Dog Day w/Shotgun Jimmie, The Skeletones Four, Reversing Falls, Old and Weird Friday, October 21, Gus’ Pub, 9pm, $10 Friday’s Pigeon Row Showcase is going to be a doozy. To celebrate the fifth year of being a rootin’-tootin’ promotin’ machine, Pigeon Row gathered some of their favourites to make a very sweet lineup. If you […]
Andrew Patterson
Posted inArts + Music
Girls
On its sophomore effort, Girls comes on all hot and bothered. Opening with the saccharine send-up “Honey Bunny” and working their way through to the fully-charged “Die,” Chris Owens and company are reticent, at first, to show their softer sides. However, the second half of the record tells another tale, gushing forth with sentimentality and […]
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Daily Picks: Friday
DOG DAY w/Shotgun Jimmie, The Skeletones Four, Reversing Falls, Old and Weird Friday, October 21, Gus’ Pub, 9pm, $10 Friday’s Pigeon Row Showcase is going to be a doozy. To celebrate the fifth year of being a rootin’-tootin’ promotin’ machine, Pigeon Row gathered some of their favourites to make a very sweet lineup. If you […]
Posted inArts + Music
Quaker Parents
{image-1] This brother/brother/Brad Lahead combo is up to it’s usual tricks, packing ten minutes of tape full of compelling wordplay, chopped up pop hooks and unerring earnestness. Opener “Get In” finds vocalist Mark Grundy self-starting, working his band to a heartfelt frenzy and then, as the song reaches its apex, bolstering, “even if your heart […]
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Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew
Known for a myriad of literary pursuits (including founding the Toronto Small Press Book Fair) Ross’ poetry, essays, publishing and editing work have garnered plenty of international attention. Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew is his first novel and bears many of the earmarks of his other works: keen detail, time/space conflation and unlimited vibrancy. The novel sews […]
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Slam pickings
Slam Dunk is some kind of happy accident, a series of jokes that continues to escalate. The group’s first incarnation was as a one-off cover band for a cancer benefit in its hometown of Victoria in 2009. Guitarist and lead vocalist Jordan Minkoff explains the genesis: “We got together kind of as a joke and […]
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The Brave Never Write Poetry
Jones is not for everyone. He is for the rejected, the frustrated, the marginalized, the addicted or for the people who are so smart they’re bored to death. He is a largely forgotten yet essential figure of Canadian poetry and Coach House has done young readers a service by reprinting his one-off book of poetry. […]
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Lloyd Cole calling
After more than two decades as a songwriter, Lloyd Cole is, once again, trying something new. Breaking from screenprinting in his basement, he explains that his performances at the Halifax Urban Folk Festival—a songwriters’ circle and headlining show—will be his first solo shows this year, and his first visit to Nova Scotia. The show also […]
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The Group Sound take on a genre
The Group Sound’s Matt Israelson is on the phone at Toronto’s Reactive Ink while he gets a tattoo of Dante Basco’s character Rufio from the movie Hook. He explains that he plans on sending a photo of the tattoo to be autographed and returned by Basco. Amidst the sounds of a buzzing needle and the […]
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Sappyfest 2011, Day 3:
As the final day of this little festival commences, people recede into the shade under the only tree near the Town Bandstand where Toronto’s Lisa Bolzikovic begins quietly. The sky is intensely blue and the shade offers very little respite from the scorching sun. After a few sullen numbers unaccompanied, Bozikovic is backed by three […]
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Sappyfest 2011, Day 2:
Fair readers, I must admit, yesterday I was lead astray. I did not see all there was to see. But I swear, it’s not entirely my fault. Weekends such as this make itineraries entirely foolhardy. Either way, I do still feel like I got a full day of festival and then some, but I did […]
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Sappyfest 2011, Day 1:
I arrived in Sackville around 5:30pm; The highway was full of cars, and we spot a few familiar faces along the way and one back window sign proclaiming ‘Sappy-Dappy-Doo!’). With just enough time to head to the local liquor shop and to direct a few fellow passengers to a vacant lot to set up a […]