The Franky Tones - Janky Phones
Emotionally omnipotent, rich yet economical, dense yet immediate, and always having fun, Janky Phones uses vintage-minded pop-rock as a living vehicle to navigate contemporary absurdity, forging a unique blend of old and new.
Emily Steinwall - but, there’s beauty in the fall from Grace
Where Welcome to the Garden often felt like Steinwall demonstrating the full breadth of what she could construct, but, there’s beauty in the fall from Grace feels more comfortable bringing Steinwall herself into the equation. It is more ambitious in scale, yet far more personal in its lyrics and delivery, as though you’re hearing Emily as Emily for the first time.
N NAO - Nouveaux Langages
Il n’y a parfois rien de plus gratifiant que de voir une artiste évoluer, s’épanouir et se métamorphoser au fil du temps. Ce processus ne mène pas toujours à la reconnaissance méritée, mais il dévoile néanmoins une force obscure et invisible qui progresse dans l’intimité, à la fois dans le cœur de l’artiste et dans l’esprit de celui qui l’écoute. L’artiste montréalaise Naomie de Lorimier réussit le pari de transmuter cette force et chaque nouvel album est une nouvelle démonstration de son énorme potentiel artistique, tant au niveau musical qu’humain.
The Satisfactory - Self-Titled
The Satisfactory’s debut album is such a strong start to a musical career. Their undeniable blend of 60s and 90s rock and roll will take your ears back to a time when it was all about four people with instruments. Back when the charts recognized the power of bands and the average listener was more interested in a collective sound than an individual celebrity.
Secondhand Dreamcar - Get Ready
Boasting a lineup of some of Canada’s best musical talent, Secondhand Dreamcar delivers another album full of catchy tunes that will have you up out of your chair and onto the dancefloor. Get ready for Get Ready, the newest album from Secondhand Dreamcar.
Potions - Beebo, Make a Wish
On “Beebo, Make a Wish,” Potions have fulfilled a wish I didn’t know I had by inviting me to be part of their art, as participant and listener, friend and observer, watching these four souls capture lightning in a bottle. No, Potions are the lightning and the bottle. They are alchemists gathering ingredients and manifesting something brilliant and new where there was nothing moments before.
Abigail Lapell - Shadow Child
Different seasons represent different points of our lives, which Lapell conveys through colours and images in her lyrics. The warmth of this record reminds me of the leaves in the fall.
AMRITA - S/T
Blending classical North Indian music with modal jazz, the output is a synthesis of harmonies that fuse rhythm, tone, and structure. I’m particularly enamoured by their name; “amrita” is the Sanskrit word for a nectar promising immortality.
Hoopla - Weird Nightmare
What is this beautiful power pop? Alex Edkins can actually sing? Are those honest to goodness hooks that aren’t buried under an endless wave of metallic feedback? Am I losing my mind here? No, this is real and it’s so good.
Big Evil Rat - Big Evil Rat
The solid rhythm, cascading fuzz delays, and warm rock and roll organ are familiar but welcoming garage rock territory. The band’s not reinventing the wheel, by any means. The real payoff is their distinct musical sound, their specific timbre and swagger, their characteristic spooky resonance and vice-tight ensemble playing; harmony decomposed into volatile compounds, the emergent property that is Big Evil Rat.
Pre-Breaker - Self-Titled
Pre-Breaker’s titular album is one hell of a debut. It comes in hard and serves as a cathartic release for those who find themselves troubled by corporate greed, the horror of war, and the police state.
Evil Ebenezer & C-Lance - Steroid Era
Evil Ebenezer is a Vancouver-based rapper with a grimy flow and a battle tested delivery, whose new album, Steroid Era, uses the great game of baseball as a metaphor for striving for authenticity in a complicated industry. His flow and cadence drips with confidence, as he swaggers through battles and tribulations, skin thick and calloused, toughened and creased, like a perfectly broken-in catcher’s mitt.
Ellen Froese - Solitary Songs
Solitary Songs exists in the mercy of its own brilliant means, with a magical, fated quality. If you’re looking for a record that combines the collaborative warmth of a tight-knit prairie community with the solitary, cosmic searching of a brilliant songwriter, do not pass this one by. It’s a masterclass in modern folk melancholy, and it deserves a permanent home on your turntable.
Zoon - Happy Thought School
By wrapping deeply alienated lyricism in laid-back rhythms, shimmering guitars, and sunny production, Zoon doesn't just look back at childhood trauma. Instead, they squeeze a vital, survivalist beauty right out of it.
Flore Laurentienne - Volume III
As a whole, the album tells a vivid story. To me, it felt like listening to an ancient tree recounting its life from a single spot in the forest: growing from a sapling to a dilapidated, fungal log, enduring fierce floods and burning fires, until at the end of it all, something new emerges.
Kaeley Jade - The Great Unknown
I am inspired by Jade’s vulnerability as she explores the deepest parts of herself while also discussing the beauty of love. This record is timeless and relatable, conveying how music can change your life for the better. It is a reminder to live life one day at a time, and that the journey of self-growth is ongoing.
Masahiro Takahashi - In Another
Beautiful and occasionally unsettling, “In Another” is an album fit for any fans of the ambient, the jazzy, and the experimental.
The Talbot Trail Boys - S/T
With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Henry Adam Svec creates parallel Canadian universes, ones in which football players write love songs, AI-bots compose remarkable Canadiana, and rural families withhold secrets from a folklorist and song collector. In his many worlds, history melts into fantasy, tragedy melts into comedy, past melts into future, and music is the only constant. Maybe there’s a bigger metaphor there, but I won’t connect the dots, and neither will Henry.
Tired Cossack - ZIMA
In a sense, ZIMA is not simply a record about survival. It is the sound of survival in progress. In its kineticism, or perhaps because of it, ZIMA also bears a certain enduring persistence, running defiantly alongside its bleak underscoring. And what is survival if not persistence in the face of annihilation – of the self, or even, of reality itself?
Truster - Creeping Thing
Bringing an unapologetically raw and untamed energy, this hard-hitting album also brings with it a unique restrained softness, a dim light amidst the darkness, but as you approach the light rows of sharp teeth reveal themselves, waiting to swallow you whole. Accept your fate and allow yourself to be cast into the dark abyss of human emotion that is Truster’s Creeping Thing.