It’s been nearly a year since Victoria’s Freak Heat Waves has graced our fair city. Last October, the band played a sold-out show during Halifax Pop Explosion in the Bus Stop Theatre. Clad in chameleonic black clothing and lit solely by a strobe light, the trio mesmerized its audience with a striking combination of sonic […]
Andrew Patterson
Posted inArts + Music
Seth Smith
By now, it’s safe to say that Seth Smith is an institute of Halifax art. A prolific musician, printmaker and a budding filmmaker, Smith has proven himself an idiosyncratic wizard on all fronts. This soundtrack only serves to further that reputation. It may just be the darkest thing in Smith’s catalogue: it trudges through the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Close Knits
Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, The Cable-Knits has crossed this mighty continent to bring you their idiosyncratic, fuzz-mangled pop ditties. Comprised of songwriters Nate Waters (Hunter Gatherer) and LeeJay Dunphy (Stawart Sons), the two take a collaborative approach to create singularly scatterbrained songs. “This band is a truncated version of mine and Lee’s extended courtship. We […]
Posted inArts + Music
Taking Names
Crossing paths with a wild animal is a striking experience. Whether it’s a raccoon rustling in the shadows of a shed or a deer standing roadside and motionless, there’s often a kind of memorable excitement to it. “When I encounter a wild animal, I never quite know what to do,” says D’Arcy Wilson. “It’s really […]
Posted inArts + Music
Mavo
At long last, Montreal’s best-kept secret has released its debut batch of songs. Recalling the charm of Flying Nun records, the cheekiness of early Television Personalities and explicitly referencing The Velvets and The Fall, this gem may as well be required listening for campus stations nation-wide. If you yearn for the days when bands could […]
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Church of The Exquisite Panic: The Ophelia Poems
Using the quietly powerful and tragic character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a touchstone for a sprawling collection of new poems, established poet Carole Glasser Langille has given readers her most refined and vital work to date. Traditionally viewed as a deeply troubled character with large impact and little voice, here Ophelia is revealed as […]
Posted inLifestyle
Scoop dreams
Ice cream can be many things: a family outing, a great first date, a late-night secret, a sunburnt stop on the way home from the ocean. A creamy, ill-advised meal substitute. It’s not just a dairy product, it’s an experience. And for the complete experience, the light and heat of summer are a necessity. One […]
Posted inArts + Music
Special Costello
On its second physical release, Special Costello digs up the dirt and hollows out a craggy, fuzzed-out bunker somewhere in outer-space. The shifting, boisterous clusters of song rumble with filthy bass and lash out with clanging drum patterns. Singer Jeremy Costello’s majestic vocals get the Dr. Frank Poole treatment: floating around suffocated somewhere out in […]
Posted inArts + Music
Music For Uninvited Guests
In her first collection of short stories, Misha Bower, a founding member of Toronto band Bruce Peninsula, offers the reader a series of emotionally complex visions rich with colloquial dialogue. Bower adopts a series of plainspoken voices to tell the tales of brothers, cousins and lovers, all of whom attempt to define themselves within a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Old & Weird
This debut cassette scrambles my brain. It’s like one of those black- and-white drawings that looks like a wistful old woman wearing a pearl necklace; then, when you return to it, it looks like an eagle soaring over a lake of fire. The presentation is deceptively simple, the lines are nuanced and multi-dimensional. The spindly […]
Posted inArts + Music
Sappyfest Number Seven
This weekend, car loads of compatriots, wagons of wonderful merchants, vans full of families and campers full of campers made their way to Sackville, New Brunswick to take part in the seventh annual Sappyfest: an independent music festival that takes place over three days in the heart of the heart of the heart of the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Special Costello
There is something incredibly direct and moving about Special Costello’s music. It has a grandiosity not dissimilar to Grizzly Bear’s louder moments. It can bowl you over with bravado and mange to charm the pants off of you at the very same time. Singer Jeremy Costello’s soaring vocals figure heavily into the duo’s cinematic certitude […]