Results tagged “folk”

Lady singer-songwriters get an historically raw deal (thanks for nothing, Lilith Fair). But when you're lumped in, first and foremost, with company as incestuous—and hugely successful—as the Arts&Crafts crew, you've got not only the means but the insular support to create and release, unafraid. Amy Millan, luckily, has nothing to be afraid of anyway. The Toronto-born-and-raised, now-Montreal-moonlighting chanteuse released her sophomore solo album, Masters of the Burial, earlier this month, and through laments of her own and some choice covers, she paints another dusty, unabashedly pained-artiste portrait of romantic solitariness.

Oshawa's Cuff the Duke find themselves in position for a great lurch forward with their fourth album, Way Down Here—the album was recorded and produced by one of Canada's most successful demographic-crossover roots-rock artists, Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor, and they're self-releasing it with distribution through Universal Canada on their newly formed Noble Recording Co.—but instead they find themselves at a near standstill.

We're cheating this week; The Wooden Sky's sophomore effort, If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone, isn't out via Black Box Recordings until August 25, but we're excited about it, and there are lots of great upcoming releases to plan around. Throughout the vagrant Montreal-to-Toronto creation of this dense record of guilt, innocence, and wonders both abstract (God) and tangible (life), The Wooden Sky have bloomed into a resolute musical force who stand poised to carry the weight of much indie-rock respect.

If you read only one album review this summer (where's your attention span?), make it this one, because if there's one local band you should listen to this year, it's Horses. There's no gimmick, no trend, no all-star roster here (how's that attention span holding up?)—just four dudes with heart, substance, stories, and balls. Their new EP, Brotherly Love, is available now through Juicebox Recording Co., and its roots-tinged, working-class earnestness is as authentic as it gets.

When Three Gut Records ceased operations in 2005, it left a gaping hole in the larger Toronto-area music community. The Guelph-originated label was short lived but prolific and hugely significant, not unlike one of its primary acts and raisons d’être, Royal City. The promise of a once-planned posthumous Royal City rarities compilation has been lingering unfulfilled since the Three Gut demise, but earlier this year Sufjan Stevens' (a long-time friend and supporter) Asthmatic Kitty Records picked it up for release, and today is the day we can hold it in our eager little hands (it's distributed in Canada by Outside Music). A wise woman once said that you don't know what you've got till it's gone; awful clichés and Counting Crows covers aside, in the case of Royal City, she couldn't be more right.

This music stuff sure can be serious business sometimes. When Bon Iver's Justin Vernon secluded himself in an isolated cabin for a winter to deal with the break-up of a band and a relationship, he produced one of the most (rightfully) lauded releases of 2008. For Emma, Forever Ago was an aching, almost desperate catharsis—a much-needed exorcism of love and self lost. With her group The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman makes a similar attempt at hiding and healing on the new debut full-length, The Line.

There was a time—a brief, glorious time—in the late nineties and early two thousands when the word "emo" had become somewhat interchangeable with indie and was not yet a default joke about eye-obscuring black hair and all of the awful, angled mirror shots showcasing it. When some of the best of these nu-emo American pop artists (Death Cab for Cutie, anyone?) showed up in Seth Cohen's bedroom and then a barrage of commercials, the underground found its way up and into the charts, and fans were left with an empty (and very popular and profitable) shell of the worst parts of the genre; shiny young bands riding the re-brand all the way into Hot Topic and weird Livejournal role-playing communities.