Month: December 2017

2017 was a punk rock year for Sweet Sweet Music

Posted on by patrickdonders

2017 was a punk rock year for Sweet Sweet Music.

01. Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life

02. The Menzingers – After The Party

03. The Lillingtons – Stella Sapiente

04. Together Pangea – Bulls and Roosters

05. Hot Water Music – Light it Up

06. Pacific Radio – Pretty, but killing me

07. The Front Bottoms – Going Grey

08. Citizen – As You Please

09. Brand New – Science Fiction

10. Acid Tongue – Babies

ED RYAN – Furious Mind

Posted on by patrickdonders

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“Furious Mind follows on all that was great about Roadmap. The songs are beautifully constructed taking up the rockier space in Power Pop. Loads of hooks, soaring choruses, everything you need from an album.”…I Don’t Hear A Single 

“It is like an album of singles, all killer, no filler and with more hooks than a Chinese fishing fleet…get it!”… Ice Cream Man

“Pleasing melodies, weeping guitars. There’s something here for everybody”…POWERPOPNEWS.COM 

Furious Mind received some great reviews because it is a great record. It’s as simple as that.

 

 

It sounds like every now and then you like to play outside. Outside the Power Pop marketplace. Can you share your view on this?

I have very eclectic tastes in music and that informs what I like to write and play. I just like very strong melodies no matter the genre…I do prefer the harder rocking side of things and love a good guitar solo.

My first musical training was playing jazz drums and as an adult I went back to school to get my masters in musical composition, so I’m classically trained as well, but I love to rock!

My all-time favorite album is Buffalo Springfield Again…it includes everything from garage, folk, country, jazz, orchestral, psychedelia and a little power pop.

Variety keeps me from getting bored. Power pop is my favorite, but I have entire albums worth of more hard rock, prog pop and rootsy/acoustic songs in the can. Hopefully, it’s all good music no matter what it’s called!

If you listen to Roadmap and Furious Mind you can say you have a style of your own. How would you describe it?

On the musical side of things, my music is melodic but hard rocking for the most part. I love the juxtaposition of a catchy melody over a band sound with the attack of The Who or Humble Pie with a Beck/Ronson type lead guitar.

Lyrically a little dark but hopefully with a sense of humor. Another huge influence is the Glam era of the early seventies and art pop like John Cale, Kevin Ayers, Peter Gabriel etc. So…catchy, rocking and a little dark!

 

How many Pink Floyd records did you play before you recorded the guitar solos on Take Me Home 😊?

 

Ha! Actually, Gilmour live in Gdansk is a touchstone. I love emotional, dramatic blues-based solos that never lose their sense of melody. So that was definitely in the back of my mind while recording!

 

Rocket Ship is my favorite song. After a year of extremely hard work at the office, this can easily become my 2018 theme song. People like this one a lot, do they?

 

Yeah, that seems to get to people. I wrote it in about 30 minutes and recorded most of it the same day. I mistakenly didn’t release that as the first single since it doesn’t actually have a proper chorus!

 

 

In my case, the Rocket Ship represents my home studio…everyone needs a place to escape to and that’s mine! I have to say that the whole album, and that song, in particular, benefited greatly from the drumming of Christopher Ryan of The Anderson Council!

 

What will 2018 look like?

In 2018 I’m looking forward to having both Roadmap and Furious Mind available on cd’s through Ray Gianchetti at KoolKatMusik.

Beyond that I already have demos of the next album happening. A friend of mine said, boy, you’re really churning them out. Though he didn’t mean it as an insult I felt like…churning them out? I don’t think so. I only now have the technology to record but I’ve been writing music for decades.

Furious Mind was all new material but I have a fairly vast back catalog of good tunes. I know if you put out too much, people de-value you…or get sick of you.

That being said, when guys that I respect that were around my age, like Tommy Keene and Pat DiNizio pass I think…I better get cracking. So…maybe another album by the end of 2018.

I could never do a Pollard and release three a year, but once a year could happen! I’m very grateful for the support of the podcasters and bloggers who have helped to give me an audience.

TALK SHOW HOST – Not Here to Make Friends

Posted on by patrickdonders

TWO RECOVERING PUNKS AND AN INDIE ROCKER WALK INTO A BAR.

And Chris (guitar/vocals) answered the questions about Not Here to Make Friends.

Talk Show Host is an indie punk trio from Toronto, Canada. The band has been playing together since 2015 and has two EPs under their belt. Their 2016 release, Perfectly Competent, earned a 7/10 review from Exclaim! magazine and drew comparisons to Green Day, Against Me! and Bob Mould.

 

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What was the biggest fun during the making of the last album?
Recording with John Dinsmore was lots of fun – he’s got a great space and he let me use his 50-year-old hollow-body Gibson. For me, I think the day I spent recording the guitar leads was the most fun I’ve ever had in a studio – the vocals were done and I didn’t have to worry about the lyrics anymore, and we got to add all the little flourishes that we wished we’d had time for on the previous two EPs but didn’t get around to.
At what point, during writing, rehearsing, recording, did you knew you were on to something special?
I can’t speak for Fab & Sean, but my overwhelming self-doubt keeps me from ever being sure of this. I still get cold sweats when I think about the weeks leading up to recording and the sleepless nights I spent writing and rewriting the lyrics. Even after listening to the first mixes, which sounded incredible because Olive is a genius, it took me a few weeks to accept that we did, in fact, have a bunch of songs worth releasing.
The music industry has changed a lot (or so they say). What did it bring you? And what not?
The fact that we can self-release our stuff and still have people in other countries listen to it is the biggest thing. For the most part, we are so far removed from the actual music industry that it makes us laugh sometimes. We’re a good fucking band. We know it and the people who hear us know it, but optically, we’re irrelevant. We’re three white dudes in our mid-30s playing 90s throwback guitar rock in 2017. We don’t have a sexy narrative so any attempts at getting the attention of anyone in the actual industry are generally a waste of time. We’ll keep doing what we do until someone notices. If they don’t, fuck ’em.
She tells you she will decide on a 5-song-mixtape if there is going to be a second date. Which 5 would you put on?
1) Tom Petty, “American Girl” (top five of all-time)
2) Paramore, “Hard Times” (one of the catchiest damn songs of 2017)
3) Weezer, “Do You Wanna Get High?” (every tape requires some =w=)
4) The Velvet Underground, “Rock & Roll” (I’m just currently obsessed with “Loaded”)
5) Andrew WK, “Party Hard” (no explanation necessary)
Holy shit, that’s an awesome mix tape.
The meaning of ‘success’ has changed over the years. When will the new record be a success?
It was a success the second we finished it. These days, you can’t really measure it any other way. If you set the bar high in terms of songwriting & sound fidelity and you meet it, then that in itself is a success. We know we won’t see a dime from it and we know that Punknews isn’t going include it on any year-end lists, but we know we made a solid record, so we’ll just coast on that smug definition of success for now 🙂
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