Lay it On Me
Self-distributed
Waa-BOOM! With an album title ripped from frontman Ryan Hoben’s muscleman tattoos, indiefolkrocksters Minto punch it open with sludgy dirge, “New Bones” – formerly a chooglin’ alt-country number i...
Best of 2016: The Garage received a lot of blues CDs this year and all of them were above standard, but ultimately had to be judged for other reasons of personality, believability, skill and versatility, etc. Take a bow Michael Kaeshammer a...
The Red Hot Lovers had their cd release party and last show ever on the same night. Talk about rock stars. I would be worried about doing that based on the fact that you might end up with a box of cds in your closet. Hopefully this doesn’...
Derek Miller
The Dirty Looks
Arbor
I try to balance the good and bad in my reviews, even if I'm not into the style. I don't like saying it, but the sophomore album from Ontario's Derek Miller thoroughly sucks. It sounds like a bar band...
ENGLISH MOTETS
The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park · Hyperion CDA68256
The Gesualdo Six hardly need a review of this their debut CD: within days of its release around Easter it was top of the iTunes classical chart. The CD is a collection of E...
Unfamiliar Records.
The scene has been hit by the sharp sounds of a new five piece: The Clips. The debut album Matterhorn is made of raw, electric energy mingling among melodies. Lyrically, the album is freeform, created strictly from wh...
Find someone who thinks tapes aren’t cool and I’ll shove my Sony Walkman up his bum. Tapes are still rad and this Anion tape is no different. It’s red in colour and resembling the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles soundtrack cassette tape ...
Produced by Hawksley Workman, Wind Up/Let Go is a tasty, ten-track synth-pop treat.
BLACK MOUNTAIN
In The Future
Jagjaguwar
When I hear Stephen McBean’s slowly-picked A-minor guitar intro for “Stormy High,” I’m almost tricked into thinking it’s a cover of “Hell’s Bells,” but then the swing-time Black...
Metal Blade Records
Bison is the most hyped band in Vancouver right now. Sometimes hype can be a tough thing to deal with, but these fuckers keep coming through every time. Every show is better than the next, so every album is obviously ...
Bill Johnson contributes eight originals to his Still Blue, each one a fine example of a contemporary blues song, not merely a retread of a familiar 12 bar theme, and each sung in his evocative voice. The variety of approaches, from the sne...