A visit to an astrologer helped birth Share’s latest and fourth release, Slumping in Your Murals, according to the band’s songwriter, singer and guitarist, Andrew Sisk. “It was an opening to a new understanding,” he says. Sisk received a “proper” astrological reading, which required details beyond day, month and year, such as the hour of […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Dédé, à travers les brumes
André (Dédé) Fortin founded and fronted Montreal band Les Colocs through the ’90s. He fought both external—bandmates, Quebec’s robust music business, his province’s independence—and internal—depression, lust for women—battles. Despite some uneven use of animation, the film shows how the battle lines in Dédé’s life cross; how the personal, professional and political fronts feed each other. […]
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Spiral Beach
Let the boomers keep their recent Woodstock anniversary, their hazy memories. Psychedelia has left them behind, residing now in bands like Spiral Beach. On their third release, The Only Really Thing, this Toronto-based quartet serves sugary jolts with frosty-icing-coloured imagery. But there’s nothing artificial about them. The album opener, “Battery,” establishes the nocturnal motif, with […]
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Smokin’ Contra Band
CBC Studio H has played host to many local artists’ album-making. Smokin’ Contra Band checked in as one of the latest to work with producer Glenn Meisner and Patrick Martin, who records and mixes. The Meisner/Martin sound favours a polished, balanced mix. On Slim Pickins, the ragged edges of a fun, feisty folk/traditional band disappear. […]
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Cut from the same cloth
In Sherry White’s directorial debut, Crackie, the feature film’s main character, Mitsy, wears a red coat. But she does more than just put it on for a few scenes: She recedes into it. The winterwear envelops Mitsy, becoming part—an emblem—of the character, played by Meaghan Greeley. “That red jacket that she wears, which I loved, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Joe Pernice,
Joe Pernice’s voice greets you with sweet breath, breadth and warmth. The singer-guitarist’s return is always welcome, even if it’s for a primarily covers album. It Feels So Good When I Stop, which will strike fans as a perfectly Pernicean sentiment, is a novel soundtrack. (The book’s out now too.) Pernice reads three short excerpts […]
Posted inArts + Music
Cailin O’Neil’s solo flight
While the other kids were exploring the neighbourhood and catching their favourite shows on TV, Cailin O’Neil experienced the world on a bigger scale—and looked at it through a wider lens. “My mother worked for an airline growing up,” she says. “I loved travelling and making little films.” Her mom, who received employee-discounted fares as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
NSCAD fashions a couture vert
In late April, as the wind blew cold rain in swirls and angular patterns across Granville Mall, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design professor Gary Markle playfully stalked the runway at NSCAD’s Wearable Art Show. He wore nothing but boxers, mukluks and a mask (complete with bunny ears) made out of old shoes, an […]
Posted inArts + Music
Shandi Mitchell breaks ground
Buses roll by frequently. Dog-walkers stroll past, some stopping to chat with coffee-drinkers sitting in a line of chairs and tables. Cyclists pull up and lock their bikes. It’s an everyday scene, an intersection of activity that Shandi Mitchell might well describe. A screenwriter and filmmaker by trade, her first novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, […]
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Under This Unbroken Sky, Shandi Mitchell (Viking Canada)
In Depression-era northern Alberta, Theo Mykolayenko returns to the family homestead an almost-broken man. He was imprisoned for breaking bureaucratic regulations regarding his own wheat. (He’d similarly suffered under the Ukraine’s Stalinist regime.) Shandi Mitchell, a screenwriter and producer (see story on page 32), describes Theo’s slow movements, the family’s uneasy readjustment, with trimmed, precise […]
Posted inArts + Music
Harmonics, Jesse Patrick Ferguson (Freehand Books)
Ferguson divides his poems into two parts, “Fundamental Tones” and “Overtones.” In the first part, Ferguson offers short, declarative lines in “Norval,” stating “Morrisseau’s paintings prove/there are no new pigments.” In part two, Ferguson extends line-lengths a little and lets images linger and resonate a little longer in “Shaman Traveler to Other Worlds For Blessings,” […]
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Here is Always Somewhere Else
In 1975, Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader set off alone on a small sailboat across the Atlantic. He was heading home to Holland (but not for good) from America. He’d been living in California and he’d planned to go back. A photographer, installation, video and performance artist, Ader called this crossing or performance, In Search […]
