June 2009 Archives

Timber Timbre stops you. The elements are deceptively simple: a confident, but hushed voice, understated guitar, strings and keyboard flourishes, and a subtle percussive beat. Timber Timbre front man Taylor Kirk is making pop as if it was meant to sound haunted.
Over the course of two records, 2006's Cedar Shakes and 2007's Medicinals, Timber Timbre has gained a devoted following. Spellbinding performances opening for noted Toronto musicians Bruce Peninsula and Ohbijou have earned Kirk more fans. The years have also marked a rapid progression from a dusty, low-fi bedroom blues to the sophisticated, cinematic studio work found on his newest self-titled record, set for release in January 2009 by Toronto based record label Out of this Spark. Despite Timber Timbre being the project of Kirk, the recording of this record was a community affair. Guests on the record include some luminaries of Toronto's pop underground. Mika Posen (Forest City Lovers) contributed string arrangements, as did the singers of Bruce Peninsula.The sum of the parts, however, is something grounded in a strange place where genre descriptions like blues, country, and folk intersect becoming secondary to the precision of the moods being conjured.

Wilco's seventh disc, Wilco (the album), took shape quickly in January '09 after the band traveled to Auckland, New Zealand to participate in an Oxfam International benefit project. The band began cutting tracks for the new album, producing it themselves with the help of engineer Jim Scott. The sextet completed the disc at its Chicago studio and performed some of the new material in April at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival; where the Times-Picayune praised the band's 'thrilling, nuanced set.' Wilco (the album) combines the intimacy of its previous studio disc, Sky Blue Sky (2007), with the experimentation of A Ghost
Is Born (2004) in a set that boasts strong melodies and gorgeous, often unabashedly pop arrangements. Wilco has clearly laid out the welcome mat to admirers of all aspects of its career; in fact, the disc opens with 'Wilco (the song)' originally unveiled in the group's performance on The Colbert Report last October in which Tweedy & Co. offer their fans 'a sonic shoulder to cry on,' promising,'Wilco will love you, baby.'

"Hard Knox is a 14 track wordy escapade that wickedly haunts you from beginning to end, and the collection of rare B-sides, home recorded tracks, and rarities is so good we can stamp it as excellent immediately. -Citizen Dick

2009 album from the Alt-Rock/Punk legend. Iggy Pop takes on the language of romance and puts a decidedly French twist on Preliminaires. Produced by longtime collaborator Hal Cragin, Preliminaires highlights another facet of the Iggy Pop persona, focusing more on Jazz arrangements and the distinctive, rich baritone heard on classics like 'Nightclubbing' and his duet with French legend Francoise Hardy on the song 'I'll Be Seeing You'. The album themes and texts have been inspired by Iggy's reading of controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq and his book The Possibility Of An Island. On the record, Iggy even sings one song in French, a cover of Jazz standard 'Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn Leaves)', a song widely associated with French legends Yves Montand and Edith Piaf. There are also more raucous moments like the Swamp Rock stylings of 'Nice To Be Dead'.