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.
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.
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.
Trevor Sloan - Sparrows Sing While Leaves Decay
Sloan’s poetic sentiments, captivating songwriting and delicate voice hold our hand through these changing seasons and life lessons as summer ends and the leaves begin to fall.
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.
Average Weekends - Beached Out
Beached Out brandishes their hard-earned wreaths and scars as they forge a path forward on Average Weekends, cautiously hopeful about a future that has invariably been shaped by the past, for better or worse.
Daniel Romano & The Outfit - Preservers of the Pearl
Only Daniel Romano could go from the spiky, almost Buzzcocks like “Phantasy” to the beautifully idiosyncratic waltz of “Abstract Stone” to the tender flinger-picking of “Secret of the Eye” to the country pastiche of “Metanoia” and have it all make perfect sense. With Preservers of the Pearl, The Outfit have added something wonderful to Romano’s wildly prolific and genre-splintering catalog.
Status/Non-Status - Big Changes
Big Changes builds on the sound that Sturgeon has cultivated for Status/Non-Status throughout their debut as Status/Non-Status in Warrior Down (2019) and its sophomore follow up in Surely Travel (2022). With an incredible cast of collaborators, the album shapes up to be a defining experience of what Status/Non-Status is for me. This maturity in the band’s sound coheres well with the thematic angle of the album, sitting tightly between its atmospheric moments of disillusion and its more awe-inspiring peaks.
Jo Passed - Away
Away is an incredible record. Each song stands on its own and seems like it could be a hit. As a whole, the album is even better, like Voltron or pizza. I feel like there will be a day where Joseph Hirabayashi’s name will be spoken in grand conversations of mythical songwriters and we will talk about Away as one of the great Canadian albums.
Charlotte Cornfield - Hurts Like Hell
Hurts Like Hell is another shining example that Charlotte Cornfield is a national treasure. She can pen a love song to rival the greatest, and her peculiar eye for odd details makes her one of the most original songwriting voices working today. Cornfield’s foray into motherhood has gifted her with wisdom and a new, less self-focused perspective that comes through in her lyrics. This doesn’t make her come across as pretentious or dogmatic, though, and she still impresses upon the listener that she’s one of us. She is still tumbling through life, feeling all the bruises that are left behind. She is still hurting like hell, but these songs offer a resilient hope for the future.
cootie catcher - Something We All Got
Something We All Got is an album that has a cinematic ambiance to it. I am not saying this is quite an atmospheric soundtrack, but that it captures those moments of life that you just want to get a snapshot of. It feels like cootie catch achieved exactly what they set themselves out to do, by creating the sharper edges of their rough-around-the-edges sound.
femtanyl - MAN BITES DOG
Listening to femtanyl feels like a rush of aggro movement. Abrasive and thriving in all of its intensity, femtanyl is the Toronto digital hardcore act by Noelle Stockwood, now joined by multi-instrumentalist Juno Callender.
blosum - Amaryllis
In its heart, Amaryllis feels like a remedy for unresolved heartbreak; a letter to a former lover, an old friend, somebody you wished was still there but isn’t. The sense of incompleteness portrayed in both the sense of the lo-fi, DIY recording style and lyrical themes of the album work in the band’s favour as it reinforces the themes of loss, change, and the uneasy clarity that can come with both.
Winnowing - Anemomaniacs
For their first release of 2026, OwnSound Recordings dropped Anemomaniacs, the debut album from Winnowing on January 8th. Winnowing’s DNA can be traced back to Thresher, an improvisational post-rock jazz quartet who dabble in collage-style albums stitched together from collections of free-form debauchery. Winnowing is the result of alternative band lineups and swapped instrument sessions that introduce even more freedom and chaos to their approach.
Hobby - Clear Blue River
Hobby’s third album is a refreshing collection of tunes that pay homage to and expand upon the long line of Canadiana music that has come before it. Dive into it and let it wash over you. When I listen to this record, I’m transported. All of a sudden, I’m right there with the band, and they’re right there with me on a summer day in the back of my best friend’s car as we head towards the Clear Blue River.
Rec Centre - Squash
Overall, in many ways, Squash takes everything that Rec Centre had built up to in Maxed Out (2023) and takes it to the next level with its gentle thematic focus and its creative ways of playing on this long term creative collaboration with Jay Arner. Honestly, this album can appeal to a wide audience from indie rock darlings who want gentle rock music all the way over to engineering music heads who will find lots to dig into throughout some of the more ambitious cuts of the album.
Kathleen Edwards - Billionaire
This album is a triumph of songwriting, a lyricist who found another peak more than 20 years into her career and whose voice has only gained power and beauty since her 2003 debut - less airy vibrato and more grace and control. Honesty and vivid storytelling have always been Edwards’ strengths. Here those strengths are balanced by a level of experience and wisdom that can only come with the benefit of age.