jenngrant.com Just to be clear - Haligonian songstress Jenn Grant's upcoming Toronto show would have been pretty much a must-see regardless. Her latest album Honeymoon Punch is just about the record I've been hoping she'd make since she arrived with her debut Orchestra For The Moon in 2007. It sheds some of the overly tasteful production choices that held it and 20092s Echoes back and gets both breezy and scrappy, pushing the electric guitars up, and [...]
Big Hassle Last year , I wrote up a duo out of Minnesota called Now, Now Every Children who impressed with their debut album Cars , a no-frills chunk of indie rock made special by Cacie Dalager's winsome vocals, simultaneously sweet and sullen. I had been looking forward to experiencing that specialness live in August of '09, when they were slated to play the El Mocambo, but that show was cancelled when their van broke down for not the first time on that tour and given that apparently not many [...]
Frank Yang Thursday night's bill at The Horseshoe was both a repeat and an inversion of a show at The Garrison last October - that show was an introduction of sorts for the newly-buzzy Toronto folk outfit The Wilderness Of Manitoba and a final show for a while from London, Ontario's Olenka & The Autumn Lovers , who were coming off an extended tour and were turning their attention towards a new album. Thirteen months later, The Wilderness had converted their buzz into some genuine success on the back of their debut [...]
Oct 13, 2010, 4:28pm
MBV
Valerie Phillips When Why You Runnin' , the debut EP from Rock Island, Illinois native Elisabeth Maurus - aka Lissie - was released late last year, she was heralded as a bright new voice of the alt.country scene and indeed, her emotive voice and songwriting had the right balance of twang and rasp that she could well have become the next big crossover act for the genre. The problem with this was that in many ways, alt.country has become as rigid and codified a style as the Nashville scene that [...]
Valerie Phillips When Why You Runnin' , the debut EP from Rock Island, Illinois native Elisabeth Maurus - aka Lissie - was released late last year, she was heralded as a bright new voice of the alt.country scene and indeed, her emotive voice and songwriting had the right balance of twang and rasp that she could well have become the next big crossover act for the genre. The problem with this was that in many ways, alt.country has become as rigid and codified a style as the Nashville scene that [...]
Before we begin, if you didn't live in Southern Ontario or Western New York state in the early to mid '90s, then you'll need to read this for this post to have any sort of context. I was excited when I heard about The Lowest Of The Low being tapped to kick off the month-long 60th anniversary celebrations for the Horseshoe Tavern, having rediscovered my passion for the band earlier this year (see above linked post) and certainly liked the idea of seeing them again for the first time in over seven years. [...]
Local webmag SoundProof recently polled local music-types asking for their top 20 Toronto albums of all time - I was asked to participate but it's not a question I've ever really thought about so I wasn't able to get a decent response together by their deadline and so the the final list lacks my input. The exercise is interesting but the results rather dubious, with some of my main points of contention based more on the basis of whether I'd consider an act particularly "Torontonian" rather than their actual musical merit. For [...]
Chromewaves
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
SABRINA JOHNSTON + TIEFSCHWARTZ
THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF EDWYN COLLINS (Part 9)
American Idol Finalists: where are they now?
