RatTail – Self-titled
There is an incredible surety at play in Rattail’s music. Far from cocksure or showy, they are a band whose confidence seeps into their playing and fills their straightforward compositions with an elusive, almost droll quality. Their debut LP emits a vibe akin to those moments when you feel as though you’re in proper motion: heading to the exact place… Continue reading
The Just Barelys – ‘Mad Bits’
The Just Barelys crystalized their sound a couple of albums ago and are running right on time with their new release Mad Bits. The duo is known for their dance beats, angular lyrics, and pop intuition making them accessible and interesting. The metronomic drumming of Eleanor King ticking along to Stephen Kelly’s lengthy guitar vocabulary encase the album with a solid backing. Like a… Continue reading
Mike O’Neill – ‘Wild Lines’
I often wonder what would be left of our era if, through whatever circumstance, only the things that could be kept in our memories survived. What works of music would last through posterity? Would the ease of repetition and hidden mystical quality of melody overcome lesser songs than have been marketed better? I would argue that the contagious lines of… Continue reading
Dixie’s Death Pool – ‘The Man With The Flowering Hands’
Dixie’s Death Pool’s latest record The Man With the Flowering Hands reveals itself like a series of lifting and drifting veils, each passing attitude gently giving way to another shifting impression of a mood. The songs fit together like floating aural continents bridged by field recordings and improvised sonics, each tune a strange country with new ways of unfolding musical… Continue reading
Devon Sproule – ‘I Love You Go Easy’
Good role models are hard to come by these days. Faults and blemishes seem easier to magnify than blessings, and so finding people to look up to becomes more difficult with each passing experience. (I suggest a reinvention of a paragon.) Devon Sproule is a shining exemplar of someone to idolize through song. I Love You, Go Easy collects a… Continue reading
Bad Vibrations – ‘Black Train’
With the release of their first proper full-length, this murky Halifax three-piece have crystallized their most vital ideas and turned them into a mesmerizing batch of songs. Bad Vibes are a strange breed: too sophisticated and spacey to be passed off simply as punk, and too brash to be considered merely psychedelic. They are a centaur of sorts: a brooding… Continue reading
Gypsophilia – ‘Constellation’
I had moved to Halifax for the second time in 2004 and had heard of these gypsy jazz shows that were happening in an old church. It felt like one of those secret underground happenings that I had always read about but had never had the chance to be a part of. In the dimly lit church, the music summoned… Continue reading
Marine Dreams
Ian Kehoe (Marine Dreams, Attack in Black) comes across as a young Leonard Cohen sitting in a bathtub typing out his lyrics. You find it all in his words, biographical honesty feathered with poetic embellishment sifted through narratives that leave the listener seeing as much as they are hearing. Marine Dreams feels like an underdog winning, like an art student’s… Continue reading
Al Tuck – ‘Under Your Shadow’
Audiences are usually taken aback at the lack of illusion and abundance of authenticity that takes the stage while Al Tuck is performing. Personifying so many characteristics songwriters aspire to emulate, Tuck tours and writes his songs because there is no other version of himself. His songs are undeniably his own while borrowing from familiar blues structures and Dylan-esque deliveries,… Continue reading
The Daredevil Christopher Wright – ‘The Longsuffering Song’
Most well written music finds a way to bind itself to a time and place in its listener’s life, so that certain songs harken broken hearts or better times passed. The Daredevil Christopher Wright have taken their well-composed creations a step beyond that conception, and imparted a worldly sense that feels hundreds of years old. The Longsuffering Song EP holds… Continue reading
Each Other – ‘Taking Trips’
Teetering on the brink of pop, edging towards introspection and falling in and out of time and space, Each Other build inviting songs out of aberrant riffs and fractured narratives. After earning an irreproachable reputation as one half of Halifax’s pristine guitar pop group Long Long Long, Mike Wright and Brad Lahead paired down and recorded this EP all themselves,… Continue reading
Adam & The Amethysts – ‘Flickering Flashlight’
Adam and the Amethysts are a band that have been categorized as Folk rock, however, there is more minimalist Beach Boys and Sufjan Stevens than anything resembling traditional folk or rock on their latest release. Creeks of synthesizers swirling around picked acoustic guitars and long bowed violins crystallize the band’s sound on half of the album yet diversifies it’s influences… Continue reading
Extra Happy Ghost!!! – ‘Modern Horses’
One of the first lessons we learn about the world is how scary it can be. Discovering just how expansive your surroundings are for the first time and can be an absolutely terrifying thing to come to terms with. It’s easier every day to feel completely lost in a disaffected world with no reference point. Extra Happy Ghost!!! know this.… Continue reading
Bruce Peninsula – ‘Open Flames’
“You can’t hide what you want.” This album is not about hiding anything. As soon as the drums and vocals burst in, you know this record isn’t going down without a fight. Open Flames is a pleading, a collective prayer for redemption, evocative of shedding a former skin and becoming something wholly new. Bruce Peninsula aren’t known for being subtle,… Continue reading
Jon McKiel – ‘Tonka War Cloud’
Tonka War Cloud arrives like an autumnal cold snap sounding earthy and sure- footed for Jon McKiel’s sophomore full length release. The clean succinctness of his premier album, Nature of Things, has been transmuted into more self-conscious arrangements unfolding behind his steady voice. The layers of sound throw themselves in a beautiful unique pile on tracks like “Iceman” and “Confidence Lodge” ,where… Continue reading
Quaker Parents – ‘No Crime When Covered In Grime’
Over the last two years, this frenetic pop trio have been allocating their laconic anthems to a series of short-run cassettes. The medium is well suited: each song feels perfectly cramped, overfull with wit and bursting at the seams with clever invention. Their most recent effort, No Crime When Covered In Grime, is a further refinement of all their idiosyncrasies.… Continue reading
Dan Mangan – ‘Oh Fortune’
I don’t know how old Dan Mangan is, and Oh Fortune does nothing to suggest how many years he’s spent honing his song writing. If a guess were hinged on his lyrics, he’s outlived most people already and possesses the wisdom to prove it. He’s written laments for a life unspent in Post War Blues; and Leaves, Trees, Forest comes to the realization of just… Continue reading
Cousins – Secret Weapon / Speech 7″
For those who like their tones clean, their recordings painstakingly pored over, and their songs needlessly novel- I have a message for you: Get your head(s) out of your asses. Listen to Cousins’ Secret Weapon/Speech seven inch. No clarity in music is more necessary than good songwriting, and both sides of this album are covered in a film of static energy and… Continue reading
Braids – ‘Native Speaker’
Winter in Canada is always difficult to deal with. Anyone that tells you otherwise is a liar. It’s unpredictable, dark and dismal- most importantly, its really, really cold. Braids offered solace through the more difficult cold spells with their release of Native Speaker at the start of this year. From the thawing beginning of Lemonade, those frostbitten moments ride a slow wave of sparse, building percussion and a… Continue reading
Colin Stetson – ‘New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges’
Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is, in the classical sense of the word, a sublime thing – terrifyingly powerful and large, almost unfathomably so. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t learn of it until it made the Polaris short list, though Stetson himself carries an impressive resume, playing and recording with the likes of Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Tom Waits,… Continue reading
Shotgun Jimmie – ‘Transistor Sister’
Shotgun Jimmie comes from the heart of the heart of the heart of New Brunswick. He plays from the heart of his heart. His guitar bounces gleefully, charges steadily forward. Your ears perk up and he starts singing about all his friends, who remind you of all your friends. His words are full of carefree consideration. He is a performer whose… Continue reading
Dog Day – ‘Deformer’
I have always liked a good song over fashion, fame, or finesse. This is the reason Dog Day have always had a special place in my heart and stereo. From the first glimpse of their potential on their Thank You EP, to the confirmation of greatness with their Night Group LP, they have yet to resort to tricks or gloss. You would be wasting your time… Continue reading
Hooded Fang – ‘Album’
Hooded Fang’s Album may have been recorded in a run-of-the-mill studio, but on its first listen, that information becomes dubitable. It’s much more likely that these songs were strung together with brightly coloured yarn woven by the band dawning hand-drawn monster masks atop a treehouse in a bioluminescent marsh. Everything about Album is bright, beaming and optimistically imaginative, but it never reaches that headache-inducing… Continue reading
Joan Of Arc – ‘Life Like’
Though I count the Kinsellas among my favourite musicians, Joan of Arc has been a tricky band to follow. How Memory Works and So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness are early favourites. Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain and Boo! Human – both great. To be certain, all of their works peaks at brilliance, but in their twenty or… Continue reading
