It’s the final week of April Lavigne… or should we say… April La Green??? Do you understand? Do you finally get it? This week is about “Rock N Roll” but it’s also about politics, journalism and the efforts to preserve the Greenbelt. And we’re joined by our boy Joey Coleman, who has his own show called the 155 Podcast. And he’s an absolute player when it comes to independent journalism.
Listen to the new ‘sode of 155 here.
Here’s some other stuff we’re thinking about right now:
Stillbirth “The Hunt”
Sam: As a hardcore Purge-head and general fan of anything remotely Dangerous Game-coded, opening your album with blaring sirens and public service announcements is really all I need. I remember asking Josiah what the hard curfew in Montreal was like during the pandemic and he basically described The Purge to me, but I now recognize that might have been for my benefit due to my fragile mental state at that time, like lying to a child Beautiful Life-style. Anyway this is sick.
Jos: During COVID and before I had a car, I had rented a Communauto (disgusting fart-filled, crumb-covered communal vehicles that should all be destroyed in a cleansing fire) to go pick up pod shirts that had been printed. The closest Communauto was like four blocks from my apartment, and I had to return it to that spot, so that meant pulling over in front of our place, lugging the shirts up three flights of stairs (and this was peak popularity so there were tons of shirts), and then drive back to the parking spot. I had gotten stuck in traffic on the way home, which meant I didn’t complete the tasks and get back to the parking spot until 7:59 p.m., and the curfew was strictly 8 p.m. or face a $500 fine. So I took the back roads and sprinted home, and luckily I wasn’t caught. Also I hate this kind of metal that has bong-rip vocals and terrible HD graphic design.
KEN Mode “I Cannot”
Sam: Longtime KEN Mode appreciator over here, but they have lost me recently as they swerved into being as “interesting” and “difficult” as possible, which is cool for your art but boring to me as a dumb metalcore guy (new personality I’m trying out thanks to Josiah’s bullying). Welllllllll here comes a very ‘90s metalcore song with that patented KEN Mode twist - a sax solo that sounds like some OG Knitting Factory shit. I can get with this! I think the main guy (Ken??? Kidding I know what KEN mode) is wearing a Deadguy shirt in their press photos, too. Neat!
Jos: Liking KEN Mode is like, the most Exclaim!-coded thing you could do. They’re the kind of “hard” band that everyone loves (and I’ve never heard) that would be named like Artist of the Year by Chartattack and they’d be on the cover playing croquet and wearing cardigans despite being so scawy and metal. Except KEN Mode is also like, kind of a thinking man’s version of that, right? I’m listening for the first time right now. Okay it’s got Kurt Ballou guy energy too. Cancon Kurt Ballou smartie pants magazine music. Sam let’s apply for a grant since we run some kind of Canadian music magazine apparently.
Four Tet “Three Drums”
Jos: Look, I’m no better. I’m a music magazine dweeb. I’m a product of noughties elitism. I’m a British guy named Barry. And because of all these things, I’ll always listen to everything Four Tet puts out. I’ve been fucking w Kieran Hebden since I was listening to Fridge on Brave New Waves in ‘99. And I’ve loved seeing him blossom into some kind of new normie EDM figurehead. I stopped watching Coachella livestreams when Blondie made me fall into some kind of depression, but I did see a snippet of Four Tet up there with Skrillex and that other guy, and I scrambled to click play on “Three Drums” the day after. What I love about it is that it sounds exactly like Moby. He’s taken the long route through pinkies-up pretension and musical history to arrive at a song that sounds exactly like Play without the racist vocal samples. And it’s boring as hell. And I love it.
Sam: One million years ago when I had a hit fringe show in the form of Giant Killer Shark: The Musical, we would always play one song for each of the three members of the cast as the audience filed in to get hyped. I’m only partially sure mine was a Refused song, because all I really remember is another guy had picked one of the Four Tet x Madlib songs and that was the real jam we’d play right before the show started. The realization that the same guy is headlining (“ “) Coachella with Skrillex is so funny. What nice music. I bet he’s a really good person.
Sick of Myself (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
Jos: Despite the things I’ve said about satire in the past, I sure am loving some satires lately. But Sick of Myself isn’t just good because of its message about the lengths people go to for attention. It’s good because it’s funny as hell and incredibly dark, like a more subtle Ruben Östlund paired with the absolutely evil antics of Frank and Casper from Klovn (why am I the only one who has watched all of Klovn?). The film follows Signe, a hip Gen Z. girl who has a sort of sibling-like rivalry with her artist boyfriend. She decides to start taking a black-market Russian pill, knowing that its side-effects will give her a brutal skin disease, and then laps up all the sympathy of those around her. The movie is nasty as hell, full of pus and scars, but it’s also packed with laffs.
Sam: This looks sick. I might actually watch this! I probably won’t, though. I read that Vulture article about Tubi and now I just want to watch the Tubi original about Vanessa Hudgens going to Salem to learn how to be a responsible witch. But if I still lived near the Lightbox I’d definitely consider watching this.
BLINK-155 LIVE
Jos: We have only kind of half-planned the live shows and figured out our travel situations, and there are no individual posters or really anything else to go on. But the big blink-155 live shows are still happening in both Toronto and Montreal in the second week of May. It’s going to be so stupid and fun, just like everything we do.
Sam: The last two live shows were so much fun and the Junior Battles show last weekend had a bunch of pod people there and was so much fun I truly cannot wait for this.
blink-155 s02e27
I think I listed the wrong episode title in this lil module last week, so I apologize. The truth is we are now on blink-155 s02e27, which is episode 4 of the “words” series, but also part 3 due to Caleb’s songs. And it’s also the fifth week we’re doing it. Do you understand?