The soft-spoken, good-humored voice on the phone line clashed with what I had been listening to only moments before: Heavy drum beats, rolling bass, guitar riffs, and resonant Inuit throat singing. All of these feature on Nicolas Pirti-Duplessis otherwise known as Arctistic’s new album, Anirniq. Slightly over 40 minutes long,[Read More…]
Album Reviews
‘My 21st Century Blues’ ditches the restraining diktats of music labels
Raye’s debut album, My 21st Century Blues, triumphantly arrives after years of the singer-songwriter battling with an unsupportive record label. With this new project, released on Feb. 3, the British artist charts an independent path with the distribution and artist services company Human Re Sources. Pain, frustration, and the difficult[Read More…]
Joesef’s ‘Permanent Damage’ delves into the messiness of breakups
On Jan. 13, Joesef released his debut album, Permanent Damage, a soulful and intimate ode to his chaotic romantic relationships. The ominous title describes the indelible mark that love and subsequent heartbreak can leave on a person. A honey-soaked voice and confessional, explorative lyrics characterize the Scottish singer-songwriter, who moved[Read More…]
‘Five Easy Hot Dogs’: Mac DeMarco’s listless instrumental road trip
Mac DeMarco was trying to break out of an artistic rut, a process that led to the conception of his latest project, Five Easy Hot Dogs. The album, released on Jan. 20, follows DeMarco’s road trip after a Bay Area show in mid-January of last year. He began driving north[Read More…]
‘NO THANK YOU’ poignantly hits back at the music industry
Something felt off amidst the accolades lavished upon Little Simz following her 2021 Mercury Prize-winning record Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Be it by awarding her Best New Artist at the Brit Awards in 2022, despite having just released her fourth album in a decade-plus career, or through the postponement[Read More…]
Arctic Monkeys return to earth with grandiose inconsistency
Arctic Monkeys are no strangers to reinvention, having pursued a range of musical directions since emerging as part of the mid-2000s garage-rock revival. On The Car, however, the band continues down the path set out on 2018’s left-field, lounge-infused Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, refining their approach with new baroque-pop influences[Read More…]
‘The Loneliest Time’ offers up a mixed bag of delights and let-downs
As a long-time Carly Rae Jepsen lover, I have been eagerly awaiting new music since her last project, 2019’s Dedicated and the accompanying Dedicated Side B (2020). While Jepsen’s sixth studio album, The Loneliest Time, certainly doesn’t disappoint, it doesn’t quite knock your socks off either. Released on Oct. 21,[Read More…]
Miss Americana is back, and so is her pop persona
It’s 11:59 on a Thursday night. My friend and I wait with bated breath in Milton B, hurriedly refreshing Spotify. We’re not waiting for the café’s mediocre WiFi to load—we are waiting to listen to Midnights, Taylor Swift’s latest album. I knew all too well that the impending release would[Read More…]
The 1975’s new album is a triumph of genre-mixing tracks
The 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language is an eclectic new album that encapsulates the band’s shift into genre-mixing assortments. Filled with lively synth sounds—courtesy of star producer Jack Antonoff’s production—unlike The 1975’s previous work, the album abandons their alt-rock origins in favour of jazzier, pop notes. “The 1975”[Read More…]
Alvvays embrace expansive shoegaze in a bold development of their sound
Though it took Alvvays five years to produce the follow-up to 2017’s Antisocialites, their third record Blue Rev proves to be worth the wait. The band grappled with several setbacks in the album’s production, including the theft of their early demo tapes, the destruction of their equipment in a basement[Read More…]
