Cet album est excellent. T'as pigé, Harvey?

I don’t know about you, but when a big name releases a new album, I always feel a bit scared to be disappointed. Sometimes I am disappointed, like it was the case with the last U2 or Rolling Stones, sometimes I am relieved because it’s not that bad, like it was the case with the last Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney, but I am rarely amazed. Exceptions include 'In Rainbows' by Radiohead, 'Third' by Portishead and the album PJ Harvey released today.

Pitchfork reviewed it severely, but they’re way off base. As for me, ‘A Woman A Man Walks By’ officially joins the run to the best album of the year with ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, ‘It’s Blitz’ and ‘Fever Ray’. The album is written in collaboration with a guy named John Parish. He’s kind of a nobody, but his contribution on this one is very important, in that he wrote the music while she wrote the lyrics. However, it’s probably a lot easier to make good music when you have someone like PJ Harvey as a performer, right?

The song you can download today is not for sensitive ears. It’s a real rocker that comes directly from the ashes of the 90s. For the most part, she's repeating the affirmation ‘I Will Not’. It’s not like she doesn’t want to do something or think something or feel something, it’s just a pure refusal of nothing… or maybe of everything. At the end, the volume of the instruments gets down dramatically, and a beautiful piano gets played over it. That's music how I like it.

Mediafire : PJ Harvey – Pig Will Not (192 kbps)

Drunk Americans in Montreal

I wanted to see Passion Pit tonight, but they had to cancel their whole Canadian tour for health reasons. Ok ok, their show was scheduled on Wednesday, but for some reason, I had written down that it was tonight. A bit confused and still in the mood to see a show, I decided to go to Il Motore, our new venue here in Montreal, to see what was there. It was my first time there and I think it's a cool venue. It's really located out of nowhere - near metro Parc -, but their washrooms are really big and clean. Overall, it's good.

The main band playing was Takka Takka from New York City. The five of them had the same sweater with an animal face in the back of the hood. I don't know about that, but I really enjoyed their music. Not only do they focus on melodies and arrangements, but they also make sure that their songs are danceable. I talked to the singer before the show and he sounded like a nice guy. He said they were going to get drunk to celebrate the end of their tour with the Montreal-based Sister Suvi. While they're enduring headaches in the van back to NYC, I encourage you to listen to 'Everybody Say', the best song of their debut album.

Mediafire: Takka Takka - Everybody Say (192 kbps)

Photomontage In Tokyo

I remember very clearly that, two years ago, during a period maybe as short as one week, I used to visit Tokyo Police Club's myspace around twenty times a day to listen to their new single 'Your English Is Good'. At the time, I thought that song was one of the best I had ever heard. But this love story didn't last very long and by the time of their debut album 'Elephant Shell' last year, I had already forgotten of their existence. It's sad because their 2006 EP 'A Lesson In Crime' was so good, with songs like 'Be Good' and 'Nature of the Experiment' and 'Cheer It On'. 

But tonight, I'm gonna forget that I had forgotten them because they are playing with Ruby Coast at La Salla Rossa. It's a very cool venue and it's probably gonna be a very cool show as well. But it's sold out. If you still want to party, there's a Room 22 event at Club Coda with Mad Kids, formed by two ex-members of December Strikes First/Hello Dangerous, mixing some crazy music. Check that out!

Mediafire: Tokyo Police Club - Your English Is Good (240 kbps)

A Cruel And Brutal Fellow

One of the nice things about having a blog is that you have to make some research on your subject, and sometimes, you learn very interesting related facts, such as the meaning of the word 'ruffian', of which I was totally ignorant a few minutes ago. The band I was researching is called Born Ruffians and my research didn't go much further than the name. I only know that they are a band from Ontario and that last year, they released a very good debut album called 'Red Yellow and Blue'. They make catchy songs, and even though they stay faithful to the basic instruments of rock'n'roll, they are very good to experiment with the way they use them. They play tonight with Akron/Family at Il Motore. I think Akron/Family is headlining, but in my opinion Born Ruffians are better. Here's one of my favorite songs from 'Red Yellow and Blue'.

Mediafire: Born Ruffians - Foxes Mate For Life (168 kbps)

POMO - is it?

Have you ever heard of Radiohead? Uh uh… Before becoming experimental geniuses with Kid A, these guys were really good to take the rock clichés that bands like Nickelback uses all the time and arrange them in a way that makes them work, a little bit like Tarantino does with the clichés of cinema. A perfect example for this would be Fake Plastic Trees, a sentimental rock ballad Bon Jovi-style with violins and organs, but for a reason I can’t explain, when I listen to the song, I really feel something.

There’s a band from Montreal that also does that right. I wouldn’t say everything from them is good. I didn't go crazy on their bigger hits like ‘Montréal – 40’ or ‘Pâte Filo’ and I didn't go crazy on their new album 'Labyrinthes' neither. But when I finally got a hand on Trompe-l’oeil a few weeks ago, I discovered a song called ‘La Monogamie’ that made me go crazy. The song is already good from the beggining – especially the beautiful acoustic guitar riff – and until the half of the song, it's classic indie rock like we like it. Then, at 2:45, the outro begins, with a strummed acoustic guitar and the voice of Julien Mineau, it then evolves into a crescendo that's usually not my kind of thing and it finishes in a crazy chorale with drums and guitars and keyboards, and all this makes me feel something I can’t explain, a little bit like with Fake Plastic Trees. Ok, Malajube are no Radiohead. They’re not even close. But when I hear something like that, I feel proud to be a Québécois.

They are playing tonight at La Tulipe to promote their new album. The Montreal-based Hollerado is the band opening. I’ve seen them open for the Virgins a year ago and I can tell you they're cool. But... the show is sold-out. There’s still the possibility to pickpocket one at the door if you want to danse, danse, danse toute la nuit.

Mediafire: Malajube - La Monogamie (196 kbps) 

How to get girls when you're ugly

What is the cool thing to do when you have to play in a crappy venue in Montreal in front of 15 people who are just disappointed that Voxtrot had canceled their presence at the last minute? Simple, you tell bilingual musical jokes like, ‘You know what the guitarist from The Smiths (Johnny Marr) says when he’s bored of something? He says : ‘J’en ai marre’’ That's funny, isn't? The 14 people who were also there probably know about which band I'm talking cause the show was memorable. For the rest of you, I will satisfy your curiosity, I'm talking about The 1990s.

In addition to being a decade, they are a band from Glasgow, and their debut album was amazing. I don't know why they are still unknown here in America cause their songs are really catchy. I probably listened to ‘See You At The Lights’, ‘You Made Me Like It’ and ‘You’re Supposed To Be My Friend' more than a hundred times each. They are often compared to fellow Glaswegians Franz Ferdinand, the principal reason being that the ancient band of the singer Jack McKeown, The Yummy Fur, counted for a period Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson, respectably singer and drummer of Franz Ferdinand.

And following Franz Ferdinand, who released their third album earlier this year, the 1990s released today the follow-up to Cookies, entitled ‘Kicks’. Second albums are always difficult, but this one, like the title say, kicks... lots of asses. Their sound is still as retro as before and that's for the best in my opinion. They even hired Bernard Butler, ex-guitarist of the really good Britpop band Suede, as producer to make sure they really sound like they were from the 1990s. But, what makes them superior to similar bands who are fond of remaking the musical history? Simple again, they don’t take themselves seriously, and that’s what makes songs like 'The Box' so enjoyable.

Mediafire: The 1990s - The Box (213 kbps) 

'Smoke Mushrooms' in Norwegian

The new Röyksopp is out today. That’s a pretty important release, but... wait a minute, ‘What the hell is Röyksopp?’ Well, they’re from Bergen in Norway who has seen the Bergen Wave around 2000. They have released in the past two critically and commercially approved albums: ‘Melody A.M.’in 2001 and ‘The Understanding’ in 2005. Their best known singles include ‘Eple’, ‘Remind Me’, ‘Only For This Moment’, ‘What Else Is There’ (featuring Karin Dreijer of The Knife) and the first single from ‘Junior’, ‘Happy Up Here’, which is the major blog sensation since the beggining of the year.

All this looks very good, but if you would ask the critic in me what I think about them, I would answer this: ‘Their style is somewhere between Euro-pop and IDM, and if they appeal to both connoisseurs and large public, good for them. They found a pretty good way to achieve this by disguising their electronic experiments in pop music, but what a real pop amateur like me wonders while listening to their first two albums is: where are the songs?’

I guess they evolved, cause there are actual songs on 'Junior' and pretty good ones too. To name a few: ‘The Girl and The Robot’ (featuring Robyn), 'Vision One’ (featuring Anneli Dreckner) and ‘You Don’t Have a Clue’ (featuring Anneli Dreckner again). This album is mostly good, sometimes great, and it’s probably their best effort so far. Waiting for the follow-up of ‘Junior’, ‘Senior’– I’m not joking -, that’s gonna be released later this year, take a listen to the rythmic use of bass guitar and the child-like voice of Lykke Li on the Air pastiche ‘Miss It So Much’.

Mediafire: Röyksopp - Miss It So Much (192 kbps)