fri 29/03/2024

Canada

Margaret Atwood: Old Babes in the Wood review - bookending the short story

Margaret Atwood has been writing for sixty years now, and, with her latest publication, she has given us a book of short stories in three parts, Old Babes in the Wood. These tales are engaging, but, as is frequently the case with short story...

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Women Talking review - abused Mennonite women find their voice

Women Talking is very powerful. It was adapted by writer-director Sarah Polley from the novel that Miriam Toews, raised a Mennonite in Canada, based on terrible events that took place in an isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia between 2005...

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DVD: Oscar Peterson - Black + White

I can’t help enjoying the continuing elevation of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) to national monument status in Canada. A park or a square here (Montreal), a boulevard there (Mississauga), a school, a concert hall, a statue, a...

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Album: Ghost Woman - Anne, If

After a few listens, the second album from Evan Uschenko’s musical alter-ego Ghost Woman increasingly resembles something which could have emerged from the early Eighties Los Angeles scene dubbed the "Paisley Underground". However, this does not...

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Album: White Lung - Premonition

In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for...

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Crimes of the Future review - Cronenberg looks back

Crimes of the Future is a nostalgic return to classic Cronenberg, a comforting catalogue of body horror and fleshy biosynthesis, paranoid plots and shadowy cabals. Sharing a title with his 1970 debut, the director is still fascinated by our physical...

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Album: Tami Neilson - Kingmaker

We music journos miss stuff too. This writer had not come across New Zealand-based Canadian singer Tami Neilson before, despite the fact she’s been around for over a decade and this is her sixth studio album. How did I miss her?Kingmaker contains...

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theartsdesk in Montreal - delights and discoveries at the 42nd International Jazz Festival

For most Montrealers, their 10-day jazz festival (30 June - 9 July) is, as the new head of programming Maurin Auxéméry described it to me, a “free, all-you-can-eat musical buffet every night”. People head into the town centre to the Quartier des...

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Tallies, Old Blue Last review - Canadian quintet rejuvenates indie prototypes

Toronto’s Tallies have acknowledged their fondness for Aztec Camera, The Smiths and The Sundays. Add Cocteau Twins into the building blocks, too. Encountering a band so strongly immersed in the back catalogues of familiar names can obscure what’s...

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Clubbing with the Stones: Live at El Mocambo

In a little over two week’s time, the three remaining ones will kick-start their 60th year as The Rolling Stones by taking to the stage at a stadium on the edge of Madrid on June 1, around the same time that Elizabeth Windsor marks her own @70...

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Album: Arcade Fire -WE

When the pandemic closed in, Canadian experimental indie rock troupe Arcade Fire were on the cusp of heading into the studio to record their new album. COVID had other plans. But rather than pause, the husband and wife duo of Win and Regine...

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Album: Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales - Consumed in Key

The three Canadians Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Jason Beck (Chilly Gonzales) and Tiga Sontag (aka just Tiga, who exec produced this album) are each so laden with image and persona it is easy to forget they are musicians sometimes. Hawtin has since...

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