Canada
Album: Ghost Woman - Anne, IfMonday, 16 January 2023
After a few listens, the second album from Evan Uschenko’s musical alter-ego Ghost Woman increasingly resembles something which could have emerged from the early Eighties Los Angeles scene dubbed the "Paisley Underground". However, this does not... Read more... |
Album: White Lung - PremonitionThursday, 01 December 2022
In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for... Read more... |
Crimes of the Future review - Cronenberg looks backWednesday, 14 September 2022
Crimes of the Future is a nostalgic return to classic Cronenberg, a comforting catalogue of body horror and fleshy biosynthesis, paranoid plots and shadowy cabals. Sharing a title with his 1970 debut, the director is still fascinated by our physical... Read more... |
Album: Tami Neilson - KingmakerWednesday, 13 July 2022
We music journos miss stuff too. This writer had not come across New Zealand-based Canadian singer Tami Neilson before, despite the fact she’s been around for over a decade and this is her sixth studio album. How did I miss her?Kingmaker contains... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Montreal - delights and discoveries at the 42nd International Jazz FestivalMonday, 11 July 2022
For most Montrealers, their 10-day jazz festival (30 June - 9 July) is, as the new head of programming Maurin Auxéméry described it to me, a “free, all-you-can-eat musical buffet every night”. People head into the town centre to the Quartier des... Read more... |
Tallies, Old Blue Last review - Canadian quintet rejuvenates indie prototypesWednesday, 18 May 2022
Toronto’s Tallies have acknowledged their fondness for Aztec Camera, The Smiths and The Sundays. Add Cocteau Twins into the building blocks, too. Encountering a band so strongly immersed in the back catalogues of familiar names can obscure what’s... Read more... |
Clubbing with the Stones: Live at El MocamboWednesday, 11 May 2022
In a little over two week’s time, the three remaining ones will kick-start their 60th year as The Rolling Stones by taking to the stage at a stadium on the edge of Madrid on June 1, around the same time that Elizabeth Windsor marks her own @70... Read more... |
Album: Arcade Fire -WEThursday, 05 May 2022
When the pandemic closed in, Canadian experimental indie rock troupe Arcade Fire were on the cusp of heading into the studio to record their new album. COVID had other plans. But rather than pause, the husband and wife duo of Win and Regine... Read more... |
Album: Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales - Consumed in KeyWednesday, 30 March 2022
The three Canadians Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Jason Beck (Chilly Gonzales) and Tiga Sontag (aka just Tiga, who exec produced this album) are each so laden with image and persona it is easy to forget they are musicians sometimes. Hawtin has since... Read more... |
The Weather Station, Scala review - communion achieved against the oddsThursday, 24 March 2022
Acknowledging the contrast between personal and public situations, The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman says “I have a lot of songs about not being heard, yet I’m holding this microphone.” An individual’s voice can be ignored, but if it’s given a... Read more... |
Album: Basia Bulat - The GardenThursday, 17 February 2022
On her sixth album, Basia Bulat re-records 16 of her own songs with specially created string arrangements. The Garden isn’t a best-of, more a recalibration of how the Canadian singer-songwriter sees herself through her music and how the meanings of... Read more... |
Album: Le Vent du Nord - 20 PrintempsThursday, 03 February 2022
What a joyous album for a grey winter’s day, any day in fact – a celebration of 20 springs by Le Vent du Nord, a wonderful five-piece band that hails from frigid Quebec and who make it their business to explore and collect the folk music of French-... Read more... |
