The T.O. Do List: June 19 2009

by: Toronto Notes

June 19, 2009 12:00 AM

Comments: (1)

1. A year after calling it quits with The Distillers, Brody Dalle is back with a sleek haircut and glossy new sound to match. Spinnerette’s debut disc sees the returning scream-queen tone down her throat-ripping carnage to make more room for contagious melodies and ass-shaking hooks. She even channels Debbie Harry on the ethereal “Distorting a Code” and Pink (seriously!) on the quirky electro-pop of “Baptized by Fire.” Elsewhere, Dalle’s familiar rasp and dirty guitar-skronk reappear, but she’s traded in the punk for sexy, low-slung grooves bearing her hubby Josh Homme’s imprint. The motorik stomp of “Cupid” and fuzzed-out monotony of “A Prescription For Mankind” sound uncannily Queens of the Stone Ageish, partly because Homme’s long-time collaborator Alain Johannes co-penned the disc. Sure, Dalle’s pilfering musical ideas, but at least she’s stealing from the right people. Spinnerette play the Mod Club (722 College) tonight at 10pm.

2. Harvard-trained, Guelph-based jazz musician Kate Schutt warms up the genre with her reverb-drenched vocal-jazz release Telephone Game, managing an amicable brightness that sounds like Blossom Dearie covering Bonnie Raitt. The fetching “Blackout,” for instance, plays with indie-rock sass while the imploring “Take Me With You” manages a burning tension through its sophisticated arrangements of piano, sax and brushed drums. (“You can tell I’m your cousin, no, they don’t ever need to know,” sings Schutt in a rare incest-themed love song.) Boasting 11 originals, all of them as smoky, rich and inviting as the first sip of a well-made martini, Schutt’s professionalism and full feeling make Telephone Game a formidable listen. “Take me with you when you want to,” she sings, “take me with you when you don’t.” I’ll take her. Schutt plays the Free Times Cafe (320 College) tonight at 1am.

3. You are now about to witness the strength of revolutionary politics. Mr. Lif’s third album, I Heard It Today, opens with an incendiary comment: “Oh, I see. So, we all just supposed to start trusting the government again cause it got a friendlier face to it now, huh?” What follows is a sustained and relentless assault on Western-style capitalism, which sees Lif breaking from his Def Jux crew to kick paranoid venom for 2009. The Beantown MC goes in at the self-serving political elite — which apparently includes Obama (“What About Us?”), police brutality (“Gun Fight”) and the housing crisis (“I Heard It Today”) — with his Tommy gun flow and martial, pummelling beats. You might not agree with Lif’s shaky polemics about returning to the gold standard and the barter system, but this is still the first record since Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet that sounds both as furious, and as righteous. Mr. Lif plays the Opera House (735 Queen E.) tonight at 11:30pm.

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