“I just wanted to amp it up,” says Dana Beeler. “I was tired of being nice.” Beeler is referring to a recent shift from her country and bluegrass beginnings to an edgier sound. Beeler’s roots are country-fried, having played bluegrass with her family and releasing the twangy debut full-length The Long Goodbye in 2012. But […]
Music Festivals
Posted inArts + Music
Ostrea Lake
“They think it’s the place in Germany,” says Elias Abi Daoud, leader of Ostrea Lake, of when people say his band’s name aloud. Really it’s the road he grew up on in the decidedly more rural Musquodoboit Harbour, between Porters Lake and Lake Charlotte. But his baritone ukulele-based, harmony-grazed pastoral folk songs do have their […]
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Fiver
Over the phone from Sackville, NB, Simone Schmidt says that she’s “feeling good, just relaxing in a room that isn’t” hers. The Toronto-based singer is referring to her disposition during some downtime on tour, but the offhand comment functions just as well as a more symbolic statement; an inferred reference to Virginia Woolf’s feminist text […]
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In the Dead of Winter 2014
Nothing warms the body and soul like music. Put a cork in your winter whining and join the rest of the lovely neighbourhood at IDOW, January 23-25, a three-day festival of soft, loud, uplifting, heartbreaking and soul-exploding sounds from our cover star Tanya Tagaq, as well as Kathleen Edwards, Dana Beeler, Timber Timbre, Fiver, Ostrea […]
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Flip side
Not quite a year ago, Montreal jazz musician Peggy Hogan had some downtime after releasing a solo album. Idle hands are the devil’s tools and Hua Li was born. Using her Chinese name, Hua Li became Hogan’s alter ego, the ultimate bad bitch/femcee who runs the party and has the best makeup. “Hua Li was […]
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Islands are forever
“I don’t believe it’s the last record, but if it is, I think I will be satisfied with the body of work left behind. Ski Mask would be a graceful exit,” says Islands’ Nicholas Thorburn. “Stylistically, the music represents the entire catalogue and even the songwriting spans the last seven years, so it is an […]
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Big breaks
Toronto grunge/noise punk trio METZ has one of those career stories that most bands only ever dream about. Formed in 2008, METZ jammed it out for awhile, cultivating a sick live show and releasing a couple EPs before getting signed by Seattle’s Sub Pop Records, the home of grunge. It’s a tale that doesn’t get […]
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No Joy’s luck
“We do not wear earplugs and as a result are deaf which leads us to turn up our amps even louder,” says No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz. Fair enough, considering the intense wall of sound No Joy produces every night. With Laura Lloyd, White-Gluz’s reverb-heavy guitar fill every empty space of the Montreal band’s latest, Wait […]
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Shad’s Flying high
The machine guns and machetes were half a world away, but Shad still flinched at the sound of their wounding jabs. His parents hailed from Rwanda, but they raised him in London, Ontario. That meant the would-be MC first heard his homeland’s piercing violence from the stereo speakers of his family’s television. He describes that […]
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Barry alive
“I’ve never been to Halifax and up until a few months ago, I thought it was in western Canada,” says comedian Todd Barry. As a comic, actor and voice actor, the Manhattan-based funny guy has appeared on all of your/my favourite things: Wonder Showzen, Chapelle’s Show, Bored to Death, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Sarah […]
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Trillion to one
“Trap music is the space where southern hip-hop & electronic dance music collide,” say Halifax’s new trap duo Trillionaires (Michael Molloy and Nick Hood). “In the past couple of years, producers combined the sounds of both genres, mixing the drums of the southern hip-hop with the synths and builds of dance music to create something […]
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Woodpigeon’s too coo for school
Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton, a recent transplant to Vancouver from Calgary by way of Vienna, will wind down his current cross-country tour with a set at the Company House. “Intimate venues are great,” he says. “Grand halls are great. I’ll play in a bedroom or a field and be eternally grateful for the opportunity to do […]
