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Ora Cogan, Formless
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It’s not surprising that for an artist as exacting and precise as Ora Cogan, the title of her ninth album is something of a misnomer. Cogan’s Formless is fully immersed in psychedelic, gothic, alt-country vibes that are as eerie as they are enticing. Melodic, morose, and mournful, it’s easy to get lost in the glimmery guitar-and-strings work on gems like “High Noon” and minimally arresting melodies of Y La Bamba collaboration, “Ways Of Losing.” She closes with an alluring cover of Lhasa de Sela’s “Is Anything Wrong,” whose simple and sweet arrangement answers the song’s lyrical questions—“Is anything wrong? / Oh, love, is anything right? / And how will we know / Will time make us wise?”—thusly: Nothing we can’t handle; more than we know; time is all we have, so let’s make the most of every moment. • Jim Di Gioia
La Faute, Blue Girl Nice Day
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”Blue Girl Nice Day” by Toronto based project La Faute evolves with such grace, beginning with an organic folk feel that builds in emotion as electronic instrumentals and haunting vocal effects pile on. The faint trace of fingers shifting on the fretboard darkens when the strum of a distorted electric guitar signals the chant-like chorus, “Blue Girl Nice Day / Slow Dance Sweet Taste / Soft Hair Sharp Needle / True Story True Story True Story”, inspired by the Milram Experiments of the 1960s. • Tia Julien
Favourite Daughter, full/new
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Favourite Daughter (Julia Kennific) describes her music as “indie pop to hurt your feelings.” It’s a description that made me laugh when I first read it but then I listened to her new EP full/new and said “oof” aloud. The EP’s two raw songs, “twenty five” and “tornado warning (vn),” are packed with poignant emotions. On the former, Kennific describes her joyful present but then she repeats “I wanna live forever” and with each iteration it feels like the years are slipping away. The piano-led “tornado warning (vn)” has a similar mournful quality as Kennific recounts the end of a relationship. full/new is a gut punch. • Laura Stanley
Daniel Lew
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To me, it seems somehow irresponsible to review one of an artist’s songs without at least trying to place it within the context of their life and oeuvre. After listening to the “indie-pop summer anthem” (as the artist aptly labels the song) “Alive (The Ocean Song)” by Daniel Lew, I listened to it a bunch more times, because it was a pleasant experience, happily escapist (“Let’s all take a moment/To feel like the ocean”) with appropriate fringes of the discomfort being left behind (‘Break up the commotion/In our minds”). THEN… I went into Lew’s back catalogue, which was almost an opposite experience, centring much more on the discomfort. The single released earlier in 2023, “Afloat,” for example, meanders more like poetry than anthem, and leaves us much more passively to our fate (“I know that the wind will take me/To Safety/In time”). • Brian Gross
Yours Sincerely, Anna
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If you’re looking for complex, intricate arrangements and personal, heartfelt lyrics, look no further than Anna, the debut album by Edmonton-based laptop ska artist Yours Sincerely. Nina’s love of experimentation shines through as she takes cues from ska, alternative rock, grunge, EDM, and punk to create a unique sound that shifts seamlessly from tender, emotional piano ballads (like the album opener “To My Fantasy”) to upbeat ska songs (like “The Covers” and “Majesty”) over the course of 10 tracks. Anna is full of promise and I can’t wait to see what direction Yours Sincerely goes next. • Em Moore
Playdate, Wonderland
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Matthew Bailey, Carl Schilde, and Scott Harper play improvised music oscillating somewhere between bingo hall Casio suites and kosmische dreamscapes. Their sophomore album “Wonderland” is sourced from a monthly residency in a sports bar basement and a one-off show at a now-defunct cassette duplication facility. Each night they were joined by one of Toronto’s more adventurous musicians: no warm-ups, no practice sessions, no pre-game huddles. Every track is an artifact of performers discovering each other in real time, with clarinets, vibraphones, and pedal steel grounding and offsetting Playdate’s synthesized romps. The guests – Christine Bougie, Michael Davidson, Michael Eckert, Karen Ng, and Daniel Pencer – are all pillars of Toronto’s improv/jazz community. • Jim Di Gioia
Arlesque, Everything You Do
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When I ran creative arts programs at (mostly BI-POC) queer and allied high schools in Los Angeles in the mid-90s, I (a white, gay guy in my mid-20s) invited one of my students who wrote songs to record a 5 song-demo at my “studio” (a 4-track, effects rack, drum machine… that’s about it). I rightly feared this was a really bad idea, and I’ve been sitting on this review of Arlesque’s premiere single, “Everything You Do” with a lot of the same rationales and misgivings. The vulnerable, intimate nature of Arlesque’s creation and presentation, as well as his life story (born “Rohan Sharma” in Punjab, he finally fled a childhood of bullying to Canada at age 18), don’t make this any easier (nor, probably, do the vestiges of my internalized homophobia from growing up in the 70-80s). But, upon first listening to this gloriously-produced and uncompromisingly personal offering, I thought (especially as someone who too fled to Canada to keep my binational same-sex relationship together in the early 2000s) this song is a testament to what can probably only happen in Canada. • Brian Gross
Ape-ettes, Simply
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Simply, the latest fuzzed-out release from Sudbury trio The Ape-ettes, is just four songs but they cover a wide range of topics including: heartbreak, motherhood, self-love, and even the importance of wearing ear plugs. Full of high-energy and good advice, this is garage-rock, simply, at its best. • Laura Stanley
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