Music has a transformative quality. It’s like time travel. Last night at Sarah McLachlan’s two-act concert at Scotiabank Centre (formerly known as the Metro Centre), I returned to my teenage years, nostalgia-soaked. A time when I quaked with aliveness and felt raw yearning for experience, I wanted the moon, stars and whole night sky to […]
Shannon Webb-Campbell
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La Ribera
2014 SOCAN Songwriting Award winner Alejandra Ribera’s music career is a tale of slow-burning success. After releasing her demo, Navigator, in 2009, she was discovered by CBC during a stint as artist-in-residence at The Cameron House. It took several years for her debut full length, La Boca (Pheromone Recordings), produced by Jean Massicotte, to be […]
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Have Mercy
There’s a sense of triumph in Amelia Curran’s epic release, They Promised You Mercy (Six Shooter Records). She revels in maturity and grace November 12 at the Rebecca Cohn with a full band, and fierce heart. “It’s one of the only records I’ve had to make once,” says Curran. “I’ve had to make previous albums […]
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Uh Huh Her’s sweet Future Souls music
In 2008, Los Angeles-based Uh Huh Her’s Camila Grey and Leisha Hailey had just released their debut EP, I See Red (2007), had only played two dozens shows together and giggled into the phone like new found best friends. Grey had just finished up with her previous band Mellowdrone, and Hailey was best known as […]
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A woman like Bettye LaVette
With a music career spanning over 50 years, Bettye LaVette doesn’t miss a beat. As America’s great lady of soul, she was born to sing. Her latest release, Thankful N’ Thoughtful, showcases her legendary voice–sexy, raw and unhinged. She takes the stage along with Nova Scotia Super Soul Review at Halifax Jazz Festival July 9. […]
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Five Must Listen Robert Glasper Experiment Tracks
1 Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” like you’ve never heard it before. Think sultry piano notes, drum rolls, and a sense of jazzy otherworldliness. No wonder the album Black Radio took the Grammy. 2 “Gonna Be Alright” smooth-talks listeners into a state of intrigue, hypnotic possibility. Ledisi’s killer voice soars over a gorgeous melody. 3 […]
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Amber Dawn’s poetic justice
Poetry is renegade. Poetry is sex. Poetry is rebel. Poetry is Amber Dawn’s first love. Her sophomore book, How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir (Arsenal Pulp), brings the award-winning author to Halifax for the first time, reading with Kaleigh Trace, author of the forthcoming Hot, Wet and Shaking: How I Learned To Talk […]
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The success of Failure
Award-winning transgender writers and musicians Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote are failures. And they are damn proud. Together, they celebrate Gender Failure, a collaborative collection of essays based on an international touring live show at Bus Stop Theatre April 20. “In the show, I don’t trace my entire journey and the gender binary,” says […]
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Poetry saves lives
National Poetry Month celebrates all poetic rhythms. Halifax’s poet laureate El Jones believes poetry humanizes people, brings us closer together. Jones is a powerhouse of spoken word and activism. As the city’s fifth poet laureate, she notes poetry is all about transcendence. “The job of the poet to listen and give it significance, people just […]
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Molly Thomason’s high school confidential
Remember when life was a series of what-ifs? Becoming was a rite of passage. Those crucial years of self-discovery, no responsibility, first loves, begging for cigarettes, getting high at lunch, hardcore crushes, stealing alcohol, grades, navigating your parents and self-absorption. Dreaded adulthood was never gonna happen. Some of us walked out the doors of our […]
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Birdy
When Karie Richards was asked to write for a monologue for the most extreme version of herself, she began imagining a character who felt guilty for something they failed to do before they were even born. “What kept inspiring me is how impossible it is to know a person’s whole story. What is hidden from us, […]
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Go To Hell
Michael Best wants you to Go To Hell. After the success of his award-winning Gay White Trash in 2008, Best returns with a play following Johnson, a self-obsessed gay lawyer, who dies and finds himself in one circle of hell. Turns out the Christians were right—all gays do go to Hell. Best questions values, identity […]