If you threw together a stack of comics, zines and scrappy drawings from across the country, you’d find a complex web of friendships, school ties and social networks underlying it. That’s what curator Corinna Ghaznavi found when putting together the show Pulp Fiction, opening at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery—uncovering an interconnected community of artists […]
Laura Kenins
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Lake of Stew
The foot-stompin’, banjo-playin’, whoop-whooping train stops here. On its sophomore record, Montreal’s Lake of Stew delivers another set of solid country-folk tracks about everything from “mean shakin’ mamas” to running from the cops while painting graffiti on train bridges. Sweet as Pie sounds a little more like an old-timey jug band than the first album, […]
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Health
Though I feared this LA band’s name indicated some hipster aerobics obsession, this is more weird noise than American Apparel. Part My Bloody Valentine, part DD/MM/YYYY, Get Color is a mix of noise, electropop and shoegaze. With songs that start off with weird skreeks, droning vocals and almost machinelike drum beats, there’s a harsh edge […]
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The Banana Story of Agony, Lesley Johnson (Conundrum)
Not quite a children’s book and not quite a graphic novel, Sackville, NB, artist Lesley Johnson creates strange vignettes illustrated in loose, fluid watercolours. Her themes range from a persistent Santa who a suspicious boy won’t let into the house, to a girl who ignores her family’s warnings that there’s a chicken on her butt, […]
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Talk of the town: best music of 2009
A History OfAction in the North Atlantic (Noyes) High-octane, Maritime-themed math rock? Yes, please. A History Of gets the Halifax music scene right, and finally gives us a full-length record. —LK Black MoorThe Conquering (Diminished Fifth) The stuff of heavy metal legend: surviving a car crash, Black Moor channels death and Kill Em All hooks making you […]
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The Prescription Errors, Charles Demers (Insomniac)
A dark novel centred around an obsessive-compulsive young Vancouver man, Daniel struggles to maintain his own fragile sanity while those around him fall apart. Also an activist, Demers skillfully weaves in lesbian parenting and free-speech arguments, aging activists and neighbourhood politics, seeming sincere and not forced—the way politics entwine our real lives. Demers’ Vancouver settings […]
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Peace
The press release for this says “File under: Indie/ The Fall,” which I wish it didn’t, because now I can’t hear anything else (and also didn’t realize The Fall was an entire genre). Certainly, it’s not a bad comparison when somebody could get confused with Mark E. Smith. Less weird, more rock ‘n’ roll than […]
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Selected Blackouts, John Goldbach (Insomniac)
Full of honest but not overly sentimental emotion, Selected Blackouts is a strong debut collection of short stories based mainly on adolescence and young adulthood. A blackout theme ties the book together subtly but neatly. “How Much Do They Know?” is a painfully detailed interior monologue about romance and secrets within a group of friends, […]
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A History Of
Though they’ve been around a few years, this is the local band’s first full-length. Action in the North Atlantic delivers nautical-themed math rock with punk energy, speeding up and turning up the volume of some of their older material. “Strike It From the Lexicon” pairs sullen lyrics with an anxious, angry swell of sound, while […]
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Shearing Pinx
Starting out as harsh instrumental noise, this record gradually builds up layers, adding and subtracting from the wall of sound, vacillating between sheer noise and punk rock. The comparatively lighter sounds of the first half of the record lead up to the sharp blasts of sound of “Xenophobe/Frostflood” on the b-side, into the screams of […]
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Shearing Pinx cut it up
Far from its jam space in the Mouldy Village, a grungy building on Vancouver’s downtown east side, Shearing Pinx is regrouping. Its guitarist Erin Ward moved to Montreal a few months ago, so other members Jeremy Van Wick and Nic Hughes have been playing under different names as a two-piece at home, and touring through […]
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HPX: Saturday night is for hometown heros, ghosts and rocking out
Running between folk and rock and rainstorms on the last night of the 2009 Pop Explosion.