Matt Mays, now minus El Torpedo, has been working on a new record here in town, and you’ll be able to hear his progress at The Seahorse on June 19. The $25 tickets are available at Ticketpro outlets and website. Consider Mays usually needs two nights at the Marquee, and the bars’ relative capacities, and […]
Tara Thorne
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Sappyfest preliminary line-up launched
The fourth annual songs, sadness and superness Sackville festival Sappyfest has announced its preliminary line-up, and it’s NBD—if you hate things that are awesome! Welcome (almost) home, Wintersleep, you magnificent bastards! Who else will be sharing headlining duties with you? Oh, just Women, Destroyer, Eric’s Trip, Ladyhawk, Timber Timbre and Ohbijou. You won’t even remember […]
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Jason Shipley’s killer trip
Jason Shipley has a friend who’s got a cabin in New Brunswick. Two springs back, that friend, Pierre Huard, told Shipley of a film idea he had about two men who go on a fishing trip—with bloody results. Huard wanted to act and direct; Shipley told him he should pick one. And the actor, as […]
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Caledonia release new full-length CD, We Are America
Zac Crouse is spending his rainy Sunday hand-screening t-shirts. “It’s fun, it just takes a lot longer,” the Caledonia bassist-singer-songwriter reports. “And it’s cheaper.” The DIY ethic extends beyond merch to every part of Caledonia—the Halifax quintet’s new LP, We Are America, was funded in full by the band. Recorded at Echo Chamber last summer, […]
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Wextra special: Interview with Tori Amos
On her last album, American Doll Posse, Tori Amos adopted four personas—cast in Roman and Greek mythology—to perform its 23 songs. This time around, it’s just her. She rang The Coast from her home in Cornwall, England (evening weather report: “Enh”), where she and her engineer husband, Mark Hawley, plus Marcel Van Limbeek, produced Abnormally […]
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Tori Amos
Though she made her name as one of the most confessional songwriters of the ’90s, the Tori Amos of the aughts is an epic myth-weaver, layering characters upon back-stories upon eras upon the piano. Where the actual Tori appears these days can be hard to parse, especially on 2007’s American Doll Posse, 23 tracks sung […]
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Ben Lee
The forgotten side of the Mary-Louise Parker-Billy Crudup-Claire Danes square of yore, Ben Lee’s music has gotten steadily saccharine since the breakup that should’ve provided his best material. It drifted on Awake is the New Sleep (his last batch of uniformly strong songs), dipped on Ripe, and has disappeared beneath syrup with The Rebirth of […]
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Pony Up
Like the band’s name, Stay Gold has a multi-level function: It’s a title. It’s advice. And for Montreal indie-pop quartet Pony Up—whose stellar 2006 debut, Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes, had the full label treatment—it’s gotta be a mantra for a record that arrives as a CD-R in a DIY package. The […]
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Bishop Allen
A handful of New York indie bands manage to escape overblogged hype and are always better for it—think Ra Ra Riot, Regina Spektor—and so you don’t feel like a trend-fucker when listening to the likes of Bishop Allen, AKA Justin Rice and Christian Rudder. The follow-up to 2007’s fantastic The Broken String, Grrr… displays more […]
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Josh MacDonald’s Halo moves to the big screen
“I’ve done a lot of bracing over the years—I don’t think it’s any huge secret that any low-budget Canadian film has about 10 near-death experiences on its way to fruition,” says Josh MacDonald. “But here we were, first day of photography.” The Dartmouth writer first put the idea for Halo to paper a decade ago […]
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Dog Day focuses on new album, Concentration
A shrink-wrapped copy of Concentration sits on the table in the kitchen rented by Nancy Urich and Seth Smith, one half of Dog Day, the record’s author. Its release is in a few days and not all of the band, all of whom are here, have seen it. Urich banters with Smith, her husband, about […]
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Elliott Brood does it country revival style
“You can write a love song a million times,” says Casey Laforet, guitarist-singer-songwriter for Toronto alt-country trio Elliott Brood. “Our tastes are geared to storytellers like The Band, Neil Young. It’s not for everyone. We love a cool story and to tell that story with instruments. I don’t think we can write super-catchy pop songs.” […]