Places You Call Home

Inspired by Zoilus' recent post of his Top 20 Toronto Albums(which was a submission to a poll conducted by Soundproof Magazine[for which I was also invited to submit a list but didn't get around too, sorry]), I was thinking of my favourite Toronto artists. Local pop shoegazers Mean Red Spiders then came to mind. They haven't performed live much recently - I think they performed a showed earlier this year, and then before that their last show maybe was last year's Virgin Festival set(which I missed). Their last album was 2002's "Still Life Fast Moving" which I never got around to picking up. According to their December 10, 2006 MySpace blog post their new album is tentatively titled "Waler" and at the time of that blog post the recording was almost complete. A few demos of songs from the new album are currently streaming over at their MySpace. The last album and the new one apparently continue towards a more 'fuzzy' pop sound than the shoegazer-y "wall-of-sound" pop of the band's first two albums, 1998's "Places You Call Home" and 2000's "Stars and Sons". Thankfully the wonderful angelic vocals of Lisa Nighswander still remain. I wonder what the status of the album is at the moment. Funny, but I've actually never seen the band live. Hopefully, they tour for the new album. Ten years in as a band they definitely deserve more recognition.

MySpace: Mean Red Spiders
streaming audio: Last.fm
MP3: Mean Red Spiders - "First and Only"
MP3: Mean Red Spiders - "Azimuth of Panama"
MP3: Mean Red Spiders - "Trains and Boats and Planes" (Burt Bacharach cover)
MP3: Mean Red Spiders - "Shiny Skin"

Happy Canada Day!