One of my biggest regrets of the summer was missing out seeing local cats Citizenship play Pop Fringe. They just released a couple of tracks from their forth coming EP Swan Dive and they are killer to say the least. Checkout their bandcamp page for some download action of just dig into them in the player below. You’ll also be able to witness CTZNSHP in the flesh at Cabret Mile End Saturday September 24th with Yuck, most surely a show not to be missed, get your tickets here.

You can feel it in the air, you can smell it in the streets, it’s Pop Montreal time. I’m not going to write a guide since Sean at STG has already done a great job. One show that I’m totally down to see is Girls (with Nobunny no less!) at Theatre Corona (tickets) Sunday September the 25th. Girls’ latest Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a stellar sophomore release that I haven’t been able to break away from the last few runs up Mont Royal. The album isn’t anything really new muscially, a potpourri of styles that Owens and crew have managed to make their own. I’ve particularly fallen in love with the Tony Iommi-esque riffage in ‘Die’. If you haven’t checkout out the album yet freast your eyes and ears to this lil’ diddy and favorite of mine, ‘Honey Bunny’.

Also you might notice the brilliant painting above, this is the work of a close personal friend of mine Peter Farmer. Pete is an award winning artist who recently moved back here from Halifax. In Halifax he was the owner of the Paragon Theatre (old Marquee) and while there painted most if not all of the artists that played the venue. Check out his Paragon Collection here, his work is magnificent. He’s starting work on a new collection and here’s a taste:

Running around Jeanne Mance this evening listening to the new Night Birds album. I can’t remember how I discovered Night Birds, but the New Jersey punk outfit is really bringing back nostalgic vibes.  Similar to OFF! and their throw back sound to Black Flag and 80’s hardcore, The Night Birds are serving you a plate of Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables with a dash of 80’s surf punk. The Other Side Of Darkness (preorder here) starts off so strong with the 1-2 punch of ‘Demon Haunted World’ and ‘Neon Grey’ then into Brett Gurewitz-esque  ‘Born of Man And Woman’ (listen below) after that there aren’t any really “stand out” tracks but each jam is good and consistent. The lyrics won’t blow your mind but their energy might.

Night Birds - Born of Man And Woman

So it’s been what, 4 months since I last wrote in this blog. I’ve got no excuse really as to why I wasn’t. Time was there, however this blog (or me maybe) has lost a lot of focus. I took a break. A long break over the summer to figure out what can be salvaged from this four year old website. There is a lot of content on here, some I’m proud of some I’m not. Anyway so last week I had full on decided to shut down the site, archive it and move on. However….

Back late December 2010 a bud of mine and I where sitting around an after hours bar in St. John’s Newfoundland and decided that we’d make a new years resolution to run everyday of 2011. Not run in the sense of training for a marathon or for any reason in particular, just to do it. So we set up some rules, the first being that it must be outside (face all the elements of the seasons) and the second that it must be for at least for 15 minutes. The 15X365 plan was born. So far we’ve kept to it. There has been no day where we haven’t ran for at least 15 minutes. It’s been hard, much harder than I anticipated. I’ve ran though shitty weather, sickness and while being bombed out of my mind. The past month has been really stale and I’ve been doing the bare minimum. But as I ran around Jeanne Mance park tonight I thought about Trendwhore and what I could “rebrand”. I’ve been keeping a very bland running journal, just to write down how the run went and what I was listening to and as I was listening to the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album tonight sweating with new found excitement I figured that I’ll use Trendwhore as a medium for ….. reviewing (for lack of a better word) the great music I’ve been exploring as I ran around Montreal. I believe that if I apply the same discipline for running as blogging (whilst combining the two) I could maybe make a more consistent and interesting blog (at least for me).

So gone will be the blog that was mostly focused on the Montreal music scene (there are far better blogs for you to read on that subject) and the new Trendwhore will be more focused on my running and listening pleasures. My passion is running and exploring music, new and old and this place will be my medium for writing my bullshit thoughts about it.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed the old Trendwhore but I expect the new Trendwhore to be much more interesting. If you’d like to start a 15X365 of your own, you should…. it fucking feels great and is worth every bit of sweat, pain and shit weather you have have to endear.

If you made it this far you are in luck. I’m sharing the title track from the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album Hysterical, upon first listening I’m into it. It’s great and made me forget how sad I was listening to 2007’s Some Loud Thunder. The four break might have been worth it.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical