// Category Archive for: Music Reviews

Music Review: Prince, Art Official Age

By Tyler Hodg

The ever-enigmatic Prince returns with not one, but two new albums with help from his friends in 3RDEYEGIRL. With the first of the two—Art Official Age—Prince’s ambitions were to incorporate creativity and artistic value back into music. He is able to achieve this, also revealing that there are no guidelines in music, despite what mainstream pop artists often deliver.

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Music Review: Jen Wood, Wilderness

By Melissa Bratcher

How does writing an album on piano differ from writing an album with a guitar? For an answer, listen to indie/neo-folk singer Jen Wood’s new album, Wilderness. While her previous releases had been written on guitar, Wilderness is piano based and as a result, even at its quietest and most intimate, has a massive, almost filmic quality. The songs are deep and moving and meaningful, chronicling the last several years of her life.

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Music Review: Angela Moyra, Fickle Island

By Melissa Bratcher

Dutch singer-songwriter Angela Moyra’s stateside debut album is bound to the ocean. A charming, sweet, throwback record, Fickle Island is full of tropical vibes and lyrical imagery, and the accompanying laid back rhythms. It’s a sometimes-delightful debut.

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Music Review: Madeleine Peyroux, Keep Me In Your Heart For A While: The Best Of

By Noreen Sobczyk

When the first Madeleine Peyroux album was released, I was managing a corporate store and gave her non-offensive easy jazz debut a lot of play. I remember thinking, “she’s got a nice voice, even if it is Billie Holiday’s.” She had the chops, but lacked emotional conviction. Since it was her debut I thought perhaps she would find her own artistic voice on her sophomore release.

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Music Review: Sons Of Bill, Love & Logic

By Melissa Bratcher

On their fourth album, Charlottesville, Virginia outfit Sons of Bill (brothers Abe, James and Sam Wilson are literally, sons of Bill) return with glorious harmonies, thoughtful, literate lyrics, and some excellent musicianship. Produced by former Wilco drummer (and Grammy-nominated producer), Ken Cooner, Love & Logic is the sonic equivalent to wispy clouds scudding across a full moon. It’s arresting and loaded with hooks, but also at times deeply lonesome.

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Music Review: The Rural Alberta Advantage, Mended With Gold

By Melissa Bratcher

On their third album, Mended With Gold, The Rural Alberta Advantage continue to make hooky, emotion-heavy, often gorgeous, folk-ish music. There’s an epic quality to Mended With Gold that exists in the quiet moments of introspection in frontman Nils Edenloff’s songs: a feeling of space and loneliness, and a feeling of hope. It’s a really good record. I wish Friday Night Lights was still on, because these songs would be perfect soundtrack fodder.

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Music Review: Luke Winslow-King, Everlasting Arms

By Melissa Bratcher

New Orleans transplant Luke Winslow-King is spreading his ever so creative wings and trying a new musical direction. Sort of. Not every song on his new album Everlasting Arms hews to his faithful reproductions of pre-war, deep South music (though those are the best tracks), and he tries on some rockabilly pants and samba beats for size. The results are mixed.

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Concert Review: Thank You Scientist/Coheed And Cambria at Kool Haus

By Tyler Hodg

Toronto, ON
October 1, 2014

On October 1, New York prog-rockers Coheed and Cambria treated their fans in Toronto to a night they won’t soon forget. Eleven years after its initial release, the album In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 breathes fresh air with the band playing it in its entirety on a 25-date North American tour. Bringing along their friends Thank You Scientist, Coheed and Cambria tore the roof off of the Kool Haus and celebrated not only the album that brought them success, but also their fans for their endless support.

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Music Review: Zola Jesus, TAIGA

By Ben van D

If Frozen were a greasepaint opera, a Brechtian musical set in a hinterland abyss, and directed by Robert Wilson, it would bear a passable resemblance to TAIGA. “Let It Go” would fit in surprisingly well with the themes of self-reinvention and severance from the tethers of the past running through Zola Jesus’s (Nika Danilova) latest offering. Even the winter woodland setting from which the album draws its name is a parallel. None of these are to TAIGA‘s detriment, however. This is markedly a pop album, more so by far than any of Danilova’s offerings to date, and any passing likeness to Disney’s ubiquitous pop monster hit is a feather in its cap.

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Music Review: Lowell, We Loved Her Dearly

By Less Lee Moore

You live in a man’s world, I live in my own world.
I tell you I don’t want you anymore.
—Lowell, “I Love You Money”

Imagine if there were a female singer/songwriter/musician who’s a Britney Spears-loving feminist, a former stripper who self-identifies as bisexual, and who has synasthesia. And imagine that her music is poppy and provocative and that she sings like both an angel and a banshee. That person is real and her name is Lowell.

Lowell first came to my attention earlier this year with her dynamic and delightful EP I Killed Sara V. (review). Its first track, “Cloud 69,” is a unique slice of sugary, sexy pop and like nothing else I’ve heard. We Loved Her Dearly contains that EP’s five tracks plus seven more and it’s going to blow your mind and break your heart.

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