I had breakfast yesterday morning with Will Robinson of i see rowboats, who are playing St. Matthew’s Church tonight, and I said, “That’s the perfect venue for you guys.” Which is not necessarily what I’d assume with Spiral Beach, four exuberant Torontonians barely out of their teens who first hit success at age 15 or […]
Laura Kenins
Posted inArts + Music
Halifax Zine and Record Fair
I was going to finish writing about last night’s shows, but it seems I don’t have time to do that or resize my photos down to tiny pixelated things small enough to upload to the blog before I have to leave. I’ll be selling comics all day at the Halifax Zine and Record Fair at […]
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Friday night downtown
I arrived at St. Matthew’s Church last night midway through the Prospector’s Union, who played this kind of wool-hatted, folk/ country sort of music I’ve been listening to far more than expected for most of this year, reminding me a little of the Great Lake Swimmers. They played some nicely crafted songs about New Brunswick, […]
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Sometimes bandages are for show and sometimes it’s just tendonitis
I headed out to the Music Room in the far reaches of nowhere last night to see Basia Bulat. It was my first time at the Music Room, which is the most beautiful little venue in Halifax. It says it fits 110 people, though it doesn’t actually look like that many, the acoustics are terrific, […]
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Nocturne: sight night
Susan Dobson, temporary architectureSaint Mary’s University Art Gallery (5865 Gorsebrook) Guelph-based photographer Susan Dobson has built a career documenting industrial sites, housing developments and other throwaway architecture. There’s a lot of work motivated by this type of architecture out there, and there are a lot of these buildings. Temporary Architectures shows her series Retail, imposing […]
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Jay Reatard at the Marquee
The attendance list of the Jay Reatard show at the Marquee tonight was like a who’s who of the local music scene. I think everyone who’s in a band in Halifax was there. A History Of is high on my list of local bands that don’t play enough, and they played an awesome set- their […]
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Stunt
StuntClaudia Dey(Coach House)I’ve always felt a kinship to Claudia Dey, both of us being right-brained alumni of the same lawyer- and engineer-producing high school. The florid style of her plays and her Globe and Mail advice column has a timeless, nearly ethereal quality. Stunt, her first novel, brings to mind the poetry of Gwendolyn Mac-Ewen […]
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Kimya Dawson
[image-4]Published October 16, 2008.Kimya DawsonAlphabutt (K Records)With indie-rock stars catching on to the celebrity baby trend, what we get is a boom in indie children’s records. Dawson (Moldy Peaches) recorded Alphabutt following the success of the Juno soundtrack and her first child’s birth. Though more nonsensical, many songs aren’t discernibly different from Dawson’s grown-up work, […]
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Pop: Halifax versus Montreal
I’m already so broke that the only cheese I eat is at gallery openings or my roommate’s, but unlike Alison I’m in impeccable health and have already got myself on a schedule of going to bed at 4 AM. I was just in Montreal for the Pop Montreal festival and found the experience of attending […]
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Ghosts of the Highway
Published October 09, 2008. Ghosts of the Highway Road Warriors Unite (indie) Recorded in houses and cafes across Canada (including the defunct One World) while hitchhiking, Ghosts of the Highway combine twangy acoustic guitar and fiddle with eerie, almost Chris De Burgh-like narrative. Road Warriors Unite is like a punk travel zine in musical form. […]
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All the Pretty Girls
All the Pretty GirlsChandra Mayor(Conundrum)Chandra Mayor thinks knitting is “achingly boring and not particularly radical,” which is enough to get me to read her novels. A follow-up to her 2005 debut Cherry, set in Winnipeg’s punk scene in the ’90s, All the Pretty Girlsis a collection of short stories in the same vein, the characters […]
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Blackouts
BlackoutsCraig BoykoMcClelland and StewartAt 28, Craig Boyko’s stories have been nominated for the Journey Prize several times and published, it seems, in every Canadian literary magazine. Blackouts, his first book, is a collection of short fiction. It travels from Stalinist Russia to WWII-era London to banal, contemporary Canadian suburbs. Boyko is a skilled, articulate writer, […]
