Each January, our intrepid Kenna Burima puts together a festival called The Midway, held adjacent to the annual High Performance Rodeo here in Calgary. Last year, Woodpigeon performed a set of Bjork tunes, and a recording has just re-surfaced, thought earlier lost due to an exploding hard-drive. While we put some pretty big arrangements together, this stripped-down version of ‘Aurora’ has always been my favourite of the night. A guitar, some voices, and a hushed theatre (and a little demo that we worked from too).

• Aurora [Bjork] (live)
• Aurora [Bjork] (demo)

With everyone’s eyes on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we here at WPHQ wanted to highlight a feature-length documentary entitled Dirty Oil, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Leslie Iwerks. You can watch some clips and catch up on some important tar sand related readings here. As Albertans, we personally can’t believe what’s happening in our gorgeous province. WP is extremely proud to be featured on the soundtrack of Dirty Oil with an instrumental version of ‘A Hymn for 2 Walks in Different Cities’. Here’s the original 2005 Sketchbook EP version of the song, to hopefully give you at least some warmth in these frustrating times.

• A Hymn For Two Walks in Different Cities [Sketchbook Version]

Late this summer, the editors of MOJO magazine asked if WP would be up for covering a song from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Without admitting I’d never actually listened to it, we set about re-building the track ‘Mother’ into something a little different from the original everyone seems to love. Talk about pressure, but it’s out at newsstands now, free with the December issue. (Otherwise, just take a listen to it here. We won’t tell).

• Mother [Pink Floyd]

Everyone in Montreal seems to be perfectly in love. It’s a city of pairs, strolling happily hand-in-hand, cooing bilingually. It’s a city of endless possibility, but even then it seems all the best ones are already taken.

• 7th Wheel (‘Mary Christa O’Keefe’ –‘Balladeer’ –‘An Entanglement of Weeds’ –‘Featherstone’ –‘Morningside’)