Dave Hayden

The double album has always been one of those “Oh really now, how dare you” rock ’n’ roll statements. Hard enough to fill one disc with consistently great material? Try two. But there are several defining moments in the double-album canon, and while III/IV isn’t quite those masterpieces, it is a textbook lesson in songwriting […]

This fine Halifax- and Truro-based trio’s latest offering further intensifies the band’s insanely catchy, slap-happy pop-punk, circa ’90s-era Superchunk. Melodic lines delivered with a smile yet carefully adorned with guitar bliss, overloaded amps and feedback swirling around your head on angel’s wings. If the first two new tunes on side A haven’t convinced you about […]

Despite a double billing with one of Canada’s most darling indie bands, the wonderful Falcon Lake Incident is a Jim Bryson record through and through, with his signature wit, wisdom and melodic phrasing shining brightly above all. But after a few listens, the collaborations eke out, such as the few louder, rockier passages (notably “Up […]

Recorded as a gift for Dan Ledwell’s newborn niece (Siigoun in Cree means “spring”), Jenn Grant is offering this extremely limited four-song EP at her shows. Pick one up Thursday at the Paragon as a tide-over until her new record Honeymoon Punch drops in January. Each one, with its individually hand-painted sleeve (collector junkies take […]

If Ryan Bingham’s Academy Award in any way went to this young man’s head (his song “The Weary Kind” won Best Original Song Oscar for the film Crazy Heart), it doesn’t show. There is no catering to the masses or cashing in at all on his third album. Bingham is still singing about hard-living, wayward […]

Forget that this record is a soundtrack because it isn’t—at least not in the traditional sense (ie glorified mixes of classic rock or otherwise well-trodden material). The lone pre-released track is Buck 65’s “Girls with Boyfriends,” which can only be found on an obscure tour compilation that sold out a few years ago. But that […]

While Amy Millan’s voice is always an unmistakable focal point of the Montreal band Stars, on The Five Ghosts she doesn’t just shine—she takes over. Radiant as ever, Millan offers perfectly balanced and articulated bite and nuance. When she sings, “After I am caught/Touch turns into fisticuffs” on the lead single “Fixed,” the echoing “you, […]

“Factory,” the opening track on Infinite Arms, is an elegantly swaying, melodic slow-dance that perfectly illustrates what’s to come: a series of soft rock, lighter-held-high anthems that are neither overly exciting nor are they too bland to be discarded. If “NW Apt.” is the album’s highlight, then “Blue Beard” is its worst offense. If any […]

Damien Jurado has a compelling way with imagery. There is always at least one indelible lyric or sentiment that lingers. On Saint Bartlett that line comes in the second act, after the more upbeat and hopeful “Cloudy Shoes” and ragged feedback-laden “Wallingford,” when he turns back to mournful acoustic self-accompaniment on “Kalama” and sings, “Mother […]