I bet you didn’t know it, but Wednesday night was the unofficial launch of the inaugural Halifax Plaid Explosion. iPhone, dark bars and thick plaid don’t mix too well, but you get the idea. Check out the slideshow below (with the best plaid from the Toothy Moose, Seahorse and Coconut Grove) and stay tuned for […]
Mike Landry
Posted inArts + Music
HPX: Night One
Architects Blood, bruises and broken bikes headlined my first night of Pop Exploding. My bicycle, Old Blue, couldn’t make it through even half of night one. Jaunting from seeing Pig at Gus’ to see Red Mass at the Paragon, my rear fender came loose and got mangled in my rear wheel throwing me ass of […]
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HPX: jitters&junk
My broke-ass Velo Sport, Old Blue, I’ll be using to jump form venue to venue this Hpx. Check out the missing right hand brake and Via Rail taped-on fender. Rock and Roll! Eee! After missing Hpx for the past two years, I’m back in town and quaking with excitement. But with 25 bands scheduled to […]
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Gerald Ferguson’s legacy
New York-based conceptual painter and sculptor Rachel Beach manages to get one sentence in before choking up. “In terms of being influential on students that then go out into the world and have a certain idea about how art gets made,” she says, “there’s no other influence that’s had any single larger effect than the […]
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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Season 4
“Come one come all to a beautiful show. It’s going to be awesome and…some other stuff,” announces Charlie (Charlie Day) about his musical, The Nightman Cometh. But that’s the fourth season too—awesome plagued with just some other stuff. Highlights involve the hilarious pairing of Charlie and Sweet Dee (as cannibals, for example), but episodes suffer […]
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Bruce Peninsula’s gone big time
“We’re hell-bent on making new music,” says Bruce Peninsula’s singer-guitarist Neil Haverty. Although still riding the success of its Polaris Prize-nominated debut album, A Mountain is a Mouth, the Toronto band has postponed tours next year to start writing again. What form those new tracks will take is anyone’s guess. But for a band that […]
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The sounds of Nocturne
Sense it Saturday night: This year Nocturne offers even more public art
happenings: from six to midnight, with 30 galleries and 34 special projects, the streets of Halifax will be overflowing with images, performance and energy. To help get your night started, we’ve mapped out two routes. Choose the audio trail.
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Grassmarket’s family way
While most Halifax musicians are heading out at 9:30pm on Saturday, Penelope Jackson and Dan MacCormack are getting ready for bed. They know their two-year-old son Clem has a 4am wake-up call in store for them. With that schedule, it’s no wonder it’s taken a year-and-a-half working with bandmate David Bradshaw for Grassmarket to release […]
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Acres and Acres are miles away
Acres and Acres do simple in the most complicated way. Its debut album, All Nations, balances studio acoustic and lap steel guitars with the rich sounds of about a dozen musicians performing at Robie Street’s All Nations Christian Reformed Church. “It’s funny because we wanted to make it simple and easy,” says Dave Scholten. “We […]
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Ride the Moose
Known for their delightfully dark posters decorating local power poles for almost a decade, The Fantods have delivered a steady diet of eccentric spook rock to a devoted following. But Ride the Moose finally makes their unique sound accessible to a wider audience. Perhaps it was the effort put into recording it live, but it’s […]
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The rise of fall arts: visual arts
Nocturne October 17 at various locations, dusk-midnight, free, artgalleryofnovascotia.ca Last year’s inaugural Nocturne festival brought 5,000 people out to local streets and galleries from dusk to midnight. Following up on that success, this year’s after-dark art festival will feature 32 gallery spaces opening their doors and more than 30 artists setting up installations and performances […]
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Jenocide
The pounding distorted bass and fuzzy synth shrieks opening Jenocide’s Machines To Make Us Wet recall the sweaty genius of her first EP. But three tracks in Nine Inch Nails-like staccato drum beats introduce Jen Clarke’s haunting, subdued vocals, setting it apart from your standard electronic dance album. From there, Clarke navigates vocal history with […]
