Interviewing Toronto’s The I Spies was one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had leading up to North by Northeast. On a three-way call with singer/guitarist/keyboardist Johnny Kay (in his kitchen “cooking up a whole mess of farfalle pasta”) and lead guitarist/singer/keyboardist James Roberston (on his cell being chauffeured around town), I found myself in the middle of an arsenal of snappy one-liners and in-jokes that one might expect from a comedy troupe.

That’s not to say that their music is a joke by any stretch of the imagination. The I Spies deliver powerful guitar-fueled pop songs reminiscent of the early days of new wave (Television, not Culture Club). With energy to spare and hooks galore, their debut album, In the Night, stands as testament to a local act ready to take on the world.

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Brant Bjork is in no danger of becoming a huge pop sensation, and that suits him just fine. As a founding member of Kyuss who’s also served time in Fu Manchu and Queens of the Stone Age, Bjork has definitely earned his stripes in the riff rock world, and he’s quite happy doing his thing his way.

His new album, Punk Rock Guilt, is a purely analog document of stoner metal that’s truly been a “long time coming.” Over the phone from his home in California, Bjork tells me “it’s been on the shelf for about three years … I hadn’t been working on it. I just made it and then sat on it. It just kind of sat there and collected dust, and then we just realized now’s a good time to release it.”

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David Ford is a British singer/songwriter who approaches his craft with a refreshingly honest and easy going nature that really comes through in his writing. His latest record, Songs for the Road, is finally available in North America after being out for several months in the UK. I recently had a nice, long conversation with Ford about his music and the trials and tribulations of constantly being on the road.

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I just can’t get to the el Mo early enough anymore. Case in point: I tried checking out an act there a couple of weeks ago that was scheduled for 10:00pm. I showed up just a couple of minutes late only to find out the act had started at 9:20 and I had just missed the whole thing.

It happened again last night. All the CMW literature said that Toronto’s Automatic Dub Riot were kicking things off at 10, so I showed up at a quarter to only to see they were already playing. Oh well, the singer was still wearing his leather jacket, so I guess I couldn’t have missed much.

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When Shortwave released their debut EP breaker/breaker last summer they got a nice little surprise in their inbox - a fan letter from former Boys Brigade frontman turned Grammy-winning producer Malcolm Burn. It wasn’t long before Burn extended an offer to the band to come down and spend a week recording at his Colonial mansion in the Catskills. Shortwave’s answer: “Hell yes!”

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