Today on the Decay

Just a heads up about what's coming up on todays show.

First of all, I'm going to be previewing new releases by Jens Lekman (which pitchfork was appropriately geeking over earlier this week), the Animal Collective and new Ecstatic Peace! artists Turbo Fruits (which was a wonderful summer surprise). I'll have more on those albums early next week.

Secondly, I will be previewing the artists who appear on this years Echo Prize short list. The Echo is an award put out by SOCAN (maybe that's where all those stupid SOCAN fees go), where listeners can vote on their favorite song by a Canadian artist. The short list consists of "Scarecrow" by Nathan, "Graveyard" by Chad VanGaalen, "Dopplespeil" by Feuermusik, "Pedal Pusher" by Abdominal, and "Devastation" by The Besnard Lakes. You can vote here.

Basically I like all these artists with maybe the exception of The Besnard Lakes. I found their album (which was deemed by many to be a critical success) to be meandering yet still predictable and kind of boring. It's the second year a Winnipeg artist has made it onto the short list as Propagandhi took home the winnings last year, and this year it's Nathan's turn. I've always enjoyed Kari Latimer and find her to be one of the better songwriters to be working write now. The same could be said for VanGaalen. However, after listening to all the tracks I have to say "Dopplespeil" is TOTALLY FRICKIN' AWESOME!!! It's equally parts Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley (if that's even possible) and Animal Collective. How great does that sound?

Anyways, tune in at 2pm today on umfm and you'll hear all the artists.

Until next time ...