New and useful places.

[via greenbiz]

LONDON, UK — Sainsbury’s will this week cut the ribbon on new “Kinetic Road Plates”, which have been installed at the supermarket giant’s new store in Gloucester, U.K., and will harness enough energy from vehicles driving in and out of the store’s car park to power all the store’s check outs.

Read the full article here.

I saw Phoenix last night.

Thank you Toronto.  Thank you for proving to me that on a sweaty dense Monday on Sherbourne, you can outcrowd some big Montreal shows.  Quite a night ladies.  Phoenix @ The Phoenix were literally flawless.  With a drummer that completely took me for a long hard triple take.  When I think of Phoenix, I’d assume their drummer would be the 7A open handed quick and tight kind of drummer.  But this guy BASHES.  Bat for bashes.  garr.  He’s a Bonham-Grohl school style drummer which made their stage presence go from a 4 to an 8.  Thomas Mars’ voice feels like a ctrl+c ctrl+v from CD to stage, almost scary perfect.

I liken Phoenix to a French Sloan around their One Chord to Another / Navy Blues days, buuuuut catchier uppier rockier tunes on the whole.  It’s just greatunashamed Beatles revival, so down.  Fellow concertmate Hunter and I agreed on the French pop aesthetic – slightly femininized, kiddy innocence and fun, touch of silly, catchy as eff, already signed up.  Lead single 1901 off new record Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is the Feel Good Hit of the Summer.

Here’s 1901 again, because it has already clinched its position as #1 Mike summersong.

Phoenix – 1901