Interviews
Staff Benda Bilili
It’s an oppressively muggy afternoon in Montreal, and the members of Staff Benda Bilili are gathered behind Club Soda for a pre-concert photo shoot. Across the road are two low-rent strip clubs; nearby, apparently, is a crack house; and security moves in as a belligerent, bleary-eyed street couple make a beeline for the band’s small catering table. Not the most salubrious of surroundings, but the musicians have seen worse — much, much worse.
Eternia & MoSS
Most of Canada’s best-known rappers have become successful by bucking hip-hop conventions. Drake tempers his hip-hop braggadocio with introspection; K’Naan puts American gangsta rap in stark perspective with his tales of Somalian violence, and k-os is as likely to collaborate with an orchestra as with a DJ. But the Ottawa-born Eternia is taking on the deepest-rooted conventions of them all.
The Roots
Onstage, The Roots are a whirlwind of energy. The members of the veteran hip-hop group march back and forth, chase each other around, intersperse their songs with blasting covers of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song and Kool & The Gang’s Jungle Boogie and jump into the crowd while still playing their instruments. You’d never guess that middle age was weighing on their minds.
Christian Scott
Four minutes into the opening track of his new album, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, Christian Scott works a solo up to fever pitch, blaring out an aggressive high note on his trumpet — when suddenly, off-mic, he lets out a long, loud bellow.
Laurie Anderson
It’s a strikingly sunny April day, and somewhere up above the sparkling east London alleyway where Laurie Anderson is sitting, a spreading ash cloud is threatening to strand her in the city. She looks up and smiles at the prospect: “It’s kinda great to just improvise, isn’t it?”
Gord Downie
If Gord Downie didn’t exist, Canada would have to invent him. After all, who else unites such a wide spectrum of Canadians, from sensitive nature-worshippers to surly, lager-swilling brawlers? On his new solo album, The Grand Bounce, the Tragically Hip front man even sings about how the two extremes can have more in common than one may suspect — although he comes down on the side of the softies.
Sharon Jones
Sharon Jones may be the hardest-working woman in the music business today, but despite all of her obligations, her enthusiasm is uncontainable. From a tour stop in Chicago, barely two minutes into our interview, she bursts into song. “I feel God gave me a gift, and this was my calling,” she says. “Like how they said on Singin’ in the Rain: ‘Gotta dance?’ I go-o-o-o-otta sing!’”
Holy Fuck
It’s one of the most versatile words in the English language, but the so-called “f-bomb” remains, for many, one of the most offensive. Not that this was a concern when Toronto’s Graham Walsh and Brian Borcherdt first deployed it in the name of their band — they just figured “Holy fuck,” as an expression of astonishment, was self-deprecating.
Caribou
When Caribou (a.k.a. Dan Snaith) won the 2008 Polaris Prize for his album Andorra, he celebrated in his own particular way: by disappearing back into his home studio in London, England. “Apart from a nice financial boost,” he says, “it was like nothing had happened.”
Courtney Love
“You can take me anywhere,” Courtney Love says. Had she made this statement five or six years ago, when she was busy flashing David Letterman, stumbling into Pamela Anderson and getting arrested with startling frequency, it would have ranked as one of her more outlandish pronouncements. But now, post-rehab, and with a powerful comeback album to promote, she sounds lucid and strikingly intelligent; she might even be eminently presentable – if a little manic.
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