Allan\'s World Music Indie Music Blog that does reviews, looking at upcoming bands or reviewing some well known favorites. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 3 1019

Articles from Allan\'s World Music

Brand New Concert w/ Thrice and MeWithoutYou 2007-12-15 23:23:23 I recently had the opportunity to see Brand New at the International Centre in Mississauga, and it was an AMAZING experience. As with the central theme of all my reviews, I’m not here to critique them, as much as I am to boast about how great they are live. I was a bit sceptical heading in to the concert because I was not a fan of Thrice’s The Alchemy Index or Brand New’s The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. Besides that, I found Mewithoutyou to be just ok. As expected by any concert Mewithoutyou put on a good performance, but I was not overly impressed with the music. Thrice also had a stellar performance, and I was quite pleased that they played a couple songs off Artist In The Ambulance, but for an hour long set, it was just not nearly enough. Being satisfied, I felt that the concert had at least lived up to the exciting, adrenaline-rush experience that I expected of any rock concert. That’s when Brand New came on, and definitely stole the show making a successful effort ...

St. Vincent (Annie Clark) - Marry Me Review 2007-12-12 19:02:36 I ran across St. Vincent aka Annie Clark quite randomly. I am trying to figure out which song opened the door to me deciding to review this album. I think my curiosity even overlooked the fact that St. Vincent and the title Marry Me gave off that Christian-y vibe that would usually have me running away. It’s weird for me being a non-Christian to listen to artists who are quite open about their beliefs. It asks the question whether I would’ve bothered to listen to Sufjan Stevens had I known… Anyway back to Annie Clark, religion aside, she’s a 25-year old singer/song writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma with one hell of a beautiful voice. She’s a member of the Polyphonic Spree (who also kinda scare me). Marry Me does contain some religious lyrics but I’m doing my best to ignore it. Almost everything is sung beautifully on “Marry Me”. With more of a soul/jazzy vibe on these songs it reminds me a bit of some of the songs on Feist’s Let It Die. ...

Allan’s Top Albums of 07: #10-1 2007-12-05 19:00:28 In case you missed it, check out Top Albums of 07: #20-11. I am going to go on a blogging break due to exams so look out for the top 30 songs of the year when I come back. This blog has made some huge strides in the last two months and while it seems hard to keep on rolling with taking a huge break.. we’ll see what happens. # 10 Tegan & Sara - The Con Original Rating: 5 out of 5 I still love this album after posting a very generous review of The Con. Granted it’s probably not that cool to have this in my top 10 but I just can’t do that. From top to bottom this is the perfect pop record in my opinion. It arguably had me singing (not a sigh to see) along whenever I had the album playing on my computer. Sure stylistically this is NOT for everyone but it’s still very enjoyable with good lyrics and overall catchiness despite rather depressing lyrics. Overall this album produced some great tracks and while they may not bring anything new to the table, music isn ...

Allan’s Top Albums of ‘07 :#20-#11 2007-12-04 18:42:57 Exams are upcoming and I am going to have to delay regular posting until December 17th! So hopefully the blog can stay afloat with traffic and hopefully the other guys pick up the slack with posts. Anyway my selection on my top albums of this year go with what I would term as “my style” so if you look back it won’t be based on the original score I gave at the time (some albums have that lasting effect after a few months). Anyway check out the bottom half of my top 20 of 2007 feel free to criticize! Click->>> For Top Albums of ‘07: #10-1 ...

Playlist Dedicated to Posties + Money Draw! 2007-12-01 12:58:34 Recent developments that have altered the way I blog (discontinued my two other blogs) is the non-sense with Google punishing blogs for having paid content. This has affected me personally. Just know that this music blog would not be possible with the money I made from paid blogging. I can host my own songs and I can purchase albums for reviewing whenever I want (a HUGE luxury). If you’ve come here from the Hype Machine or Elbo.ws, posties is a name that was given for paid bloggers usingPayPerPost which acts as the driving force to making us an incredible amount of money. The community has some really nice people and are really are deserving of having their spirits lifted for the holiday season will all the crappy turmoil recently faced (there have been some unfortunate issues). Here my playlist dedicated to the Posties with some of my favorite artists: 1. Up Against The Wall - Peter, Bjorn, and John 2. The Moneymaker - Rilo Kiley 3. A Time To Be So Small by Interpol 4. Thief - ...

Death By Decibels Tour! 2007-11-30 22:28:49 The Death by Decibels tour came to the Opera House in Toronto on the 22nd of November. I checked it out with my friend Roman and I was pretty disappointed. I guess I just prefer thrash metal better than death metal. Me and Roman arrived at the venue nearly two hours late cuz we were searching for a LCBO. I had to chug my cheap Genesee beer on the way there, on the street and in the subway. I ended up chugging 4 beers in like 40 minutes. Anyways, when we finally got to the gig, we missed 2 openers, Light This City and Abigail Williams. Malevolent Creation (the second headlining band of the tour) couldn’t be part of this Canadian part of the tour because our lovely Customs wouldn’t let them in the country. They were not the only band that couldn’t get into Canada that week. Leftover Crack was also not let into the country (BIG disappointment). All this tax money we’re paying, and you’d think these government custom guards can do their jobs properly and go ...

West Indian Girl - 4th & Wall 2007-11-29 19:08:26 West Indian Girl is not what I expected when I first heard their band name. I first thought literally it must be a solo artist…I’m not much a fan of band names that usually instills race because it almost makes me want to use stereotypes (it’s hard not to) as to what music I should expect. Anyway West Indian Girl is actually named after a strain of acid. They are from Los Angeles and they started out as a two-piece band but has slowly put together a full set (including the hot girls :)). I was sent 4th and Wall and after seeing many blogs decided to write a post on West Indian Girl, I figure I should give it a shot. 4th and Wall I would have to describe as mainly as a pop album with solid lyrics. As always the case I dig the mix of male/female vocals. At times it does get annoying the random beats and attempts to be psychedelic…there are some periods without vocals that annoy me. It’s a decent album but I think this band could be more successful with a ... Amp

Lowstar 2007-11-27 14:20:02 Lowstar is a band out of London, England. I promised to do a post about them after liking what I heard (I actually decided it couldn’t hurt to ask a few interview questions since I need to work on it but I got lazy). Lowstar, I would describe as harder sounding and I feel as if their sound is more like that of 90s popular rock. I wanted to bring up Bush as an example or maybe the harder Audioslave stuff. Either way it sounds grungy to me but Lowstar has a better lead singer. I feel like it if they were from the States or around 5 years ago they probably would be big. O the times… Anyway their myspace page sadly only has around 2,000 profile views as I write this and they are much more deserving. They offer their tracks freely available to download (I’m hotlinking their mp3s so just visit their website if you like what you hear). Their myspace has 4 tracks playing that I would recommend checking it out. Otherwise listen to these two tracks and if you like harder roc ...

Seeing the Stills and Illscarlett Today! 2007-11-23 12:30:41 Tomorrow Kevin (the other guy writing on this blog) are going to see two different concerts. Specifically to see two Canadian bands, Illscarlett and The Stills. Illscarlett is playing a free show for the grey cup festivities and the only thing holding us back is arguably the shitty weather that has popped up recently. We actually haven’t gotten the tickets to see the Stills but crossing my fingers Rotate This will have it. I am pretty excited for today, Illscarlett is playing for free and in the outdoors. and it’s freezing like hell. A storm is expected but meh it should be a fun day out. The Stills have always been one of my favorite bands so I’m really happy to be finally seeing them. It’ll be my 4th concert (or 4th and 5th if you want count literally). Bands like the Arcade Fire, White Stripes and Muse are hard to compare to! Hopefully on Saturday I’ll have some pretty good pictures. Here are some mp3s as usual: Nothing Special by IllScarlett Yesterd ...

Black Tie - Wide Open 2007-11-19 21:05:53 I always check out music sent to me in my inbox and I feel I ran into this by Black Tie very randomly. Black Tie isn’t a bad name for a band but attempting to find this band with the number of wedding bands searches that popped made it very difficult to try to even find his myspace. Black Tie is a solo project of Roger Apodaca out of New Mexico. It described as either Americana, Experimental or Ambient. It’s definitely something different. It’s arguably tough to find admirers of lyric-less music especially when it’s not electronic. Vocals are generally ditched on his album (Goodbye, Farewell) for some pretty cool instrumental work. Instrumental work generally isn’t my thing but when he does include some vocals, I found the songs to be awesome. I don’t really have much to say about his work but I definitely strongly recommend “Wide Open”. I don’t know who the female in this song is either… all I know is I like it a lot! If an ...

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal 2007-11-14 19:22:37 Whenever I can, I try to find albums of a band after listening to one song that I really like. Sometimes it just proves impossible as some bands may not even have an album. The Fleet Foxes were recommended by Siberian frontman Finn Parnell in this post when asking about other local bands. You could say that it was recommended due to J. Tillman being brothers with Zach Tillman of Siberian but either way the recommendation ended up working out. Finn described the Fleet Foxes are folky/Americana and they had one very good song “White Winter Hymnal” that was amazing. What makes this song great? Probably the range of vocals displayed and this song just feels like something I could peacefully die sleep to. Either way I feel like I’m dreaming when this songs enters my brain. I’m not great with words and I doubt I will ever be and I find words never do a song justice. They have an album to be released in January 08 and I can barely find anything about their band except ...

Jenna Fischer (Pam from The Office) in Music Video 2007-11-14 14:24:42 Jenna Fischer known more to people as Pam from the US version of the Office starred in a Wisely’s Through Any Window. His album is being released on January 8, 2008. Wisely is a singer/song writer who plays acoustic and has a nice soft voice. I’m not exactly digging his stuff but it’s not bad. It’s the music video that I took keen interest in. Being a fan of “The Office” (I watched all previous season in a matter of a few days) it’s a shame that re-runs will air due to the strike by th WGA. Check it out: ...

The Raveonettes: Lust Lust Lust 2007-11-12 21:06:39 The Raveonettes are a two piece band from Denmark. The Raveonettes are noted for their repetitive style on their albums with “Whip It On” And “Chain Gang Of Love” being played in the same chord throughout the album. Despite their repetitiveness, the Raveonettes were able to catch my attention with their style of aggressive rock and have created some of my favorite singles out in recent years. If you have not heard about the Raveonettes I probably would describe them as a band with a mix of pretty good male/female with harder sound that you typically won’t hear with duets. Most refer to Jesus And Mary Chain Chain as a common band that this band sounds like. The Raveonettes are not actually an indie band. They have been signed to Sony all the way throughout the beginning of their career until recently. For me this doesn’t matter at all but it’s interesting that I find them more to be the hit producing type rather then the type to release masterpi ...

Kevin Drew: Spirit If… Review 2007-11-10 15:57:10 Kevin Drew, more known as the lead singer of one of Canada’s best bands Broken Social Scene, released his album in September called “Spirit If…”. The album received some great reviews though overall it seemed to get positive/lukewarm reviews so I decided to delay getting around to it. I decided I should really give it a look with an extended effort to cover Toronto/Canadian musicians. As a side note, apparently is dating Feist, one of my favorite female artists so maybe I should learn to play the guitar to improve my sex appeal? Back to the album, “Spirit If…” is very easy to listen to, being used to Kevin Drew’s soft and soothing voice makes almost every song as excellent tracks on this album. It seems really similar to BSS’s work but slightly less complex and without the great backing vocals. This album is a joy to listen to and I can probably listen to a few times in a row. Songs I didn’t like were few and far between. N ...

Silversun Pickups: Carnavas Review 2007-11-08 18:01:51 The Silversun Pickups are an indie band hailing from LA. They released their first album, Carnavas, in the summer of 06. I’ll start off by saying that this album is awesome. The band has a very mellow/grunge feel to them. To produce this vibe, they use a lot of distorted guitars, and synthetic electronic sounds. This produces a beat that retains a lot of aggressive grungy tones, at a more placid pace. The mellow really kicks in, when you hear the vocals. A soft subtle male voice, by lead singer Brian Aubert, is accompanied by a sweeter sounding female vocal, that of Nikki Monninger, which combined creates a very surreal atmosphere. The range of vocals is neither extravagant nor everlasting, but a sense of emotion can be heard from every line. It is definitely the kind of music, one would listen to high, but can definitely be appreciated sober. The first song off the album, Melatonin, displays the fusion of vocals that really impressed me throughout the album. Aubert, although retaini ...