Two new discs from three-word-named bands

* My Sister Ocean is going against the tide. Instead of feeding our needs for instant gratification, the local pop-rock duo is releasing its new album, one song per month, between now and November.

We Die Alone is the first track from The Month of Tuesday. The ditty is now available on iTunes or MSO's site. Each subsequent song will be released on the first Tuesday of each month. Burn The Truth is due Feb. 2, while Please Don’t Say It’s So follows March 2 ... and so on and so forth until November.

"I wanted to do something to promote this album that would give people something to look forward to all year. I also know that promoting the same album all year gets boring pretty quick, so I wanted to have an excuse to get the My Sister Ocean name out there more often," says frontman Holden Daniels.

"There are some other 'music business' type benefits such as getting more features on the stations that would never play us in rotation, but that regularly play us one time every time we release a single. I just got the chart numbers for the first week, and if we did these numbers every month instead of every 3-6 months like we used to, I think it will help us secure a decent summer tour, which was the real hope behind the whole concept.

"Who knows - music directors might hate the idea and they might stop playing anything we send them, but we're trying something different and I think the concept is fresh enough to stand out from the same old strategies that record labels have been using for years.

"What I really love about this idea is that none of our songs get picked as being 'better' or more 'radio friendly' than the other ones. They're all going to have their shot at radio, and we'll see at the end of the year which ones had more success.

"And even more exciting to me is the comfort in knowing that we did not write this album to be radio friendly. As a producer for other bands (Jezibelle, Parachute Penguin, Mockteerah, Cara Albo), I tend to have this notion of what makes a song radio friendly and I try to get songs to conform to those ideas. With all the new My Sister Ocean material, we threw out the radio rule book and just tried to write songs that would translate well in a live show; the irony is that a lot of them ended up being under 4 minutes and having hooky choruses (both great ingredients for radio).

"We have the ability to upload directly to iTunes through Edmonton label Oddball Productions, so since the process has been simplified, we figured we may as well try it."

My Sister Ocean will also be releasing three EPs, via Edmonton's new online shop, Music On Demand, throughout the year.

* Radio For Help’s second album, You Don’t Wanna Miss This, is in stores Tuesday, Jan. 19. The pop-rockers teamed up with R&B/pop singer Quanteisha Benjamin for their first single, Breathing, now available on iTunes.

The band will host its CD release party on Saturday, Jan. 30 at The Pawn Shop with The Flash Jam, Seventh Rain and Maryland. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Springing into action

The Bounce 91.7 FM’s past and present Showdown champions are springing into action with a fresh set of tunes.

Justin Blais, the latest winner of the talent search, recorded two more songs with the team behind Vancouver’s Hipjoint Productions. He’ll perform the first, 7 Days, and sign autographs on Saturday, Dec. 5 at the HMV stage in West Edmonton Mall. (The second tune is still under wraps.)

“Most of my family says (7 Days) sounds like Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson,” he says.
“It has that relaxed summer vibe but it’s more uptempo.”

Perfect! Just what we need to get through our frigid days.

Blais, 19, previously recorded two dance-pop numbers, One Night and Some Kind of Beautiful, with Hipjoint. The latter is now charting on radio stations across Canada. “It’s amazing,” he says of his post-Showdown life. “It’s so weird to know people care. I’ve been singing and performing all my life and now people want to talk to me.”

Saturday’s gig starts at 2:30 p.m.

* Kreesha Turner, the very first Showdown winner, is the voice of Delerium’s swirling new electronic single, Dust In Gravity. “Bill (Leeb) and Rhys (Fulber), the masterminds of Delerium, actually kinda sought me out and asked for my vocals,” she says on one of her YouTube vlogs.

The tune will be featured on the Vancouver duo’s next album, due in the spring.

* Quanteisha Benjamin, last year’s champ, is sportin’ a new club-pop ditty, D & G, written by Hipjoint. She also teamed with the rockers from Radio For Help to record a tune, Breathing, for the local band’s forthcoming album, You Don’t Wanna Miss This. Both singles will be available Dec. 15 on iTunes.

Radio For Help will perform Saturday, Dec. 5 at Avenue Theatre, 9030 118th Ave,, with Define The Line, Seventh Rain, Chasing Jones and The Red Threat. Doors are at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $10.