By Will McGuirk
Nation of Language at Lee’s Palace Thursday Apr 7 2022 Tickets here
The Pack AD at the Legendary Horseshoe Thursday Apr 7 2022 Tickets here
Pillow Queens at the Legendary Horseshoe Saturday Apr 9 2022 Tickets here
By Will McGuirk
Radio Zeitgeist spotlights the best of the week’s vinyl releases scheduled for a drop on Friday. This week we spotlight tracks by the RTs, Palette Knife, Nation of Language, Slow Down Molasses, and JW Francis plus a whole lot more. Dig in. It is available on the Spotify platform. Subscribe, Follow, Like, whatever it is they do do it there. We have been doing the RZ roundup for a while so there’s an archive too.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
By Will McGuirk
“Blush is about saying 'sure, the world we've created is full of bullshit, but that's not some inevitably, it doesn't actually have to be this way, and we have an antidote, and it's each other.” - Matthew Lyall, Gold & Youth
“I wanted to write a song to myself as a reminder, almost like a mantra, to stay in the present and accountable.” - Brandon Wolfe Scott
“. . . I feel like the song is universal with its message that it’s the little things and moments that matter, the time we’re able to spend with one another.” - T. Buckley
Kaia Kater, photo by Jess Sung
By Will McGuirk
“As I was working on the lyrics I had a kind of fixation on terrible tax policies, our cultural addiction to meaningless consumption, and it all got swept together into this punchy, kind of fun track.” - Ian Devaney, Nation of Language
“It’s about ripping out harmful beliefs that have grown and taken root inside many of us like weeds. I wanted to create a sense of sonic chaos—as if anything could happen—because mine and my friends’ experiences in the last few years have been to show up and care for each other amidst the chaos of job loss, financial instability, mental health crises, environmental disasters and more.” - Kaia Kater
“Within hetero society, it’s typical to hate your exes, but in the queer community, exes are viewed differently. When collaborating on the track, Casey and I had the inherent understanding of having queer exes; who frequently run into each other, can end up as close friends and will always be within the same circles as one another. That’s where All The Girls With The Boys Names came to be; a dedication to our former lovers, but still appreciating where we landed." - D.W. Waterson
“Despite the luxury of time to 'breathe in the terpenes', the song also describes our ongoing and underlying levels of anxiety about not having enough time to help make the changes needed in our community and world.” - Greg Tilson, The Gertrudes
“Music is a chance to tell stories of pain and beauty. I want my songs to make people feel something unexpected.” - Jeremy Dion
Clever Hopes, photo by Kyle Gatehouse
By Will McGuirk
“‘Remaining Light’ expresses the frustration felt towards invincible and corrupt institutions that uphold structural inequities, including police brutality and manufactured poverty experienced primarily by racialized communities. Written during a heat wave in the summer of 2016, the song dishearteningly remains as relevant as ever today.” - Absolutely Free
“‘Sparrow’ is my little ode to freedom. It was the perfect ‘escape’ when I was held ‘prisoner’ in my basement, as I wrote it in my home studio while I was in quarantine.” - Chin Injeti
“The song touches on the blinding love that you feel when you’ve found the ‘one.’ It’s like nothing else matters because they are all you see, want, and care about. Almost as if, they have this divine control over you.” - Lexxicon
By Will McGuirk
“The song is really about ego, and it's that inner ego that everyone holds within them." - Snotty Nose Kids
“We are all morons. In a world of moronic things. In a world of moronic ideas. You are moron. I am Moron. We are Moron.” - The Lovely Eggs
“To watch someone quietly working a craft with their hands, taking their time and allowing themselves to focus in a way that hopefully quiets the mind and blocks everything else out can be incredibly calming and hypnotic. Whether at a professional level or just channeling energy into a personal hobby, there’s a lot of power in having a pursuit that requires attention and finesse.” - Nation of Language
"It's about flipping the power structure, the power dynamic, in your life. The world or a personal figure might be putting you down; it's about taking control and owning your life and owning the situation." - Samantha Fish
“I remember pontificating these thoughts in my basement studio before looking up and saying, ‘Hey! Am I the only one feeling this?! Am I the only one thinking about this change? This undertow of a tide sweeping us all potentially under water? And how we don’t know when we can come up for air?’” - Niz Wiz
Cots, Photo by JG+Shi
By Will McGuirk
“‘Flowers’ is a meditation on death—death as essential, awful, tragic, beautiful, mysterious.” - Steph Yates
“When the air in the room suddenly feels like it changes in an undefinable way. It’s a kind of celebration of that certain joyous panic, and the uncertainty that surfaces right after it.” - Ian Devaney, Nation of Language
“My goal was to be as un-Aidan as possible” - Aidan Andrews, daysormay
By Will McGuirk
To have hope but not faith. To continue although experience says other. To build, to make, to write, to sing, to continue. forward . . even as 2020 becomes a year of looking back and accepting we collectively took the wrong fork in the road. Will we ever learn? Look to the artist as they forge ahead, voyageurs on the stream which engulfs the rest of us.
“At the moment, living in a complicated quarantine surrounded by invisible (and not-so-invisible) plagues upon us, fragmentation is palpable: a splintering of social ties, of nature's capacity to regenerate, of something vague that once felt stable and now feels unreal...... All of these things hover between us and within us.” - Peter Burr, Austra art collaborator
“I have this idea in my head that our music generally feels out of place against the backdrop of summer, but the dynamic of the city in its current condition really captured the solitude and confusion behind the song in a way that feels compelling.” - James Thomson, Nation of Language
“‘The Swans’ is a present day, apocalypse-era reply to Springsteen's ‘Dancing In The Dark’ or Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’. I wrote it before the pandemic, but in anticipation of the need to live above and against the fire and brimstone, to forever fall in love with the natural world. “ - NYSSA
By Will McGuirk
When we can’t quite put our finger on it the artist can, the artist can articulate what we are feeling, the artist seems to be able to express just what it is we are hovering around. We are hovering now, unsure, cautious, courageous but nervous about this future we were not expecting.
“Of one thing we can be certain, as to visions of the future, it will be, as it has always been, the emancipatory, freedom-giving, loving and best fulfilling version of the future having been anticipated already and suggested by artists.” - President Michael D. Higgins via Hot Press
“ “Paper Thin” is about restarting and that strength that we find in ourselves during our hardest moments. Through catharsis and release, we are able to heal and a new sense of self emerges.” - Peter Katz
“It’s about exploration, nostalgia, searching for something greater and deeper than anything you’ve known.” - Ben Kunder
“I wrote "Paranoia" as an examination of mental health, looking at a bout of anxiety and depression.” - Paul Kasner, Venus Furs
“Our vocalist, Tim, began the process of creating “Underground” during a period of anxiety and insomnia while dealing with personal loss.” - Shred Kelly
“It’s about the transition of growing up and finding someone to create your own family with – leaving home, finding love, and the evolution of that happening all over again.” - The Lagoons
“It’s about saying goodbye to the world we lived in before Twitter, smartphones and Reddit. The times when we used to show up to each-others houses unannounced and it wasn’t weird. Now, however, in the context of COVID-19, the song sounds like it’s about saying goodbye to the world we lived in before the virus.” - Matt Rogers, Fleece
100% of the proceeds from this single from Jun 10 thru July 10 will go towards the Black Youth Helpline, Native Women’s Association of Canada and Black Coalition For AIDS Prevention.
Absolutely Free, photo by Colin Medley
By Will McGuirk
The Early Morning Rain and Sundown are on my mind - there you don’t have to read my mind now - I’ve been humming Gord Lightfoot’s hymn of the airliner of late, “because I miss my loved ones so” and somehow think I may never see them again - so I say don’t take it all for granted - take this as a sign - we miss touch and the wheels and wings which bring us closer.
“Hear the mighty engines roar - see the silver bird on high/ She's away and (eastward) bound - far above the clouds she'll fly/There the morning rain don't fall and the sun always shines /She'll be flying over my home in about (five) hours time.”
and the Sundown ?- no not that, this. . .
“What did I say
Where’s your head
No one is immune “ - Jon Stancer, Chase The Moon
“Fuck it… even if we could make the video we want to make right now, this is probably the video we should be making.” - Nation of Language
“We, after all, as if nature set out to remind us, currently face an unanimous threat, unilateral and ubiquitous, and would do well to emerge from this aware of both our impact on others and the impact that others have on us.” - Luke De-Sciscio
Jaunt, photo by Sylvain Chaussée
By Will McGuirk
Its become quickly about those who are making art for art’s sake. The infrastructure around delivering music live was breaking, it may be broken forever now. But like the murmuring of starlings the fragments may coalesce into “something familiar” and it may be the artists themselves who figure this out, the makers not the managers. Dig in. think, wash your hands.
“The song is an optimistic ballad about what it means to be present. We hope it can spark a bit of joy and encouragement for those who listen in these strange times that we are collectively experiencing. In a way, the song feels mysteriously prescient for the moment. Hope everyone is staying safe, connecting with their loved ones, and keeping their head up.” - Jaunt
“‘Snow Angel’ was written in the immediate wake of the 2016 US election, as our collective conscience took a sharp inhale. It’s a diary entry of sorts – a snapshot of the mind grappling with our era’s endless barrage of content and destruction, continents away and close to home. *This* moment, with our world in the midst of a pandemic, is admittedly a new context. But I can’t help but sense the song speaks to feelings many of us are experiencing – uncertainty, angst and a desperate desire to make sense of it all. - Braids
“The only way for time to be wasted on lost love is to refuse to examine it and learn something about yourself. “I’ll Have Another” is a coming of age story, showing the growth that comes from owning your mistakes.” - Midnight Vesta
"‘September Again’ is about struggling with the feeling that with each passing year you're only becoming a worse version of yourself—less capable of wonder or grand ambition, less sure of your footing in your own life. I used to just pick up a book like 'Crime and Punishment' or a detailed history of the Italian campaign in WWII. Those kinds of artistic/academic adventures now feel so much more daunting for some reason. There is a grit that is required to relentlessly pursue these things like I used to, and I can feel that part of me slipping. I tell myself it's simply because I've picked a lane in life and I only have so much time, but there is always the nagging suspicion that I have, in reality, deteriorated in some meaningful way. The song comes out of this war within myself where one part of me is desperately wanting to get back there, while another part is only looking to what lies ahead in the life I’ve made for myself.” - Ian Devaney
