Tuesday, April 23 2013
Ólöf Arnalds: Sudden Elevation
On her third full length Ólöf Arnalds marries tradition and innovation. The language she does it in hardly matters.
Monday, February 20 2012
John McCutcheon: This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America
The ever-relevant songbook of folk's immortal influence comes to life again.
Thursday, November 10 2011
Various Artists: Whaur the Pig Gaed on the Spree
The singers throughout the album, in universal folk song tradition, take on the voices of the poor and the pressured, which are the voices of themselves.
Tuesday, July 12 2011
The Tragically Hip Hippies of Yorkville, Toronto, in ‘Making the Scene’
This book astutely charts the transformative effect of Yorkville as a community, revealing it be a place that was greatly changed over the course of a few scant years.
Monday, October 11 2010
Great Big Sea: Safe Upon the Shore
Great Big Sea is, at its heart, a party band, and there is pretty much one thing that its music is a soundtrack to in Canada: drinking your face off.
Friday, June 18 2010
Pete Seeger… Un Hombre Sincero
These two documents transport listeners and viewers back to the heart of the civil rights era and reaffirm Seeger's creation of a truly global music of conscience that can transcend the limitations of its local translations.
Thursday, June 17 2010
‘Cigar Box Banjo’ Is a Nice Parting Gift From One of Canada’s Most Talented Writers
Cigar Box Banjo is less a memoir than it is an epitaph: Paul Quarrington wanted to be taken seriously as a bluesman, less so as an author.
Friday, May 28 2010
Race in America, Race in Music: Different Trains, Same Two Tracks
It's an American pop music creation myth: that blues and folk music developed along two distinct tracks, with their own distinct traditions, divided along racial lines. The truth is, of course, far more slippery and complicated.
Friday, February 26 2010
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
What starts as a comforting, peaceful collection of songs becomes vaguely and unfortunately workmanlike after more than 10 tracks.
Monday, November 2 2009
Herman Düne + Julie Doiron: 29 October 2009 - Chicago
Words and Pictures by Kirstie Shanley
