No. 58 - It's fun being yourself edition
New tunes from Oklou, Momma, sombr and more
Kool Kids Self-promotion Club
Cassia Hardy, mastermind behind the late, great Wares is dropping a new solo album on Friday (May 23). Ahead of its release, I spoke with her about the record, finding herself, and forging an alternative culture outside of the DSP mega-bubble.
I recently interviewed Vancouver artist Ekkstacy about his new album, Forever, his return home, and his struggles with sobriety. Fascinating guy, cool record — think Wavves meets the Drums. But seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so old in an interview as I did during our chat.
I reviewed the new doc, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. I was not terribly familiar with Swamp Dogg, the cult R&B artist, whose career spans the last 70 years of popular music. But this doc made a fan out of me. I guess it worked!
"Just be cool," he offers when asked his philosophy on life. It's "fun being yourself. That's fun like a motherfucker. But you gotta find yourself."
Toronto noise-rockers Gloin dropped their latest full-length All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry) at the end of March. I said it was “stuffed with anthems for anyone feeling stuck in place, All your anger… is indeed a very noisy rager, and an excellent one at that.” I stand by that.
Finally, wayyy back at the beginning of March, I saw Wolf Parade play their debut album Apologies to the Queen Mary on back-to-back nights (long story) and reviewed the first one. Somehow, it was my first time seeing them live. I called the gig “a convincing riposte to anyone who thought that the night was just about wistfulness for the past.” I’ll give you a minute to look up the meaning of “riposte.”
Kool Kids Music Recommendation Club
I first heard New York singer-songwriter SOMBR via an episode of the New York Times’ Popcast, which dunked on a bunch of Billboard hits for their unremarkable anonymousness. I see their point, but there’s still something about “back to friends” that I like. Born Shane Boose, the 20-year old singer feels like a direct descendant of the 1975’s Matty Healy, which might be an immediate disqualifier for some. In the song Boose ponders how his partner can be so intimate with someone one minute, and then act like nothing happened the next over a vibey backing track. It’s a story old as time — Chappell Roan has a better take on the whole situation IMO. But the anthemic chorus gets me every time. Will I care about SOMBR or this song in three months? Hard to say, but it does the trick right now.
French — like France French, not Quebecois — singer Oklou quietly built a groundswell of fans before dropping her debut album Choke Enough earlier this year. Born Marylou Mayniel, she frequently works with Canadian producer and composer Casey MQ. AG Cook, Danny L. Harle co-produced the record with Casey and Bladee, Underscores and Montreal’s Cecile Believe all contribute vocals to the record. That’s a hyperpop dream team. Yet Mayniel remains slippery when it comes to genre. Mayniel’s classical training brings to mind Danish musicians like ML Buch and Astrid Sonne. Yet at its best, Choke Enough reminds me of how Massive Attack folded disparate sounds underneath a broad pop/R&B roof. It’s easily one of my favourite records of the year so far.
Momma are one of those bands who have been a low-key constant for me for a number of years now. That probably has a lot to do with the ever-growing number of groups indebted to sugary 90s alt rock à la Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt (see also: Pony, Beabadoobee, early Charly Bliss). But they’ve really stepped things up on their third album, Welcome to My Blue Sky. “I Want You (Fever),” a punchy anthem for anyone pining after someone who is emotionally unavailable, captures the record’s fizzy energy perfectly. Apparently, as soon as they wrote the song, they recognized a new bar had been set and scrapped everything else they’d done.
I first wrote about Toronto’s Babygirl for Exclaim! four years ago. They’ve been pretty quiet since they dropped Be Still My Heart in 2023. In the meantime, they hooked up with Arts & Crafts Records and made “After You,” another slice of deceptively catchy songcraft hiding in some dreamy soft-pop production. I can’t figure out if it’s a song about falling in love or wallowing in the past after a breakup. “Who could devastate me in the way you do?” asks singer Kirsten Frances in the chorus. “Who could come after you?” The song’s title suggests the latter, but there is little else to suggest that the protagonist wants there to be someone else.
The Beths are a deceptively good band. I say deceptively, because the New Zealand group make penning pitch-perfect, jangly indie rock seem like it ain’t no thing. But it is very much a thing! The band recently signed with Anti- Records, and announced a big tour, a sure sign a new album is on the way. Until then we’ve got “Metal,” another deceptively good indie-rock tune, this one about healthy living.
Few bands do tension like Model/Actriz. On their very excellent debut, they ratcheted it up again and again, only to break it by unleashing their industrial post-punk fury on listeners. The Brooklyn crew just released Pirouette, their follow-up, where they sand down some of the edges — and some of their noisier tendencies — but amp up the grooves. I wouldn’t call it a move towards the mainstream - they remain far too inscrutable for that. But it does mark a great jumping-off point for anyone unfamiliar with the band’s remarkable intensity.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
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