Posts in Arts + Crafts Records
Brendan Canning, Broken Social Scene
Brendan Canning, Broken Social Scene

If you ever email Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning, a word of advice: don't ever greet him with "nice to e-meet you!" This is horrible, and Canning hates it. He's also not a fan of any reference to "hump day" in emails he gets on Wednesday. I agree with Canning's point, and I hate these phrases because they are lazy. Canning probably does too, but as a songwriter who creates original art, hackneyed phrases like these must especially make him cringe.

Of course, I might be reading too much into this. But Canning is always creating: he cooks, he gardens, he plays soccer, and he DJ's. "I live life with my curiosity piqued," he told me. In fact, you can often find him on the streets of Toronto on his bike, staring at people and wondering what their stories are. The important thing is that Canning is always keeping his brain going in some fashion. So if you're in downtown Toronto and notice Canning staring you down, there might be a Broken Social Scene song in there somewhere.

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Arts + Crafts Records, IndieBen Opipari Comments
Wes Miles, Ra Ra Riot
Wes Miles, Ra Ra Riot

Remember all those physics majors in college who spent their time holed up in labs?  If they are anything like Wes Miles, the songwriter for Ra Ra Riot, they might very well be writing songs as well as working with spectrometers.  That's not to say that Miles (a physics major and 2006 graduate of Syracuse University) was writing music when he should have been working with mass and magnets; instead, it's pretty clear that being a physics major has made Miles a better songwriter.  This is not the first time a songwriter has told me that, as you'll read, and it's something that I find fascinating.  It's easy to see the link between, say, writing lyrics and reading literature, but I'm intrigued by the link between music and mathematics. 

So read my interview with Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot.  You'll learn more about how being a physics major helps him as a songwriter, how many of his lyrics start as pure gibberish, and why he likes Wuthering Heights.

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Indie, Indie Rock, Arts + Crafts Records, Barsuk RecordsBen Opipariboy, physics, ra ra riot, syracuse, the orchard, too dramatic, wes milesComment