Saturday, September 6, 2014 We wound down summer festival season by attending our first Riot Fest. While smaller versions of the festival took place in Toronto at Fort York the last two years, this year offered an expanded line-up at Downsview Park. Having rained hard the night before, we made the trek north under grey […]

Band: Shovels & Rope Album: Swimmin’ Time Written by: Chiara DiAngelo South Carolina husband-and-wife duo Shovels & Rope offer up homegrown, frill-less, and at times even crass, Americana on their sophomore album, Swimmin’ Time. Appropriately filled with water imagery, the album ebbs and flows, weaving like a river, as it eases back and forth between […]

Date of show: August 30, 2014 Written by: Chiara DiAngelo Toronto’s Dangerband has been pretty quiet this year. That’s because the band no longer exists. The five-piece featuring Rane Elliott-Armstrong (vocals, guitar), Lucas Meilach-Boston (vocals, guitar), Jackson Beyer (vocals, bass), Jacob Stanescu (keyboard, synthesizer), and Chai Elliott-Armstrong (drums) emerged from semi-hiatus on the last long […]

Sunday, July 27, 2014 Workshop: Marmalade Skies (Lake Stage, 11AM) The Hillside Sunday Gospel Session has the power to make even the staunchest non-believers believe in something, anything. This year’s country-blues lineup of Elephant Revival, Red Moon Road, Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar, and Spirit Family Reunion was hard to pass up, but we instead […]

Date of show: August 28, 2014 Hanson

Saturday, July 26, 2014 Workshop: The First Days are the Hardest (Island Stage, 11AM) The first days can be the hardest, but not when they begin with a workshop featuring Winnipeg’s Royal Canoe and Seryn from Denton, Texas. With six people in each band, the stage was overflowing with musicians as they joined in on […]

Friday, July 25, 2014 We’ve been going to Hillside Festival in Guelph for three years now, and while this weekend didn’t have the greatest ending (Sunday night’s schedule got rained out), it’s still a weekend we look forward to all year! There are certain things about the festival that never change: the excitement felt getting […]

Band: The Gaslight Anthem Album: Get Hurt Written by: Chiara DiAngelo There’s a line in “Selected Poems” that recounts “And all in all I find that nothing stays the same.” It’s true. The Gaslight Anthem’s Get Hurt is not the same. The band’s punk edge of the Sink or Swim days has faded over the […]

Sunday, July 6, 2014 Jon Langford & The Burlington Welsh Male Chorus (East Stage, 12:45PM) Devin Cuddy (South Stage, 12:50PM) The third day of a festival is often tough and can prove difficult to drag yourself to the grounds early. It was however worth the early morning in order to catch Devin Cuddy, whose set […]

Saturday, July 5, 2014 Caitlin Rose (South Stage, 1:10PM) Day 2 of the festival began early in the afternoon, with Caitlin Rose on the South Stage. Boasting a voice more massive than you’d initially expect, a typical country starlet Rose is not. The Nashville native spun tenderhearted Opry-worthy ballads doused in the whiskey and cigarette […]