Three days left. Fifteen venues. A shitton of bands. The sum: too many choices to be made in the next 72 hours. If spontaneity’s your thing, tuck this geographical list of bar-only Halifax Pop Explosion venues (there are nine) in your pocket today, so that when you—or someone you know—-inevitably arrives at the Paragon at […]
Music Festivals
Posted inArts + Music
HPX spotlight: The Hold Steady
If The Hold Steady are not America’s greatest rock band—and there’s a case to be made for it—they’re certainly its most deceptively great one. A casual listener may wonder why their five albums of seemingly familiar power chords and piano histrionics have earned such cultish devotion. Sure, the band’s ability to suture the punk/classic rock […]
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HPX spotlight: Radio Radio
Radio Radio shows must produce two by-products, “sweat and smiles,” according to Gabriel Louis Bernard Malenfant, one of three members of the band (along with Alexandre Arthur Bilodeau and Jacques Alphonse Doucet). Much has been made of Radio Radio’s Acadian identity. The three hail from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The bio on their label […]
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HPX spotlight: Tokyo Police Club
In 2006, Tokyo Police Club’s A Lesson in Crime EP—16 minutes of speedy, punchy indie rock gold—quickly made the Newmarket, Ontario, foursome one of North America’s hottest buzz bands. Four years later, the harsh internet hype cycle having moved on, the band has been able to record and tour its excellent second album, Champ, on […]
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HPX spotlight: Cursed Arrows
It’s a sadly familiar story by now: band forms in Halifax; band gets big in Halifax; band leaves Halifax for the verdant and populous musical pastures of Montreal/Toronto. When any band does the reverse, it’s noteworthy; when the band is Cursed Arrows, it’s an extra bonus. “It just seemed like the right time,” says Ryan […]
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HPX spotlight: Sloan performs Twice Removed
It’s easy to forget, now, how long it took Sloan’s sophomore jinx-defying classic to find its audience. Before Napster—before Netscape version one, even—Sloan zigged when they were supposed to zag, and delivered the wrong record to their record-label masters. There was no World Wide Web to fall back on, no Plan B to end-run the […]
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Halifax Pop Explosion on parade
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21 Tasseomancy The Company House, 10pm, $10 Sisters Sari and Romy Lightman play the Pop Explosion in mid-transformation. They’ve already changed their band name from Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy, the title of their excellent 2008 release. The changes are going deeper, explains Sari Lightman by email: “We’re focused on developing our skills as […]
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Brunching with Just Friends
Yesterday’s gone, you’re hung over and in need of a refuel before the last Pop Explosion night—all signs point to the Just Friends brunch, which’ll fill you up with food prepared and served by the multi-talented musicians. Laura Peek & The Winning Hearts, Hymm and Brent Randall will all be doing their own sets, as […]
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HPX preview: The Superfantastics
While nursing post- Thanksgiving turkey hangovers, celebrated Halifax indie-pop duo The Superfantastics chat over the phone from their respective abodes. But shortly after the call gets underway, things get awkward. It’s the “third member” question that did it: the one that explorative couples often broach, surely with the same bashfulness. Lead singer and guitarist Matthew MacDonald […]
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HPX preview: Mark Sultan goes solo
It has been a tumultuous few months for Mark Sultan. After spending the better part of the last decade as the “BBQ” half of the King Khan & BBQ Show, Sultan left the band amid swirling blogger accounts of cancelled shows, wild drunkenness, trashed apartments and screaming arguments between the two musicians across a Pacific […]
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HPX preview: New town for New Pornographers
“That’s crazy,” he says on the line from Woodstock, New York, where he bought a house last year. “We should mark that,” he says, recalling the debut album came out in late October 2000. The collection of roughed-up new wave was released by the Mint Records label in Vancouver, the city where Newman grew up […]
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Elizabeth Shepherd’s salvation
Vocalist and pianist Elizabeth Shepherd had an unlikely musical educator: the Salvation Army. Growing up with parents who were Salvation Army ministers, she spent her childhood moving around Canada and France, with the church as the main basis of the family’s social life. The Salvation Army “was a great foundation for music,” she says, listing […]
