Your Enemy's Asleep
If Paper Bag Records were a sports team, one may say it's just gone through a rebuilding process and is preparing to make a run at a league championship. It's built itself with hot young talent [Magneta Lane,controller.controller, Uncut] for a while and now they're starting to mature into good, if not great, bands. However, the wonderful part of rebuilding is that you can still add some talent late in the process. Case in point: Tokyo Police Club
On April 18th, Paper Bag will be releasing their debut EP, A Lesson In Crime. I can't tell you anything aside from the two songs that are on their MySpace page, but they are signs of good things. Their sound is what you might expect, considering the rest of their label mates, except with some of the dance elements turned down a bit. "Nature of the Experiment" [feat. Magneta Lane's Lexi Valentine, of course] features guitar and bass trading off riff for riff until all things collapse into electronic glory. "Citizens of Tomorrow" starts off with handclaps and, well, who the fuck doesn't love handclaps? Through the two songs they make nice use of dynamics and don't just try to explode your ears off, but explore different sonic levels.
They're playing with Magneta Lane on the East Coast, then doing a bunch of gigs in the Southern Ontario area. I'll be catching those two bands at the Horseshoe on April 6th
In other concert news, I've got my ticket for Architecture In Helsinki's return show after their van died last October. After picking up the new Young and Sexy album, I have to decide between their April 22nd show at the Drake or John Vanderslice at the El Mo. The Sounds at the Opera House on April 16th is also an interesting show that could grab my attention. In annoying news, Mates of State probably won't come til the fall.
I can definitely say that this computer setup will not be good for my back in the long run.