I know that Monday and Tuesday nights are generally reserved for laundry and/or recovering from weekend revelry, but please, Winnipeg, I implore you — break with tradition and go see these two early-week shows.
1. MISS EMILY BROWN – MONDAY, APRIL 19 at the MONDRAGON, 9 p.m.
$7, with openers Ben Wytinck and Steve Brockley (Montreal)
Hopefully our feature on Emily Millard, a.k.a. Miss Emily Brown, sparked your interest. Her expert manipulation of her instruments — from voice to autoharp to guitar and banjo — coaxes out sounds that bring the old into a starkly modern context. Check her out on MySpace, or watch this little video to get a better picture of what to expect at tonight’s show:
Miss Emily Brown – In Technicolor from Benjamin Schuetze on Vimeo.
2. BABY DEE – TUESDAY, APRIL 20 at the WEST END CULTURAL CENTRE, 8 p.m.
$12, with opener Keri Latimer
Baby Dee adds new meaning to the term “uncategorizable.” Her music takes a lot from classic cabaret, but throws in heaps of church music as well as the brutal honesty of the folk singer-songwriter tradition. Her voice, heartfelt and rich, only adds to the glorious ambiguity of it all. Learn more on her website or on MySpace.
Here’s a video of her performing my favourite track from her new record, Songs for Anne Marie.
Meshuggah play a style of music unlike any other. Their complexity is not due to them performing well; rather it has to do with the unusual time signatures used in their songs. Don’t expect to ever hear something in 4/4 at 120 BPM in one of their songs (unless it’s in an odd number of bars). What you should expect is to hear the guitars, bass, and even the drums playing in three completely different time signatures and only syncing up every 12 bars. It might even hurt your head to listen to but it’s all mathematically correct. With that in mind, try to imagine the difficulty in performing such a feat live. Sounds hard, but Meshuggah has been doing it for years and they have archived some recent tour dates on a new live DVD. The performances were recorded in Tokyo, New York, Toronto, and Montreal. As cool as it is to have Canada represented in over half of the songs, it may have been a better choice to use only the Tokyo footage. The stage in Tokyo was the largest, and best of all they had a camera on a track in front of the barricades moving back and forth, catching everything onstage up-close. Even if the other cities had better audio recordings, the visual appeal of the Tokyo footage would have made up for it. The only visual advantage of the smaller venues is that the stage was better lit because the lights were not spread as wide apart. Between each song was backstage footage and brief interviews, some relating to performing a show, some related to songwriting. It is a relatively enjoyable DVD about a very unique band. If you have never heard Meshuggah before, you probably should, not because you might like them but rather they’re a good point of reference. (Nuclear Blast, 
Taking the stage on Austin City Limits this time are Drive-By Truckers. First of all, I’ll get the technical aspects out of the way; the visual quality is good. It looks nice on the big screen television at my house, and the audio quality is great in my home theatre system. You can hear every instrument being played in detail. But what you really want to hear about is the music. The Drive-By Truckers could have very easily stormed the stage, and unleashed a three-guitar southern rock attack that could have made the studio look like it was hit by a tornado when they were through, but instead they opt to do a slow-building set. They start off very soft, very folk rock, and then build up from there, reaching the peak in the middle with “Putting People on the Moon,” a seven-minute southern rock epic that Lynyrd Skynyrd would be proud of, and “Space City,” one of the best country ballads you’ll hear anywhere. This CD/DVD set made me a fan of Drive-By Truckers (even though the CD contains only half of the 26 tracks on the DVD). (New West Records, 
The spelling above is not me showing signs of inevitable mental decline. This review isn’t as fair as it should be because I have heard brokeNCYDE before. They had a single that was so awful that people posted it on each others’ Facebook walls, trying to best each other by seeing who can make it closest to the end. So, I have actually heard them. This leaves me with the shittiest of aftertastes, something that gargling with Drano can’t even fix. BrokeNCYDE appear to be four douchebags who try too hard to be hip (to be square). Left to right, they’re sitting in the back of a yellow van drinking the following: unidentifiable microbrew, Patron (which is expensive as hell up in Canada, but fairly cheap in the States. You ain’t foolin’!), MGD, and a can of Crunk. I shit you not, a can of Crunk. And speaking of Crunk, mix unhealthy amounts of that with the “one guy singing, one guy screaming” thing that Alexisonfire does, add a high school notebook full of verbal diarhea, and throw it naked into a shower in a male prison. You got the idea yet? Here, try this shit: “I love it when you tease me! / You make it seem so easy! / You make my PP hard!/ You make my PP hard!” (“Sex Toys!!!”) No? How ’bout: “Kickin’ it baby, get crunk get crazy / All fucked up, make me wanna punch babies.” (“40 oz.!!!”) The exclamation marks are all there, the only thing you’re missing is that the letter “N” is always rendered backwards. Hardcore. After you can’t handle reading along to this white-boy raprock by douche-drizzles that have neither ever heard rap or rock, you’ll close the liner book. One of these twats dressed up his senile granpappy like the “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” guy, complete with oversized red plastic goblet Bedazzled® with the word “PIMP.” Goes to show that douchebaggery don’t age well; it just wrinkles and smells like VapoRub and gauze. But this review doesn’t do the thing justice. I recommend that EVERYONE who happens across this turd put on gloves and examine and marvel at how a piece of shit like this made it into the world. (The boys in “quality control” should be fed to bears.) Tell your children and your parents that such tripe exists. Steady your hand and take a cell phone camera pic as valid proof. But for the love of music, never, EVER push play. (Break Silence Recordings, 
I will fully admit that the name of the band was the reason I chose to review this CD. After doing some research, here is what I can tell you about Gypsophilia. They are a seven-piece band from Nova Scotia whose sound is a mix of gypsy jazz and traditional Jewish folk music, with a little bit of classical and indie thrown into the mix. They have been a fixture at jazz festivals across Canada, including the Winnipeg Jazz Festival, since their debut album was released in 2007. I was a little disappointed when I first played the CD; I found the first track to be too slow-paced for my liking, but I cleared that hurdle, I found myself enjoying the rest of the album’s more upbeat sound. Tracks like the aptly titled “Jewish Dance Party!” will make you want to clap your hands and find the nearest person or chair to dance with, while other tracks like “A Oha” let you sit back and admire the sounds that these musicians create. The best jazz albums should give you a taste of what the band is capable of live, since jazz is always best when it is improvised live. If you are looking for a unique jazz record, Sa-Ba-Da-Ow! should satisfy your cravings until the band returns to the jazz festival in your city. (Independent, 
I know these guys have said that they like Fugazi and a number of other bands on Dischord Records, but I still hear hints of Pavement in some songs—especially in the upbeat intro and the grandiose guitar duel of title track “The Sun Hot.” However, Pavement didn’t take themselves seriously. Singers Jesse Hill and Cole Woods trade off vocal duties quite smoothly, having two distinct voices, and they sing a wash of nice wide chords when the two blend them together. Their lyrics are mostly concerned with nostalgia, (which I find really ironic since not all of the band members have graduated from high school yet) but they yearn for a memory-filled past well. As a group, Right Through are never out of step with one another and their musical chops really shine through on The Sun Hot, which is best at its really moody moments. It’s awesome that these guys have taken their angst and channelled it into something like a disc like this. (Independent,