Music

Willie Stratton album release show w/Campbell & Johnston May 27, The Marquee, sonicconcerts.com Is Willie Stratton the real deal? So much of rock ‘n’ roll and vintage country-western music—the Venn diagram overlap where Stratton is planting his sonic flag—hinges on a visceral sense of authenticity. If the heartbreaks are fiction rather than lived—if the denim […]

Can-rock icon and notorious anti-vaxxer Bryan Adams is coming to Halifax on September 3 as part of his just-announced So Happy It Hurts tour. The “Summer of ’69” singer will play the Scotiabank Centre as part of an extensive coast-to-coast effort that also includes shows in Moncton, Cape Breton and Summerside. Tickets for the Halifax show, […]

W hen the Halifax Jazz Festival announced its return to a pre-pandemic-level event in late April, we already knew it was the sort of fun that’s worth marking in your calendar. Today’s second wave of act announcements proves our gut right, with the announcement that indie royalty Perfume Genius and The Weather Station will be […]

Once you can get over the name, Crywank is the sort of band you tell all your friends about, a ‘just-trust-me’ look as you take the aux. Tracing the line between earnest and ironic with surgically precise lyrics, the band lives up to its anti-folk genre by mixing simple acoustics with fuzzed-out bridges, punked-up drums […]

Music festival season just got a whole lot hotter, thanks to the city’s announcement this week that the square at Grand Parade (1770 Barrington Street) will play host to 38 events and over 50 artists—all for free. The Grand Oasis is billing itself as a festival, which it is in spirit. In function, it’s a […]

When indie rap mainstay Shad (born Shadrach Kabango) arrives at The Marquee this May 13, the triple-Juno-winner will have two set lists tucked in his back pocket. Attending a Shad show is always akin to taking a tour across the map of backpack rap, watching the ways that he’s resuscitated, sustained and expanded the genre […]

Thank U and Please Don’t Go, the sophomore album by Halifax songbird Keeper E., is music equally suited to waiting and to ruminating: Soft, shoegaze-y bedroom pop rendered mid-fidelity, the songs bend between morose and hopeful, between danceable and downbeat—sometimes as often as in a single line. After nabbing New Artist Recording of the Year […]

Music lovers can officially breathe easy about the fate of north end institution Gus’ Pub. “We’re gonna have to distinguish between Gus’ Pub, the building it resides in, and Gus’ Pub, the business: That’s two different things, right? So Gus’ Pub the business wasn’t sold. The building it resides in was sold,” says manager Dimo […]

Sarah Swire is the sort of multi-hyphenate who breaks the character limits of social media bios: Between touring the world as a performance artist with band Belle & Sebastian and acting in a recurring bit on Murdoch Mysteries, she’s also produced music for the BBC. But these days, the best description for the artist, who […]

A couple of indie Can-rock kings will descend on Hubbards’s Shore Club this August 25-27. Dartmouth hero Matt Mays has long marked the swan song of the season with a trio of always-packed, always-sold-out, always-worth-it shows at the venerable dance hall, and 2022 sees the tradition return to its pre-pandemic format, ditching the inflated prices of […]

When The Coast called Gus’ Pub today to see if the rumours we spotted on Twitter of the venerable institution’s closure were true, the record was set straight very quickly: “NO, we’re not closing,” the manager who took the call said, almost as soon as they picked up the phone. “It’s the same rumour that […]