The Christmas party season will soon be upon us. Sometimes these occasions with fellow employees feel forced, the small talk painfully shrunken. But other times, these events can lead to something of a festive glow. The lights went on at a work party in 2008 for Jeremy Lutes. He prefers to keep details of the […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Frederick Squire
The essential warmth of Frederick Squire’s guitar chords and of his vocal chords is almost overwhelming. If you have a dog and your dog looks warily out the window, hearing thunder and looking for thunderclouds, go comfort your four-legged friend (same goes for the two-legged). This is an album of comfort, giving and receiving. From […]
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Construction & Destruction
Switching off drums, guitars, keys and bass, the duo of David Trenaman and Colleen Collins conveys clearly place and headspace here. They live in an old house in Port Greville on the Parrsboro shore, where they recorded these eight excellent tracks. (“Nightshade” and “Public Square” are exceptionally strong.) Songs of location, being grounded in a […]
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Love Ranch
Helen Mirren is a versatile actor, adept at assuming the form and character of very different women, but viewers are dropped into the lives and work of her character, Grace, and husband Charlie Bontempo (Joe Pesci). The couple run a legalized brothel in Reno, Nevada. The film could’ve and should’ve started with its ending, with […]
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d’bi.young’s words
Many artists work from or toward an ideal. Call it a vision, or a manifesto. Or, in the case of Toronto-based d’bi.young anitafrika, a “wombanifesto.” Besides being the name of her 2010 release, it’s also her guiding principle. She publishes it at dbiyoung.net and opens the text with a clear declaration: “I am an afrikan-jamaican-canadian […]
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The Geography of Arrival
George Sipos, a poet and former bookseller in Prince George, BC, recounts his youth in London, Ontario. He arrived there in 1957 with his parents after they left Hungary and before they moved to the west coast. Sipos considers a series of sites for their ordinary, quotidian resonance. One of the best is the shuttered […]
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Eiyn Sof
Melissa Boraski is Eiyn Sof. As such, she uses her tenor voice, acoustic as well as electric guitar and analogue keys to moody effect. She tells stories of solitude, motherhood, love, having a place in the natural world and longing to understand it all, sometimes to get away from it all. Through layered vocals, chants, […]
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Manning up
Three men stand tall in Grant Lawrence’s story: father, mentor and figurehead. They’re bound together by place, Desolation Sound, “a collection of deep inlets, islands and coastal mountains found at the northern end of the Strait of Georgia,” as Lawrence writes in his coming-of-age memoir, Adventures in Solitude. In the mid-70s, successive provincial BC governments […]
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Nova Scotia native Skibsrud wins Giller, 50-Gs
Johanna Skibsrud won the Giller Prize, and its fifty-grand purse, for her novel The Sentimentalists, which was published by Gaspereau Press. The 30-year-old—-the youngest ever to receive the literary award—-grew up in Pictou County, specifically Scotsburn in Pictou County, home to one of the province’s major dairies. Based in Montreal, Skibsrud until this point has been known as a poet. Her book of poetry, I Do Not Think That I Could Love A Human Being, came out on Gaspereau’s spring list this year. (Read about it on the publisher’s site: http://www.gaspereau.com/1554470854.shtml) Skibsrud’s debut novel, The Sentimentalists, accompanies the daughter
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A noted destination
It’s the image of the deluded dreamer: Halifax’s place on the musical map, a destination for big concerts. But the the city has been there, at a smaller scale, all along. “We’re the end of the road here,” says Heather Gibson, who this week is bringing Ani DiFranco to Halifax for two nights at the […]
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Meligrove Band
The Toronto band releases the hounds, returning after a four-year recorded absence (since 2006’s Planets Conspire). It’s as though pent-up energy finally gets its release. Darcy Rego (drums) and Michael Small (bass) play with abandon, with Jason Nunes (keys/guitar) riding the wave. So, you get less melodic focus and more forceful, rhythmic playing. Now-departed member […]
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Tall tales
Stillness fills the inside of St. John’s United Church, a large red-brick building at the corner of Windsor and Willow streets. The church was closed two years ago when structural and environmental assessments concluded the building was beyond repair. Worshippers now assemble at the nearby Maritime Conservatory. Louisa Horne and Heather Bown have returned to […]