A lot of things happened to the Go! Team between their two Toronto shows, mere months apart in 2005. They lost a member, gained another member, navigated through a major label bidding war and finally signed with Universal, and released their debut album in the States after a lengthy sample clearing process. All this corresponded with a massive boost in profile, such that the diminutive Lee’s Palace could no longer hold the band, and so they were shifted across town to the Phoenix.

Something else happened on the way across town: the Go! Team forgot how to impress. Part of the problem was probably integrating their new member into the lineup; Silke Steidinger filled multiple roles in the Go! Team’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cartoon factory sound, and so Kaori Tsuchida probably had some learning to do while on the road. Another problem was playing the revamped songs; while Universal made an attempt to keep the album’s songs relatively intact, there were some samples that just couldn’t be cleared for the international release. The band adjusted to fit the new sound, but shoehorning Ninja and Tsuchida’s vocals into places where they didn’t really belong wasn’t an ideal solution. And I guess the band shouldn’t take all the blame for a poor second performance; the Phoenix is not the greatest venue, the all-ages venue split that put the kids at the front and the drinkers at the back was a bad plan, and the crowd was far less interested in dancing than the terrific Lee’s Palace crowd.

So what happens when you calculate for their presence from the get go? The first hint is the new single from the as-yet-untitled new album, due for a fall release. Unlike many of the songs off the band’s Australian tour EP, Ninja’s vocals are mixed relatively low in the mix, meaning the signature klaxons-and-sirens sound still dominates like it should. In fact, head knob twiddler Ian Parton seems to have done his level best to turn Ninja’s vocals into as close an approximation of Thunder, Lightning, Strike’s cheerleader chorus samples as is possible while still retaining some of her innate personality. The rest of the song is still pretty by-the-numbers Go! Team—lots of urgent guitar wails and cheesy handclaps, with wallpapering lifted straight from a 70s car chase. If this is an indication of things to come, then the Go! Team have handled the growing pains rather well after all.

I went through a phase in high school where I decided I needed to learn how to sketch actual, honest-to-goodness people instead of the lifeless landscapes and odd still-lifes I’d been doing in art class up to then. When you’re learning to sketch people, you obviously need some models. In lieu of live ones, I resorted to photos. So for a couple of months, I was trawling the internet for whatever photos I could find of Mary Timony and Corin Tucker, and drawing them rather badly during the free workshop classes in art. This led more than one girl to remark on my apparent love affair with girls with guitars, and in hindsight they were totally right—I am a complete sucker for a woman with a guitar. If you’ve paid any attention at all to this blog, you’ve probably already noticed the pattern.

Meet Elizabeth Powell, the lead singer and guitarist for Montreal’s Land Of Talk. Land of Talk’s oeuvre is a rough-hewn variety of your usual melodic indie rock template, which requires a fair bit of guitar dexterity out of Powell. She can not only spit out a mean streak of guitar fire, but she can also belt out the lyrics too. Let me see if I can explain it without resorting to the PJ Harvey/Cat Power references: she has a voice with chameleon tendencies, urgent and tense when she’s wailing at moments like the chorus to “All My Friends,” but warm and reassuring on “Summer Special” as her voice breaks over “If I didn’t knock it then / why would I knock it now.” Her laissez-faire approach to things like staying perfectly on key only add to the charm; her voice is like an old friend whose imperfections you’ve grown into, the cracks in her voice and the intensity in her snarl. If that description didn’t do it so much for you, please see the note re: Polly Jean and Chan having a rockstar baby.

Land of Talk has been all over the place as of late, touring with Menomena and next the Rosebuds, all after playing the stuffing out of SXSW. And even though their drummer is leaving and Powell sounds a bit broken up even as he’s wishing him well, the band soldiers on. I might go see them when they pass through Toronto later this month, but honestly, I can’t keep collecting indie rock girl-with-guitar crushes like this. They’ve all completely destroyed any reasonable relationship standards I might’ve once had.

It’s a bit strange to think of Mary Timony as one of the veterans, but it’s true—over a decade and a half later, she’s still out there playing shows and putting out records. This Aversion interview plays up the not-so-oddity of her being an old-school indie artist at a time when “indie rock” has become shorthand for a fairly popular style of music. The contrast can be hard to see if you’ve been following Timony’s career in isolation, as I often do with artists I really like; the progression she’s made from Autoclave and the early Helium days through to this year’s The Shapes We Make (under the Mary Timony Band moniker) makes sense until you zoom out and place Timony’s career in context. Suddenly her choices don’t seem so obvious, and she looks much more like a lone trailblazer. After all, putting out an album like 2002’s The Golden Dove, so wrapped up in layers of medieval atmosphere and fantastic imagery, would be strange in any year, but especially in a year when the likes of Wilco and Interpol topped end-of-year lists.

Ex Hex and The Shapes We make are more conventional albums for Timony, but the angle of attack is still very different. She’s not afraid of protracted prog-odyssey guitar epics, and the matter-of-fact, lazy afternoon rebellion attitude on songs like “Pause/Off” reminds me most of—dare I say it?—The Dirt of Luck. While not as immediately pleasing as Ex Hex, Timony’s latest album is a fast grower, and lighter on its feet to boot. Recommended.

There are few things in life that can’t be made better with the judicious application of vintage keyboards. Case in point: this charming little ditty from a trio of women and a guy called Slow Down Tallahassee. It’s pretty much a revival of the grungier, garage side of the 60s girl groups—maybe a trashier, fuzzier version of everyone’s favourite 60s girl-group revivalists, the Pipettes, but with a drum machine. So basically the aesthetic of the 60s, filtered through the sounds of the 80s, and played in the 2000s. (Memo to newspaper editors: have you kids finally come up with a better name for this decade than the “oughties”?) Another way to put it would simply be this: remember the Rondelles? They were a fun indie pop band from the mid-90s that produced nothing but awesome lo-fi garage pop gems until they imploded earlier this decade. Well, think of this as the second coming.

You can pick up a limited-edition CD version of their EP from Cloudberry Records in Florida, but it turns out the band’s actually from Sheffield—that’s right, the home islands. Which brings up another interesting point: what’s with Britain nicking all the Motown and soul influences and outdoing the Americans in the revival sweepstakes? Between the Pipettes, Lucky Soul and now Slow Down Tallahassee, the Brits seem to have this market all locked up.

Or do they? Tune in next time as I cynically attempt to stretch my limited library of new music beyond the breaking point!