
Facebook Custom dictates that for tenth anniversaries, the traditional gift is something made from tin and the modern equivalent is aluminum. Or diamond. How on earth do you get from tin to diamond? Happily, Toronto's Paper Bag Records pays no attention to such convention and to mark their tenth year of releasing great music from both Canada and abroad, they've opted to put together three nights of shows at The Great Hall from September 27 to 29 and featuring the best of their current roster as well as a surprise and welcome return [...]

Sonic Unyon Were the magical little elves in charge of categorizing music - be it in record store bins or the meta tags on MP3s - would like to take Halifax trio Kestrels and file them under "shoegaze", pointing to the heyday of Creation Records in describing their second album A Ghost History . And I'm not necessarily going to argue the point - it definitely owes more than a debt to the sounds of the early '90s, what with its roaring guitars and liberally reverbed vocals, but those expecting [...]

Frank Yang There's a point in the arc of the breakout band where long-time fans who've supported and encouraged the artist through those early days find themselves in the odd position of rubbing elbows not with the faithful but newbs and tourists, interested not in hearing the songs that soundtracked crucial points in their life but that one tune they heard on the radio. For fans of Vancouver duo Japandroids , that time has come and for those in Toronto, that specific moment was Saturday night where on the strength of their second album [...]

Here is this week's music singles chart for the week ending April 29 - May 5. This week's #1 goes to a split single with Xiu Xiu that was recently released on Record Store Day. It is Dirty Beaches with a Francoise Hardy cover. The song is dark, gloomy and creepy which is what I love! There are four new debuts from Purity Ring and The Danks. (whose debut album "Are You Afraid Of The Danks" is getting a release in the USA on May 22, 2012) Check it out! [...]

Norman Wong We're going to close out the week with some new and hopefully interesting stuff to listen to, domestic-style. Unless you're not Canadian in which case this will all be strange and foreign and exotic. Whoooooo! Last week, Bruce Peninsula were teasing on their website that something big was coming as of April 24 and they weren't kidding. And it's literally big - an epic-sized, three-part, almost 14-minute song cycle entitled "Of Songs" that takes the band's choral gospel-blues sound in unexpectedly experimental directions. It's available to stream - as below [...]