Casper Skulls Lips & Skull Buzz Records Although trends in popular music would suggest guitar Rock has been through a bit of a latent period in the past few years, labels like Toronto’s Buzz Records have been quietly building all-star teams of fun, weird Rock bands. With [...]
Lou Barlow Apocalypse Fetish Joyful Noise Recordings A year after the release of Brace the Wave, a record exploring the complexity and heartbreak of his divorce, Lou Barlow returns with a collection of songs that try, with some success, to blow on the embers of his residual [...]
Hooded Fang Venus On Edge Daps Records My first encounter with Hooded Fang was on a compilation called Milkin’ It, an In Utero tribute record littered with every corner of Toronto’s rich music scene. On Milkin’ It, Hooded Fang reimagined Nirvana’s “Tourette’s” as a spacey [...]
Solids Else Dine Alone Records Sometime in the early teens of the 21st century, a niche group of rock bands decided they were completely burned out on jangly Libertines-esque rock music, and dusted off their old Jawbox and Sebadoh cassettes. Fortunately for music nerds, the [...]
Greys & Odonis Odonis w/ GREY//WATER & The Great Machine @ The Casbah, Hamilton April 9, 2016 Hamilton’s Hess Village is a bit of a toss up depending on your mood, age and your tolerance for newly minted post-secondary alcoholics. In the heart of Hess is The Casbah. An [...]
Nap Eyes w/ Century Palm & Cian Nugent @ The Garrison, Toronto April 7, 2016 The Garrison is a great venue for soft, airy music. Typically the crowd and performers have an understanding regarding volume, and those who don’t hang out in the separate area in the front. [...]
Yeasayer Amen & Goodbye Mute Records Many bands make careers out of applying the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy: Rage Against the Machine did it for a few years, Motörhead did it for decades. Brooklyn art-rock outfit Yeasayer on the other hand, ostensibly [...]
Wintersleep The Great Detachment Dine Alone Records A few years ago, economist and Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner declared McDonald’s McDouble hamburger to be the “cheapest and most nutritious food in human history”, measuring its price against its nutritional [...]
The Dirty Nil Higher Power Dine Alone Records For the better part of a decade, The Dirty Nil has been chipping away a monolith of a rock band. They’ve been patiently releasing 7” singles, an EP, and an ongoing fan club exclusive series of singles and covers. They’ve cut their [...]
Yuck Stranger Things Mamé Records Breaking up is hard to do. After the success of Yuck’s eponymous first record in 2011, founding member Daniel Blumberg left the band, leaving the young English quartet stripped of their leader and their momentum. Seeing no other option, the [...]
Junior Boys Big Black Coat Geej Recording/City Slang Big Black Coat, Junior Boys’ first release in five years (and first for new label City Slang), finds them working in the comfort of their hermetically sealed bedroom R&B, littered with empty takeout boxes and boutique [...]
The Pooches Heart Attack EP Lame-O Records Geography has always served as ambivalent signifier for bands. The Strokes were compared to Television upon the release of their first record; Coldplay were categorized as Radiohead fed through a Starbucks coffee filter; and The Hold [...]
Vicky Speedboat Two Years No Basement Independent More than halfway through Two Years No Basement, vocalist/guitarist Will Lindsay declares “I tend to fall in love at first sight/ two or three times a night.” Vicky Speedboat writes heart-on-its-sleeve songs about the road, [...]
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart Hell Yebo Music Packaged as a sort of afterthought, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s Hell EP is a pleasant three-track offering from the New York band. The title track is ostensibly about “how insufferable performances of sensitivity [...]
