How DIY music is staying alive despite Ticketmaster dominance
Rosie Long Decter
In 2016, Felix Viton Ho showed up at La Vitrola on St. Laurent in Montreal, not sure what to expect. An undergraduate looking to feel involved in something, Ho had Googled “Montreal concerts” and come across the show listing. He climbed three flights of stairs and entered the dimly lit venue to find a crowd […] More »
Many are caught up in her legal battles and conservatorship, but more people should be paying attention to Britney Spears’s music
Sydney Urbanek
“Sometimes people’s … personal life becomes bigger than their work,” says pop star Britney Spears at one point during Framing Britney Spears, the New York Times-produced documentary released in February 2021. Though the complaint backgrounds a montage of Spears being chased around by paparazzi in the late 2000s, it may as well have been issued […] More »
Pop singer Halsey begins her 2020 album, Manic, with a quote from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.” It’s hard to imagine Katy Perry or even Lady Gaga starting a record the same way 10 years ago, but in today’s music […] More »
Pantayo mixes traditional Filipino music with contemporary pop and rock
Rosie Long Decter
We were teaching ourselves something that we didn’t know,” says Kat Estacio, co-founder of Toronto’s Pantayo, a quintet blending traditional Filipino kulintang music with Western pop and rock styles. That’s partly why it took eight years between the ensemble’s first practice in 2012 and the release of their self-titled debut earlier this year. As with […] More »
Tamara Lindeman, also known as Toronto singer-songwriter The Weather Station, doesn’t mince words when it comes to climate change. Asked whether she thinks the music industry is finally waking up to the global crisis, her answer is a swift no. “People talk about feeling guilty more,” she says. “This doesn’t mean anything is changing.” Lindeman […] More »
When You've Built a Shrine to Your Problematic Fave
mel monoceros
Dear Bjork, The year leading up to my 30th birthday almost killed me, quite literally. The stress from my living situation at the time was pushing me to the edge of my sanity. I was living in a place I didn’t want to be in because I had gotten priced out of the place I’d […] More »
From his time studying classical music in the 1960s to decades spent writing songs and performing on CBC’s Mr. Dressup, Glenn Copeland has long been interested in looking inwards to “the core of one’s own being.” Seventy-five and a practicing Buddhist, he has never been too concerned with signifiers of success or following musical trends. […] More »
The music explainer is the new review, and it has the potential to improve our understanding of music criticism
Drew Crocker
Photo by Gavin Whitner “Music criticism is dead,” proclaimed Dan Kopf emphatically on culture website Quartzy this past spring. In the present streaming era, when you can easily discover music on your own, the “music explainer,” in the form of podcasts, is where it’s at, he argued. Why consider secondhand opinions when you can hear […] More »
Inside Mark V. Campbell's ...Everything Remains Raw
Maria Siassina
…Everything Remains Raw: Photographing Toronto’s hip hop culture from analogue to digital By Mark V. Campbell Goose Lane Editions, $35.00 Mark V. Campbell’s …Everything Remains Raw is an in-depth look at Toronto’s burgeoning hip-hop scene from the 1980s until present day. It also explores how the city helped mold hip-hop culture. The book is a collection of […] More »
The group is queering everything from Top 40 songs to your favourite Disney movie soundtrack
Jeff Miller
On stage, a group of classical musicians dressed in formal evening wear hold their string, brass, and woodwind instruments. Making their final preparations before playing, they check their tuning, adjust their seats, and arrange sheet music on the stands in front of them. A pianist sits to one side, and a drummer near the back. […] More »
Amplify Her tells the story of seven female electronic artists and their careers
Melissa Gonik
What unique perspective do women bring to the arts? This is the question west-coast filmmakers Ian MacKenzie and Nicole Sorochan want their audience to think about, especially within the realm of female DJs with their transmedia project, Amplify Her. Through a documentary-style, feature-length film, a graphic novel, and a motion comic series, Amplify Her tells […] More »