“Chainsaw” Artist: Ramones Album: Ramones Released: February 4, 1976 This song begins with a chainsaw. Jonny Ramone’s heavily distorted, relentless guitar keeps up that chainsaw sound throughout—power chords, power chords, and more power chords—and Joey Ramone’s doo-wop, ooooh-oh-oh vocals don’t even try to disguise the fact that the song is[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Earl Sweatshirt – I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside
“I’ve never been behind myself this much,” Los Angeles-based rapper, producer, and Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt said about his second LP, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. However, Earl’s confidence is more self-effacing and anti-social than Kendrick Lamar’s self-love anthem “i” or Drake’s grocery list of achievements[Read More…]
Peer Review: Mountain of Servants
Sometimes, amazing things can be the product of pure chance and timing. This is exactly the case with Daniel Lombroso’s documentary, Mountain of Servants, which documents the Syriacs, a dwindling minority in Eastern Turkey. Lombroso is a U3 Political Science major here at McGill University who grew up in Westchester[Read More…]
Deep Cuts: Dark Undertones
Chainsaw Artist: Ramones Album: Ramones Released: February 4, 1976 This song begins with a chainsaw. Jonny Ramone’s heavily distorted, relentless guitar keeps up that chainsaw sound throughout—power chords, power chords, and more power chords—and Joey Ramone’s doo-wop, ooooh-oh-oh vocals don’t even try to disguise the fact that the song is[Read More…]
Redemption Songs
“Why are you bothering to do good for people who have done so much bad?” As the founder of Pros and Cons, a pilot program that gives musical mentorship to prison inmates, Hugh Christopher Brown has put a lot of thought into this question. Ultimately for him, the answer comes[Read More…]
10,000 hours in 84 minutes
Seymour: An Introduction, the new documentary from actor/director Ethan Hawke, focuses on pianist Seymour Bernstein, but it’s really an in-depth look at the search for greatness. Without taking attention away from Bernstein, who’s given a treatment bordering on hagiographic—and deservedly so—the film becomes a guide to those seeking answers to[Read More…]
Album Review: Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar is at his best when he embraces the contradictions that define his life. He is one of the most famous rappers alive, but feels stifled by his culture and his past. He’s outwardly full of bravado and bluster, yet unable to get past his crippling self-doubt. Fame has[Read More…]
Peer Review: Bring Your Own Juice
It is no surprise that McGill, a school of academia and research, is reputable for its political groups, newspapers, and environmental activism. Yet, comedy often fades into the background almost unnoticed. How ironic is it that in Montreal, a city that’s home to the Just for Laughs headquarters and festival,[Read More…]
Inside the Echo Chamber
We are in the midst of a culture war where the personal and the political are becoming increasingly intertwined. A new discourse of social consciousness is emerging as the generation that was born in a world with ostensible equity across racial, sexual, and gender lines comes of age and realizes[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: A fresh perspective? It’s a boat time
The airing of the show Fresh Off The Boat (FOTB) on ABC was met with much fanfare and hype. The show—based off the life of chef Eddie Huang, as numerous blog sites were quick to note—was the first TV show in American mainstream media starring Asian Americans since All-American Girl[Read More…]
