UK alt-folkies STORNOWAY brought a coded setlist, a saw, face-paint, a bunch of multi-instrumentalists, the ability to quieten a post-hockey crowd and some SERIOUS pretty to Vancouver’s Media Club on June 1. Here’s the gallery, a video of their new track “Bigger Picture”, plus some words. PHEWF.

Indie rock stalwarts Yo La Tengo brought their enormous tour bus and their “Spin the Wheel” show to a packed Vancouver Rickshaw show on Feb 19. Then they sorta scrapped the wheel and went off noodling instead. And it was delicious.

What do you get when you put three people in the pitch fucking black on stage with a Korg, a bunch of effects boxes, and dry ice in front of a load of nodding hipsters. Uh, SALEM. And it was good.

New indie band alert! True Womanhood: oddball young things from Washington, DC, playing eerie, rhythmic new wave music. And they like banging on stuff and playing with reel-to-reels. I’d like you to shake their hands.

Presenting Humans – slinky party music for puppets and uh, us humans. Check out some ridiculously sexy photos by KK and cast your ears on some new choons.

BACKSTAGERIDER POST #100: Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips brought their version of Galaxie 500 to Vancouver on November 15 at the Biltmore Cabaret. I gots the photographic evidence, an old story AND the setlist, pop pickers!

Been a while since we’ve had a Top 11 (because our lists go right to 11). But this one’s from Toronto oddball Gregory Pepper/Common Grackle. The BackstageRider loves her some oddballs. So here’s an introduction, as well as his Top 11 TV Show Theme Songs.

You want details about new Mogwai and a linkee to the presale information for tickets to its upcoming North American tour in 2011? Of course you do, silly.

Deerhunter – Herewith: photos from the band’s October 26 visit to Vancouver, in which their possibly stoned guitar tech got bopped on the head with a Maglite by Bradford Cox who was trying to get his attention, while standing next to me and some other photogs. Plus some of my own frustration about the concrete walls of the venue. Because I’m nothing if not about the little details.