Music
Album Review: Calvin Harris – Motion
Nearly seven years after his first album, I Created Disco (2007), Calvin Harris continues to be a relevant fixture at house parties, summer festivals, and clubs everywhere. His latest production, Motion, strays further away from the dance-pop that defined his previous album, 18 Months (2012), and provides a more somber[Read More…]
Gas Girl’s flame is futile
Written by Canadian playwright Donna Michelle St. Bernard, Gas Girls is an aesthetically intricate play that shares the story of two African girls who survive by trading sex for gasoline, which they then sell for cash. Loosely based on a real-life occurrence in Zimbabwe, the play has immense potential to[Read More…]
Music soars, plot sinks in God Help The Girl
Focusing on the subtle insecurities and adult tragedies that plague young women emerging from adolescence, God Help the Girl provides a surreal look at an improbable situation. The film centres around Eve (Emily Browning), a young woman being treated for anorexia nervosa who aspires to be a musician. Visually, the[Read More…]
Deep Cuts: Songs that Give you the Creeps
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) Artist: Nancy Sinatra Album: How Does That Grab You? Released: January 1, 1966 Originally written by Sonny Bono and recorded by Cher, this song has been covered by a number of great artists since then, but no version is quite so[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: A tale of two musicians
When I heard Neil Young would be putting out an album on Nov. 4, the same day that Bruce Cockburn was set to release his autobiography, along with a nine-disc collection of career-spanning music, it got me thinking about how the two artists relate to one another. Young needs no[Read More…]
Album Review: Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2
Stop whatever you’re doing and go download Run The Jewels 2. Screw your essays and midterms—sit down, hit play, and feel yourself melt into the beats of the fellows who are slaughtering the game. Run the Jewels—consisting of New York rapper/producer El-P and Atlanta rapper Killer Mike—started up officially in[Read More…]
Album Review: T.I. – Paperwork
If T.I., known as the King of the South, has accomplished anything with his latest album, Paperwork, it has arguably been nothing more than demoting him to the title: “Prince of the Disjointed.” The album features a broad spectrum of techniques and musical genres culminating in an uneven sound that[Read More…]
Deep Cuts: Joyful Hip-Hop
Eye Know Artist: De La Soul Album: 3 Feet High and Rising Released: March 3, 1989 This is perhaps the most unabashedly romantic song in the history of rap. De La Soul, the original hippies of hip-hop, crafts a song that tracks the trajectory of a relationship from courtship to[Read More…]
Album Review: Caribou – Our Love
Canadian composer Daniel Snaith has followed the success of Swim (2010) with his sixth studio album, Our Love. Snaith, known by his stage name Caribou, continues to push the edges of experimental electronic music. Upbeat hip-hop vocals overlaid with gritty beats creates a Drake-meets-James Blake vibe that pushes listeners to[Read More…]