Toronto’s Jack Breakfast has recently released The Escapers, a 35-minute song cycle about familial disappointment, love, and ghosts. This is Breakfast’s fourth album, and his first release since 2003. Breakfast fancies himself an amateur naturalist, and enjoys taking photographs of waterbirds in all seasons.
Big Star / Kangaroo The sounds, the scratches, the ghostly strings, the hammering percussion, the purposeful errors in production and performance, the lyrics (silly and heartbreaking all at once, somehow) and on top of it all, riding above, Alex Chilton’s shimmering haunter of a voice. This song has been breaking my heart since I was a boy and has taught me so much about accidentally-on-purpose musical arrangement.
Hard Drugs is an indie rock opera that trusts in spectacular songs rather than an elaborate stage production to tell a twisted story that could only happen in Terminal City. Aline is a prostitute looking for love. Lloyd is a drug dealer seeking passion. The two find each other, falling madly, deeply into a love few have ever known. That is until Aline’s pimp Slim learns of their affair. To continue riding the high, they must get rid of Slim and escape Terminal City forever. Murder, chaos, and heartbreak ensue. Contributors include members of Blood Meridian, Black Mountain, Lightning Dust, Pink Mountaintops, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Limb Lifter, Bughouse 5, Bend Sinister, Fan Death, The Mohawk Lodge and Bison, among many others.
Ladyhawk / The Dugout There are lots of great bands from Vancouver, but my favourite is Ladyhawk. Hell, they’re one of my favourite bands period. Goddamn sweethearts. This song is one of their classics but the recording doesn’t do for it what they always pull off live.
Port O’Brien began early in the year 2005 as a folk-ish duo of Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin. The two penned songs while Cambria lived in the tiny Californian coastal town she shares her name with and Van lived in an apartment in Oakland which was about the size of his name. In the summer of 2007, the band released a compilation of previously self-released songs titled The Wind and The Swell on American Dust Records. They’ve become a touring machine since the critically lauded M. Ward first named Port O’Brien his Favorite New Band on Pitchfork Media.
Beachwood Sparks / Confusion is Nothing New This is a song that has a lot of movement in it. I get bored really easily, so I need songs to keep changing as they go. The harmonies are so rad here. They are super loud and in your face.
Durham, North Carolina, indie quartet Bombadil claim, somewhat toungue in cheek, that their conceptual starting point is the folk music of Bolivia. They released their debut album, A Buzz, A Buzz, in the spring of 2008.
Red Collar / Used Guitars This track has an infectious vocal riff and a strong intro and buildup. We’re attracted to the Springsteen-esque vocals and the image of used guitars as a sad thing — symbolic of a dream someone gave up on. Live, it is another animal entirely. Nothing beats the collective catharsis of a crowd shouting the ‘Bah bah, bah nah!’ hook at the tops of their PBR-greased lungs.
My Secret Playlist is a music discovery website and weekly email publication. We invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. These are their words on the music that inspires them.
