Canada
Album: Drake - For All the DogsSaturday, 07 October 2023
Drake’s new album is his fourth full-length in under two years. While his peers like Kendrick Lamar and J Cole disappear for years at a time, Drake seems to be afraid that leaving the limelight means he will evaporate into thin air. As a result, For... Read more... |
BlackBerry review - the nerds versus The ManThursday, 05 October 2023
Nothing goes out of date like new technology. Who now remembers how plain old Alan Sugar brought word-processing to the masses with the Amstrad PCW 8256, or how the Psion 5 was for a moment the last word in personal organisers?BlackBerry transports... Read more... |
Album: Bokanté - HistorySaturday, 15 July 2023
Everyone has their "what-if" moments. But the “Sliding Doors” inflection points in the life of Guadeloupe-born, Montreal-based Malika Tirolien, after which everything that happened afterwards could been very different, are truly extraordinary.What... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Montreal - the world's largest jazz festival just got youngerTuesday, 11 July 2023
The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal (FIJM), the largest in the world, is genuinely on a roll. The head of programming of the huge event, which takes place all around the Quartier des Spectacles in the centre of the city, says in this year... Read more... |
Album: Lunice - OPENThursday, 22 June 2023
There are whole books to be written – indeed, hopefully being written – on how hip hop has interacted with dance music culture in North America over the past decade plus. From the overblown mania of rap megastars jumping on David Guetta tracks in... Read more... |
Album: Feist - MultitudesSaturday, 08 April 2023
This is technically Leslie Feist’s first release since 2018’s Pleasure. But that doesn't mean the Canadian songwriter has been resting on her laurels.In the five-year period, she’s stepped into the role of solo parenthood by adopting her daughter... Read more... |
Margaret Atwood: Old Babes in the Wood review - bookending the short storyTuesday, 14 March 2023
Margaret Atwood has been writing for sixty years now, and, with her latest publication, she has given us a book of short stories in three parts, Old Babes in the Wood. These tales are engaging, but, as is frequently the case with short story... Read more... |
Women Talking review - abused Mennonite women find their voiceFriday, 10 February 2023
Women Talking is very powerful. It was adapted by writer-director Sarah Polley from the novel that Miriam Toews, raised a Mennonite in Canada, based on terrible events that took place in an isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia between 2005... Read more... |
DVD: Oscar Peterson - Black + WhiteTuesday, 24 January 2023
I can’t help enjoying the continuing elevation of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) to national monument status in Canada. A park or a square here (Montreal), a boulevard there (Mississauga), a school, a concert hall, a statue, a... Read more... |
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... |
