Feature

Jon Boudreau is usually a warm and outgoing guy. Every time I visit the CDPlus location he manages on Barrington we talk for a while about new albums we like and local bands we hate. That all changed a few weeks ago. As I brought box after brimming box into his store, containing all the […]

While you read, listen to “Don’t go easy” by Jill Barber. Jill Barber’s 2007 East Coast Music Awards weekend was a coming out party that fans won’t soon forget. Building on the success of her 2006 release For All Time, Barber wowed audiences with a string of stellar showcases that left the entire conference buzzing […]

Only 29 days remain until Choke’s final show in its hometown of Edmonton. On Sunday, as the band drives from Sault St. Marie to Barrie for the last time, vocalist/bassist Clay Shea says there’s only one thing he won’t miss about touring: the heat inside the van. “Hot makes me grumpy!” he says, laughing. Combining […]

It’s probably safe to say that Andrew Sisk, the brainchild behind the folk-inspired electronic project Share, had to leave home to find what he was looking for. A native of Chipman, New Brunswick, Sisk didn’t see a punk band in concert until he left his hometown for Fredericton as a 17-year-old. That experience, along with […]

Ontario’s bookish songwriter Nathan Lawr has added scholar to his lengthy list of talents, but will squeeze in a brief tour before returning to a rigorous academic timetable of history courses at Laurentian University. He rolls into town for an acoustic solo stint with FemBots and Rich Aucoin on April 28 at The Seahorse. “I’ve […]

Listen to “So sorry” off the new album From the Photographs. Laura Peek and The Winning Hearts’ first full-length album, From the Photographs, took almost two years to complete, but as the saying goes, it’s worth the wait: charming, smart, beautifully orchestrated, the kitten-loving, piano-pop singer’s debut is a delight. Accompanying other Just Friends label […]

Prodigy isn’t a label with which Celeste Williams is terribly comfortable. But she has heard it ascribed to her. “Usually people who use a word like that don’t even know what it means,” she says, laughing. The violinist, 18 as of last Saturday, has a confidence in her speech and grace in her limbs that […]

Listen to “Oh Dead Life” off the new album Night Group. True to its name, Area 52 hides itself well—in plain sight, as it goes. The average passerby likely never considers the massive space, with all its various compartments, lying just beyond the banal, barely marked entrance off Gottingen Street. Unless they’re hauling gear—an amp, […]

What started as a concert for an influential California avant garde electronic band soon became a festival showcasing some of the best hardcore, experimental, punk and metal-influenced music the east coast has to offer—and the local label that releases it. The ironically named Obey Convention festival, hosted by Divorce Records, goes from April 13-15, featuring […]

Listen to “Tonight Tonite” off the album Pop-Up Book. On the afternoon before he leaves on tour with ever-expanding band The Sleepless Nights—Halifax’s version of Broken Social Scene—Matt MacDonald, a co-conspirator behind the peachy power-pop duo The Superfantastics, finds time to chat about their quirky, irresistibly adorable, full-length concept album Pop-Up Book. “My parents had […]