Video Of The Week: Kandle

I haven't been able to stop listening to Kandle since I featured her last month - not that I ever did, really, as she's been playing steadily in my rotation since 2014.

I dove back into her first EP, her debut album, switched up my phone's song list to remove the oft-skipped Baby and replaced it with Gimme A Pill, a song she hasn't played live in a while because it sends mixed signals, often being interpreted as "pro-drugs" when in fact it is about her struggles with chronic migraines.

She shot a video for it in 2016, directed by Maya Fuhr, which depicts a day in the life of an opioid-addicted adult:

"I won't stop until the pain goes away" - the phrase that best describes the millennium so far.

Video Of The Week: Kandle

I was at a taping for weekly talk show Le Beau Dimanche last night and was surprised that the musical guest was a favourite of mine, Kandle; she played her recent single Bender, which reminded me that she had a video for it that I hadn't featured yet:

It looks stunning, directed by Kat Webber in what seems like an abandoned NDG appartment, with visuals inspired by horror classic such as Stanley Kubrick's The Shining or the Silent Hill video game series...

Well done!

Video Of The Week: The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins' 1998 release, Adore, was the band's ode to dark New Wave music, where electronic beats (and Joey Waronker) took over for departed drummer Jimmy Chamberlin; it was also the last to feature any member of the classic line-up save for leader Billy Corgan, as guitarist James Iha left for A Perfect Circle and bassist D'Arcy Wretzky had just had enough (of everything, Corgan in particular).

A lot of people loved the song Perfect - I didn't, feeling that it was an easier-to-listen-to rehash of 1979 - and almost no one understood the The Cure reference of 17; Ava Adore, however, was liked by almost all fans, in the same vein as Eye from the Lost Highway soundtrack, but more radio-friendly and with its own themes and structure. Its video, directed by Dom & Nic (a.k.a. Nic Goffey and Dominic Hawley), was heavy on the "heroin chic" visual theme, one the Pumpkins had been flirting with since 1995 (Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Zero) but hadn't fully embraced yet:

With Adore considered a flop, Corgan followed it with the extremely hard rocking two-part release Machina: The Machines Of God and Machina II: The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music, thought at the time to be the band's curtain call.

Video Of The Week: Leonard Cohen

We lost another great today, with the passing of legendary Montréal poet Leonard Cohen, who was inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.

Sure, Cohen was a Montrealer through-and-through, a Jew-turned-atheist-turned-Buddhist-turned-peacenik, a bohemian ladies' man, a quiet man who loved his routine (including freshly-squeezed orange juice to start his walk around the Mile End area on Sunday mornings)...

But he was also a New Yorker through-and through, having lived at the Chelsea Hotel alongside Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin (the story of their night together told through Chelsea Hotel No. 2), a friend of Lou Reed's, who partied with Saturday Night Live cast members and its producer, Lorne Michaels.

And yet he was also at home in Europe, drinking wine, eating well, and courting beautiful women at all times of night and day, muses for eternal songs to come.

And he spent his last years in the perfect California weather, perhaps extending his life by doing so, as you want to battle cancer in the most perfect setting possible.

Many of his songs are now seen as prophetic - and not just those from You Want It Darker, the record he released just weeks prior to his passing. Now, the final words from one of his best-known songs, Tower Of Song, ring as true as ever:

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song

I don't know. As I sit here in tears writing this piece I find myself reflecting on my own life, most of it spent not just with no regard to my own future, but not even picturing myself in one; I've lived for the moment for so long - 20 of those years in the excesses of food and alcohol - that I never thought I'd outlive someone like Cohen.

Today, I choose to feature the video for Closing Time, from his 1992 record The Future, directed by Curtis Wehrfritz, featuring back-up singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen:


If you like the look he has in his eye, it's because his flame at the time, actress Rebecca De Mornay - who also co-produced the record - felt he needed to show more passion than he had in previous takes and opted to perform a mock striptease off-camera to seduce him.

Ever the Old World Romantic, Cohen then bent down and put De Mornay's shoes back on for her, on his knees.

Lou Reed. Hunter S. Thompson. Leonard Cohen. Most of my influences and idols have now passed.

Someone make sure Tom Waits, Renaud Séchan, Eric Clapton, Jean Leloup and Eddie Vedder still have a pulse.

Video Of The Week: Banks

With her second full-length album due out in just over a month, Banks (or Jillian Rose Banks, as her birth certificate calls her) seems to have set her sights on a dancier version of dark pop (where Lana Del Rey is more orchestral) - or at least that's what I gather from her latest video, directed by Philippa Price, for the song Gemini Feed:


There's something in the song's sound that I find lacking, but I can't put my finger on it exactly. Perhaps it's the drum programming, or the lack of actual string instruments, but there's a void in the sound that is reminiscent of that of 1980s pop to my ears, the type that makes me nauseous usually - but not in this case, not quite.

I do really like the directing and photography, though; the colours are clear and crisp, the wardrobe design is really nice and makes up for the simplistic set design (and probable lack of budget). And, yes, I did say I liked the clothes she wears in the video, despite not being a fashion enthusiast - at all.

Video Of The Week: Blonde Redhead

New York City indie rock group Blonde Redhead actually has ties to a bunch of cities; singer and multi-instrumentalist Kazu Makino was born in Kyoto, Japan, while twin brothers Simone (drums) and Amedeo Pace (lead guitar/vocals) were born in Italy, raised in Montréal, moved to Boston as adults and studied in NYC, where they met Makino.

They formed the band in 1993 and released their self-titled debut in 1995, but people like me only started knowing of them in 1997 (Fake Can Be Just As Good). My favourite record of theirs is 2004's Misery Is a Butterfly.

Today, I chose to feature the title track from their 2007 record, 23, the first the band self-produced, though sound engineer extraordinaire Mitchell Froom participated in the recording of two songs. The video was directed by Melodie McDaniel, a photographer-turned-director whose past work includes Tori Amos' God, Madonna's Secret, Annie Lennox' Momma, Patti Smith's Don't Smoke In Bed, Porno For Pyros' Cursed Female and Charlotte Gainsbourg's Another Magazine:

Video Of The Week: Bat For Lashes

Natasha Khan - known to some by her stage name Bat For Lashes - is set to release her next record on July 1st, 2016. It will be a concept album called The Bride, dealing with a relationship that ends in death, as in "Til Death Do Us Part"; it remains to be seen if the protagonist will get to the wedding first or if the couple will die as fiancés*, but I'm curious to find out, to say the least.

It will be her fourth full-length album; she also has three live EPs under her belt.

After releasing the song I Do in February (featuring a cover image that was simply a wedding invitation with the album's release date), here is the first true single and video, co-directed by Khan and John De Menil, for the haunting, mournful song In God's House:

The imagery and cinematography are stunning, and so far I like the song a lot. I find it rich, smart, subtle, subdued, nuanced and multi-layered. Maybe the over-abundance of keys will get on my nerves eventually, but so far I'm really into it. I also really like the nods to her past work everywhere in this, including the Volvo.


*You'd think a song called I Do would mean that, yes, they got to the ceremony, but in In God's House, she sings: "In God's house I do wait / for my love on our wedding day / Dewy eyes and lashes long / for my love, but I'm feeling something's wrong", which kind of steers the story in another direction.

Video Of The Week: The Cure

There are a few bands I want to go see live this year, including Pearl Jam and The Cure, whom I have seen before. I've talked a lot about PJ on this here blog, but somehow I'd never featured The Cure, who very well may rank in my top-5 favourite bands of all time (and definitely are alwys in my top-10).

I've covered them many a time (Lovesong being a staple from 1998-2009, Wrong Number in 2005 and 2007), and decided I should feature one of their best songs and biggest hits this week in a video directed by Tim Pope, who later directed the feature film The Crow: City Of Angels:



It consists mainly of lead singer and main Cure figurehead Robert Smith in a cave where The Fraggles (a.k.a. Fraggle Rock) wouldn't have felt out of place. Great song, though.

Video Of The Week: Interpol

For a guy who claims to have always hated Pearl Jam's music, Interpol's lead singer and songwriter Paul Banks sure went out of his way to write a slow-building song (like Unthought Known, I Got ID and 80% of PJ's catalog) with an energetic chorus (Alive, Do The Evolution, Given To Fly) and co-directed a video (with Sophia Peer) with a lot of water (Amongst The Waves), waves (Can't Keep) and surfing (Oceans) in it... in black-and-white (Oceans, Amongst The Waves).

Don't get me wrong, it's his best song in years, and hints that the upcoming album El Pintor may finally live up to the promise of the band's first two (Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics) after pretty much a decade of disappointment, on record at least. Because I have to admit Interpol still delivers live, and are now a far ways away from just mixing Joy Division-type of songs with modern indie rock: they have their own, distinctive voice, their own vibe and energy, and create their own experience. And I'm certain that this new song, All The Rage Back Home, will be the new staple of their shows.

Another song about failure and heartbreak? Yep, and a mighty good one too.

Video Of The Week: Kandle

With her new video directed by Natalie Rae Robison, Kandle tackles the hard subject of violence against women and hardcore depression, and released it in collaboration with canadianwomen.org - a community-based organization that looks to help balance the bad on this planet with a bit of good.

Not Up To Me is a terrific song, and I hope she doesn't tire of singing it any time soon, but because its message is so powerful and it's so well-crafted, it could have the Jeremy (Pearl Jam) or Creep (Radiohead) effect, where the artists just can't bring themselves to perform their signature song because it stirs up too many conflicting emotions in them.

In any event, I'll be attending her show next week as she performs in this year's Jazz Festival - she probably would have fit better playing at Pop Montréal, but I'm happy I'm seeing her in July rather than September. If anything, the walk home will be less painful (mentally) in the summer heat than it would have been in the chill of autumn (and possible rainfall).

Video Of The Week: Kandle

It's been a couple of months since I last featured Kandle, and she remains one of the acts I listen to the most these days. Directed by David Valiquette, this black-and-white video for Demon will have its main line (''You've got to go'') stuck inside your brain for weeks, I promise.

Kandle looks like a human version of Taylor Swift and sounds like P.J. Harvey covering The Velvet Underground on modern instruments, so she's everything I could ask for in terms of layered, smart dark-ish pop, and her songs fit so well with the current weather, with summer struggling to arrive, and grey skies and rain a daily occurrence, feeling more like autumn than spring.

Then again, if the Montréal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins tonight, no one on this God-forsaken island will care about the temperature, because the sun will rise within our entrails, warm our hearts and burn our depression away.

Video Of The Week: Macedo

This week I decided to feature a group of indie up-and-comers, the type that is either hit or miss, who could just as well become the Next Big Thing or fall into oblivion, usually depending on one small push from one famous person, or one remarkable performance on one late-night TV show, or one impressive festival booking in the right slot...

The band is Macedo, a California act comprised (mostly) of twin sisters Michelle Alicia Macedo and Melissa Ann Macedo. The style is teenage dark pop, and this single in particular, Your Skin, really reminds me of a less-guitar-driven, softer, perhaps a tad less edgy version of Magneta Lane's The Constant Lover, a song I should have featured years ago (and can't believe I still haven't, considering it's in my top-100 of the 00s). And perhaps that's why I find it so catchy, but maybe not.

Of course, there are some oh-so-clever lyrics because we are in that age in spoken arts in general, but they don't distract so much that they overshadow the rest of the song; nor are they worthy of an award in and of themselves, either, though. Here are two:

I handed you a sentence you would never forget

(get it? like a prison sentence, or like a phrase that couldn't be repeated in song), and

I'm about to kiss my worst critic

It's cute, and a welcome change from the crappy pop too many people still listen to these days. I would have just one quip with it: it's a tad too 'rocky' at the end for my 'pop' tastes, and far too quiet in general for when I'm in the mood to rock out, like it's sitting between chairs, not knowing which to choose.

When confronted with the same dilemma, Magneta Lane decided to rock harder. Just sayin'.

Video Of The Week: Chelsea Wolfe

When Chelsea Wolfe (#8 in my top albums of 2013) enlists Mark Pellington (Pearl Jam's multiple-award-winning Jeremy, Alice In Chains' Rooster, the fine films Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies), the end result is, of course, a hell of a sight, if a tad dark in tone.

Her dark, drone-y orchestral pop is the perfect match for Pellington's visuals, apparently taken from a forthcoming, hour-long film called Lone. But for now, it's all Feral Love, which you may recognize from some Game Of Thrones ads.

Video Of The Week: Kandle

One of the main reasons why I can't get into Lana Del Rey is that I prefer more honest stuff, and I like my pop a tad darker, too - and Kandle is a perfect example of how that can work.

Born in Vancouver (as Kandle Osborne) but now living in Montréal, she inherited her father's songwriting skills, as he is Neil Osborne of Canadian rock legends 54-40.

She is set to release her debut album, In Flames, but hasn't released a video for that yet, so instead I present you with All That I Need, directed by Thibaut Duverneix. off her self-released and self-titled EP from 2012:



You just can't go wrong with a girl in the snow in the forest.

For the song I wanted to feature, though, hear it here.