Rating: 4.5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Let’s just say it, get it out in the open, so then we can just realize that it is absolutely irrelevant and move on: Kathleen Edwards is dating Bon Iver front man Justin Vernon. We good? Ok! Moving on…
Posted in Country + Western, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Somehow—and likely this is a larger question of music history in general—the blues seem to transcend trend and popularity, bringing The Black Keys with them. It further seems that no matter the state of pop music, no matter what is crazy, popular and floating all over the internet, [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy “We had a different name. It was Sparrow and then it was Oh Sparrow but then we […] just couldn’t use it and I was in my dad’s basement looking at book titles and I saw one that was called “Imaginary Beings” and one that said “Invisible Cities” and we liked the [...]
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: Trent Depue For The UK’s James Morrison, his third release The Awakening is an attempt at something of a personal re-emergence. Following the recent passing of his father, the subject matter revolves largely around that topic.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 3.5 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov The Darcys hearken back to a not-so-distant past when Canadian indie rock didn’t require a 15-person band with six percussionists. When “handclaps and gang vocals” was a punch line from a Tragically Hip song, not a prerequisite to releasing an album.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov Much has been said about Dan Mangan’s precipitous rise to fame. Not only has he cultivated a dedicated group of fans, he’s also earned the elusive fawning of the media. Simply put, it’s hard to find anyone with a bad thing to say about him.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy A somewhat well-known Canadian playwright once said that good writing, good art and good thinking should fetishize one specific question and one questions only: who are you now? (Who am I now? Who are we now?) and clearly he isn’t alone in this thinking.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
Rating: 2.5 / 5 Reviewer: Michelle Kennedy Thirty-some years ago, Rick Carnes uttered the five most argued about words in combination in the history of rock and roll: “Rock and Roll is dead.” Since that utterance bands across the globe have been working hard to prove Carnes wrong – the Arkells are not among them.
Posted in Music Reviews, Rock + Pop
