One of my favourite albums of 2009 from within and without of our great city was The Bruce Peninsula’s ‘A Mountain is a Mouth’. The epic dozen or so sized band mixes technical guitar riffs, gut grabbing drums, a chorus of voices and remarkable composition. Lyrics that you revisit; themes of drinking, of heritage and of darkness. I listened to it 100 times.

The new tracks on Open Flames (2011) hold the same water, and the videos accompanying them take it one step further. Interesting to watch and well done:

Okay okay, we all love to love Austra. Toronto heros making it big across the globe. And yes, yes… Katie and crew are known for flowery imagery, darkness and weirdness.

Their new video strikes me though as something that would be featured in a Beavis & Butthead segment where they are confused the whole time, just picturing the commentary from the famous toon duo kind of cracks me up.

Whether you dig it or not, you can’t deny that Austra has seen a lot of success and we hope they continue to see more in 2012.