A quarter-century later, that W is as iconic and revered as the Nike swoosh. Consider the indignation over Martin Shkreli, the pharma bro who bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album auctioned in 2014, for $2 million just to hoard it for himself (and later sell it on eBay). So widespread is Wu fandom that in August, a prospective juror in Shkreli’s fraud case admitted they couldn’t be objective because the CEO “disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.”

Though fans still can’t hear Shaolin today, Wu-Tang’s latest effort, The Saga Continues, brings a significant ruckus in its stead. Crafted by Mathematics, it’s “not a Wu-Tang proper” album, as per their publicist, but a Wu-branded compilation released on 36 Chambers ALC, a new lifestyle company founded by RZA (who executive produced the record). Which might explain why U-God — who sued RZA for $2.5 million in 2016, claiming unpaid royalties — is the sole Wu-Tang MC absent from the album.

Nevertheless, Saga is the most Wu-sounding thing the collective has released in a decade. Whereas RZA’s production has veered toward the esoteric lately (as on the Wu’s alienating last album, 2014’s A Better Tomorrow), for this project Mathematics went back to the source: “I dissected [the group’s 1993 debut] 36 Chambers and Dr. Dre’s 2001 beginning to end, like never before,” he says. “And then I listened to nothing else.”

The result is a record that exists in a bong bubble, outside of current hip-hop trends. All the founding Wu principles are here: martial arts dialogue, soul samples, speaker-popping beats, criminology-heavy rhymes. No flutes or synthy trap beats within earshot.

Critics might question the value of a Wu throwback album in 2018. But they’d be wise to also ask how many old heads with corner offices would eat this thing up (and pay good money for it). “People will spend $600 on headphones, but when you put all your blood, sweat, and tears into art, they download it for free,” says Math, adding that RZA put Shaolin up for auction so it would be appraised like a painting. “And it worked! It sold for $2 million. Even on eBay now, the bids are already over $1 million! So there’s still value to our music.”

Inter-crew conflict and all, the Wu Dynasty continues to prosper — as its own genre, a business empire, and an idea bigger than the members themselves. “When I was drawing that W,” says Math, “I had no idea it would be what it would be.”

Wu Verticals

As they’ve already conquered hip-hop, Wu-Tang Clansmen have been expanding into other industries.

Film

Since 2001’s How High, Method Man has been steadily populating his IMDb page. He just wrapped up his first season as “the pretty pimp” Rodney on HBO’s The Deuce.

Literature

This year U-God will release RAW: My Journey Into the Wu-Tang Clan, a memoir detailing the history of the crew. The chapter on RZA should be interesting.

Cryptocurrency

In 2017, Ghostface Killah co-founded a cryptocurrency company (fittingly) called Cream Capital. So much for those dollar dollar bills, y’all.

Photography: Jonathan Weiner

The post Inside Wu-Tang Clan’s Best Record in Over a Decade appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

The 20-year-old, Paris-based artist’s music traces a line through eras of Euro pop: the warm and funky bounce of French house or Italo disco’s animated melodies packaged in plasticky tones. The orchestral pop of classic romantic Serge Gainsbourg guides like a polestar (perhaps that’s a bit like telling an American band they sound like Dylan or Springsteen).

His greatest influences, though, are the soundtracks of old cinema — the sweet, swelling strings of Italian productions from the ’60s and ’70s, especially, the moody worlds of composer Ennio Morricone. OfMan wants his music to impact the audience like film, he says. “Every time you finish a film that touches you, you carry it in your head,
in your atmosphere, for the next two or three days.”

When he imagines the best place to play his songs, it’s the car, he says, driving on a highway through the countryside during the night. “No lights, no people, just one person driving and thinking. I want my music to make people think about themselves.” It’s a curious ambition to place on dance music.

Singing in la langue de l’amour and shuffling in his Guccis, OfMan enamoured the crowd at a Toronto East Room show most fully when he stepped to the keys, where he flexes in jazzy flourishes and witnesses push close to capture video proof because damn, he’s good. His main keyboard, the Technics unit pictured on the cover of his Yo Bene

EP — which he calls his soul, his friend, and his voice — broke in sound check, so he performed on an off-brand loaner shipped at the last minute and didn’t miss a beat.

Cinematic and set to the clip of a mean strut, OfMan’s music has found favour on fashion runways. He likes those projects because the scale of the show lets him build a larger world than a pop song does. That means he gets to soak longer in his private cinema, and he gets to dream a bigger dream.

That transportive power is OfMan’s gift. For his listeners, the headphones become a dance club and the street becomes a runway.

The post Making a Scene: Why Lewis OfMan Is the Toast of Paris Right Now appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

But hey, it’s about quality, not quantity, right? If so, what to do with Drake?

Toronto’s finest dropped his long-awaited fourth studio album, Views, in April 2016. In March of 2017, Drake followed that up with More Life — which he describes as a “playlist,” but it’s both long and interesting enough to qualify as a major release. And more Drake is coming, allegedly: while headlining OVO Fest in August, Drake vowed, “I’m about to go back to making this new album in Toronto, just for you.” (We may have just had our first taste of said album with “Pistols,” a new Latin-style Drizzy track that leaked on Christmas Eve.)

The unusual length of both Views and More Life (each runs upwards of 80 minutes) means that Drake released almost three hours of new music in the span of a year, which is some Beatles-level shit by any measure.

Of course, there are a few important caveats here. First, hip-hop, with its culture of mixtapes and featured artists, has long leaned toward the more prolific end of the release spectrum, especially among its youngest and hungriest stars. Drake is perhaps the most popular rapper to accelerate his release schedule recently, but he’s not alone. Only a week separated Future’s self-titled and HNDRXX albums in February, followed in October by his Super Slimey mixtape collaboration with Young Thug. Snoop Dogg dropped a full-length album and an EP, Neva Left and Make America Crip Again, within six months of each other in 2017. It’s hard to quantify “busy-ness,” but what perhaps sets Drake apart from his peers is how many extracurriculars he’s packed into his schedule on top of recording new music: buying the rights to the U.K. crime drama Top Boy in April (and reportedly starring in its still-unscheduled next season), hosting the NBA Awards in June, and collaborating with Timberland on a new ICON 6” OVO boot — which debuts this month exclusively at OVO stores (Drake’s label also found time to open up three new shops in 2017).

Second, it’s probably not just Drake’s boundless creativity driving the lengths of Views and More Life. There’s a new commercial incentive to the extra-long album, as first Billboard and more recently the Recording Industry Association of America began counting streams in official album sales data: 1,500 individual song streams equal one “streaming equivalent album” — regardless of whether streamers are playing Views start to finish or just putting “Hotline Bling” on repeat for hours. More tracks lead to more streams, which lead to more albums “sold.” (This is an industry-wide phenomenon whose endgame will likely be an 80-minute Taylor Swift album in 2019, God help us.)

Finally — obviously — neither Views nor More Life is Abbey Road. Unlike with The Beatles, not every minute of Drake’s rapid-fire output is equally beloved. Being a Drake fan these days requires some DIY curation, for better and worse.

The “for worse” is obvious: even in 2017, long after iTunes and then streaming promised to kill the album as an art form, there’s something elementally satisfying about a collection of songs that just work together, with no wasted moments or dud experiments. That’s how Drake’s Take Care (2011) and Nothing Was the Same (2013) still, for the most part, sound to me.

But there is a “for better,” too. Would perfectionist Drake have ever trotted out his ludicrous faux-Jamaican patois, which on different songs (and, I’m sure, for different listeners) can be perfect (More Life’s “Madiba Riddim”) or just annoying (More Life’s very next track, “Blem”)? Could Drake have arrived at the hilarious, weirdly moving detail of Views’ “Childs Play” (“Why you gotta fight with me at Cheesecake? / You know I love to go there!”) without also getting the grating melodrama of Views’ “Keep the Family Close” out of his system?

These are unanswerable questions — but they spring from the clear sense, on Views and especially More Life, that more Drake means more of everything: the good, the bad, the mainstream, the artsy, the cool, the embarrassing. The boundaries of these categories will shift for each listener; my favorite Drake may not be yours. But there’s something exciting about a hugely popular artist opening the floodgates this way, leaving fans to sort out for themselves which parts of the Drake surplus will be kept or tossed. Just because we’re not accustomed, in 2017, to dealing with the kind of extreme musical onslaught Drake is currently dishing out doesn’t mean we should lose sight of how worthwhile much of it is.

Photography: Sharmarke Abdi

The post Drake Will Probably Release a New Album in 2018, and Redefine the Limits of Overexposure While He’s at It appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

Migos (feat. Lil Uzi Vert) – “Bad and Boujee”

This infectious single by Atlanta’s Migos debuted at No. 76 on the Hot 100 in late October 2016. But in January, it catapulted to No. 1, thanks to viral memes (and a timely shoutout by Donald Glover at the Golden Globes). Tweets about the song directly mirrored its chart ascension, increasing by 600 per cent since November. Offset’s opening lines of “raindrop / drop-top” provided the ideal memeable canvas on which to paint jokes, with brands like Jimmy John’s and Wendy’s even jumping on the trend.

Rain drop
Drop top

I eat Jimmy John's nonstop

— Jimmy John's (@jimmyjohns) December 26, 2016

Rain drop
Drop top

Spicy Chicken keeping it hot pic.twitter.com/qDBVObG3HZ

— Wendy's (@Wendys) January 4, 2017

French Montana – “Unforgettable”

In April, French Montana posted a video on Instagram of himself holding a white cup and hopping slackly to his own music, adding the hashtag #UnforgettableDanceChallenge. Within a week, the video for his single “Unforgettable” — which featured a Ugandan dance troupe doing the same dance — racked up 10 million views, further popularizing the hashtag, with a bevy of stars (Drake, Diddy, DJ Khaled) partaking in the challenge. By August, the song’s methodical viral campaign scored Montana his first No. 1 on the Hot Rap Songs chart.

#Coachellanights money hop #unforgettabledancechallenge biggest tune in the world @swaelee @raesremmurd #cash

A post shared by French Montana (@frenchmontana) on Apr 15, 2017 at 10:38am PDT

PERFORMED UNFORGETTABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME WITH MY BROS @swaelee @djkhaled #unforgettabledancechallenge #cochella A post shared by French Montana (@frenchmontana) on Apr 16, 2017 at 9:41pm PDT

Taylor Swift – “Look What You Made Me Do”

This long-awaited single seemed, uh, Taylor-made for social media. There were the snake videos Swift posted on Instagram leading to its August release (acknowledging the meme that she’s a snake) and the voicemail part of the song, featuring the very memeable lyric, “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now / Why? / Oh, ’cause she’s dead!” Those lines spawned a meme tsunami (most of it, admittedly, derisive), and despite the song being objectively terrible, it still topped the Hot 100 and broke Spotify and VEVO records.

i'm sorry, the old anakin skywalker cant come to the phone right now. why?? because he's dead!!! pic.twitter.com/ucQy3JDANa

— leia porgana (@nicolecieux) August 25, 2017

I'm sorry, the old Lizzie can't come to the phone right now… Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead! pic.twitter.com/IMgr3VeHvK

— Lizzie McGuire (@ImLizzieM) August 30, 2017

In sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now
Why?
OH
Because rebranding is important for boosting sales and relevance

— jingle my films (@jacksfilms) August 29, 2017

Big Shaq – “Man’s Not Hot”

In August, London comedian Michael Dapaah — in character as aspiring MC Big Shaq — dropped a ridiculous freestyle on BBC radio show “Fire In the Booth.” One especially absurd lyric — “The ting goes skrrrahh / Pap pap ka ka ka / Skibiki pap pap / And a pu pu pudrrrr boom” — delighted the masses, many of whom didn’t realize it was in jest. Countless memes ensued. He released the freestyle as an official single, which debuted at No. 30 on the U.K. charts, making him the highest-charting debut artist of the year. The tune has since become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, cracking the U.K. Top 5 and currently posing a legitimate threat at being Christmas No. 1.

me: gently adds fries into the pot
the oil: pic.twitter.com/GtvnYLNRit

— legal baby (@lilbabycurl) September 3, 2017

Big Ben's Final Ting pic.twitter.com/GYs7a4hZFv

— Dolan Dark (@DolanDark) September 2, 2017

Katy Perry – “Bon Appetit”

Over the spring, Katy Perry attempted to promote her single “Bon Appetit” by creating the #BonAppetitChallenge, which asked fans to spray their faces with water. It was an awkward stunt that failed to connect with anyone. The song didn’t even crack the Top 40. The Internet is a harsh mistress.

#bonappetitchallenge 🤷🏼‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/Td2xEnWaUc

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) May 13, 2017

The post The Ting Goes Viral: The 5 Best (and Worst) Songs That Became Memes in 2017 appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

Instead, some pleasantries kick off the conversation with the legendary front man, who would later just so happen to bring up Zeppelin of his own accord. Evidently, he didn’t get the memo. “I can feel everybody’s energies,” he says of the album release. “It’s a funny thing. When you were kids, you just made records and kept touring. The machinery is huge now.” The 69-year-old with the iconic primal howl and curly mane still the envy of many a man — and a mighty gentlemanly speaking voice, too — has released 11 solo albums. Two years after Zeppelin split in 1980, following the devastating choking death of drummer John Bonham, he put out his first, Pictures at Eleven. Since then, the sort of adventuresome heavy rock music that Zep birthed hasn’t given rise to many equals (certainly not in the mainstream), but Jimmy Page’s guitar work and Plant’s stratospheric vocal range continue to inspire new generations.

Not that Plant is particularly interested in channeling his power-ballads-and-Hobbits days of yore. While bands left and right have been embarking on reunion tours (see: Guns N’ Roses, Fleetwood Mac, LCD Soundsystem, At the Drive-In), the last decade has seen him skirt the rock idiom, opting instead to explore bluegrass and Appalachian folk (as on his Grammy-winning collaboration with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand) and continuing his interest in Celtic, Indian, and Middle Eastern sounds. His backing band on Carry Fire, the Sensational Space Shifters, are old mates from 2001’s Strange Sensation — John Baggott, Justin Adams, Liam “Skin” Tyson — who, along with Dave Smith and Seth Lakeman, collectively played 30-some odd instruments on the album, including Moog, t’bal, dobro, violin, fiddle, bendir, djembe, oud, and, of course, your standard drums-bass-guitar keys.

Carry Fire has got so much life to it, so many nuances and layers, that — like the more minstrel-y Zep tracks — it’s transporting.

Self-produced and recorded mainly at Top Cat studio in Box, Wiltshire, the band just got to work and let the ideas flow. “It’s just got to be the absolutely correct mood and the trance aspect of rhythm, a talking through the music without even there being lyrics at all,” says Plant. “It sounds pretty good without a singer. It’s got such a great ambience to it.” He’s heard the album called “nomad rock” and “heavy folk,” which he doesn’t seem to mind. “It’s not a world music extravaganza,” he says. “These instruments that we use are part of everyday life for us. I’ve got bendirs all over the house at home. I buy them in Morocco, but you can get them in L.A. now.” He thinks it’s “a bit more sexy” than always turning to a conventional drum kit. “It’s like a mantra, a kind of — whatever you call it — I guess trance music.”

“There’s a sort of intoxication that people get from power and from being able to manipulate the media.”

Lyrically, there appear to be some life lessons and wistfulness about the passage of time on “Season’s Song,” “Dance With You Tonight,” and “Heaven Sent.” As well, some songs about immigration — “New World,” “Bones of Saints,” and “Carving Up the World Again… a wall and not a fence …” — which Plant insists had nothing to do with Trump, despite one tune seemingly quoting him directly.

“I’m not inspired by anything at all like that. I just find it abhorrent and unbelievable. There’s a sort of intoxication that people get from power and from being able to manipulate the media,” he says. “You can create an entire picture that has nothing to do with reality. One man’s reality is not another man’s, either, so my songs just say what they say.”

He points out that he sang “Your Ma Said You Cried in Your Sleep Last Night,” the Kenny Dino cover, in 1990 — “I just think that aimless songs about affairs of the heart roll off the tongue” — and on Carry Fire, he covers “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” written in 1958 by Ersel Hickey and popularized by Ritchie Valens and then the Beach Boys. Plant’s take is a bleeding, slow, swampy guitar track, featuring the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde.

Plant wouldn’t mind if it prompted listeners to check out the other versions, too. Rock ’n’ roll, after all, has long been about seeking inspiration in what came before you and moulding it into your own. “In Led Zeppelin, it was the same thing,” he says. “You lean on all sorts of styles, but, of course Ritchie Valens was so amazing, and to think that he was 18 when he got killed with Buddy Holly. His style was amazing, and his voice had this almost disinterested tone on ‘Bluebirds Over the Mountain.’ When we were creating Led Zeppelin II, we went to the studio where he recorded that in L.A. to try to get some of the sound that Richie Valens had.”

Still, Plant believes there ought to be some limitations on revisiting the past.

“Yeah, music is everywhere; kids have got it down. The only thing that is a little dull, really, is the number of tribute bands we have in England, where it’s old guys playing the Eagles until the very last breath.”

The post Robert Plant on Stylistic Exploration, Trump, and All Those “Dull” Tribute Bands appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

Maybe you heard of Kiran Gandhi back in 2015. The musician was at the centre of a viral moment when she ran the London Marathon while “free bleeding” to address the stigmas surrounding women’s periods. After the crush of interview requests that resulted, she realized she had a lot of ideas on gender equality and she wanted to share them publicly. “That’s when I moved from the drums to the front,” she says.

Her debut EP, Voices, travels the borderlands between electroclash, trap, and downtempo. It delivers its activism in dance music. That’s the seduction, she says. “My dream is to get everyone partying to the sounds of feminism. I want people fucking to the noise of gender equality.”

When she met Toronto DJ Bambii on the bus ride to their show at Frankie’s Surf Club, Muskoka, presented by East Room last August, the pair connected and decided to collaborate on the fly. A little treat for those on hand: Bambii
DJed Madame Gandhi’s set while the emcee — dressed in radiant yellow like the morning sun she’s named after — hopped from the mic stand to the congas, then behind the drum kit to solo and back again. When Gandhi returns to Toronto at the end of September, she’s invited Bambii out once again.

That’s become part of her mission: to elevate and celebrate female voices. This fall, Madame Gandhi will release a Voices remix album, featuring what she calls some “pretty experimental” reworks of the EP tracks, recorded by five talented female artists: DJ Shiva, TT the Artist, Suzi Analogue, Gizzle, and Perera Elsewhere.

For Gandhi, “the future is female” isn’t some slogan or platitude, it’s a guiding philosophy. “It’s about valuing femininity as much as we value masculinity,” she says. It’s about giving more than taking, collaboration instead of competition. “‘The future is female,’ to me, is about looking to the female archetype for inspiration, for new leadership, but also for our survival.”

Leave it to a drummer to voice the resistance. They’re disruptive and loud, but it’s also the drums that establish the rhythm. It’s the drummer we all dance to.

The post You’ve Drummed A Long Way, Baby: Madame Gandhi’s Aim is To Beat Sexism – Literally appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

It’s a theme well suited for the cinematic sound the band has perfected. Lightburn and Yanchuk have encapsulated the emotion in their sweeping romantic compositions that span their 20-year career. Lightburn is quick to point out there is a definite difference in their thematic approach this time out. There’s something deeper with these albums. Could be the emotions of their long-storied career or the wisdom that comes with age.

With The Dears set to return to North America this month, Lightburn opens up about the bands longevity and what’s been at its heart after all these years.

The Times Infinity project was ambitious with both records being recorded at the same time.

Yeah. It was very, very challenging. We just kept accumulating music over the years and ended up with ten songs on each volume. Some people could argue that we could have taken the very best of both volumes, make one album and call it a day but I think for us it’s not really how we operate. We were going for two really solid albums. We’re still an album-making band. We just pursue what we think is the strongest material and what lends well to the overall theme.

The songs themselves seem emotionally challenging as well. Were these tough songs to make?

The overall theme for the project was a celebration of the band being around for 20 years but also what is at the heart of the message of the band: finding and holding on to a very deep and meaningful love. It doesn’t have to be romantic; it can be on a familial level. Friends you’ve had for a lifetime. It’s addressing all of those things. It’s just something we’ve never fully tackled. We’ve talked about love but we’ve never gone deep. More importantly, across the two albums what we’re addressing is the risk. There are a lot of people who are terrified of committing in a real way to anyone. It’s kinda terrifying, the thought of losing those people. They become an integral part of who you are. If you lose that partner you wonder if you’ll ever find another one that you’re able to do everything with and rely on and can really, like, have as your best friend and confidante.

Do you feel that way about your identity in terms of The Dears? Like, when you speak of losing part of your identity, how do The Dears figure into that?

The Dears is something we want people to rely on, to relate to. I’m telling you, I’ve lost track of how many times I meet people and they tell me a story about how such and such a song meant a lot to them at a particular moment. We recognize [that] now more than ever. We’re very aware of our role. So being at the top of the charts doesn’t mean anything to us. What’s more important is maintaining that role for people. We’re there when they need us. The music is there when they need it. So having this stuff out in the world, it doesn’t matter when they pick it up. They can have it week of release or pick it up in five years, it doesn’t matter. I think that’s the cool thing about what The Dears have to offer and why we’re still here after all this time.

How important is it for you to create something that leaves a lasting impression?

We’ve never prided ourselves on making records that were made for a first listen. The kinds of records we’re making are very deep and involved. You really have to listen a few times to get all the details. The way I would recommend people listen to The Dears is in bits like you’re reading a long book. I don’t think any one reads Milton’s Paradise Lost in one sitting. Not that what we’re making is that. I think we’re trying to make something that lasts. Things that people can always go back to, that will always be there when people are ready to pick it up. People are going to discover this band on this album! It’s crazy to think that after 20 years. That’s the beauty of sticking around and continuing to produce stuff. The more that you’re out there producing stuff, the more chances there are for people to discover you.

Can bands still leave that type of impression or is the age of the career band over?

I would like to think that if The Dears came out in 2017 for the first time, everything would be the same moving forward. I think what we do is always going to be interesting to people that are ready to receive what we’re doing. But on a more general level, I think it’s definitely tough. It was always tough, but I think now that funnel is getting even more fine. I don’t know how a band cuts through. I think you gotta look hot. Very important. I mean, if Billy Joel came out now he wouldn’t stand a fuckin’ chance, y’know? Even Bruce Springsteen. What would happen to him if he came out in 2017? He’d have a fuckin’ tough time. Maybe the songwriting would cut through. But there’ s no long-term development any more. You get six months. You get one single. A band like REM, if they came out now, wouldn’t stand a chance because they wouldn’t get that development time. They didn’t break out until the fifth album, for God’s sake! Today, you’re lucky if you make two albums.

And you’ve made seven albums. How have things changed for you over the course of 20 years?

We just finished this double record and I was deep in it for a number of years. I definitely feel like we’re not gonna take as long between albums going forward. I think we’ve gotten more efficient in our record making. I mean, sure, we started working on this album in 2012, but the only thing that slowed us down is that Natalia and I had a baby. At that time a couple of guys got married. Life got in the way. But I think what we learned from making this album was how to be efficient. Once we started making it we really banged through it because we knew what we were doing. So we went with tight blueprints and just knocked it out. All business, y’know? I think that’s how we plan to continue on making records. Just be as efficient as possible.

Would you ever perform in front of an orchestra?

You can do that, but it’s kind of like gratuitous when it comes to pop music. Pop music doesn’t really need an orchestra in most cases. You see Metallica with one and you’re just like, NO. That’s just not something the world needs. I mean, God bless everyone involved with it, I’m not slagging any one, but is it really necessary? I don’t think so. People like the idea of having these ornate things happening, but with a band like The Dears, there’s already a lot going on. I think that the cool thing about classical music is that it’s composed for orchestras. It was the way at the time. They weren’t thinking of a rock band playing with it,you know? I think pop and rock should respect that in the way they incorporate the orchestral.

So you’ve successfully framed orchestral concepts in a rock ‘n’ roll context?

I think that’s always been the idea. To take the stuffiness out of classical or bring some stuffiness to rock ‘n’ roll, depending on how you look at it. With The Dears, there’s definitely this clinging to the shreds of dignity one can possibly have playing in a rock band, a sort of elegantly wasted spirit. I mean, we don’t even have hard liquor on our rider any more. Those days are over! There’s something about, in our world especially as we get older, you look at young bands and you admire how they can be firmly committed to being rock ‘n’ roll and get away with it. But when you’re in your 40s and you have children, you can’t really be hung over any more, number one, and I think there’s something unappealing to me about getting on stage, almost close to 50, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, trying to be a rock ‘n’ roller. If I’m gonna play rock ‘n’ roll, I’m gonna class up this place a little bit.

Upcoming Tour Dates

Nov 8 – Rum Runners – London, ON
Nov 9 – Great Hall – Toronto, ON
Nov 10 – Maxwell’s – Waterloo, ON
Nov 11 – Mansion – Kingston, ON
Nov 16 – Mill’s Hardware – Hamilton, ON
Nov 17 – The Rondo – Windsor, ON
Nov 18 – The Warehouse – St. Catharine’s, ON

Photography: Richmond Lam 

The post I’mma Let You Finish Arcade Fire, But The Dears Made Montreal’s Best Indie Rock Album of 2017 appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

The quartet — comprised of sisters Kylie Miller on lead guitar and Jordan Miller on lead vocals, with Leandra Earl on guitar and keys and Eliza Enman McDaniel on drums — may not be 19 anymore, but after years of developing their craft, their first full-length record, appropriately called Late Show, is finally out. Haines and Metric’s Jimmy Shaw produced it.

Just before embarking on their North American tour with Death From Above (you should follow them on Instagram if you want to see all their behind-the-scenes stories), Leandra and Kylie dropped by Sharp HQ to chat with us about the much-anticipated album, working with Emily and Jimmy, and the cringiest parts of Toronto.

So where did the title Late Show come from?

Kylie: It’s actually a song off the record. It’s the oldest song we have as a band. We had the song before Leandra even joined. When we transitioned from our old band to our new band, we wrote “Late Show” and it really was kind of a mission statement for the music that we wanted to make. It’s a super simple, just straight-up rock song — that’s kind of the record we wanted to make. It’s taken us a long time to release the record so we thought it would be fitting calling it Late Show.

Leandra:  We’re late to the show… but we’re here. (Laughs.) We’ve been playing it live and it’s one of our strongest songs. [It gets] everyone moshing and going crazy. We end our set with it and it’s just fitting.

How was it working with Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw?

Kylie: Amazing!

Leandra:  We had a trial session with them where we did a demo of one of our songs, “Sweet Life.” We kind of knew from the very second we got there that they were on the same page as us. We just vibed.

Kylie: They understood what we wanted to do and they didn’t really want to change us or change our sound too much. Even their approach to songwriting and producing was completely different than anybody else we’ve worked with. They didn’t really want to change our songs; they just wanted to make them all kind of fit together and be a cohesive unit. Having someone believe in your songwriting qualities and not put their name on it or change anything was awesome.

The album is a collection of your experiences growing up in Toronto. What’s a really great memory of growing up here and what’s your cringiest?   

Kylie: We’ve become best friends in this city. We all got to know each other because we all grew up here. We also always go out together and we have some fun times and sometimes some really not so fun times. (Laughs.)

Leandra:  I mean, the great memories are from when we first became friends and I joined the band. We would go drinking at Jack Astor’s all the time underage. We would get wasted from the grossest drinks, like those blue big bowls or whatever, and we’d go out on the streets and, like, pee on the sidewalk. (Laughs.)

Kylie:  We were just, like, really crazy. That was super fun but also kind of cringey when I think about it now. (Laughs.)

Leandra: A lot of the cringe happens on the TTC. There’s a lot of cringe on the subway.

Where does the name “The Beaches” come from? Are you guys from the Beaches?

Kylie:  Yes.

Leandra:  I’m not. But it was named before I joined.

Kylie:  Yeah, we named our band after the neighbourhood we’re from — even though the neighbourhood doesn’t have a lot to say about the music. We all met there and it’s kind of funny because when you think about the Beaches it’s kind of this bougie, very family-orientated neighbourhood, and that’s not really what our band is at all. But we kind of took that name and flipped it on itself and made a badass rock band.

Leandra: (Laughs.) We’re not a bunch of suburban moms walking our dogs.

You guys are going to start touring with Death From Above. How stoked are you and how did that relationship happen?

Leandra:  We’re so excited!

Kylie: We actually met DFA backstage at the show we played with Eagles of Death Metal at Canadian Music Week last year. I guess that’s sort of when they first heard of us. Recently, they followed us on Twitter and we became kind of like social media friends. Then we got a call from our manager saying they were really big fans and they were really excited about the record and they wanted to take us on tour. We were blown away. They ended up coming to our show in Quebec City and we hung out with them until four in the morning. That’s kind of when the deal was sealed. (Laughs.)

Some of your influences are David Bowie and St. Vincent. Are there any other influences?

Kylie: Leandra and I specifically are massive Pretenders fans. We love Chrissie Hynde so much. We also love Stevie Nicks and The Breeders. They were a big inspiration for a lot of the songs on the record.

Leandra: Nico from The Velvet Underground with those oversized suits.

Kylie:  She’s your style icon!

How about Karen O and Shirley Manson?

Kylie: Oh, massive fans! I love Shirley Manson. I actually wanted her to produce our record like a long time ago when we first started. We got signed to a record label and 16-year-old me went into a meeting and was like, “Shirley Manson would be a good producer.” (Laughs.)

I feel like the rock scene has gone away a bit. Do you think it’s going to make a comeback?

Kylie:  I hope so! It was super important to us to release a rock record. Our last EP was kind of more synth-driven, which was really cool, but we wanted to really release a guitar rock record because we feel like there’s an absence of it right now. There should be a resurgence of that.  It’s so powerful! Rock music is such a powerful thing and it really affected all of us when we were really young and it was something that was really important to us. We want to be that band for other people.

Leandra: We’re going to these shows now, like our friends Goodbye Honolulu. They put these shows on and it’s packed and these kids are all moshing and they’re really into this whole rock resurgence. It looks like it can make a comeback cause there are so many kinds into it.

Kylie:  There’s a community that’s being created and it’s really cool to be a part of that.

What’s the lamest attempt a guy has made to pick any of you up?

Kylie: (Laughs.) There’s been a couple of really weird ones. This guy at a show in Windsor, Ontario — he was wearing this really weird Speedo thing and he came up to me and I was super confused. He was like, “Yeah, I got a boner watching you play.” I was just like, this is the weirdest thing.

Leandra: They slide in the DMs a lot. You’ve got a lot of annoying dudes who won’t stop messaging you.

Alright. Fuck, marry, kill: Chad Kroger, Jared Leto, and Adam Levine.

Leandra: (Laughs.) Alright. I’ll go kill Chad. Marry Adam, because you’d have, like, a good time for your whole life, and then fuck Jared Leto. But he disturbs me (laughs), so I’d be like, hmm… I don’t know.

Kylie:  Oh man. Okay, I think I’d have to go with the same order as you. Kill Chad, marry Adam, and fuck Jared.

Leandra: Cause I couldn’t live with Jared Leto for a long time. He’s a weirdo. (Laughs.) I saw him in Blade Runner and was like… what the fuck?

Music is a notoriously difficult industry to succeed in. I was wondering how you guys block out the noise of people asking, “Should you be doing this?”

Leandra: There’s actually a lot of support from our friends and family. There are a couple of friends who were like, “What’re you doing? Why aren’t you in school? You’re not going to make money from this.” But we just practice everyday. There isn’t anytime to hear the haters. (Laughs.)

Kylie: It’s true, though, and I think that the fact that the four of us are all such good friends, we are each other’s support system. Even when we had people question us, we’re so sure of ourselves and one another that we’ve really been there for each other throughout the whole process. Being able to have one another, it kind of strengthens us and makes us tougher because we’re a unit. I have three of my best friends constantly supporting me and doing the same thing I’m doing.

The post The Beaches on Being a Rock Band in 2017, Lame Pickup Attempts, and Getting Drunk at Jack Astor’s appeared first on Sharp Magazine.

Will the record be iconic and influential like their first two albums, the Blue Album and Pinkerton, whose songs about rejection by girls, struggles with alcoholic stepfathers, and all things nerd inspired a generation of socially awkward boys to feel more and a generation of pop-punk bands to memorialize their failed attempts at getting laid? Or will it be utterly scorned, like 2010’s Hurley, which was so abhorrent that one fan attempted to raise $10 million to pay the band to quit entirely? (He was unsuccessful.)

For his part, front man Rivers Cuomo, now 47, isn’t worried about fan reactions. At least not anymore. “It only bothered me in the early days,” he says before a show in Toronto. “I just know that’s part of the whole process of being Weezer.” He notes the band’s resiliency to criticism is one of the reasons they’ve lasted so long. “I feel one way when I’m making a record. Then it comes out, and people are going to have their reaction to it. Then I react to their reaction. It’s just a process that goes around.”

The issue is while certain elements of Weezer’s sound have remained consistent — angst-ridden yet endearing lyrics – the band is also relentlessly, almost restlessly, experimental. Cuomo uses his life as a lab for different ways to invent pop music. Over the years, he’s signed up for Freudian analysis, joined Tinder (despite being married), and co-written songs with fans through YouTube, all to hone new techniques for writing lyrics and melodies.

Fittingly, Pacific Daydream is another departure. “We didn’t want to do the same power chord thing that we’ve done for ten albums before,” says Cuomo. Instead, according to him, the album is “very much in the old Beach Boys style that I love: melancholy, but uplifting.” Case in point: the first single, “Feels Like Summer.” It’s all ’60s pop sweetness, contrasted with sad, lovelorn lyrics (“I cried for you, you were the song in my life / Let me see the smile, stay with me a while”).

Another experiment on the album? Cuomo is simply giving less fucks. Instead of being so calculating in his writing, he’s now “less intentional.” After all, the cult of Weezer has never been about trying to be cool; it’s always been about identifying with the band in all their awkward, weird corniness, and embracing it. “It’s more like I’m mixing together different ingredients, without an idea of what is supposed to happen,” says Cuomo. “And if at the end of that experiment people say it makes them feel happy, I don’t feel that I have an authority to tell them otherwise.” And that’s for all time.

The post Rivers Cuomo Still Doesn’t Give a Hoot What You Think About Weezer’s New Music appeared first on Sharp Magazine.