Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the CityMark Kingwell (Viking Canada)The author begins by reconsidering, if not defending, concrete as an architectural material, not to mention the style it’s often identified with—Brutalism. That alone is valiant. The fuller project: a philosophy of architecture. More than housing residents and workers, architecture, Kingwell argues, shapes our consciousness as it […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Yet at a Distance—Father Poems from the Maritimes
Yet at a Distance—Father Poems from the MaritimesVariousBorealisThis anthology, launching on January 25 at Local Jo Cafe, opens with the parable of the prodigal son. Gary Burrill, the collection’s editor writes an opaque foreword about why “father poems” proliferate in the Maritimes. Attaching a regional basis is debatable. The biblical passage suggests all sons are […]
Posted inArts + Music
Essays in Love
Essays in LoveAlain de Botton (McClelland & Stewart)Even when falling in and then being in love, some people can’t shut off the analytical parts of their brains. Where passion exists, so does reason—always and forever. The protagonist in Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love certainly exhibits this condition. Though it purports to be a piece […]
Posted inArts + Music
Dolly Parton peddles books in The Book Lady
The opening frame shows a shoe with a towering heel on a bouncing foot. A familiar piano riff chugs along over top of the image. The song is “Nine to Five” and the stiletto belongs to Dolly Parton, who settles into a chair, ready to be interviewed, in the opening sequence of The Book Lady. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Free Lab
Free LabChristine Macy (Tuns Press)At the risk of oversimplifying, writers of books on architecture (like architects themselves) select from two options: Going big and elaborate, or keeping it short and simple. A practitioner and professor at Dalhousie, Christine Macy thankfully elects the latter. In Free Lab, covering 15 years of work (1991-2006), she succinctly and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Human Highway
Human HighwayMoody Motorcycle (Secret City Records)The harmonies on this collaboration by Jim Guthrie (solo, ex-Royal City) and Nick Thorburn (Islands, ex-Unicorns) are exquisite. The duo sings together like an updated version of The Everly Brothers, Simon & Garfunkel or Travelling Wilburys, where two voices stitch together seamlessly. Elsewhere contrast is high and powerful: Thorburn delivers […]
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Bruce LaBruce’s gay zombie heaven
Bruce LaBruce’s day begins with the sound of oven buttons being pushed, a conversation about zombies and a plan to catch two films (an Austrian movie about revenge and the latest, Tokyo Sonata, by Akira Kurosawa) at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I’m seeing about two films a day, and then I have business meetings […]
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Sebastien Tellier
Sebastien TellierSexuality(Record Makers) Enough already with the fey guys, their antique-analog synthesizers and canned (female) moans and giggles, a combination that doesn’t itself constitute a genre, despite the efforts of adoring writers and fans to make it so. Parisian Sebastien Tellier’s Sexuality reproduces late ’70s and ’80s electro-pop, but that was a time when the […]
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Chad VanGaalen
Chad VanGaalenSoft Airplane(Flemish Eye Records)That Calgarian Chad VanGaalen has signed an international deal to release this third album with the storied Sub Pop label makes perfect sense. This is arguably something more like the album fans were hoping to get from label-mates The Shins on their last outing, Wincing the Night Away—still quite good but […]
Posted inLifestyle
A pedestrian primer
As students, you represent the incoming population wave arriving in this Atlantic coastal city. The outgoing wave: Tourists. You’re here at the beginning of the end of tourist season, so numbers may perhaps not be as great as during the height of summer, but there is enough tourism still happening that you can and will […]
Posted inArts + Music
Universities draw them in
The art galleries of Mount Saint Vincent, Saint Mary’s and Dalhousie universities operate in post-secondary institutions where fine arts degrees aren’t offered. The bulk of funding for programming at each space comes from the Canada Council for the Arts, not the institutions’ administrations, which tend to assist with operating funds (staffing and equipment costs). Although […]
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Sign of the times
Shawn Duggan is a student of body language. The local actor, who’s appeared in more than a dozen plays (mostly with local company Angels & Heroes), short films and TV, learned by getting on stage and in front of cameras. Next week he returns to Nova Scotia Community College’s waterfront campus in Dartmouth as a […]
