On tour with new-wave synth-pop outfit Windom Earle last week, Jen Clarke left her alter-ego, Jenocide, back in Halifax. As the lone female in all-dude bands for almost five years, she knows some things can’t be addressed playing with guys. But her bottled-up feminism explodes 10-fold when assuming the exaggerated electro-synth-fuelled Jenocide persona, first felt […]
Mike Landry
Posted inArts + Music
Ariella Pahlke’s smoke signals
Living in rural Halifax, filmmaker Ariella Pahlke is used to sounds of the wild. And not just the chorus of chirping crickets and shushing leaves, but the piercing squeal of the real wild ones—drivers burning rubber. The activity, also called laying a patch, burning out, squealing tires or simply just givin’er, was foreign to Pahlke. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Fun with Fantods
Unsatisfied with their previous three studio albums, The Fantods lugged recording equipment through subzero temperatures and slushy puddles down stairs to the Blue Moon Bistro last January to record their latest album, Ride the Moose, during a free show. “It was just surprising how a live recording could be exactly what we wanted,” says drummer […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Meeting people is easy
The student population in this city is more than half the size of the entire population on the peninsula, making casual run-ins a way of life. So whether you’re crushing on that cute boy in your Dinosaurs and Their World class or swooning over the server at a nearby cafe, the following hotspots will help […]
Posted inLifestyle
Dartmouth daytripper
As San Francisco has Oakland and New York has Jersey, Halifax has my dear Dartmouth. I opted to settle there when I moved back from Toronto a month ago. Plenty of Haligonians think Dartmouth is just a place to drive through on the way to the airport, but here are a few of the reasons […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Ravine
The RavinePaul Quarrington(Random House)If there’s anything harder than writing a good novel, it’s writing a bad novel well. But it’s this feat that Canada Reads 2008 winner Paul Quarrington accomplishes in his latest comedic romp. A book within a book, The Ravine is egomaniac Phil McQuigge’s attempt to write a memoir. An “enthusiastic amateur alcoholic” […]
Posted inArts + Music
I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin
I Still Have a Suitcase in BerlinStephens Gerrard MaloneRandomHouseLocal author Stephens Gerrard Malone’s first novel, Miss Elva, was nominated for a Dartmouth Book Award, but latest, I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin, would be better suited on the Governor General’s list. Beginning on the shores of Point Pleasant Park in 1932, young Haligonian Michael […]
Posted inArts + Music
Almost Green
Almost Green James Glave(Douglas & McIntyre)In the 1986 comedy The Money Pit, home renovator Tom Hanks laments, “Here lies Walter Fielding. He bought a house, and it killed him.” Flash-forward two decades, replace house with Eco-Shed, and there’s James Glave nearly breaking his arm using a wild hole-saw while his radio blasts classic rock. In […]
Posted inArts + Music
A Covenant of Salt
A Covenant of SaltMartine Desjardins (translated by Fred Reed and David Hormel)Talon BooksBefore nutritionists blackballed salt for causing high blood pressure, it was the most valuable and holy of dietary staples. Pure, incorruptible and potentially deadly, salt is the central theme in Montreal author Martine Desjardins’ macabre historic thriller, A Covenant of Salt. The novel […]
Posted inArts + Music
Quintet
QuintetDouglas Arthur Brown(Key Porter Books)Quintet could refer to five separate strands of story: identical triplets (Rory, Cameron and Adrian) coping with the sudden death of their parents in a train wreck; the lasting effects of growing up in Cape Breton; a Halifax carpenter (and choir singer) struggling with 30 years of addiction and caring for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bus blues
He hates to admit it, but councillor Steve Streatch has never been on a Metro Transit bus. But with gas prices set to skyrocket, he’s one of many car-owning Haligonians looking for a seat on Metro’s already-crowded buses. “We all need to recognize, regardless of what walks of life we come from, this is something […]
Posted inLifestyle
ABA League fatigue
“God Pity Halifax if you get involved with .” That quip, from a reporter with the Indianapolis Star, sums up the Halifax Rainmen’s relationship with the ABA—one that was ended last week at the end of their first season. From the beginning, Andre Levingston, owner of the Rainmen, had to deal with the stigma of […]
