Lowell’s bold, new vision for a women- and girl-friendly pop future POP SINGER-SONGWRITER Lowell has recently been experiencing a recurring dream in which she’s robbing a bank, then driving away on a motorbike with her lesbian lover. Given the surreal imagery in the videos for her songs “The Bells” and “Cloud 69,” it’s easy to […] More »

With this his final column in the print edition of This, MASON WRIGHT begins a regular series profiling independent Canadian record labels for this.org. Here is his first, from our Jan/Feb 2015 issue. CANADA IS HOME TO DOZENS of small and independent record labels that nurture the development of emerging artists in every part of […] More »

Inside The Weakerthans’ bassist Greg Smith’s studio Beer in hand, Greg Smith sits in a chair wedged into a corner. A microphone stand, angled overhead, partially frames him. The room is full of instruments: four- and six-stringed guitars on stands, a mandolin hanging from a hook, a drum kit and keyboards facing one another. But […] More »

Thoughts on the creative value of taking a break “MY LIFE IN MONTREAL WAS SO GOOD,” said the songwriter Sean Nicholas Savage in a recent interview for Bad Day magazine. “We did so many projects. We made tons of albums and we were making movies and just doing tons of shit all the time.” Savage […] More »

New FM airwaves lack distinct Canadian sound—and that’s a good thing By the time you read this, the newest entry into Toronto’s FM radio marketplace will be running at full power, armed with a signal boost obtained in November, two months after its launch. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the owners of Indie88 […] More »

You’ve probably heard the tune, though you may not even know it—it’s definitely a candidate for 2013’s song of the summer, alongside Miley Cyrus’ also contentious We Can’t Stop. It’s floating in the air on every patio, blasting from cruising cars, oozing along the sidewalks in the club districts. “#BLURREDLINES” billboards loom over this city. […] More »

It probably comes as no surprise that an audience for a discussion about women and music would be filled with, well, women. Such was the case in mid-June when Melissa Auf der Maur led a thoughtful conversation at Toronto’s NXNE festival titled “Women in Music: More Than Ever Before.” Auf der Maur was joined by […] More »

Rethinking the album format After the success of his 2003 album Now, More Than Ever, which reached No. 3 on Canadian campus radio charts and was nominated for a Juno award, Guelph, Ont., singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie left fans wondering when to expect the follow-up. He was still writing songs and playing shows on his own […] More »

Canadian musicians to watch in 2013 As has become customary each year, 2012 saw many new Canadian artists earn their way onto best-of lists: the sample-heavy serenades of Grimes’s Visions; METZ’s self-titled, high-octane punk debut; and the breakout folk-soul record from Bahamas, Barchords—to name just a few. Now, it’s time to take a look at […] More »

Where do you go after you’ve successfully presented upwards of a thousand bands at hundreds of shows and festivals in Toronto, including notable early sets by some of this century’s most beloved independent Canadian musicians? If you’re Jonathan Bunce and his fellow Wavelength programmers, you get out of town—literally. This weekend, the Wavelength Roadshow hits […] More »

While crushing stoner metal is the easiest way to describe the vast, fuzzed-out sound of Vancouver-based Anciients, to limit them to this description is a disservice. Beneath the fat, distorted guitar tone and acrid smokiness is a deep vulnerability. There are moments of wonder, of tentative exploration on their debut, Heart of Oak, that speaks […] More »