CIVL Station Manager Aaron Levy is excited for local lost boys Blessed to play an insane SXSW bill in Austin this week with Dine Alone records, the label that brought you the Arkells, Dallas Green, and basically everyone else you like that’s from Ontario. Check out who all they’ll be playing alongside this week, and behold the glory that is “the come-up.” See Blessed April 5 at the Abbotsford Rugby Club for a low, low price of not having to spend over $1,000 just to get into SXSW.
Wintersleep – “Drunk on Aluminum”
This may not be my favourite Wintersleep track, thanks to the earlier and heavier “Danse Macabre,” but it’s the moodiest, most ethereal opener to their breakout late-2000s Welcome to the Night Sky, which also featured advertisement-bait classic, “Weighty Ghost,” which asks if you’d be singer Paul Murphy’s so-called “ghost.”
Rich Aucoin – “Release”
A tour-de-force (literally, he used his powerful calves to propel himself multiple times across this wide, vast country of Canada on a bicycle in order to raise money for charity, touring his film-synced EPs before recording his debut full-length and ensuing slew of singles), Rich Aucoin is the best.
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead – “Relative Ways”
This band is significant to me, not because I like them particularly — I don’t — or that I am particularly familiar with they’re music — I’m not — but because of who ELSE likes them. Typical, right? Their Source Tags and Codes was awarded an historic 10/10 by Pitchfork Media way back when.
Blessed – “Rolled in Glass”
The final single and leadoff hitter from the upcoming debut full-length from our favourite — and still repping our sorely underfunded Valley music community on international stages — Abbotsford quintet channels debut EP closer “Feel,” and both King of Limbs and Moon Shaped Pool era Radiohead on this game-changing anthem.
