After seeing off a friend, Stephanie McNair walks across the freshly mopped, grey wooden floor to greet a new guest. The walls, including columns and moldings, have been dusted and painted a pristine white. High-ceilinged, the large, open space has no walls; no rooms, only the component parts of a small or studio apartment-based life […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Eleni Mandell
Los Angeles-based singer Eleni Mandell sings of a night in Montreal in the opening and title track, “Artificial Fire,” and released this album, her seventh full-length, on Toronto label, Zedtone. The title track is one of the album’s best, for the rhythmic strum of Jeremy Drake’s guitar part as much as anything else. He works […]
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Native Song: Poetry & Paintings
With this second edition of Native Song, Halifax author and painter David Woods goes all in and the result doesn’t show in his favour. Too often this finished book reads like a notebook (though it’s not identified as such), full of unfinished, unformed ideas—beginnings of larger ideas or expanded forms. For example, while the section […]
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The Hylozoists
Paul Aucoin has found the limit to his main instrument, the vibraphone. With this third record from The Hylozoists, its sound is pretty much played out. In a pop/rock context, the vibes (and related percussive instruments, such as marimba) weren’t meant to carry this much weight—best playing role as accent—and end up getting emotionally flattened. […]
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In-Flight Safety: Band of brothers
John Mullane A black hoodie fits tight to broad shoulders, a knotted scarf of the same colour shifts from side to side as he talks. John Mullane appears to carry a burden, the weight of many thoughts or worries, both in conversation and on In-Flight Safety’s new album, We Are An Empire, My Dear. When […]
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Don Vail
Taking this album as evidence, a grunge revival really has happened. Co-produced by Jordan Zadorozny (Blinker the Star), Don Vail mixes the heavier side of grunge (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden) with punk (Mudhoney, even Nirvana) and pop (Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub) elements. Then there’s the ghost of long-defunct Treble Charger, a once-respectable post-punk/power-pop band that […]
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Tim Krahn’s inside stories
Tim Krahn pads down the stairs in slippers. The footwear contradicts the austere name of his workplace, Novel Tech Ethics, as does the untucked shirt, stylishly cut hair and a welcoming, friendly manner. (The only visible concession to formality is a few empty earring holes in one ear.) Novel Tech Ethics is an international and […]
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Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Campbell, a former cellist and singer with Scottish band Belle & Sebastian, wrote, arranged and produced this album. There’s a romantic and dramatic effect to Campbell’s high, haunting voice harmonizing with Lanegan’s low rumble (heard on solo material and via an off/on gig fronting Queens of the Stone Age). The songwriting on Sunday at Devil […]
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In-Flight Safety
Departure time has arrived for Halifax’s In-Flight Safety. While the album design for The Coast is Clear (the band’s first full-length from 2006) was awash in Maritime blue and green, the cover of this new album (with artwork from former Coast art director Kate O’Connor) is inky black with pinkish-red strokes, drawing the eye to […]
Posted inArts + Music
In-Flight Safety
Departure time has arrived for Halifax’s In-Flight Safety. While the album design for The Coast is Clear (the band’s first full-length from 2006) was awash in Maritime blue and green, the cover of this new album (with artwork from former Coast art director Kate O’Connor) is inky black with pinkish-red strokes, drawing the eye to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Frida Hyvönen
So, you weren’t looking for a singer who embodied the late Laura Branigan? Well, here she is anyways. Swedish singer-pianist Frida Hyvönen sounds scarily similar to the late singer (“Gloria”) from the ’80s on “Dirty Dancing,” “Science” and “Birds,” three of the album’s best songs. And, like Branigan, Hyvönen sounds both powerful and pathetic (in […]
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Brent Randall hits a perfect harmony
More than two years back, The Heavy Blinkers were playing the Atlantic Film Festival’s street party on Argyle and they invited Brent Randall on stage to perform his song “This House,” the eighth of 13 tracks on his new—and first full-length—album, We Were Strangers in Paddington Green. Wearing loafers and clutching shakers, Randall delivered a […]
