Exclaim NXNE review HERE

TorontoMusicScene.ca article HERE

We’ve got like a million new photos up, here’s a couple of my favourites… check out the whole set HERE or HERE. Thanks to Hailey McHarg for the Sarnia shots!
-Daniel

The White House (seriously)

Airick and Lauren Schreiber

Sault Ste Marie

McKibbin Lofts Brooklyn crew

this was meant to be a happy post, celebrating our band’s return to New York City next month

but within the last five minutes eight people have called or texted me informing me that the King of Pop has died. I suppose he has given so much of his heart to people all over the world that he had nothing left for himself, and it finally gave out. so sad.

but we’re still gonna rock NYC!!

-Daniel

We’ve got TWO features this week to promo the show on Friday at Maxwell’s in Waterloo…

In Wilfred-Laurier’s CORD weekly HERE

And one VERY misquoted article in Guelph/Kitchener/Waterloo’s ECHO weekly (to the point where they get the title of the new album wrong!) HERE It’s still a secret, yah!

-Daniel

Just want to give a huge thank you to everybody who came out to our NXNE shows this weekend, they were amazing! I never thought I’d see such chaos as the afterparty show Saturday night at La Casa Muerte Academy of Sciences - SB, Japanther, DD/MM/YYYY, Boxes & Bags, Heartbeat Hotel and Metz absolutely blew the minds of everybody in attendance! Seriously, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a guy hang upside-down from the rafters yelling at the top of his lungs while Japanther plays in your friend’s living room.

Big shout-outs to Crispin, Eric Warner, Japanther, These Are Powers, Trevor Haldenby, Daps Duo, Lauren Schreiber, Laura Barrett, DD/MM/YYYY, Ireek Sofakia, Holt Mansfield, Hank & Lily and especially Stephen Chung for filming the whole thing! Expect to see some of this stuff very soon…

ChartAttack gave our Dundas Square show a 95, one of the best of the whole festival! Check out the review HERE

more news coming soon! we’ll be in Waterloo, Brantford and St Catharines this weekend, check out the facebook event HERE

-Daniel

OK so NXNE gets shat on all weekend by the rain but whatever. Me and Karoline walk through a cloud of fog over to the “official” gala opening at the Berkeley Church… these things are always weird and sometimes uncomfortable, but often have free drinks and HORS D’OUEVRES! (tiny art masquerading as food). My suspicions are confirmed, although we are too late for the free drinks, Liam Titcomb gives me his because he is my baby buddy and a really nice guy. Thanks Liam! We eat something that may be a squid or may be a tasty plastic tube, followed by various small vegetables wrapped in bacon. Luke from Boys Who Say No and April from Hooded Fang (with whom I made chicken-wire monster heads yesterday) are there and equally out of place, so we sit on the floor amidst all the black-clad rock dudes, reminding me of being at folk festivals when I was little and feeling the same way. Luckily Ryan finds us soon and we head outside to the “patio” area where we engage in the WORST (and my first) game of “Rock Band” ever… all confidence in my drumming abilities has been shattered!

After a couple of drinks April splits for the Drake and me, Karoline and Luke head to the Vice party we got invited to… I had heard the Black Lips AND King Khan were both playing, which is very exciting indeed… and it’s at the Amsterdam Brewery, which is totally OK with me. We wait in line for a while outside, which actually makes it more fun when we finally do get in… “it’s like a ride!” says Karoline. At the door Luke is all like “Hi, I’m Dorian from Spiral Beach” and Karoline is like “I’m Maddy Wilde from Spiral Beach” (the real band members are all off doing something else)

So the Brewery is MASSIVE and totally reminds me of the Centre of Gravity Theatre, they have a super ghetto stage and PA set up, and surprise - FREE BEER EVERYWHERE! We run into Jamez, Mo and El Bandito, which is just awesome, and dance to crazy garage rock on the PA, before the Black Lips and King Khan come up TOGETHER dressed all in turbans and robes and people go crazy! There is so much beer and sweat and partial nudity everywhere, it’s exactly what I thought a Vice party would be like…

After the set Luke goes his own way, and me and Karo decide to head to the Drake afterparty which sounds pretty good, lots of great bands and Damian from Fucked Up is DJing, which I am interested in hearing… We slide right past several different doormen who are like, “oh, Elvis Mondays, right?” or “oh hi Karoline!” and let us in, while somehow more free beer arrives in our hands … inside Bryan and Dwayne are at the board while Woodhands is playing.. sounds wicked, but people seem like they are there more to Socialize (with a capital S), so we go upstairs to see Damian… at first I’m like “but nobody’s dancing!” and he says something like “I’m the worst DJ ever”… at this point things start to blur.

Matt Woo gives Karoline a free plate of delicious macaroni and cheese, which she promptly smashes on the floor next to the DJ booth… Tisha, Airick and Dorian show up around 2am, and save us from eternal Drake purgatory, giving us a ride home in the story-mobile.

-Daniel

Hello all!

Just wanted everyone to know how COMPLETELY AWESOME North By Northeast is gonna be this year… SO MANY great bands are playing!

We have two “official” shows:

Thursday June 18 at Yonge & Dundas Square, FREE ALL AGES show at 6pm with the BLACK LIPS headlining later that night!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=91570206369&ref=ts

and

Friday June 19 at the Whippersnapper Gallery (587A College st), ALL AGES show at 7pm with MATT & KIM! The show is free with an NXNE pass ($25 for a 1-day wristband), but you can also get in at the door.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=92033465142&ref=ts

On Saturday June 20 we’re gonna play TWO MORE SHOWS around Toronto… and they’re gonna be OFF THE HOOK… the secret locations will be announced on Thursday June 18, so KEEP YOUR EARS AND EYES OPEN!

PLUS… we’re gonna film the ENTIRE WEEKEND for a music video to “Domino”, one of the songs on our new album - and we want you to help us! If you have a video recording device of any kind, even a cameraphone, shoot the song and you’ll be able to upload your video to us right at the show!

“But if it’s a new song, how will I know which one it is?” Trust me, you’ll know…

Daniel, Airick, Dorian and Maddy

We’ve got a couple more June shows to announce!

Sunday June 21 in Brockville, ON at the Roaring Frog with one of our favourite bands, Hank & Lily!

Friday, June 26 in Kitchener/Waterloo, ON at Maxwell’s

-Daniel, Airick, Dorian and Maddy

05/26/09 5:21pm
by Bianca Marcus (CHARTattack)

While talking with Spiral Beach drummer Daniel Woodhead in Kensington Market, one of the band’s usual haunts and a frequent busking location, a few things become apparent: Spiral Beach love their friends, they love to experiment and they’re artists in every sense of the word.

The Toronto quartet have just come off a six-week North American tour and just finished recording an album, which Woodhead calls “a long [due] baby.”

Spiral Beach started writing demos in November and continued to work on the record while on tour by emailing audio files back and forth with producer and Hidden Cameras member Mike Olsen. The band hope to release the album in September and tour through the fall.

Spiral Beach received the final master of the record while staying at Edmonton poet laureate Roland Pemberton’s place.

“This was just the tour of meeting people,” says Woodhead. “I think we only ever stayed in a motel five or six times the whole tour because we had met people while we were there or had connections from before.”

Other hosts included B.C. duo Hank And Lily and alt.country singer Carolyn Mark.

Spiral Beach will play a handful of music festivals through the spring and summer, starting with Pitter Patter’s Guelph and Peterborough, Ont. locations, and then moving to North By Northeast in Toronto.

“North By Northeast is gonna be really, really crazy,” says Woodhead. “We’re playing with Black Lips, which is one of our favourite bands.

“And then we’re doing a show at the Whippersnapper. I can’t tell you who it’s with, because it’s a secret. But it’s somebody really cool. They’ve played the Whippersnapper before. That’s all I can say.”

Spiral Beach often set up their own shows, choosing bands and locations themselves to create a prime environment to draw inspiration from and share ideas with their peers.

“The Saturday [of NXNE] I’m most excited about because we’re doing an after-show of our own, just for fun,” says Woodhead. “If everything comes together, there’s going to be a bunch of bands coming up from Brooklyn to do it, and it’s just at our friend’s loft.

“It’s going to be total overkill of good bands, just a party. We love doing that stuff.”

The members of Spiral Beach have music in their blood, as the saying goes. Brothers Daniel and Airick are the sons of David Woodhead, a Canadian folk musician who has contributed to records by Loreena McKennitt and Don Ross. Maddy Wilde is the daughter of Nancy White, a musical satirist perhaps best known for her songs that were featured on CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning from 1976 to 1994 and her Momnipotent: Songs For Weary Parents CD.

The Woodhead brothers grew up attending music festivals, one of which — Blue Skies Festival in Clarendon, Ont. — they may hit again this summer.

“It’s really insider, an old-school serious folk festival,” Woodhead elaborates. “You camp over and there’s tons of kids and old hippies and young hippies and acoustic guitars everywhere, and face painting and stuff. I love that shit.”

Woodhead also has a way to get into the annual Hillside festival in Guelph, Ont. this year, even if he’s short on cash.

“I might go and wash dishes. That’s the easiest way to get in if you don’t have tickets. The whole band was washing dishes one year. Dishwashing is not the hardest thing. I washed a bunch of dishes, then saw Arcade Fire. It’s pretty good.”

Even though Spiral Beach have just finished a relatively lengthy tour, they’re already chomping at the bit to get back in the van. They’re mindful of pacing themselves, though.

“We’re really into this idea of playing a lot, and then doing nothing and recording some stuff in blocks,” explains Woodhead. “We’d much rather play every day for two months, then don’t play for two months.

“You get into the bubble — the van bubble. We all really like it in the bubble. It’s nice there.”

Since they released their self-titled debut album in 2005, Spiral Beach have learned from their experiences and made a few changes to their performances.

“I actually have started wearing shoes on stage,” says Woodhead. “Because I figured out I can kick the kickdrum harder if I wear shoes.

“Another one of the things that has happened over the years is everybody plays so much louder. Everybody just turns up every couple months.”

Given the partially visually driven nature of Spiral Beach performances, does Woodhead consider the band to be an art rock outfit?

“Yeah, totally, for sure. The pylons [we use on stage] are this weird art thing… [They] indicate that there is something there. The projections are also a big part of it. It’s a cross-influence of the ’60s psychedelic thing with this digital modern effect.

“It’s definitely a mix of old and new, which is everything about the band. But we’ve definitely always consciously not tried to be anything retro or nostalgic at all. A bit Bollywood influenced, a bit ’60s influenced, and a bit very modern, digital-looking.”

Spiral Beach hope to build upon the sound of 2007’s Ball for their new album, incorporating a few different elements.

“We didn’t use any analogue recording techniques on the album,” explains Woodhead. “Some of the songs have cheesy ’80s synth, old analogue synth, and a sample we made out of a plug-in on Logic.

“It’s definitely mixed up, all these different eras. We tried to make the record as if it was the first thing that people were hearing [of our music].

“It’s not a party record in the way that you could put it on at a dance club. There’s not a lot of booty-shakin’ beats and bass. But it’s definitely a lot of fun.”

Finally, here’s what Woodhead says people should expect from a Spiral Beach show:

“Pylons, lots of dancing people, really loud noises, and very nice singing, which is a good combination.

“Just expect to have a lot of fun, no matter what. We always have a lot of fun playing, and it’s very easy for the audience to enjoy. And people get more excited, the more shit that’s happening on stage.”

www.chartattack.com

Some nice people have been posting youtube videos of us…

“ORANGE” live on TRANSIT, a new show where bands play on the TTC!

VAGUERIES live on TRANSIT

“WE SAW GHOSTS” live at the Horseshoe in Toronto

“MADE OF STONE” live… can’t remember where this was…

“SCOUR & DEVOUR” live at Zaphod’s in Ottawa

“NEW CLOUDS” live at the Pawn Shop in Edmonton

By the way… if you have footage of a show, post it up!
-Daniel, Airick, Dorian and Maddy