and maybe a few beers), shimmering sun on blacktop highways and just a little bit of heartbreak. OK, maybe a lot.
The first EP from Real Boys is out March 27th. Catch them on their Western Canadian tour, and in Saskatoon on April 11th at Vangelis.

Today's Tune: Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - "Zombie Compromise"

The knowledge that the always excellent Lethbridge-based Mammoth Cave Recording Co. was planning to re-release the complete discography of Toronto-via-Calgary surf-psych stalwarts Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet at some point in 2012 has been knocking around in my noggin for a number of months (methinks Paul Lawton let it slip at a B.A. Johnston/Moby Dicks show back in the fall). Today's news of a release date (the roll-out starts June 1st with 1990's Savvy Show Stoppers, a compilation of tunes from the 80's) was pleasing enough to hear, but coupled with the fact that the surviving members (Reid Diamond, the original bassist, passed away a number of years ago) would be reuniting at this year's Sled Island festival in Calgary, I've got no choice but to be shuffling around my house to their retro-rock riffs unabashedly for the next three months and longer. Surf's up!

Green Eggs and Ham: Wasted Days

This week's show featured a epic, jammy start and didn't let up until it's haunted, mellow finish. We danced - as always - at 7, tripped out to highlights from the "Bloodstains Across the Prairies" EP from Mammoth Cave, paid tribute to Canuck bands of yore (or, more specifically, the 1990's) and did what we always do: played some new quality music. I'm not sure where all this "we" business is coming from. Here's the playlist:

Cloud Nothings - "Wasted Days"
Islands - "Never Go Solo"
First Aid Kit - "Blue"
Yukon Blonde - "Stairway"
Cub - "New York City"
Thrush Hermit - "Pink Is The Colour"
Limblifter - "Cellophane"
Damien Jurado - "Nothing Is The News"
Sharon Van Etten - "Magic Chords"
Beirut - "Payne's Bay"
Mylo - "In My Arms" (Popular Computer Remix)
Crystal Castles - "Celestica"
Ladyhawke - "Black White And Blue" (Treasure Fingers Remix)
Beni - "Last Night" (Brodinski Remix)
Microdot - "End Credits Roll"
Auld Beak - "Queen of the North"
Caves - "Feed the Plow"
Haunted Souls - "Hairy Prairie"
This Hisses - "The Long Slow Crawl"
Jerry Reed - "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)"
     *this week's Slice Of Cheese
Leeroy Stagger - "Dirty Windshields"
Octoberman - "Thank You Mr. V"
Lambchop - "2B2"
Perfume Genius - "Normal Song"
Jordan Klassen - "Go To Me"

Green Eggs and Ham: Women In Paris

Some surprises this morning (whoever thought I'd play something form Watch the Throne just after 7 AM?), but also a whole heckuva lot of women. It's International Women's Day after all, but I didn't make any special effort to "include" the fairer sex. There's just always a lot of women making damn good music. Just like - if not as good as -  men make. (*Note: fake sexism used for comic effect). I'll quit while I'm ahead. Here's the playlist:

Colleen Green - "Goldmine"

Sunparlour Players - "Sleep"

Fanfarlo - "Tunguska"

Amelia Curran - "Hands on a Grain of Sand"

Zachary Lucky - "Saskatchewan"

Grimes - "Be A Body"

Food Pyramid - "Southside Blacktop Beat"

TRST - "Dressed For Space"

Caracol - "Horseshoe Woman"

Your 33 Black Angels - "Patient Love"

The Young - "Don't Hustle For Love"

School Of Seven Bells - "Lafaye" (Scissor Sisters Remix)

Sepalcure - "The One"

Graphics - "MacGrackleton"

Katy B - "Witches Brew" (Diplo Remix)

Jay-Z & Kanye West - "N****s In Paris"

Little Scream - "Cannons"

Boxer The Horse - "Party Saturday"

Change - "Change of Heart"   *this week's Slice of Cheese

Topanga - "Mabu"

The Just Barelys - "Lions"

The Men - "Oscillation"

Julia Holter - "In the Same Room"

Paper Beat Scissors - "Folds"

Today's Tune: Zachary Lucky - "Saskatchewan"

Zachary Lucky has an old soul. Although still not quite at the age range known as the "mid-to-late-twenties", Lucky manages to consistently craft mature missives to basic human needs: love, home, a place to belong. It's no shock, then, that his new EP (although, let's face it, it's an album) Saskatchewan is a stirring collection of such songs.

The blend of voice, acoustic guitar, pedal steel (provided by Lucas Goetz of The Deep Dark Woods), cello and piano isn't exactly new;  roots music is so-called for a very good reason. Lucky's decision to focus his songwriting on his home, however, makes this particular batch of music particularly resonant.

"Saskatchewan" perfectly captures an interesting blend of nostalgic longing, reverent tribute and sheer gratitude with just a tincture of restlessness (although that might just be the pedal steel getting to me). It also manages to evoke Zachary Lucky's actual personality. An example of true-to-self expression from an artist to watch.

I urge you to visit Zachary Lucky's bandcamp page to download the whole EP, or to order a physical copy.

Green Eggs and Ham: Frontwards

A detour into French (and French-Canadian) dystopic electro, a few new songs, a few old songs, and a capper of songs that would sound great over the end credits to a movie. That and more. Here's the playlist:

The Dears - "Yesteryear"
Pavement - "Frontwards"
Mary Jane Stole My Girl - "Dylan Thomas"
Whitehorse - "I'm On Fire"
Bleating Hearts - "Walls Come Tumbling Down"
Tindersticks - "Chocolate"
The Wooden Sky - "Malibu Rum"
Dr. Dog - "Do The Trick"
Tanlines - "All Of Me"
Frankie Rose - "Daylight Sky"
Danielle Duval - "Ambulance"
Police des moeurs - "Ville souterraine"
Liz & László - "Rien a Paris"
Chevalier Avant Garde - "Axion"
The Ketamines - "Teenage Rebellion Time"
Royal Headache - "Girls"
War - "Brodermordet"
PS I Love You - "Sentimental Dishes"
Billy Ocean - "When The Going Gets Tough"
     *this week's Slice Of Cheese
Rococode - "Blood"
Sharon Van Etten - "Give Out"
By Divine Right - "Help Me Find A Place To Land"
Hey Rosetta! - "Welcome"
Jason Collett - "I'll Bring The Sun"