Album Reviews: St. Vincent, Natalie Bergman, The Vaccines

 St. Vincent — Daddy's Home (Dallas, TX) The more she dives into full-blown art-pop, the more Annie Clark's music demands repeat listens to really get into it. In a record that infuses her style with a bit of soul-era-Bowie swagger, Clark is definitely pushing limits, and playing a more take-it-or-leave-it

Album Reviews: La Femme, Lost Girls, Serpentwithfeet

 La Femme — Paradigmes (Biarritz/Paris, France) With a constant sense of quirk and dark pop, La Femme always bring a unique voice to their records. With the theatrics mixing into their dark pop in a more subtle way, they evolve themselves first here rather than trying to change all of pop

Talking jazz with Mike Essoudry

 Just two years ago the Ottawa Citizen’s Peter Hum suggested that local drummer Mike Essoudry was “downsizing musically”. At the time, a musician who’d surrounded himself with big sounding big bands of up to ten members had decided to pair things down to something smaller. Even at that, there was

The Record Centre puts a new spin on the growing vinyl market

 Photos by Andre Gagne John Thompson isn’t afraid to go on the record. In fact, he welcomes it! What do you do when you have about 15,000 records at home with a want to only increase that mountain of LPs, 45s and 12”s? Well, if you’re Thompson the only logical

Speaking the Language with Julie Corrigan

 Photo courtesy of Jen Squires Born and raised in Shawville, Quebec, to a family of musicians, it’s no surprise that Julie Corrigan took easily to strumming the guitar. With a fiddle-playing grandfather, a guitarist for a father and a mother who’s a natural on the piano and mandolin, music is in Julie’s

Levi Hart Kicks Off ‘My Kind of Night’

 ‘THAT is My Kind of Night!’ are the words roaring from radios across Canada, since Levi Hart released his new country hit on September 25. Recorded in June in Nashville, Tennessee, Hart’s new hit ‘My Kind of Night’ has made great headway, quickly landing airplay on international radio broadcasting networks, and has been

Suns of Stone: Ottawa’s Edgier, Old-school Rock Band

 2014 is already proving to be the year of Suns of Stone, Ottawa’s rising rock band with a comparative edge that echoes the classic anthems of the 70s with southern/blues influences in a more contemporary sound. Recently signing a European distribution deal through Bad Reputation for their self-titled album, the