Music
Album Review: Rihanna
A curious thing happens midway through Rihanna’s fifth album. After emoting her way through an overproduced power ballad complete with a screamingly wanky guitar solo (California King Bed), she rolls out a tinny keyboard and rhythm box playing a reggae beat, and starts singing about shooting a man in a train station. The song, Man Down, is both sinister and silly: At last, it sounds as if she’s actually letting her hair down.
Book Review: Keith Richards
Two-thirds of the way through his sprawling autobiography, Keith Richards pauses for a rare moment of introspection. “Image is like a long shadow,” he offers. “It’s impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were.”
Album Review: Bryan Ferry
Kate Moss lounges upside-down on the cover of Bryan Ferry’s latest album, glammed up like a Roxy Music babe from the ’70s, her hair splayed out and her mouth slightly open, expectant. The album’s title casts her in a modern-day version of Edouard Manet’s infamous painting Olympia, which itself referred back to Renaissance paintings of lounging Venuses.
Timber Timbre
It was a banner summer for Canadian musicians: Arcade Fire, Justin Bieber, Drake and K’naan planted our flag proudly atop global charts. But if purveyors of anthems to arenas overwhelm you, may we suggest Timber Timbre. Their self-titled third album is a stark, eerie collection of off-centre blues and folk that sneaks up on listeners like a “night crawler crawlin’ out in the yard”—a typical image from one of singer Taylor Kirk’s songs. With European festivals ahead and a new album in the works, Timber Timbre are ready to bring their music to the world—in as self-effacing a way as possible.
Album Review: Le Noise by Neil Young
Each new Neil Young album offers something unexpected, and his 33rd is no different: It’s the first he’s ever named in Franglais. Perhaps the California resident is feeling nostalgic for the country of his birth, and indeed, he references Toronto in two of the album’s eight tracks. But the title is also a pun on the name of Canadian producer Daniel Lanois, whose sonic interventions help make Le Noise one of Young’s strongest-ever albums in concept and execution.
Polaris Prize
As an electro/hip-hop party band who sing in Chiac (an Acadian mix of French and English) about such topics as gender anxiety, smooth jazz and deck shoes, Radio Radio would seem to be aiming for a rather particular niche market. And yet, media across the country are debating the merits of their third album, Belmundo Regal. For this, they have the Polaris Prize to thank.
Movies & Music at the Toronto International Film Festival
The Soundtrack Takes Centre Stage Album sales may be stagnant, and the summer touring season was a let-down, but no one seems to be tiring of stories about musicians. Consider, if you will, the unstoppable run of music-competition reality shows, the recent spate of heavy-metal memoirs, the runaway success of Glee, and the fact that [...]
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.
Montreal Jazz Festival 2010
Parsing the State of the Genre The Montreal Jazz Festival has promoted some dubious headliners this year — Steve Miller Band and The Moody Blues, take a bow — but not all is lost. Those curious about the state of jazz and improvised music could still catch an impressive cross-section of progressive-minded acts. Culled by [...]
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.
