The Tribune

youarestars.com Celebrating their 10th birthday, Canadian indie-pop act Stars are proving that their success hasn’t been a fluke. Currently based in Montreal, Stars—a four-man, one-woman act—recently released their fifth full-length album, The Five Ghosts, the band’s first release on its own label, Soft Revolution. After a summer-long tour testing and[Read More…]

This is tense, spooky music with a delightfully playful side. In Saturn Sings, her second album on the Firehouse 12 label, Mary Halvorson adds alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson to her already formidable trio with drummer Ches Smith and bassist John Hébert.   Without Halvorson, that combination[Read More…]

Before the release of his latest album, few doubted Kanye West’s ability to one-up himself given his talent, money, and endless supply of industry connections. So it should come as no surprise that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is just as spectacularly excessive as we could have hoped.    There[Read More…]

Chiddy Bang has been on the scene since February 2009, but they didn’t release their first single, “Opposite of Adults”—sampling MGMGMT‘s “Kids”—until a year later. Over that time Chiddy Bang has generated a lot of hype, becoming a widely played university favourite and lauded as everything from “a hipster’s wet[Read More…]

For an album that was touted as the cementing of Katy Perry’s abilities as a credible singer/songwriter, Teenage Dream sure missed the mark. It’s bubblegum pop at its most extreme (read: cotton candy-scented liner notes!), and most of the lyrics are about as trite and non-poetic as those on a[Read More…]

With their self-titled debut, it’s easy to see that Toronto’s Sweet Thing have Top 40 ambitions. Whether or not they’ll get there remains to be seen. The album certainly contains elements that suggest they will: the punchy guitars of “Gun,” the shimmering synths of “Lazy Susan,” and the soaring vocals[Read More…]

Released earlier this year, the Chemical Brothers’ seventh effort, Further, can start to sound like a concert album after a few plays. Unlike many of the Brothers’ earlier releases, the album captures the raw intensity and structureless flow of a live set, filled with unexpected drops, blips, and volume shifts.[Read More…]

In this climate of all-things vampire, it is no surprise that Montreal’s Camp Broadway is now performing Dracula: The Musical. Based on Dracula, the Bram Stoker novel, the musical attempts to stay true to the classic Victorian tale—but this time, the story is propelled by dramatic musical numbers. With music[Read More…]

Kelsea Whittle Creating music isn’t always easy with 23 people, but it’s something Effusion, one of McGill’s a cappella groups, manages to achieve. “It is a huge feat for us to create a tight sound with so many people,” says President Kelsea Whittle. Effusion held auditions at the beginning of[Read More…]

Burlington, Ontario’s Sandman Viper Command’s debut album, Everybody See This, is a blend of both complex and simple songs played with a chemistry that can only come from being best friends. SVC has a raw, retro, garage rock feel, which gives off an authentic youthful rage. The theme of the[Read More…]