Doug Taylor

Various ArtistsDig Your Roots: Creative Jazz(Corus)The Dig Your Roots series is a project of campus radio stations across the country. Three of the 15 acts here hail from Atlantic Canada, and they represent mightily. On “Acting on the Assumption,” Halifax’s TFC builds a rhythmic dialogue between guitar and drums, using what they may have learned […]

The ExiesHead for the Door(Columbia)As rock progresses further down the line, up-and-coming bands will begin to adopt an “I can do that too” mentality. Case in point: The Exies and their latest release Head for the Door. There isn’t a great deal of originality here—at some point the Exies had the desire (for some reason) […]

Morgan DavisPainkiller(Electro-fi)How does a Detroiter based in Blandford walk off with four Maple Blues Awards? This is your answer. While devoted to the blues and capable of summoning the delta at the drop of a pick, Davis has been easy to take for granted. Painkiller combines self-deprecating humour, topical flow and the sharpest band he […]

Starlight MintsDrowaton(Barsuk)Not many bands sound so much like their name. Starlight Mints’ music is bright and sweet though it comes from a dark place. OK, it won’t freshen your breath. A seemingly ramshackle structure may raise memories of Pavement, before each song achieves a more hummable state. Strings of every thickness throb in concert with […]

K-OsAtlantis: Hymns for Disco(Virgin)By now, hip-hoppers should be convinced that versatility is not a pretense if you can pull it off. This nice guy from Toronto keeps on strafing the spine with beats and rhyme, even as he works up a classy soul side and fuses fraChuck Teedals of rock to his own ends and…OK, […]

Andre EthierOn Blue Fog(Blue Fog/Sonic Unyon)The former head Deadly Snake serves up some roomy compositions. A couple of solos, by saxophonist Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think and guitarist Chad Ross, arrive in the most offhand way to elevate and utterly justify the lengths of “On Lies” and “Pride of Egypt,” respectively. At key […]

David GrayLife in Slow MotionBMGGray took the world somewhat by surprise five years ago. Among the pop elite of today, Gray is more kinetic than Rufus Wainwright, less mired in bombast than Coldplay, seeming naked as a stray cat on a symphony stage. Slow Motion is an apt description of how the spacious arrangements hypnotize, […]

Gordie SampsonSunburn(Maple)As key as Cape Bretoner Samp- son has been to east coast music in his six years between albums, Sunburn could easily be from an Ontario or California artist. It’s free of fiddle and hometown homilies and packed with sonic sophistication and high-art metaphors. “Paris” uses the city to woo and is destined to […]

Eugene MirmanEn Garde Society! (Sub Pop)This New York-based comic will remind you of some guy you know who sits around playing with words and unravelling his thoughts. He gets on your nerves, but every five minutes he comes up with something. Mirman has a better laugh rate, as he dissects the peculiar phrases that culture, […]

Catherine MacLellanChurch Bell Blues(Independent)So intimate are these songs as a group, they float in from an era of slow and stark acoustic music. Many could have been composed during a bout of mid-winter cabin fever. The daughter of the late PEI bard Gene MacLellan, Catherine is less a story-teller than a confessor. Her way of […]

Ray DaviesThanksgiving Day EP(V2)Four songs plus one alternate mix are a teaser for Davies’ first full post-Kinks album in February. The Yanks’ Thanksgiving is a feast of ideas for Davies, always a lover of traditions and shrewd portrayer of inner lives. On the title cut, the longings of a widower and spinster lead to a […]