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 […]

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 […]

Band: Vogue Dots EP: Toska Written by: Chiara DiAngelo The work of Babette Hayward (vocals) and Writers’ Strike Tynan Dunfield (production), Saint John/Halifax experimental electronic duo Vogue Dots is new on the scene. Having already inked a deal with Montreal’s Indica Records, their debut EP Toska was released May 6th. Vladimir Nabokov describes the Russian […]

Artist: Bry Webb Album: Free Will Written by: Chiara DiAngelo Playing a set last summer in the heart of Toronto’s Allan Gardens, Bry Webb said “all punk eventually goes acoustic or country.” Building on 2011’s Provider, the Constantines frontman once again looks inward, exploring an introspective – and often times, pessimistic – existence on second […]