Reviews

Light and darkness have always guided the best records—think Jimmy Page’s light fretwork and heavy riffing. We Have Made a Spark, the new LP from singer-songwriter Rose Cousins, sounds nothing like Zep’s metal sludge, yet similarly uses multiple sonic shades and refracted imagery to create an extremely polished album. With piano playing that recalls the […]

Beyond the cooking soundtracks, the bands that never quite died (The Inbreds, The Lodge) and attention to detail, Mike O’Neill builds anticipation for recordings that manage to stand apart from trends of the day. Wild Lines answers the bell, pushing robust guitar and baroque trimmings, often as a tandem. A hard-drive beginning in “Wasted Time” […]

Emerging from a spell in Ontario’s Cuff the Duke, Dale Murray is back east enriching the scene here. Much as his sparkling solo debut, Brighter Lives, Darker Side in 2005 marked life after The Guthries, Dream Mountain Dream may offer surprises to those who know Murray from his bands. Pedal steel, his chief asset to […]

After recording the mostly forgettable and ostentatious Octahedron, the band is back in full force, sounding closest to the power and urgency that came with major-label debut De-loused in the Comatorium nearly 10 years ago. The album retains the bands signature sound of punk meets The Smiths meets prog-metal, yet sounds restrained compared to the […]

By now, you should know the drill: Band cuts teeth in Halifax, implodes. Band moves to Montreal, explodes. The most recent incarnation of Mike Wright and Brad Loughead (ex-Long Long Long) caught the attention of Brooklyn’s Crikey Records, resulting in this sickly sweet seven-inch. Along with the expected spindly guitar work comes a newfound swagger: […]

Hangovers! They’re everywhere, but they’re especially present on 
Outtacontroller’s criminally catchy and very consistent debut LP. Doubled up bratty vocals, sweet harmonies and relentless punk fuzz propel this album happily along, through tales of drugs, drinking, fights and hanging out in graveyards—I didn’t think Halifax had guys this tough, honestly. Sometimes venturing into creepy lyrical […]

Last year, Lupe’s Lasers was condemned as a shallow sellout, a fiasco for an MC whose last two albums established him as a hip-hop wunderkind. After Lupe cited record label interference and distanced himself from Lasers, fans expected a mixtape redemption. But he’s little more than a bored braggart with superficial peacenik proclivities, daring only occasionally, […]

Hank Jones played piano for Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and nearly everyone else before passing away two years ago at age 91. One of his last acts was recording religious tunes with standup bassist Charlie Haden. Childhood memories arrive in interwoven reverence with a jazz accent. It’s a master class in how certain century-old black […]

It’s possible that TemperTemper may be Halifax’s proggiest band. On the group’s self-titled debut, the classically trained Dal students deliver a pomp-charged array of spritely electro-pop and ornate songwriting. Lead by Thomas Hoy’s powerful timbre the band’s symphonic elements shine through their rock instrumentation on the album’s seven tracks. “Boyzngurlz” is a shredding power-pop rocker […]

Coming across like a fuzzier, steadier rolling blend of Sleater-Kinney and Buddy Holly, Long Weekends’ dreamy twist contest soundtrack defies you to stay still. The peppy, lo-fi garage songs have an undertone of spookiness, courtesy of post-punk chord progressions and singer-guitarist Noel Macdonald’s unusual—and supremely satisfying—vocalizations. The trio is a rare find, its intense delivery […]

Two-piece Cousins’ The Palm at the End of the Mind picks up where Out on Town left off, delivering a much louder record that perfectly captures the band’s live sound, developed in recent years. Recorded in part by Dave Ewenson at Echo Chamber, but primarily on four-track by lead-songwriter Aaron Mangle, Palm’s lo-fi aesthetic gives […]

Longer than an EP, shorter than most albums, Soho Ghetto’s collection marks the arrival of a distinct, fluid new seven-piece. Matthew Gibbon’s crisp harmonica and Shawn Burke’s double-pump drumming are as much a signature as Marc-Antoine Robertson’s plaintive vocals.Then, on “Heart, Beat, Skip,” Rachel Sunter’s piano drenches in colour a youthful fret about missed opportunities […]