Gianna Lauren Gianna Lauren is made for winter, or so she says. “Months’ worth of armchair time, reading and drinking tea,” she says. “The winter season forces you to relax and get creative with yourself.” On her album Fist Through a Heart, Lauren is a bit of a mystery. She’s part wallflower, part rocker, all […]
Music Festivals
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Talk of the Townsend
There are worse places to chase away mid-winter malaise than The Paragon Theatre on a Wednesday. The tables are laid with tea lights flickering like fireflies, the apricot beer is on special, and people lean their heads in to hear each other over the music thumping through the speakers. It’s Carmen Townsend’s third time playing […]
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John K. Samson loves his Winnipeg
A< relationship to a city is complicated, a matter of love and hate. This, John K. Samson knows well. Examining his own city, Winnipeg—and with that lens, the archetypal Canadian city—has been a career-spanning project of The Weakerthans founder and singer and now solo artist, releasing late last year his first in a suite of […]
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Jenny Omnichord on tour with her toddler
The 2008 In the Dead of Winter was a memorable one for Jenny Mitchell, AKA Jenny Omnichord. “I thought I’d broken my foot, and people kept giving me whiskey for it.” So Mitchell went to the hospital where she got a pregnancy test prior to x-rays, and “I found out I was pregnant.” Two years […]
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Decade in review: music scene, not a machine
Ten years is an awfully long period of time to cover, at least in the life of the average Halifax musician. Because of our diverse scene, turnover is high—Halifax could be named the call centre of Canadian music scenes. From the end of the 1990s’ “new Seattle” to a new mecca for weird punk, local […]
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Daily HPX picks: THURSDAY…must-see shows
Julie Fader The Seahorse Tavern, 1665 Argyle Street, 10pm, $10 Julie Fader never set out to be a professional musician. She wanted to go to NSCAD, but “chickened out on the move to Halifax.” Instead, she stuck around Ontario, eventually meeting Sarah Harmer and touring with her. Since then, the requests haven’t stopped for Fader’s […]
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Daily HPX picks: FRIDAY…must-see shows
Final Fantasy w/Symphony Nova Scotia Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, 6101 University Avenue, 8pm, $29-$49 Owen Pallett is so excited and he just can’t hide it. The performer, who records under the moniker Final Fantasy, is performing with Symphony Nova Scotia this Friday at the Rebecca Cohn. Pallett is as excited as his fans about the nearly […]
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Daily HPX picks: SATURDAY…must-see HPX shows
Attack in Black The Seahorse Tavern, 1665 Argyle Street, 11:40pm, $8 Attack in Black comes to Halifax in support of its 2009 album Years (By One Thousand Fingertips). The four-piece released it in March on Dine Alone Records (home to Arkells, Bedouin Soundclash, City and Colour and others). Hailing from Welland, Ontario, Attack in Black’s […]
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The sample life: Q&A with Girl Talk
Ryan Hemsworth: Where are you? Girl Talk: I’m at my home in Pittsburgh for a couple of days…can you hold on a second, someone’s knocking on my front door. A few moments later… GT: Hey. A delivery guy had a little treat for my dog—blew my mind. When I describe your music to people I […]
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Think About Life’s family business
Think About Life is the type of band that makes music writers want to quit. It’s hard to write about them in any honest and meaningful way without descending into lifeless party-band descriptors. (“An exuberant live show! Charmingly shambolic!”) And really, it doesn’t really do them justice. The facts, on paper: A few years ago, […]
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D-Sisive moment
Everywhere Toronto-based rapper D-Sisive goes, Orville Knoblich follows.”That character plays a major part as far as the visuals are concerned,” says D-Sisive, otherwise known as Derek Christoff. So, musically, he’s D-Sisive. But visually, he’s Orville Knoblich, decked out in tuxedo, bowler and ostrich mask. Think of the figure, who appears onstage and on album covers, […]
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Bruce Peninsula’s gone big time
“We’re hell-bent on making new music,” says Bruce Peninsula’s singer-guitarist Neil Haverty. Although still riding the success of its Polaris Prize-nominated debut album, A Mountain is a Mouth, the Toronto band has postponed tours next year to start writing again. What form those new tracks will take is anyone’s guess. But for a band that […]