It would be easy to list the reasons why the Toronto knockoff of Jersey Shore—with the face palm worthy title Lake Shore—is an awful idea. So here goes. First, I think we can all agree that we’re sick of Jersey Shore. The flare-up cultural phenomenon’s success is based on its[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Montreal’s Stars shine bright
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…]
Zooming in on the magic of the everyday
(3.bp.blogspot.com) In his current exhibit at the McCord Museum, Hungarian-born photographer Gabor Szilasi documents “The Eloquence of the Everyday” over 30 years and two continents. Through both black and white and colour images, Szilasi focuses on a variety of features that make up the everyday: urban and rural architecture, private[Read More…]
Mary Halvorson Quintet: Saturn Sings
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…]
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
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…]
Between a rock and a hard place
digitaltrends.com Two years after the release of director Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire comes 127 Hours, a film based on the terrifying true story of adventure seeker Aron Ralston (James Franco). Ralston inadvertently has his right arm pinned between a boulder and a cavern wall during an afternoon hike in the[Read More…]
Chiddy Bang: The Preview
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…]
Sweet Thing : Sweet Thing
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…]
Chemical Brothers : Further
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…]
A night at the museum
Perhaps one of Montreal’s best kept secrets is the Contemporary Art Museum’s Nocturnes—a program that aims to combine three Montreal pastimes: music, art, and socializing. The part-gallery exhibit, part-concert series is a cultural hybrid where those interested in both mediums can comingle on the first Friday of each month. The[Read More…]
