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…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
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…]
Album Review: Marina & the Diamonds – Froot
Welsh singer Marina Diamandis (stage-name Marina & the Diamonds) has previously been somewhat unsuccessful in cultivating her own identity within the much-crowded pop music scene. Her debut, The Family Jewels (2010), was a rather garish, cock-a-hoop record, and 2012’s Electra Heart suffered from over-collaboration due to Marina’s route-one scramble for[Read More…]
Deep Cuts: Songs for my future wedding
God Only Knows Artist: Beach Boys Album: Pet Sounds Released: May 16, 1966 This wonderful, harmonically complex, feel-good track is not always rightfully recognized as one of the greatest tracks of the 1960s. According to the songwriters, it is a story told from the point of view of a man[Read More…]
Album Review: Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell
Asthmatic Kitty Records recently gave us an initial glimpse of Sufjan Stevens’ seventh studio album, Carrie and Lowell, by releasing YouTube videos for his new tracks “Should Have Known Better” and “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross.” The former is a montage of extended still camera shots that[Read More…]
Back to Bukowski’s future
In an age dominated by tweets and texts, it is quite easy to forget—or at least be distanced from—the chaos and warfare that ravages the world today. Kim Kardashian ‘breaks’ the Internet while Russia breaks international laws. Dresses change from white to blue on Facebook while the situation in Syria[Read More…]
Album Review: Joel Plaskett – Joel Plaskett & The Park Avenue Sobriety Test
In “Lightning Bolt,” the opening track from his previous album, Scrappy Happiness (2012), Joel Plaskett sings, “This is our only chance/ For some happenstance.” Now, on the verge of turning 40, the Nova Scotian rock veteran has decided to keep the temporal meditations coming on his latest album, Joel Plaskett[Read More…]
Iran gets spaghetti westernized in latest film
Director Ana Lily Amirpour is billing A Girl Walks Home at Night Alone as Iran’s first vampire spaghetti western, as though vampire spaghetti western is a popular genre in Hollywood. While entirely in Farsi and featuring an Iranian cast, the film was shot in southern California, which barely passes for Iran. The[Read More…]
