Royal Blood kicked off their tour at Toronto's History last night. Their latest album is Typhoons and it's out now. They've also just released a new tune "Honeybrains".
During 2017 I've probably listened to the least music than I have in the past decade. Most of my favourite tunes of the year came from shows I've seen, bands I'm familiar with and many tunes that just happened to hit my ears the right way. Many of the loves of this year have not been deep and meaningful; they've been brief and fleeting one night stands of aural bliss. Forgive me.
I just have to have music in my life, especially live music. It makes my heart right and gives me balance, and helps me feel like a complete being.
Here are the albums that meant the most to me in a year when I have been sadly more absent from the care and feeding of this web site, and from music appreciation, than I’ve been in years.
There’s a melody that reaches into your soul, a voice that speaks to your values and your very humanity, a beat that makes you smile uncontrollably, and a hook that brings a tear to your eye; a joy that makes you feel whole. It’s love that comes through your ears from the unstoppable passion of another, through their music.
I can’t listen to everything; especially not in a crazy busy year like 2017. A year when work left me mentally exhausted most days meant I couldn’t get all the concert-going and photo-editing in that I wanted and much of my commute-listening was while otherwise mentally occupied with little things like driving. But undaunted I go into the yearly tradition of listing out the albums that made the biggest impression on me in 2017, in order, my absolute favourites at the top.
Wayhome Music & Arts Festival has announced their 2017 line-up. Headlined by Imagine Dragons, Frank Ocean, Flume, Justice, Solange, Marshmello, Vance Joy, Schoolboy Q, Tegan and Sara and The Shins, plus a cool list of others and more TBA, it looks like another great festival.
Festival passes go on sale this Friday February 17! Don't miss this summer festival highlight!
Who would I most like to see from this stacked list of artists? Thought you'd never ask.
Click on the artist names for my shots of these artists from past shows!
One of my favourite albums of 2014 was Royal Blood's eponymous début. One of my favourite live shows of 2014 was Royal Blood's packed Lee's Palace show. I've been itching for new music and another live show experience from this duo ever since.
They've just released a tune called "Where Are You Now?" which they wrote and recorded for the TV series Vinyl. It's got a great, tight riff for the verses that loosens right out for the chorus. Lovely stuff, lads.
I love Royal Blood. I was honoured to be able to shoot their show at Lee's Palace last time they were in town and I was very, very excited to see them in their intimate show at Tattoo Rock Parlour after two nights of opening for Foo Fighters at the Amphitheatre. I didn't expect that it would become so controversial for me.
I love taking concert photos. In this past year and half or so, it has become a major passion for me. Sadly, due to the small size of the venue and the small size of the photo pit, I didn't make the cut for photo access to Royal Blood's show. I have absolutely no hard feelings over this and treat each show that I am granted access to as a gift and a privilege.
If you've been watching the music entertainment news over the past several weeks you will no doubt know that there's some controversy growing. Taylor Swift spoke up against Apple's policy that they would not pay any royalties during the 3-month free period of Apple Music. She felt that artists should be paid for their art. It then came to light that her photo contract allows photographers to use the photos they take of her on one occasion and in one publication and only leave them up for the remainder of the year. Subsequent use would have to be pre-approved by Swift's management. Of course, there's no news of how easy or difficult it is to get such permission. And then there are the pieces that really pissed off a lot of photographers. While the artist that created the images (the photographer) can use the photos that they took on one occasion in one publication for a few months, Swift can use the photos forever, with no compensation to the photographers. So much for artists getting paid. And if you break the rules, Swift's management can confiscate and/or destroy your gear. (Update: Swift's management has amended their contract) These contracts are sadly not uncommon in the biz for big artists, with Foo Fighters and Kid Rock among the offenders. The Foo's contract goes as far as to transfer copyrights to the band.
Which brings me to my inner battle over this Royal Blood show. I had the clever idea that I'd draw some pictures of the band and post them along with my review as a joke. Then Quebec newspaper Le Soleil decided to send a cartoonist to the Foo Fighters in protest of their photo contract. I didn't want my joke to become something political, since that was definitely not my intent, so I scrapped this idea. I now feature a couple of my crappy iPhone pics of the show and point you to the Lee's Palace pics if you want to see some better shots of Royal Blood that I captured.
And now you see that I've failed in not wanting this post to become political, so I'll finish my little rant with this: Artists do deserve compensation; Artists do deserve use of their creation without overly restrictive contracts. Since artists like Swift and Dave Grohl will probably never do anything to fix their photo contracts, all that photographers can do is refuse to sign, refuse to shoot and hope that their action, along with the hopeful support of the publications they shoot for, will end up making some kind of positive change.
And now back to our review of the Royal Blood show...
Royal Blood have released one album and an EP. This limits the length, but certainly not the quality of their set. One thing I noticed is that they've become better at stretching out their tunes, including interludes, extended bits and audience participation to make better use of the tunes they have at their disposal. Their set consisted of 9/10 tunes from their eponymous début, plus "One Trick Pony" from the "Ten Tonne Skeleton" single.
Mike Kerr promised that the show would be sweaty. And it was. The room was absolutely packed with a crowd that was sold out from very shortly after tickets went on sale. I don't think that we'll ever get the chance to see this band in such a small room and I think they could have sold out a much bigger venue for this show.
Kerr also promised that when people asked how the show was, all we would be able to do is breathlessly remark, "Dude!". Pretty much on point as well.
Kerr and Ben Thatcher's playing is extremely tight. The songs are amazing, and the sound and energy they produce is incredible to behold. I had an amazing time, as I know the rest of the crowd did. Until next time, perhaps at The Phoenix, or, shudder to think, The Sound Academy, let's enjoy some tunes and cast our minds to this magical gig.
Opening tune "Come On Over"
After winning Best British Group at the Brit Awards, they performed "Figure It Out"
"Little Monster"
"One Trick Pony"
"Ten Tonne Skeleton"
Show closer "Out Of The Black". They even mixed a bit of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" into this one.
The Beverleys opened the show with their own brand of aggressive, angst filled tunes. We got booming drums, buzz saw guitars and vocals that got into viscous, guttural snarl territory at times. Great stuff. Here are some tunes:
Last week they impressed us all with a win of Best British Group at the Brit awards and they put on a massive performance of "Figure It Out". Congrats to this great band and I look forward to the amazing things they'll do as their career progresses. This post will catch us up on the recent happenings in the Royal Blood camp.
Here's that Brit Awards performance:
Hurray Hurray for the first of March, Royal Blood is covering the Police's "Roxanne".
They also released a new video for "Out of the Black"
They've put out some b-side tracks: 'Hole', 'You Want Me', 'Love And Leave It Alone' and 'One Trick Pony'.
Here they are covering T. Rex's "20th Century Boy". Great tune!
It's the time of year for reflection. I say it was another great year for music. I think I saw more bands this year than any other year in my life. I had a great time taking pics of shows. Most of all, I loved the music. It's always about the music. And so without any further ado, here is my list of my favourite 60 songs of 2014.
As 2014 draws to a close, I've taken a few moments to assess my favourite albums of the year. This list is always harder, and shorter, for me than the songs list. A song jumps into my consciousness quickly and I can say, "Yup. Great tune!" much more easily than I can say, "Wow. Solid album."
The other thing I've noticed is that I've seen 18 of the 25 artists on this list live in the past year. Perhaps that's a reason for more of the bands' tunes making an impact.
So, for better or for worse, here's my list of my 25 favourite albums of the past year.
1. Augustines Augustines
2. Royal Blood Royal Blood
3. Public Animal Habitat Animal
4. Bob Mould Beauty and Ruin
5. The Balconies Fast Motions
6. Strand of Oaks Heal
7. Lowell We Loved Her Dearly
8. Split Single Fragmented World
9. Little Foot Long Foot Woman
10. Kasabian 48:13
11. Blood Red Shoes Blood Red Shoes
15. The Hold Steady Teeth Dreams
16. Owl John Owl John
17. The C'Mons Places
18. Spoon They Want My Soul
19. Drowners Drowners
20. Mounties Thrash Rock Legacy
21. Elbow The Take Off And Landing Of Everything
22. Lykke Li I Never Learn
23. The Jezabels The Brink
24. St. Vincent St. Vincent
Royal Blood appeared before a sold out crowd at Toronto's Lee's Palace on October 14. I was lucky enough to be there, camera in tow. This band is going to be huge and everyone in attendance at this show is going to have bragging rights on seeing this Mercury Prize nominated band "back when".
And they proved why they are getting so huge so fast. The two of them make a massive noise. The secret sauce to their sound lies in the basses and the effects. Different basses were used for different songs and at least some were strung differently to hit the notes that the songs required. The pedal board is the other secret - so much so that photographers were banned from taking pictures of it. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of octave/pitch shifting/layering going on. And there's that pile of amps in back.
Of course, bass sounds alone do not make a band. The relentless pounding of Ben Thatcher's drums and, of course, the songs and singer Mike Kerr's vocals, make this band something special. Given that they only have the one album, the set was relatively short, but everyone left satisfied. They even included the live début of "Careless". Here are some tunes from their setlist.
They opened with "Hole" from their début EP.
"Come on Over"
"Figure It Out"
"Little Monster"
"Ten Tonne Skeleton"
Of course, they saved their huge breakout tune "Out of the Black" for the set closer.
Guitar rock will never die. It may evolve from style to style, but it will never die.
Royal Blood are a riff-heavy rock band in the duo form with drummer and bassist/vocalist. And yes, I'd still call it guitar rock even if they don't have a six-string guitar.
Check out "Little Monster" and watch out for these guys in the future.
