Clutching the Bumper of the Arcade Fire Bandwagon

Minifig Bands # 7: Arcade Fire, originally uploaded by minifig.

In the month since my last post, I've been catching up on culture. Since my wife and I had our second son last year, we've been a little behind in all things entertainment-related, and between the TV season ending and our boys sleeping through the night, are just now attending to the backlog. Case in point: we just saw Dark Knight for the first time, we just finished the second season of Arrested Development, and I'm just now getting into a little band called Arcade Fire.

When I'm up with my son on the couch at night, I can't watch normal TV because I will never go to sleep. Thus I started TiVo-ing "television's longest-running concert music program", Austin City Limits, with the intention of the PBS-powered uninterrupted music lulling me to sleep. When I was a kid the show was a weird mainstay in the TV listings, and almost always had country artists, but now is surprisingly diverse and often quite indie-focused. While the show went through its regular scheduled programs, it worked in putting me to sleep. Then came the Arcade Fire episode.

I've always known of Arcade Fire, heard some of their music, appreciated their impact on the indie music scene, and respected their elevation of Canada as a talented musical community. Now, however, I have just really got into them, in no small part thanks to the powerful Where the Wild Things Are trailer, but mostly because of their intense performance on ACL (as the cool kids seem to call it). If you've never seen them live, try to imagine ten people on stage switching places with a hundred different instruments (including a pipe organ, accordion, hurdy-gurdy, and a car alarm), literally beating the music out of them and the whole time playing their hearts out. PBS has only one of the performances online, in really low quality, and it's one of the tamer ones from the show, but it will give you a small taste.

The following is recommended watching for anyone who, like me, is desperately trying to clutch the bumper of the Arcade Fire bandwagon, which has already had a few years head start, but all the while enjoying the pursuit.

- The entire band together in an elevator playing Neon Bible, utilizing ripped magazines and the roof for percussion:




- A live performance of Wake Up with David Bowie, which the YouTube user publishes with the disclaimer "If you don't cry watching this, you are dead inside":




- A fan-edited music video for My Body Is A Cage using clips from a spaghetti-western classic (thanks for this one, Peter):




- Lastly, an interactive music video, also for Neon Bible, that you need to point and click on to make come alive.

Good Things Come In MP3s

Three parts of random musical goodness for the long weekend.

1. The online newsmagazine Dose.ca has a free 15-song iTunes download of music featuring artists to watch in 2009, many of them Canadian. I just got it, and while some of the songs have been free downloads of the week on iTunes already, it's an easy way to discover some bands you might never have heard otherwise. To get the songs just go to dose.ca/artists and they'll send you a code redeemable in the iTunes Music Store.
2. Speaking of Canadian, my friend Brett posted this video of a vapid butchering of the Canadian national anthem, and if you're familiar with how the iconic tune should actually sound, you'll find it just as outrageous as I did. Also on the YouTube front, a group of kids singing Viva La Vida is almost catchier than the original, and this choir of monks "sings" the Hallelujah chorus while under a vow of silence (via Chelsea).
   
3. Last, but not least, if you're looking for a soundtrack to the Easter weekend that gets past chocolate egg-laying bunnies and pastel confetti strips, I highly recommend the debut record from The Welcome Wagon, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon. It's an amazing album that sets the perfectly appropriate tone, and has the right mix of quirkiness and acousticness to keep you humming all year round. If it sounds like Sufjan Stevens, it's because it's produced by Sufjan Stevens, but in my books, that is not a bad thing.

Happy Easter, everybody.

Kay Pettigrew Acoustic Cover

I love acoustic covers, and this one hasn't left my head for the past few days. It's by a Canadian songstress from Toronto named Kay Pettigrew, and while I love her jazzyfolky vocals, the subject matter is what's dear to my heart.

You should experience the cover for yourself, so I've provided the link using NoSpoiler.com and embedded the video using this title-removing trick. Kay has also kindly provided the MP3 for download here. If anything I can say that this cover is rare...

Four Chords

Besides the occasional Australian band you've never heard of and some NSFW language near the end, this compilation of 36 songs that can be sung using the exact same 4 chords is pretty well done.

Seriously Free Music

The Vancouver Sun is giving away a free Christmas sampler download for the next 48 hours, and it has got some nice tunes on it. You don't even have to be a subscriber...

Thanks Norm for the heads up!

Super Mario Live Drumming Extreme Remix

If you need some fantastic music to get you through the rest of your Friday, put this on and try not to get into the groove. I've been hitting repeat for about half-an-hour now...

A Quick Game of Tag

For someone like me who is battling a diverse and ever-expanding iTunes library, this program is deus ex machina.