Originally coil-bound and self-published by the authors in 2000, this photo-heavy book shows how the growth of electricity’s delivery and usage—the business of the grid—was entangled with public transit for almost 100 years of this city’s history, from 1866 to 1949. The authors offer more of an economic history than a social one. They detail […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Susan Bozic is picture perfect
Susan Bozic is stuck at the border, on her way from Vancouver to Seattle, where she’ll catch a flight the next day to Aspen. But Bozic’s not going to ski the slopes among stars and celebrities. (After all, it’s the first week of July.) An exhibition of her work, The Dating Portfolio, is on at […]
Posted inArts + Music
Grey Gardens
It was only a matter of time before Albert and David Maysles’ groundbreaking, cultish 1975 documentary Grey Gardens was turned into a feature film. An uncomfortably intimate portrait of Edie Bouvier Beale and her daughter Little Edie, socialites living in unbelievable squalor, has already spawned a Broadway musical and endless fashion editorials, thanks to Little […]
Posted inArts + Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
The band uses electronic music (wide, fuzzy analogue-sounding synths and samples), as a painter does underpainting: to combine with but mainly to ground the top-level, primary elements, which are drawn from early-era post-punk and new wave (bright guitar tones, lots of crashing cymbals and toms to fill in). Co-produced with Philippe Zdar, one-half of the […]
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A Camp
There’s no getting around the voice. Nina Persson makes her mark on A Camp and the trio’s second album, Colonia, which follows up the first and self-titled release from 2001—a welcome return! The Swedish Persson’s inflections and intonations continue to give her voice that special character: a sophisticated and elegant sheen or surface shrouding the […]
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Wilco
“Wilco will love you, baby,” claims Jeff Tweedy on the opening track, “Wilco (the song).” But know the band will love you in the way it wants. Mainly, this means Tweedy maintains his character as collapsed-man. Even when the lyrics (printed on the liner) add up to what seems like optimism, the delivery is still […]
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Bell Orchestre says it out loud and clear
Though quantifiable or measurable, loudness isn’t a skill used rightly or wrongly, nor a right held by some and not by others. Really, all music can be, and perhaps should be, played loud. True, when KISS alights on the Common next week they may try to light up the crowd with “Shout it out Loud” […]
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D-Sisive
The hip-hop underground can be a place of pain. With Let the Children Die, Toronto-based and Polaris Prize-nominated D-Sisive proves this to be true. Beats are slow and steady. The low end rules—see the bass and organ samples on “Song to Sing” and “Riot I Caused,” featuring Classified. Production is minimal and moody. Winter imagery […]
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Update: Pier 21 to become a national immigration museum
UPDATE: After this story came out on June 25, Prime Minister Harper visited Pier 21 with his ministerial cohorts and Premier Dexter to make an announcement: he has conferred national museum status to Pier 21. Pier 21 becomes the second national museum outside Ottawa. It will be officially called “Canada’s National Immigration Museum.”How momentous is […]
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Eels
With a first offering of new material in four years, this LA-based outfit led by Mark Oliver Everett offers an album subtitled 12 Songs of Desire. Desire has many manifestations and it seemed like Eels had traced all the routes taken, holes fallen down and into, on previous albums. While at points this album feels […]
Posted inLifestyle
How to celebrate Pier 21 ‘s tenth anniversary
On July 1, Canada turns 142 years old. That same day, Pier 21 celebrates its 10th anniversary as “Canada’s immigration museum.” At the museum, the holiday begins with an official citizenship ceremony at 10am, harkening back to the pier’s important history as a threshold—an entry point for one million Canadians, according to the museum’s website, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Hot Summer Guide: Visual arts events
Will Gorlitz: nowhere if not here Through August 23 Guelph-based artist Will Gorlitz begins a painting by looking for the telling detail. “When determining the actual subjects I wish to paint, a crucial consideration is that the subjects present some acutely visual feature,” he explains in an email. “Commonly, this involves the tactile materiality of […]
