Black Moth Super Rainbow sounds like a mouthful…a mouthful of awesome. If there were a soundtrack to Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytales living in the dark wanderings of space, then BMSR’s latest offering Eating Us would be it – Haunting, infinite, dark, beautiful, and strangely zen.
The album produced by Dave Fridman (MGMT, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) is nothing short of a winner. The lyrics are celebrated and embedded in the melodic distortions of keyboards and guitars and Verve-like string arrangements. The drumbeats support the music’s expansiveness.
The Pittsburg collective of 5 members – Tobacco (Tom Fec), The Seven Fields of Aphelion (Maureen Boyle), Power Pill Fist (Ken Fec), Iffernaut (Donna Kyler), and Father Hummingbird (Seth Ciotti) – describes its music as experimental, pop and psychedelic.
Chicago-based Graveface Records recently released the album and if you haven’t gotten a hold of it yet, run out and buy it! Now! Or I’m sure you could just find it on iTunes. (No illegal downloads, ya hear?)
Both New York and Montreal are artsy, fashionable and brimming with beautiful people – which explains all the traveling we do between the two – but can we really compare the American metropolis with Canada’s European beacon? We can try…
1. Chinatown / “Chinatown” The former is a patchwork of colorful characters, cheap accessories and authentic cuisine. The latter is sometimes referred to as “Chinastreet and “Chinahalfablock.” Adorable effort, Montreal!
NYC Chinatown
2. Central Park / Mount Royal One’s huge and hosts theater, concerts and a zoo… and is riddled with the corpses of murdered joggers, if Law & Order is to be believed. The other’s a weekly drum-fueled free love hoedown. It’s a tie.
Weekend on Mount Royal
3. LES / SLAM The trendy stretch of St. Laurent Above Mount Royal (I just made that up) has only gotten better thanks to galleries like Push, shops like Unicorn, and galleries/shops like Les Commissaires. You’re likely to spot all 42 members of Arcade Fire in both ‘hoods, but SLAM’s still got a ways to go in terms of grittiness.
LES
4. Coney Island / La Ronde Le freak, c’est chic. Until La Ronde replaces the Monster with actual monsters in the form of Fiji Mermaids and bearded ladies, Coney Island wins, baby, hands down.
Le Monstre
5. Williamsburg / Mile End When Hassidic Jews and hipsters collide, Montrealers like to keep things civil. Cheap rent, a peaceful coexistence and better bagels (yeah, I said it) put Mile End on top. Finally!
LnA Clothing and Invisible DJ are introducing a brand new way to monetize music – with the logic that CDs might not sell anymore, but band t-shirts do!
In addition to looking freaking cool, The Music Tee comes with a URL and a special code allowing its owner to download a mixtape with 14 songs from indie artists such as The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Charlie Mars, Alice Russel and Theresa Andersson.
For most Montrealers, getting back in touch with nature means sprawling out on the mountain with a bottle of white. But Kimm Marie Fuller and a team of volunteers are reclaiming green space in a different way – by creating some of their own. Community gardening collective Greening Duluth spent the weekend doing just what their name suggests, de-paving the parking lot and building a garden outside Duluth’s Mennonite House of Friendship. (They’re still looking for people to come get their hands dirty this Tuesday evening. Hint, hint.)
“Plants mean air,” says Fuller, watering can in hand. “They help cool down the city; they counteract the heat from the pavement and the tar roofs.”
Like many of the volunteers, she lives nearby and will reap the benefits of her beautifying all season – a cool stretch of green space steps away from the crowded sidewalks and noxious fumes of St. Laurent. But she’s also hoping other streets and neighbourhoods follow suit in ditching the cityscape’s asphalt default.
Other Plateau-related projects include urban agriculture workshops, green roof building and guerilla gardening using homemade seed bombs. Because once the tourists hit Tam Tams this summer, we’ll all be thankful for a little bit of green.
To kickoff the long weekend with a good laugh, check out this collection of original cubicle pranks we found today on MyModernMet. Office Karma… who knew?
Now (if you can) get out of your cubicle and go get some sun.
You never know what you’re gonna come back to on Tuesday!
Their name is not a reference to a popular TV show or song; it’s neither a fruit nor a literary allusion to heartbreak. It actually refers to the 60’s term for a drive-in theater – something that lead singer Michael Angelakos had come up with. He just didn’t think that anyone would go for it, at least not this far.
In the last few months, the blogosphere and its readers have embraced Passion Pit with open arms. Now with their completed album being put out on a major label, we can expect a debut the size of 2008’s MGMT.
Michael’s melodic falsetto, the competing synths and catchy beats are reminiscent of a newer Bee Gees coupled with Ratatat.
Soon the 5 guys from Boston, with their curls, glasses and docksiders will be gracing your TV (and Youtube) screens – So check out their video for The Reeling, and you’ll see why Passion Pit is not just a passing phase but here to stay.
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