Dave Hayden

Though we miss her dearly, Spectators proves Amelia Curran’s move to hometown St John’s seems to have spawned a happiness we’ve never seen before. Or, at least, so it seemed at her album release show last week. Spectators (her fourth album and apt follow-up to the Juno-winning Hunter, Hunter) stretches the boundaries of her signature […]

After a seven-year absence, the easy path would be to make an album that sounds familiar, to take up where Extraordinary Machine left off. But easy is not Fiona Apple’s style. So when you hear her latest be patient—it’s a gorgeous and challenging return, but insists listeners suspend expectations. Stripped of the luscious production that […]

Not for the faint of heart, the album opens with an unsettling cyclic meditation, with the fittingly nonsensical title “Nepenenoyka”, played (possibly) on the high pitched lap harp for which the song is named. A toss off perhaps, but it’s a jarring introduction to an album that’s as raw and honest as they come. No […]

While “radical” might seem like an exaggerated definition for these compositions it is not often you hear classical references juxtaposed alongside klezmer, film and jazz quotations with such natural flow and affinity. Playfully inventive yet at times quite challenging, the eleven tracks on Radical Cycle propel the listener (similar in the way that Pictures at […]

The usual cacophony typifying Tom Waits’ most recent releases is tempered on this most brilliant recent offering. But that’s not to say all is ballads and sweet sounds—his battery of carnivalesque rhythmic gestures and oddball characters still rule the show (“Bad As Me” and “Hell Broke Luce”). One can’t help feel we are witnessing a […]