Music update

Another busy week seeing a lot of music pass through the Wenzel offices.

Starting with perhaps the best of the bunch, The Ghost is Dancing five song EP, features more of the orchestral Canadian indie pop so popular with bands like the Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. However, these kids manage to combine a wide-eyed sense of innocence and cosmic wonder with their jangling guitars. Re-released for global (alright, North American) distribution by Sonic Unyon, The Ghost is Dancing is prepping for the release of a full-length in January of 2007.

Ubiquity Records has done it again with two solid releases. The first being the party-friendly, dancefloor filling Spanky Wilson and the Quantic Soul Orchestra's soon to be classic "I'm Thankful". We don't know where Will Holland found her, as Spanky's been plying her trade in every lounge, club, stage from Hoboken to Holland, Los Angeles to Glastonbury, since the 1960s. Regardless, "I'm Thankful" merges 21st century style with 20th century soul. Meanwhile for those enjoying the more electronic funk offerings, the label has made available TM Juke's "Forward". According to rumour, Al Cowan had recorded an entire album's worth of material last year and then scrapped it in favour of this. Diverse, challenging, yet butt-shaking, Foward makes us wonder - if the songs Cowan chucked are half as good as these let's bring'em on!

For those quieter moments of the night, Wenzel has been favouring the organic blues-folk sounds of Bob Egan's "The Glorious Decline". Fans of Baudelaire, decadence, nighthawks, and cigarettes will enjoy this third album from a guitarist who's been in Freakwater, Wilco, and Blue Rodeo. Some may say don't judge me by the company I keep, but by that measure Egan turns out well.

Leeds' based quartet iLIKETRAIN's took some growing, but their ambient space-rock debut "Progress Reform" mixes equal parts Joy Division, Interpol, and Arab Strap to yield songs about chess, trains, and doomed voyages to the Artic Circle.