Here’s a conundrum: You and your friends start a band. You make punk that spangles, with romantic snappy hooks that echo in the brain for days. You do a small tour, you release a tape and suddenly everyone is in love with you. Crowds throng your shows, each person banging into the other, clutching each […]
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Heather and Chelsea Edgett
It doesn’t get any sweeter than Heather and Chelsea Edgett. The twosome embodies love, togetherness and matrimony. Both are songwriters in their own light. Having met via MySpace, Chelsea chased Heather to Los Angeles where the two of them cultivated their craft and said their vows. Due to Proposition 8 they had to head back […]
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Micro Organs
Jenny Gillespie (also of Meat Curtains) first began performing solo under the name Oil Spills and Microrganisms in 2008, but has since switched to the shorter Micro Organs. She teamed up with drummer Mathieu Blanchard in October of last year—“I thought you were good, I wanted to play with you,” Blanchard pipes up from behind, […]
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Bike Rodeo du it clean
Made up of Nigel Tinker (Joyless Streets), Mike D’Eon (The Establishment), Matt Nichols (The Stance) and Niall Skinner (Their Majesties), Bike Rodeo play a loud blend of 1960s garage rock and ’90s Brit rock. D’Eon says, “It was the first band I was in where we just jammed for a good couple months to find […]
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Bloodhouse cut it short
Alexander Mitchell (Tomcat Combat) started Bloodhouse in the winter of 2008, when he was living outside of the city and bored. “I had never composed songs before so it was nice to be able to develop a catalogue of super-short songs. I am in no way a guitar player so the simpler the song, the […]
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Ria Mae has a new job
Halifax fosters new creativity. At least that’s how Ria Mae sees it. Recently the songwriter quit her construction-management day job to take on music full-time, a bold but necessary risk. “Deep down, I know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” says Mae. “I’ve had to downsize and am living very differently, but […]
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Granelli’s children: Panos Gianoullis and Denma Peisinger
Denma Peisinger is living with master jazz percussionist and composer Jerry Granelli, doing an “old-fashioned apprenticeship.” Peisinger, who plays bass, and guitarist Panos Gianoullis met while studying with Granelli in a program teaching free jazz to young musicians at the Atlantic Jazz Festival. They have been collaborating recently, as well as playing in Granelli’s ensemble […]
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Krasnogorsk and the Moscow Country Club get around
The Krasnogorsk is a Soviet movie camera and a suburb of Moscow, but Halifax’s Krasnogorsk can be found playing on the number seven bus, in trees, on the Common or on tall ships. Violinist Jacques Mindreau interrupted baritone ukulele player Corey Hinchey’s interview with a potential roommate last fall; he “started playing music with him, […]
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Gianna Lauren fits in swell
“I didn’t have a job, I wasn’t coming for school, I just got in my car and drove here,” says Gianna Lauren. The Edmonton native arrived via Ottawa in January, with an EP (Fist in a Heart) and a plan: to become part of the local music scene. “I found the scene really insular,” she […]
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Electro Chiac Therapie: brutal acadian punk
“We thought, ‘Let’s do all sex lyrics, but we’ll do them in French so nobody knows what we’re talking about,’” says Lindsay of ECT. Two-thirds Acadian, the threesome (by stage names Lindsay Sue, Mimi Ostie and Fritzi LeBaron) sing in chiac, known as an English-tinged “brutalization” of Acadian French. They get audiences dancing by playing […]
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OWL under pop’s quiet wings
OWL came into existence last summer when Matthew MacDonald made a few tracks on his computer and convinced girlfriend Vanessa Murnaghan to write lyrics for them. After an initial bout of nerves, the pair had a song and sent it around to friends. “They liked it,” says Murnaghan, “so we just kept making more.” Murnaghan […]
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Paper Beat Scissors make abstract sounds
Remember playing rock, paper, scissors during recess in elementary school? Well, Tim Crabtree’s project Paper Beat Scissors has little to do with childish games, but there is something youthful about his approach to music. Instead of locking himself in the ivory tower of song, he begins by tinkering around on guitar and making sounds reminiscent […]
