Music Reviews

With the band’s first release in 17 years, Phil Elverum of the Microphones shares his vulnerable yet powerful journey of becoming an artist.

Ashbreather, a new and upcoming Montreal band, has the potential of making it big, simply due to the amount of originality they hold. The fuel behind this driving force: they are non-stop writers, creating new and fresh music, song after song. Let’s dig into their newest self-titled release, Ashbreather.

The album begins with a somber atmospheric feeling as if being pulled into a journey, like as if one is rising from the grave and coming back to Earth. Right off the bat, the opening track titled “Lonely Graves” gives the album a fittingly-good introduction.

Full Of Hell’s highly-anticipated fourth full-length Weeping Choir launched back in May to critical success. Just between me and you, we’re well aware how tardy this review is being published. Now I, illuminated by my unnecessarily bright laptop screen in an otherwise deprived-of-light basement at two o’clock in the morning, could sit here and reason with you as to why such a big release wasn’t covered back on May 17th when it originally debuted. Perhaps the complexity and pummeling nature of Full Of Hell’s music needed a whole month and a half to properly decipher, or maybe one can find meaning in the inverse relationship between this album’s full-throttle attitude and my lazy summer work ethic.

It has been a few months since the CJLO music directors flew down to Austin, Texas for the world renowned South-By-Southwest. As the station’s Electronic Music Director, my goal was to attend a variety of interesting shows related to electronic music; after getting a chance to gather my thoughts around the event as a whole, I've been able to identify three main themes.

1. Brostep 

Singer-songwriter David Picco is back with a fifth studio album, Out Of The Past. It features ten new songs that run through a roots rock stream but with a heartland country soul.

“Are you scared of me old man? Or are you scared of what I’ll do?”

​Those are the chanted lyrics on Stella Donnelly’s opening track “Old Man” on her debut album “Beware of the Dogs”. Already the listener is the exposed to the kind of ride they are in for. This is an artist that does not hold back: a rebel with a cause, potentially trained as an assassin for feminist rights. 

Clench your fists and get that circle pit ready, ‘cause Assimilation are in town. Innovating within a genre traditionally lacking innovation, these British Columbia boys are on the prowl for severed heads and crushed skulls! Just kidding, these are some pretty nice dudes; their music is pretty scary, though.

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