Canada
Kim's Convenience, Riverside Studios review - KC and the sunshine vibeSaturday, 14 September 2024
One wonders what sitcom writers will do when supermarkets finally sweep the last corner shops away with nobody left old enough to buy cigarettes, nobody so offline that they buy newspapers and nobody eating sweets, priced out by sugar taxes. The... Read more... |
Red Rooms review - the darkest of websTuesday, 10 September 2024
A woman sits at her computer. She copy-pastes an address into a search engine. She goes to street view. She zooms in. Click. Opens a new tab. Click. Searches a name. There are no lines of green code on a black screen or indecipherable programmes... Read more... |
In a Violent Nature review - inverted slasher is fascinatingSunday, 21 July 2024
A group of young people rent a cabin in the woods. A masked killer lingers nearby. Surely you know how the rest unfolds. The slasher and its well-worn tropes have been parodied, satirised and subverted for as long as it has existed. In fact, we seem... Read more... |
The Nature of Love review - disappointing French-Canadian romanceFriday, 05 July 2024
The Nature of Love joins a recent spate of films where older women enjoy what a mealy-mouthed columnist would describe as an inappropriate relationship. Whether it’s Olivia Colman bedding a much younger black colleague in Empire of Light, ... Read more... |
Album: Abigail Lapell - AnniversaryFriday, 10 May 2024
Anniversary is Canadian singer-songwriter Abigail Lapell’s sixth album (if we include last year’s lengthy EP of lullabies). Her success has not reached much beyond her native land, as is often the way with Canadian acts, but she’s a proven talent,... Read more... |
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)Saturday, 04 May 2024
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he inspired. Now is a good time to recall those properly to mind, to listen to his huge discography, and... Read more... |
Album: Loreena McKennitt - The Road Back HomeMonday, 04 March 2024
It was one of those truly memorable evenings – a Royal Albert Hall concert by a someone with a long career (and record sales of 14 million), a woman I’d been introduced to only a few months earlier when a music-loving friend gifted me a CD.... Read more... |
Album: Chromeo - Adult ContemporaryWednesday, 14 February 2024
A decade ago Canadian duo Chromeo had their biggest success with the single “Jealous (I Ain’t With It)” and its parent album, White Women. However, it didn’t presage a move into the mainstream.For over 20 years, Chromeo’s wry-sexy, wordy electro-... Read more... |
1979, Finborough Theatre review - niche subject matter finds a strong resonanceSaturday, 06 January 2024
If a week is a long time in politics, what price 44 years? And 3500 miles? Turns out, not much, as Michael Healey’s sparkling play, 1979, proves that events all that time ago and all that way across the Atlantic maintain a remarkable relevance today... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Myriam Gendron - Not So Deep As A WellSunday, 03 December 2023
Myriam Gendron's debut album Not So Deep As A Well was originally released in 2014 by Feeding Tube, a US label run by the prominent music writer Byron Coley. When it came out, he wrote that she was a “wonderful if spectral guitarist and singer,... Read more... |
Album: Shirley Hurt - Shirley HurtSaturday, 02 December 2023
The realisation that Shirley Hurt is the name assumed by Canada’s Sophia Ruby Katz for recording helps explain why her debut album is so oblique. As well as the cloaked identity, what seem initially to be direct songs cleaving to familiar musical... Read more... |
Album: Abigail Lapell - LullabiesWednesday, 22 November 2023
Abigail Lapell is a singer feted and given awards in her homeland of Canada, but who has yet to reach far outside it. Folk is her metier but only insofar as it’s Joni Mitchell’s.Five albums into her career, inspired by COVID lockdown-induced... Read more... |
