We're into the home stretch of #WL13! Thanks to everyone who's come out the first three nights - it's been a delirious ride so far. It's hard to believe there's only two days left - but they're action-packed. This afternoon we're at Soundscapes for a free all-ages in-store at 5pm, with performances by Laura Barrett and Andre Ethier, both of whom will have a chance to chat with writer Carl Wilson. Then we move back to The Great Hall - upstairs in the Main Hall tonight - for sets by Bernice (9:15pm), Doom Squad (10pm), Sarah Neufeld (11pm), Evening Hymns with visuals by Jared Raab (12am) and Do Make Say Think (1am). Food will be served by FeastTO, an art environment is being created by Adrian Dilena, and DJ Max Mohenu will spin between sets. Advance tickets are sold out but a limited number will be available at the door, starting at 9:00pm.

Please note: we apologize that this show will end after the TTC subway closure, so please sure you make alternative transport arrangements to get home!

Photo above of Blue Hawaii with visuals by Live Action Fezz & General Chaos - borrowed from our Twitter follower @E_Mancuso.

Full listings for Saturday and Sunday below:

** IN-STORE SERIES: Saturday Feb. 16 @ Soundscapes, 572 College St. **

Andre Ethier (one-time Deadly Snakes frontman gone solo troubadour / Blue Fog Recordings)
Laura Barrett (Toronto / kalimba popster shows off new tunes for piano!)

Both interviewed on-stage by:
Carl Wilson (author, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste and blogger, Back to the World)

5pm • ALL AGES • FREE!

Sat Feb. 16 @ The Great Hall Upstairs, 1087 Queen St. W.

Do Make Say Think (Toronto - GLOBAL INNOVATORS of instrumental post-rock make a rare hometown appearance! / Constellation Records)
Evening Hymns
(Toronto/Peterborough - intimate indie folk collective's Spectral Dusk
topped many 2012 album lists / featuring LIVE VISUALS by Jared Raab)
Sarah Neufeld (Montreal - ARCADE FIRE & BELL ORCHESTRE violinist unveils her incredible new solo material!)
Doom Squad (Toronto/Montreal - swoony tribal ambient pop trio)
Bernice (Toronto - Robin Dann and friends' jazz/R&B lullabies)
+ DJ Max Mohenu
+ Art Environment by Adrian Dilena
+ Food by FeasTO
9pm - ADVANCE TICKETS SOLD OUT / $18 door

** IN-STORE SERIES: Sunday Feb. 17 @ Grasshopper Records, 1167 Dundas St. W. **

The Soupcans (Toronto - noisy garage punk trio / Telephone Explosion Records)
Sam Sutherland (talk by author of Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian Punk)

4pm • ALL AGES • FREE!

Sunday Feb. 17 @ The Garrison, 1197 Dundas St. W.

Dusted (Toronto
- SPECIAL GUESTS JUST ANNOUNCED! fresh off our Sonic Boom in-store -
soulful basement indie rock w/ members of Holy Fuck & Ohbijou / Hand
Drawn Dracula Records) 
Cookie Duster (Toronto - LIVE DEBUT of Brendan Canning's pre-BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE electro-pop band)
The Magic (Guelph - the Gordon Brothers' sexy soul-pop crew)
Henri Fabergé & the Adorables (Toronto - REUNION SHOW for the 2006-era indie-pop collective / feat. Maylee Todd, Laura Barrett & more!)
Legato Vipers + The Harlettes (Guelph/Toronto - surf-rock meets BURLESQUE!)
Cell Memory & Castle If (Toronto - mysterious new electro-drone entity)
Co-presented with Kazoo!
+ DJ Strong-Like
9pm - $10 adv / $13 door - BUY NOW!

Purveyors of: Life as an instrumental
File Next To: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tortoise
Play Saturday, February 16 @ The Great Hall Upstairs

Wavelength programmer Kevin Parnell fell in love with Do Make Say Think after seeing them at his first Wavelength show in 2001. Twelve years later they are still his favourite Toronto band. With DMST recently returning to their seminal 2000 album Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead at shows in Europe, Kevin caught up with multi-instrumentalist Charles Spearin to see what life is like for DMST, 13 years and five albums later.

What's it like as a band revisiting material you created more than 12 years ago? I imagine it must bring back a lot of old memories and personal moments.

To have to relearn Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead in its entirety was a joy. I remember before we started rehearsing, putting on my headphones and thinking “okay, I'll go over a few bass lines to make sure I can remember all this stuff” and then finding myself completely emotionally overwhelmed and frozen to the spot until the very last note. I fucking love that record. It's so abstract and yet so personal. It's me and my friends struggling, sometimes flailing, with the complications of life and utterly filled with fire. I once heard the word “patience” defined as “the absence of anger,” which is a beautiful thought, but to me GEATLID was the album that taught us to be patient and still be passionate.

While being mostly instrumental, each DMST record is very evocative and feels quite personal. Outside of melody and rhythm and jamming until something feels right, do you write songs from stories and moments in your lives, addressing them with mood and tone rather than with lyrics?

When we write music, we don't often begin with goal in mind or a specific vision of where the song is going. We spend a lot of time just picking up instruments and listening to what our hands do until we find ourselves kind of stirred by what we hear. Then we go in that direction. Ultimately, if we're on the right track we find out a little more about what's going on inside us. It's like musical Tarot cards or something. We may be surprised at what notes we play but there could be something there to learn from. Then, once we learn, we can distill it and clarify it and offer it to whoever cares to listen. Even though it remains abstract throughout, it's been hammered and purified somehow.

DMST’s members are all involved in countless side projects, other headlining bands, film scoring, child-rearing, and life in general. How does DMST work as a band with
everything else going on?

We do what we can. Usually we write together, record bed tracks and then Justin (Small), Ohad (Benchitrit) and myself overdub, rearrange and muck about with it until it feels done. As a band, Do Make Say Think often ends up on the back burner but because we don't really have an agenda, we're not trying to “make it” or any of that nonsense, and we don't have any dubious record-label obligations, we have space to live our lives and be involved in other projects and do whatever we like. We've been a band for 16 years or so and only put out six records. That's not exactly a breakneck pace but at least everything we've done still sounds sincere to my ears.

For 16 years, DMST has shared the same core members, a group of friends who have grown up together and the music you make reflects that. It feels very honest; music made for no other reason than simply because you wanted to make it together. Is DMST a place to come together with people who have known you forever, through good and bad, a sort of place to reflect, to ground yourself?

That sounds really nice. But it's a little too idyllic-sounding. We have known each other forever, yes, but we certainly don't always see eye to eye. Unless you mean “ground yourself” like coming home to a slightly dysfunctional family where you have the same arguments over and over, but somehow still manage to laugh a lot, then yes, we are like brothers. But one of the reasons we have all these other projects is because we drive each other a bit nuts and need to go our own way once in a while. Do Make Say Think really is the artistic common ground of five people. Brothers or not, repeatedly finding that common ground and not treading the same paths again and again is hard work.

Purveyors of: Sweet’n’savoury pop-rock
File next to: Broken Social Scene, Guided by Voices, Feist, Superchunk
Play #WL13 Sunday, February 17 @ The Garrison

OK I admit it, I had a problem with hHead. Just didn’t get them. But that was the 1990’s and I was sucking on bitter pills. But that Brendan Canning guy, what an expansive imagination. I’ll bet his side projects are way better. I love every side project that guy Brendan Canning has ever been in, such as stunningly LARGE Valley of the Giants, fuzzed out bliss-rockers Cookie Duster (who will be playing maybe their fifth show ever at THIRTEEN). Oh yeah, and there was that other side project Broken Social Scene, the only band I know who ever won a Juno. You might have heard of them too. But this is the year of the cookie. Cookie Duster. Doc Pickles asked some softball questions to Brendan Canning.

Which is the better accompaniment for a nightmare: violin or Theremin?

Violin: the only thing scarier than a violin is a violinist.

To whom does Cookie Duster owe their greatest artistic debt?

Long & McQuade.

Have you ever been fishing? Tell us a brief story about fishing. This story will serve as a metaphor for the creative process. No pressure.

The last couple times I've gone fishing have been deep sea adventures to catch salmon and tuna. Once in Tofino, once in St. Martin. I was nauseous on both occasions, but only produced vomit on the Tofino trip. Good news was that we came home with fish. Metaphor: one must suffer to eat. One must suffer for their craft.

If some country asked to use a Cookie Duster track for a patriotic FIFA World Cup theme, which song would it be, and for which country?

 “Two Feet, Stand Up” is really the only “positive” song from a lyrical standpoint, so I feel it’s the only option. And it’s got feet in the title. Get it? Ireland could probably use this little ditty because their last appearance in international play was dreadful to say the least.

If Cookie Duster were a country looking for a patriotic song for the FIFA World Cup, which song would you use? And which country would Cookie Duster be?

Cookie Duster would be Poland and the  song would be the James Brown/Marva Whitney track, “If You Don't Work, You Don't Eat.”

General Chaos has uncovered video footage of Cookie Duster’s one and only show at the El Mocambo from back in the day. (I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.) What do you most dread about viewing this video?

The show was at the Rivoli. Dread? Songs that went on a little long would likely be the main bothersome thing. I have fond memories of that show for the most part. There were a few other gigs actually. Four in total if memory serves.

Purveyors of: Yacht rock you can dance to
File Next To: Tahiti 80, Steely Dan, Talking Heads, Hall and Oates
Playing #WL13 Sunday, February 17 @ The Garrison 

Between the release of their first full-length, Ragged Gold, this past year and touring with Human Highway and Islands, you’re left with the distinct impression that The Magic is a band approaching critical mass. Begging comparisons to Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac and Talking Heads, the production, the arrangement and the live show have become increasing assured, sanding the rough edges of earlier recordings with an unabashed smoothness. Evan “Cash” Gordon gives the skinny to Wavelength’s Ryan McLaren on the magic behind The Magic.

The full length was a bit of a departure from what fans had known previously, a little less disco, a little more Hall & Oates. Was this a calculated shift?

I would say it was more like a natural development. In the beginning, all we knew about making pop music was to make a disco beat and throw some synths in there. Then through working together in our studio in Guelph over a couple of years, we discovered many great secrets of pop music, which we employ on the album. I am flattered that you use Hall & Oates as a touchstone, they are one of the best examples of perfect pop music: The songwriting and singing are forefront, soulful and rich. The instrumentation and production drive this along smoothly and sleekly, without ever overbearing. 

Does this mean that we shouldn't get too attached to what The Magic is? Is your sleeve full of aces?

You should get attached to the fact that the Gordon Brothers can do anything! We can play fiddles and banjos and write Appalachian folk songs or we can write and produce rap songs. And we have done both. But the mandate is this: Geordie writes a song and we dress it up appropriately. We have dozens of songs to record and are scratching our heads a little bit trying to make them cohesive, but in the end that should sort itself out in the studio. However, new material should be a little more relaxed and adult. Writers will no longer be able to use the word “dance-able,” but people who know how to dance properly will be able to rock to it.

The production work you did on the album is amazing. How do you approach producing your own project?

Thank you so much! I feel like production is a mystery to most and I think this is the first anyone has mentioned it to me. To me, the production is split into three parts: the orchestration, the sounds and the work flow. When making Ragged Gold, I was fixated so much on the first two things that I failed on the third. I was learning so many techniques and painstakingly molding each song that it got pretty messy. Thankfully our friend and mentor Roger Leavens stepped in to help us finish. He took the threads we had piled up and spun them into gold! In the future I will still always produce, but I have learned to be more organized, more like a movie director following a shooting schedule and storyboard. 

Is it important to you to challenge listeners? Is it important to challenge yourself?

To me, the whole point of music is how it makes you feel. The songs that have the most impact on me personally probably would be considered easy listening. When something is easy to listen to, it is easier to feel something about it. However, we don't want peoples’ ears to get dull, so it's important to throw in some extreme sounds now and again. 

By contrast, I think it is extremely important for an artist to challenge themselves. I am so proud of what me and my colleagues have accomplished by reaching far beyond what we are capable of and pulling ourselves towards it. Pop music is a great art form, just like painting or writing and we owe it to our grandchildren to improve things one record at a time.

How has working with other projects like touring with Islands and Human Highway affected or influenced your songwriting?

Working with the master songwriters Nick Thorburn and Jim Guthrie has not only been inspirational, but it has helped us to feel secure that we are headed on course, writing the kind of songs we do. These two are today’s greatest pop songwriters and it has been an absolute honour to work with them, learning from them, and offering what we can. 

What's next for The Magic?

Frankly, things have not been easy for us. We had a great year in 2012; we toured Europe and USA, we released our album, we spent a lot of time in L.A. with powerful people, yet we have failed to reach the level of success we expect. We had a short time feeling wounded and confused that all our efforts had led to nothing and I became pretty
depressed. However, we played a show just before Christmas in our hometown in Guelph that was so amazing that Geordie and I, and several people who saw it said, “The Magic is the best band in the world, you HAVE to do something about this.” So we may not have help yet from industry or music press, but I swear that this year we are going to push hard, play amazing shows and make a great new record, and we will be the hugest band on the planet.