Apparently yesterday was the official launch day for Canadian blog year-end lists. Three or four blogs I read on a daily basis offered up their personalized view of the year in music, and as I scanned through the worthy additions, I couldn’t help but feel they overlooked one of the purest voices and most lovely(…)
To a casual Canadian music fan, it might be tempting to cast Julie Doiron as the battered and bruised fighter that can’t stop taking punches. You look at her life – one mostly spent traveling in vans and singing songs, documenting her most intimate moments in sonic boombast and gentle picks – and wonder how(…)
For the first time in years, Canadian music feel important again. Obviously pop mavens like Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen move units and the figureheads of Montreal winning a Grammy give us stable footing in International eyes, but Canada (and music fans around the world) are rallying behind the most obscure and innovative bands we(…)
To communicate in today’s chosen method, instead of reviewing the new behemoth from Metz, I could have just linked to the amazing bio Bry Webb penned and screamed, “a million times yes!” Everything Webb wrote channels the visceral impact of these songs. The intensity, the volume, the sheer power of each impact, well Webb describes(…)
For me, the banjo isn’t an instrument built for arena anthems. It’s not constructed to craft frantic, supporting textures. It’s a quiet focal point, made for back porches and family foot stomps. It’s made to pair perfectly with the admissions of a charismatic poet. The trusted right hand for an everyman picking through the pain,(…)
Matt Mays plays his guitar, not like a nimble fingered magician showing technical skill, but like a man swings a hammer. Riffs are full of purpose, not preciousness. Mays isn’t here to boast of conquest or ooze privilege, but to earn his living with each forceful impact and drop of sweat. Far from clumsy, Mays(…)
It’s rare that any of the artists covered on herohill actually reside outside the spacious confines of this great Nation, but for certain records and certain artists, space and time will always be given. Neil Halstead is, without question, one of those artists. Obviously, Neil’s fingerprints have been left all over today’s musical landscape, but(…)
It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely unifier than Taber’s Corb Lund. Years ago, when he released Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier I put a promo Corb patch on my bag, and since that day the people that struck up a conversation are as diverse and random as you’d imagine for an artist that can sell(…)
Stepping out from the comforting anonymity of playing supporting textures in a popular band is not a new occurrence, but for Wintersleep’s Jon Samuel, it’s a rewarding one. Samuel’s debut solo LP, First Transmission, is a beautiful, warm and surprisingly scrappy affair. The immediate sonic similarity I heard, appropriately, was to another textures focused musician(…)
I don’t know where Western Transport starts or stops anymore. The songs are now a part of me; notes I’ve heard in their nascent form, only to watch them mature and develop into adulthood. I can still feel the texture of the first brushstroke, but have no idea how they came together as they did.(…)
