Slim Twig

I'm pretty amazed (read: disappointed) that Toronto's Slim Twig is still sitting at the level of obscurity he was three years ago. He exudes the kind of cool we worshipped in Extra Width-era Jon Spencer's rockabilly punk chic and Genesis P. Orridge's extreme mixed-media weirdness, and that's hard to come by. Slim's caught the eye of someone though: Bruce MacDonald, who cast him in his latest film, The Tracey Fragments, alongside Ellen Page. His avant-rockabilly-(anti-)folk, however, shouldn't be overshadowed by his dead cool image and affable oddity. "Gate Hearing" sounds like it was recorded in an oversized oil drum with a mutant horse inside trotting the rhythm, a crew of zombies stumbling with the string section, a radiating synth cluttered with goo keeping it on repeat, and Slim's raging vocal - a howl that marries the uninhibited deliveries of Lux Interior and Ziggy Stardust. The video is a collaboration with Exploding Motorcar Collective, who join him on December 4 along with the Huckleberry Friends at the Tiger Bar in Toronto.