Recently, I had a chance to share some album recommendations with fellow Substacker Dan Gorman, where I got to share my love and appreciation for Vivek Shraya’s 2018 collaboration with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Part-Time Woman. It was a chance not only to acknowledge that excellent record, but to give a little pre-release shout-out to New Models, Shraya’s latest release.

Ever the consummate storyteller, Shraya has never been someone at a loss for words. She’s the epitome of a multi-hyphenate: musician, author, playwright, filmmaker, academic, and visual artist. No matter what medium she’s working in, Shraya’s strength lies in her ability to connect with an audience. But what happens when words don’t do justice to one’s feelings? Of the themes behind her eleventh studio album, Shraya says, “How do you express the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone—in words—when all you want to do is scream or cry?” New Models finds her “grappling with the state of the world over the past four years and eventually realizing that language, particularly English, had become so contorted and weaponized that the only way I could grieve, rage, and find comfort was to let go of it.”

Lyrics and language are not the only things scaled back on New Models. Working once again with producer and engineer James Bunton (who started his longtime collaboration with Shraya with Part-Time Woman), Shraya strips her sound down to its barest, most evocative elements. The two have built a relationship rooted in trust and curiosity, and you can hear that in every note. Bunton encouraged Shraya to experiment on her own before they came together in the studio, a process she admits felt “difficult and lonely” at first but ultimately freed her to play and explore in a way that invigorated her creative process.

Minimalist synths bend and flicker, percussion stutters and swells, and Shraya’s voice moves between words and wordlessness, like someone searching for a connection beyond language. “When I’m overcome with feeling / I have to break free from words and just sing,” she says in the album’s opening track, “When I’m Overcome,”✦ a sentiment that captures the album’s emotional core: the realization that, regardless of what language we speak, it’s feeling that ultimately connects us. New Models finds Shraya letting go of explaining; instead, she leans into expressing and trusting that the emotion embedded in her sound can articulate what mere words can’t. The glitchy eruption of “Apathy Crisis,” the aching pulse of “We’re in Pain,” the mantra-like repetition of “Moral Panic” trace Sharaya’s creative arch, following her instinct and impulses.

I’ve long admired Shraya’s ability to move between mediums, and how—no matter the form—her work always arrives in her own unmistakable voice. It’s fitting, then, that in returning to her first medium, music, she’s once again finding a new model for making art, sparking conversation, and nurturing connection. New Models reminds me that creation doesn’t always require explanation, and that sometimes the most radical act is vulnerability: to feel deeply and invite others to feel with you.

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

To read more about Vivek Shraya, check out my full review of Part-Time Woman, published in 2017, and a little something about Shraya’s 2023 single, “Good Luck (You’re Fucked).” As well, I wrote about Angry, the 2018 album Sharya released with her sibling Shamik Bilgi under the band name Too Attached.

All reviews were published originally on my former blog, DOMINIONATED, whose archives are now available on Substack.

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Rec Centre, Squash

As I was sitting down to scribble out some thoughts on Rec Centre’s new album, Squash, I had a kind of a-ha moment about the moniker musician Alex Hudson uses for his “homemade pop music” solo project. I always thought that the ‘rec’ in Rec Centre stood for recreational, in that Hudson’s day job is Editor-in-Chief of Exclaim!, Canada’s longstanding go-to source for music and entertainment news, and that Rec Centre has been his creative outlet for going on some fifteen-plus years now. But after hearing the synthy delights on Squash, I’m starting to think that ‘rec’ could just as easily mean ‘recollection.’

I know it’s been some time since Hudosn relocated to Toronto from Vancouver, so to hear his lyrics peppered with super specific references to both YYC and the past suggests that Rec Centre is very much in a reflective mood for this latest outing. “Fall 2015, I made plans to go / See a bachelor apartment at The Galileo,” he recounts of a visit to an eastside Vancouver apartment block on “The Galileo.”✦ Accompanied by tambourine and electric guitar, Hudson peppers his story-song with wry observations like “The wallpaper in the lobby / Was melted like a Salvador Dali,” “Huge gaps under the doorways / It’s like living inside of an ashtray,” and wondering “What did I expect from a Craigslist post without a photo?” Without a doubt, my favourite Vancouver reference pops off at the end when Hudson name-checks both Vancouver-based musician Devours and live music photographer Steve Louie, both well-respected and recognized names of the city’s independent music scene.

Elsewhere, the motorik motion of “Tiger” and the bouncy joie de vivre of “Reclaimed By Nature” infuse Squash with a retro musical sensibility to match Hudson’s memory poem lyrics that acknowledge the passing of time, letting go of expectations that will never come to pass, and accepting the reality that you are likely the end of the family line. It’s that last revelation, mentioned on the sterling, new wave-flavoured “Sadie,”✦ that resonates most with me: without any offspring of my own, the only mark I will leave in this world is my digital footprint, the remnants of my creative—and recreational—output.

And that’s okay, because that is enough.

Nation of Language, Dance Called Memory

There’s an altogether different discourse with recollection at play on Dance Called Memory, the fourth LP from Brooklyn-based trio Nation of Language. I felt a strong gravitational pull from their keyboard-based sound from the very beginning. OMD, Depeche Mode, New Order and Pet Shop Boys often get namechecked when discussing Nation of Language, and having grown up listening to those bands, it would seem like a foregone conclusion that I’d be all over Nation of Language. And I am, but for reasons that have less to do with their sonic palette and more to do with the emotional hues that colour their work.

Opener “Can’t Face One Another”✦ is an elegiac, understated resistance to the march of time that finds lead vocalist Ian Richard Devaney in a spot familiar to many: “The day’s begun / I can’t face another one / But on and on they come.” The woeful cry of an echo-drenched harmonica and a simple guitar melody mark the movement of shadows across the room, as a modest programmed beat and ever-expanding wash of synths break the monotony and mourning, the song sliding to its swelling conclusion.

“In Another Life”✦ breathes energy and tempo into Dance Called Memory, a peppy, poppy track on the verge of becoming a crossover top 10 hit, were it 1985. “Silhouette” raises the curtains while lowering the temperature; it feels cinematic and assured in the same way the Blue Nile’s Hats knows precisely what it’s doing and won’t be rushed into anything. Like that venerable Scottish synth-pop band, Nation of Language is self-aware of their strengths and how to leverage their sophisticated style to craft warm, human moments out of an artificial medium.

As Dance Called Memory reaches its quieter, more contemplative moments, it’s evident that Nation of Language’s power lies in what they leave unsaid. Their balance of precision-like arrangements and emotional vulnerability never feels calculated or forced. That’s a gift that their electronic forebears had as well: leaving space for intimacy and memory to plant its seeds amidst the circuitry and machinery.

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After more than three decades as masters of mellifluous, sometimes moody electro-retro-pop, Saint Etienne have released their thirteenth—and final—album, International. Upon hearing the news of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, and Pete Wiggs’s retirement, media reports suggested Saint Etienne is “calling it quits” or “calling it a day,” but the band is a tad less definitive in their press release.

“The group aren’t splitting up as such,” the release says, “they still remain the best of friends after 35 years recording together—but they don’t feel like they want to go on forever and wanted to go out with a bang.” That same statement also teased that International’s closing track, aptly titled “The Last Time,”✦ is a “goodbye to their fans, on record, for the very ‘Last Time.’” Whatever Saint Etienne are suggesting (or not suggesting) through language like “aren’t splitting up as such” and saying “goodbye to their fans, on record,” they have stated clearly that International is their adieu; the final flight (if you will) for what I’m lovingly calling Air Etienne in this series. And that makes me sad.

It makes Cracknell sad, too. In a recent issue of Electronic Sound, where the band sat down to recap their thirty-year-plus career, Cracknell discussed the aforementioned final track, saying, “I can’t listen to [“The Last Time”]. I cry every time I hear it.” The interviewer admits to shedding a tear at “The Last Time,” too, and singles out “Fade” as a song that made him well up, as well. So it goes without saying that I, an old softie who is prone to crying at the drop of a bass, was totally anticipating the waterworks to turn on from the very first notes of “The Last Time.” I was expecting International to be an emotionally charged journey the whole way through, in much the same way hearing Strangeways, Here We Come after the Smiths break-up stabbed you in the solar plexus.

But I didn’t. There were no tears the first time, the fifth time, or the fifteenth time listening to International. And that’s okay. Saint Etienne does not owe me catharsis. Their records have never come with a 100% guarantee of transcendence and salvation, and I think that most objective fans (even Winona Ryder) will agree that the band has not always delivered at that level throughout their discography.

What Saint Etienne has consistently excelled at is the art of album-making—bringing together a collection of songs that hang together like a carefully curated gallery of still images, water colours, and abstract canvases that communicate with each other in seemingly supernatural ways. Dance music as a genre has often been criticized for making banger singles but stale long players. Somewhere along the way (and quite early on, I might add), Saint Etienne discovered the formula for making superlative album-length statements: each release must look to the past, live in the present, and lean to the future.

I didn’t quite hear the formula at work in my initial listens to International. While it’s far from a whimper, it wasn’t giving the full-album emotional wallop I was anticipating. It feels more closely aligned with their highly revered compilation albums (one of which, Continental, has ascended to official album release status); I was expecting International to be a banger of an album, but it played more like a collection of songs at varying degrees of bangerness (look at me out here evolving the language).

It does start with a bang (that’s the last time I use that word in the post, I promise): “Glad”✦ is an all-out ode to joy even on the bleakest of days. You could say its sunny optimism is chemically induced thanks to the contributions of Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands. The song also features Doves’ Jez Williams on guitar, which somehow adds to the cheery camaraderie pouring forth from its infectious positivity. Not that Saint Etienne couldn’t (or wouldn’t) come up with a song like “Glad” on their own, but the collaboration brings together Saint Etienne’s two pop worlds—indie and dance—on a song that essentially instructs fans not to be sad that Saint Etienne is over, but to revel in the fact that their music will go on eternally. Who could have a heavy heart listening to a melody so light and airy?

“Dancing Heart” treads similar themes while imploring you to dance away your troubles. “Now it’s time to live and move to the rhythm of heartbreak,” Cracknell sings in the most soothing of tones, her voice noticeably more reserved and more resonant than we’ve ever heard. She tells us, “Moments like these / They don’t last forever, turn them to memories,” encouraging us to keep dancing “‘til the morning comes.”

“Glad” and “Dancing Heart” are not the only songs on International to acknowledge that this is the last music we’ll ever hear from Saint Etienne, but they are the two that are most explicitly set in the present. Lest we miss the message embedded in “Glad,” they reinforce the finality of it all by aiming the disco ball’s refracted lights right into our eyes.

“The Go Betweens” features guest vocals from Nick Heyward, one-time member of 80s new wave band Haircut One Hundred and an accomplished solo artist in his own right. Better known in the UK as a pop icon, Heyward’s involvement probably won’t register with anyone under 50, but it clearly delights Saint Etienne: “[Heyward’s] one of my secret old crushes,” Cracknell admits in the Electronic Sound interview, and his harmonies feel like a knowing nod back, as if he’s equally as charmed. The song’s title and arrangement tip their bowler hats to the Australian band the Go-Betweens, early purveyors of indie jangle pop who helped shape the musical sensibilities of artists like Saint Etienne, who grew up studying the credits on 45s, watching Top of the Pops appearances, and tracking the UK charts. It’s a reminder that Stanley, the band’s resident pop historian, literally wrote the book on this stuff with Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop (2013), a chronological yet approachable survey of pop music from the 1950s onward.

I hear echoes of 2005’s Tales from Turnpike House on “The Go Betweens,” specifically the song “A Good Thing.” There’s no specific reference point that connects it to their seventh album; instead, it’s as if Saint Etienne are making a subtle callback to that particular project. There’s a similar familiarity to “Take Me to the Pilot,”✦ on which I hear the angular synths of 2002’s Finisterre, as well as the swelling rush of early '90s EDM via Paul Hartnoll of Orbital. Both “Sweet Melodies”✦ and “Why Are You Calling?” carry some of the ambient and amorphous textures of Sound of Water (2000). “Fade” has shades of their modern take on traditional folk from 1994’s Tiger Bay, and “He’s Gone” essentially gets its name from the hook off that album’s excellent single, “Like a Motorway.”

But perhaps the song that most clearly connects to the band’s past is “Brand New Me,” a collaboration co-written with Confidence Man’s Janet Planet, Reggie Goodchild and Sugar Bones. It’s a song about closing a chapter in one’s life, shedding old skin and starting over anew. To me, it has a striking similarity in tone and style to “Nothing Can Stop Us Now,” the band’s third-ever single from 1991, and the first time Cracknell sang vocals with Saint Etienne.

“Brand New Me” may have some fans feeling the warm and fuzzy glow of Foxbase Alpha’s nostalgic charm, but it’s my least favourite track on International, and, along with “Save it For a Rainy Day,” the one I’m most likely to skip. The opposite is true of “Two Lovers,”✦ co-written by Wiggs and the legendary Vince Clarke (Erasure, Yaz, Depeche Mode), who adds engineering and programming support to the track as well. Sleek, stylish, and highly sophisticated, it feels like a future-forward reimagining of their hit, “He’s On the Phone.” Of all the collaborators on International, Clarke brings Saint Etienne the freshest sound and feel. Sadly, like the song’s ill-fated paramours, it’s a fleeting sense of what could have been: “We were two lovers / Whose future was fantasy.”

And there it is, the last variable of the formula falling into place. It’s a glimpse of an unlikely future, an unsentimental nod to the past, and an unapologetic acknowledgement of the present. In the end, International lands right where Saint Etienne intended. They resist melodrama, even in the face of finality, and that feels fitting for a band whose best work has always been measured, wry, and quietly confident. I was expecting Saint Etienne to go straight for the heart, when I should have known the route they take has always been through the head. They leave us thinking rather than weeping, and break your heart in the way that only Saint Etienne can.

The cheeky devils.

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How do you love your September: hot and spicy or lightly toasty? Now that we’re at the mid-point of the month, it seems like we’re getting a little of both in equal measure. It feels like just last week my bottom was all salty from the summer sweats, and now I’m deliberating on how many layers are too little or too much to go out and get the morning paper. I know, I know: it’s so Canadian of me to bemoan the weather. But I am Canadian (and say that with all the irony I can muster), and that’s just what I do, along with picking out a pair of albums well-suited for the in-between times we’re in. The Hidden Cameras bring the sweaty, glittery, peak-summer heat, while Winter cools it down with something more moonlit and reflective. Together, they are a solid soundtrack for when you’re still clinging to the last of the long, hot days but secretly craving sweater weather.

Totally unplanned on my part, but sometimes the best double features just program themselves. Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to the hear [t]here playlist, available on  Music and Tidal.

The Hidden Cameras, Bronto

I keep seeing people moaning about there not being a song of the summer for 2025, which leads me to believe that every single one of them has yet to experience the euphoric high of the Hidden Cameras “Quantify.” This throbbing banger dropped at midnight on August 1, and it instantly soundtracked every one of my top-down, stereo-blasting road trips from that point forward (even if it was just a trip to the hardware store and back).

Bronto perfectly places Joel Gibb’s one-time “orchestral gay church folk pop” in that most holy of gay churches—the disco. The first Hidden Cameras album in almost a decade is a sonic evolution that makes perfect sense for anyone who has followed the Cameras since the project emerged from Gibb’s bedroom with Ecce Homo at the turn of the century. The nightclub is where the sacred and profane consecrate their love/hate relationship, and Gibb brings his signature wit and commentary on the queer human condition to a collection of songs that throb, pulse, swell, and explode in ecstatic synths and shudder-inducing rhythms. “Undertow” pulls you in with mid-80s electro-pop drama (that gets an essential remix by Mr. Vince Clarke of Erasure, Yaz, and Depeche Mode) and opening track, “How Do You Love?”, is a clean, crisp distillation of the decade’s synth-soul sound (perfectly suited for a souped-up remix from Pet Shop Boys).

Winter, Adult Romantix

As a counterpoint to “Quantify,” Winter’s “Without You” is the soundtrack to late-night, sleepy freeway stretches when the city’s lights streak by and it feels like every flicker in the night sky is a memory coming into focus for just a moment. Adult Romantix, the latest from singer-songwriter Samira Winter’s eponymous solo project, drifts through the space between glow and shadow, charting the highs and lows of love, longing, and connection. Rather than romanticizing love, Winter lays bare its sweetness, its ache, its quiet devastations—each song lingering like the afterimage of a flashbulb in the dark.

I love the way opener “Just Like a Flower” (and its accompanying intro interlude) lets distortion creep in at the edges, turning its delicate dream-pop into something more conflicted and alive. “In My Basement Room” feels like stumbling upon a box of momentos you forgot you kept. I also love how Winter sprinkles her native Portuguese throughout Adult Romantix; it feels like she’s sharing an intimate secret or memory without revealing it all. “Sometimes I Think About Death” plays with musical language, capturing the sense of “spinning in a dizzy whirl”- a state of late-night obsessions that leaves you wide awake when the sun comes up, without a sense of resolution.

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

I wrote this 20th anniversary retrospective review of the Hidden Cameras’ The Smell of Our Own for DOMINIONATED, which I’m proud to say was recognized among the best Canadian music writing of 2023 by Del Cowie.

One of the very first posts I did for DOMINIONATED was about the song “The Day I Left Home” from the last Hidden Cameras studio album, Home On Native Land, from 2016.

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When I took on this Suede retro-flection series, I thought it would start with their 1993 self-titled album and end with 2022’s Autofiction. I understood the scope of what I was undertaking. It would be both an album-by-album look back at the records I loved and loathed, and an introduction to who my old favourite band had become after I stopped listening to them. I expected there would be a fair amount of personal reflection, possibly self-examination and questioning old values and opinions. I knew that it would not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is (or so we’ve been told). As well, I knew that hardly anyone would be reading this in real-time, if at all (and if you have, thank you), which gave me the freedom to set aside any expectations or responsibilities and let this project take shape as it unfolded before me.

What I couldn’t have predicted was how much the act of writing itself would change the way I hear these records. Albums I once dismissed revealed hidden corners (hello, Head Music and Bloodsports); others I had placed on pedestals showed their cracks (calling you out, Coming Up). Somewhere along the way, Suede’s catalogue stopped being just a relic of the past and became a mirror for who I’ve been, who I am, and maybe who I’m becoming.

This process has also been about more than Suede. Starting the act of just being [t]here meant consciously choosing to move my writing practice forward by looking backward. For the better part of two decades, I’d been immersed almost exclusively in contemporary Canadian music, living and writing very much in the present tense. This project gave me permission to step outside that cycle and reflect on the records that shaped me long before I was publishing anywhere. In a way, it’s the kind of writing I always wished I had done when I was younger, back when my life had a secret soundtrack that only I was privy to; back to a time where I didn’t have the confidence or the faith to believe that anyone would be remotely interested in what I had to say.

So, now I have the nerve to publish my thoughts online where anyone can (and still likely won’t) stumble upon them. And no, I don’t particularly care if anyone agrees with me or not (but a like or a restack would be nice from time to time). I feel as if this closing post in the first reflective series on a single artist is not the closing loop I had anticipated it to be. I feel like I have more questions than ever left to explore. Which is wholly appropriate given that mid-project, my subjects decided to throw an unexpected curveball at me and announce a new album.

Antidepressants turns out to be the perfect way to end this series. I began with albums I knew almost by heart (Dog Man Star), moved into ones I had never bothered listening to (Night Thoughts, The Blue Hour), and detoured into side projects that stretched the band’s orbit ( solo Bernard Butler and The Tears). Now I’m finishing with a brand new record, one I’m hearing in real time alongside everyone else. After a year spent writing in retrospect, I’ve come full circle to the present tense, which feels like the most genuine way possible to close this reflection (and, maybe, to open what comes next). In a way, this is where this project was always leading me: to the collision of then and there with here and now—memory and immediacy. It is a chance to close my reflection on Suede, not in the past tense, but in the present.

Antidepressants opens with “Disintegrate,” which wastes no time in throwing you into its tension and angst. A disembodied voice cycles between “connected, disconnected” over a pummeling one-note bass line that eventually swaths the song in distortion and torques it to life. Staccato guitars drive the track forward with a ferocious post-punk energy, yet there’s an underlying weariness, a sense of being caught in a loop that doesn’t let up. “Disintegrate” is abrasive, vital, and disorienting; it leans heavily on the dark vibes and sinister imagery of the album art and very much feels of a piece with Autofiction (prompting me to speculate that Suede still have another album in them to complete this latest trilogy.

“Dancing with the Europeans” swaps that raw, punk-infused energy for something more anthemic and melodically taut. Cut from the same cloth as Suede’s signature sweeping tracks, it moves with rhythmic precision while maintaining a certain lyrical opacity. Brett Anderson leans into lower registers and spoken-word cadences (a style that first emerged on The Blue Hour and Autofiction), letting lines like “There's something inside, craves the artificial life / There's something inside that craves the blue and yellow lights,” drift through like hypnotic suggestions.

There’s a looseness to “Dancing with the Europeans” that contrasts with the volatility of “Disintegrate,” suggesting that Antidepressants might be a manic swing through emotions and styles. The title track is the first real clue of where we’re going. Employing more of Anderson’s now-signature sing-speak vocal style, “Antidepressants” ✦ is a kinetic blast of chaos and confusion that genuinely gives me the kind of butterflies that fluttered in my gut the first time I heard “Animal Nitrate.” I couldn’t help but hear some elements of PiL's wiry, angular sound in Richard Oakes’ guitar and Anderson’s deadpan drawl. By the time “Antidepressants” comes to a juddering halt, I felt as if both Suede and producer Ed Buller had made amends for the piss-poor production work on “Moving” from their debut, delivering a beautifully neurotic banger.

Antidepressants’ title track is the first instance where I started to hear faint tethers to Suede’s past emerge. These loose threads amid the energy and immediacy feel reflective without weighing the band down in nostalgia. The most obvious example of this is “Sweet Kid,” a song about Anderson’s son that feels the most Suede-coded of the lot. They could have easily plucked it from any point in their catalogue, but only a 50-plus Anderson can give it this particular fraught emotional resonance. He loves his son, sure—but Anderson is no weepy-eyed dad looking at the world through rose-coloured aviators. He’s a weathered, recovered addict who’s seen his fair share of shit and knows he “can’t promise [his son] a miracle,” and that once his “body belongs to the worms,” his bloodline will continue to flow through his son’s veins.

Just as “Sweet Kid” frames fatherhood as a continuation of the bloodline, Antidepressants as a whole feels like Suede reflecting on their own lineage. They’re a band keenly aware of their history, infusing elements of their back catalogue into the veins of new songs as a way of keeping their past alive while moving forward into the present. “The Sound and the Summer” sharpens that reflection with references to the band’s early rush of fame, “the sound and the summer that made me.” Fuelled by fan adoration and critical acclaim, bassist Mat Osman and drummer Simon Gilbert underpin the track with a revving rhythm. Oakes’ chiming guitar (reminding me of the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary”) cuts through like the whistling air rushing past an open window as Anderson, “trapped in this miracle of glass and steel,” likens their career trajectory to an out-of-control car careening down the motorway: “With the sound of police cars giving chase / Put your foot to the pedal, you are moments from disgrace / With our arsm out the window, our heels on the dash / ‘Cause you’ve never been loved til you’ve been loved in a crash.”

Antidepressants boasts the most solid run of opening songs on a Suede album since Coming Up. And though they shift gears down with “Somewhere Between an Atom and a Star,” they don’t let up on the intensity. Forgoing his lower register, Anderson pushes his voice heavenward when he sings “Between an atom and a star” like reverse punctuation. It’s one of two tracks under three minutes on Antidepressants, but one of its most affecting in its efficiency. Where an older model Suede may have luxuriated in extended guitar solos and over-orchestration, it is a sleek and slim slice of mellodrama that adds depth and dimension and just the right moment.

“Broken Music for Broken People” pumps up the energy with another treatise on the music industry churn and the saving power of a solid melody: “We believed in something rather than nothing / And our hell was our shame was our heaven, yeah / And I’d come alive in your arms.” “Criminal Ways” is a brief, muscular workout that wipes away the gloss of glam rock, launching into “Trance State,” a showcase for Neil Codlin’s glassy keyboards. Oddly, given its ballad-like tempo, “June Rain” is the one track on Antidepressants where Suede, and Anderson in particular, sound like they’re running out of time, racing to say everything they’ve wanted to say before the clock runs out.

Echoing the song cycle style Suede employed to impressive effect on Night Thoughts, Antidepressants segues from “June Rain” into its elegiac closing track, “Life is Endless, Life is a Moment.” For an album that roared into life with wiry, angular post-punk energy, it’s a strikingly dark conclusion, an admission that every burst of vitality eventually dissolves into shadows. “Hate me if you must / Love me when I’m dust,” Anderson intones over a Joy Division-paced dirge, before calling out the title’s declarative statement as if he’s running out of breath.

But that’s the thing: Suede are far from taking their last breath. As much as it teeters on the brink of mortality, Antidepressants is very much alive. My initial impression was that this is the sound of urgency, the product of a band determined to make something of substance. Whether that drive is a result of their survivalist mentality or an attempt to stave off the stench of nostalgia wafting off some of their cool Britanina contemporaries feels immaterial, really; now, as they always have, Suede exist in a category and class of their own. Who would have predicted the fey, androgynous glam rockers of 1992 would turn out an album in 2025 with this much passion and finesse, let alone it being their tenth? The closing second of “Life is Endless, Life is a Moment” captures the spirit and essence perfectly. Everything abruptly drops off as Anderson exhales the word “life,” leaving the last line hanging in the air, uncompleted. Is life endless? Is it a moment? Is there ever a definitive answer?

For me, getting to experience Antidepressants at the tail-end of my reflection on Suede’s history comes with a similar sense of urgency and uncertainty. What started as a backward glance has unexpectedly influenced the present more than I imagined it would. I know it’s only 14 essays, which is minor in the scope of how many posts and reviews I’ve written over the last 20 years, but it feels like it’s been the most involved and prolonged writing project I’ve ever taken on, one that I wasn’t certain I’d complete when I started it. I have repeatedly asked myself who would want to read what a 50-year-old man-boy thinks about a bunch of records from 30 years ago? What’s the point of putting all of this out there online, adding to the incessant noise already clogging our brains?

I don’t know the answer. I don’t think there is one. I also don’t care one way or another, quite frankly. What I do know is that writing about and living with Suede over the last year has helped connect my past and present self, closing a gap that I didn’t realize existed. There was a part of me that was abandoned on an island, feeling alone, isolated, and forgotten. This work has been a lifeboat, reuniting me with that lost version of myself. I can’t help but mourn for all the time I wasted being separated in that way, while also feeling full of gratitude that I’m finally here.

Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to hear [t]here playlist on  Music + Tidal.

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

I made a playlist for you:

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So here’s something: four brand-new releases I’ve been spinning lately, gathered together in one post because apparently I can’t pick just one to focus on this week. It probably won’t be the last time I do this, since the queue of music I want to check out keeps getting longer than the line outside of Oasis merch pop-up shops. Also, I’m staring down a long weekend, the official end of summer (for me), the pumpkin spice industrial complex is rubbing its hands in gleeful anticipation of fall (not for me). Frankly, I’m not ready for it (except for The Life of a Showgirl, let’s get a lead single out already, Tay Tay). Weirdly (perhaps fittingly?) every sleeve here is some shade of blue (almost every). The music, though, is anything but blue.

Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to my end-of-summer-survival, pumpkin spice-resisting playlist hear [t]here, living exclusively on  Music—and now also on Tidal—because fuck you, Spotify.

Hand Habits, Blue Reminder

All of my social media feeds last week were filled with posts about Hand Habits, a band I had zero familiarity with beforehand. I took that as a sign from the algorithm gods that they wanted me to check out their latest release, Blue Reminder, and gawd damnit, I’m gobsmacked. I immediately wanted to know everything there is to know about chief songwriter and principal member Meg Duffy, and I feel that I’ve only just scratched the surface of their talent and tenacity. Blue Reminder is a quietly confident record, with Duffy’s poised and dulcet voice at the centre of a dozen understated yet exquisitely arranged songs. “Jasmine Blossoms” has this alluring groove courtesy of a muted bass, and when Duffy crashes in on the chorus, the seduction was complete, and I was in love. “Way It Goes” ✦ seems to just come together out of thin air, like wispy tendrils of sound that curl and intertwine. I read that Blue Reminder is rooted in the first flushes of a new romance. There is that wide-eyed awe that comes with finding your person popping off in its cool melodies, but Duffy’s songs still have a hint of anxiety and tentativeness in the lyrics and their delivery that suggest being scared of going all in lest you end up getting your heart broken.

TOPS, Bury the Key

Montreal-based band TOPS’ fifth and latest release, Bury the Key, is a refinement of the sugary sweet pop simplicity they have been perfecting since their 2012 debut, Tender Opposites. They have been perennial favourites for the way their songs feel effortless and crackling with excitement without having to be loud, shouty, or overly showy. Mellow vibes and mellifluous melodies abound, particularly on “Call You Back” ✦ and “Your Ride,” and the Laurel Canyon-kissed opening track, “Stars Come After You.” Bury the Key makes for the perfect late summer soundtrack, its saccharine-coated songs catching and refacting the last lingering rays of daylight, while the breezy, detached delivery of singer Jane Penny offers a chilling—almost nippy—balm to soothe your sun-burnt soul.

Water From Your Eyes, It’s a Beautiful Place

What do you imagine would be the aural equivalent of your Atari 2600 console glitching out after your cousin Rory spilled his open can of Pepsi all over it (fucking, Rory)? For me, it’s “Spaceship” off It’s a Beautiful Place from Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based duo Water From Your Eyes. “Spaceship” jerks and sputters like corrupted code, but all the while, there is a fragile, dreamy pop sensibility floating just underneath the surface that’s mesmerizing. A lot of It’s a Beautiful Place often sounds like it’s falling apart, and that members Nate Amos and Rachel Brown are catching what’s breaking off and putting those pieces back into the songs in whatever spot they can make them fit. The effect is dizzying, whether in the jittery rush of “Life Signs” or the schizophrenic turns of “Playing Classics,” ✦ which opens like New Order’s “Fine Time” before exploding into a cacophonic dance-pop anthem blasted through blown speakers. Rory may be a sugar-water-addicted clutz, but you both have to admit that playing Defender and Berzerk through a haze of fractured pixels and with audio on the fritz is kinda rad, which is the same trick It’s a Beautiful Place pulls off: turning collapse into something worth hitting “Start” on over and over again.

Kathleen Edwards, Billionaire

Of these four albums, Billionaire is the one I’ve spent the least amount of time with, but Kathleen Edwards is the artist out of today’s post I’ve had the longest history with. I fell in love with her 2012 album, Voyageur, which also ended up being her last before an extended absence from the music business (TLDR: she opened a successful coffee house called Quitters in the Ottawa suburb of Stittsville, which she sold some time after releasing her 2020 album, Total Freedom). Don’t take my lack of engagement as an indication of Billionaire’s musical quality; Edwards is as sharp-witted and emotionally astute as ever. “Say Goodbye, Tell No One” ✦ is a stand-out: “People change, people grow / You can take it in stride or slam a door,” she sings over a spritely pop-infused roots rock melody (courtesy of producer Jason Isbell’s band, 400 Unit), before dropping this doozy of a double-edged observation: “The hardest part about the truth / Saying something that might hurt you / The hardest part about a lie / You can’t outrun it if you try.” Edwards’ rawness and honesty are so rare in music these days; it’s well worth a billion bucks, let alone the cost of a download.

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You wanna talk shoegaze? Come at me, I can go for hours. I was there, man. Okay, not actually there in the UK, but I was there spiritually. Back in the early ’90s, I was into anything with a shimmering wall of guitar and haunted, indecipherable vocals singing in a language all their own. Whether listening on headphones, in my car with the shitty speakers cranked, or blaring out of the family sound system (when no one else was home), I was all in on any music I could sink into.

In my current grumpy-old-guy-into-80s-and-90s-indie era, I’m not interested in arguing about whether “shoegaze” is actually a genre (FYI: it’s not, but I’ll concede to it being a specific style of pop and rock for the moment) or who was the first “shoegaze” artist (Cocteau Twins, BTW). However, I am very curious to hear about other people’s entry points into that particular musical aesthetic. Mine happened on May 2, 1989: the day the Cure’s Disintegration came out. There are very few songs that I remember hearing for the first time, but the sense memory of having “Plainsong” literally crash down all around me is as vivid now as it was then.

And before you get your bloomers in a tizzy: no, the Cure are not traditionally considered a shoegaze band, but I ask you, what even is a “traditional” shoegaze band, when no one can adequately pin it down as a genre? The allure for me had less to do with the style of music and more with the feeling of falling right into the heart of the record, that sense that the musicians were not just composing music but constructing a world that you could live in.

Artists like Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine are world builders. The former constructed whole universes out of glossolalia (look it up, I had to) and shimmer; the latter bent guitars until they bled distortion and feedback like some kind of stigmata. World-builders have a musical vision and aural audacity distinctly their own, even when built from the same foundational template as their peers.

And yes, there are world-building artists throughout the history of popular music, not just the bands lumped together under the shoegaze banner, but that particular tag is the most germane when it comes to talking about Bugland, the bucolic beauty of an album from No Joy.

I would love to talk shoegaze for hours with No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz. That’s the tag I’ve most often seen used to describe the “band,” which is now ostensibly White-Gluz’s solo project, and it totally fits looking back through No Joy’s highly accomplished and critically lauded back catalogue. But what I’d most be interested in talking about after listening to Bugland multiple times over the last few weeks and reading some of its recent press is how I believe White-Gluz and I are kindred spirit-insects when it comes to appreciating world-building artists who transcend genre. I, too, believe Zooropa is the best U2 album hands-down (come at me), and I hear its influence in the way Bugland constructs a sonic language and history all its own out of familiar ingredients. As she explains to Range magazine, she “tried to avoid being too overly inspired by any one thing. I would instead be like ‘What if Boards of Canada were a four-piece noise band?’ and use that as a launching point to build on.”

What if—two magical words that differentiate between artists inspired to create and those who aspire to emulate. So while No Joy is throwing plenty of sonic cues that are ringing all kinds of nostalgic bells for me, Bugland sounds remarkably fresh and wildly unpredictable. The answer to White-Gluz’s hypothetical query about Boards of Canada? It could be Bugland’s frenetic title track. What if the fourth member of Cocteau Twins was Pop Will Eat Itself’s Clint Mansell? You’d likely end up with the biting and bombastic “Bits.” Ever wonder what would happen if Slowdive picked up a little more speed? You might end up with the careening pop crescendos of “My Crud Princess.” Curious about what Taylor Swift’s Midnights would have sounded like if produced by Curve’s Dean Garcia? I suggest getting acquainted with the sleek slice of synth-pop that is “Save the Lobsters.” ✦

You get the point.

Bugland is teeming with familiar “shoegaze” markers, but doesn’t feel beholden to them. White-Gluz isn’t interested in simply recreating a specific sound; she’s constructing an environment. Rather than working on the album in a sterile, isolated studio environment, she decamped to a rural, rustic retreat to write and conceive most of Bugland, and you can hear the influence of the place and her process in every track. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve been enjoying Bugland in the heart and heat of a humid, mosquito-heavy Southern Ontario summer, but songs like “Garbage Dream House” and “Bather in the Bloodcells” hiss and hum with humidity and feel squishy like a mossy bed found deep in a secluded forest.

Closing track “Jelly Meadow Bright” (which features experimental musician and White-Gluz’s co-producer, Angel “Fire-Toolz” Marcloid) is the kind of song that breathes as much as it pulses, which is pretty much true of the whole record. Where most shoegaze often feels like you are peering into an imagined dreamscape, Bugland is rooted in a tangible world that could only have grown out of its specific geography and lived experience. There’s an earthiness to No Joy’s music; even in the most synthetic moments, White-Gluz reminds us that electronic precision still feels alive when it’s fed by natural energy.

Here is where the genre label starts to crumble. Calling Bugland “shoegaze” is accurate in the same way calling Heaven or Las Vegas “dream pop” is accurate: it tells you something about its textures but nothing about its deeper architecture. Like the best world-building records, it invites you to stay awhile, to notice how the light, mood, and your own emotions change as the songs progress from one to another. It is why I’ve been coming back to it over the last little while: it reminds me of albums like Disintegration, Loveless, and Heaven or Las Vegas in how it just pulls me under its spell. Bugland is most definitely a modern-day example of musical world-building, a veritable menagerie of creep-crawly sonic craftspersonship.

Call it shoegaze if you want. I call it magic.

Songs denoted with ✦ have been added to the hear [t]here playlist, living proudly (and exclusively) on Apple Music, because fuck you, Spotify.

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

Though I’ve been following No Joy for quite some time, Bugland marks the first time I’ve ever formally written about them, so I don’t have any previous reviews to connect you to, but in the spirit of world-builders, here are four albums by world-building artists, two of whom you might consider shoegazey, two you most definitely would not. All, coincidentally, were released in 2023.

La Force, XO Skeleton

DOMINIONATED

La Force, XO Skeleton

XO Skeleton cross-examines our relationship with death and how that association affects how we engage with others…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

Zoon, Bekka Ma’iingan

DOMINIONATED

Zoon, Bekka Ma’iingan

Restless and unrelenting, Zoon’s sophomore full-length is an exhilarating full-steam-ahead run into the world…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, “Darling The Dawn”

DOMINIONATED

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, “Darling The Dawn”

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT reminds us of the infinite possibilities and probabilities that make each sun rising a discrete and ephemeral one-time-only experience…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

Sunnsetter, The best that I can be.

DOMINIONATED

Sunnsetter, The best that I can be.

Sunnsetter’s Andrew McLeod reminds us all that we are always at our best when we are most ourselves…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

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Look, I know everyone’s a playlist curator these days, and this isn’t exactly an act of radical originality. But hear me out: this hear [t]here playlist isn’t meant to break new ground, it’s meant to mark where I’m at musically in the moment. Think of it as a lightly haunted jukebox of what’s currently echoing in my head: some new, some old, some weird little in-betweens. I’ll be updating it regularly (ish), but I’m not making any grand promises about schedules. Just good music, shared when it feels right.

Right now, it feels right releasing this as an Apple Music playlist exclusively. I still have a Spotify account, and I use it, but I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy about the platform. If you missed it: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has invested heavily in defence tech, including a company developing AI-driven military tools, which has led several artists to pull their music and speak out against the platform. Add that to the longstanding frustration with how little most artists earn from Spotify streaming, and it’s hard not to feel conflicted. None of this is tidy, and I don’t have a grand statement to make here. I’ve just been spending more time with Apple Music lately, and for now, that’s where hear [t]here lives (click image).

Here’s what’s on hear [t]here right now:

The Hidden Cameras “Quantify”

Joel Gibb and the Hidden Cameras are back and fully into their club era. Their new album, BRONTO, is out on September 12, and the tease has been long, slow, and so, so seductive. Last week, they shared the track “Quantify,” which has been my absolute favourite of the three preview releases from BRONTO so far. A far cry from the indie-orchestral pop sound of The Smell of Our Own, this latest phase of the Hidden Cameras is all phasers, synths, and synthetic style, and I am down for it. Laser beam me up.

Saint Etienne, “Take Me To The Pilot”

Another very recent drop (it came out on Tuesday), “Take Me To The Pilot” is the second single from the forthcoming final Saint Etienne album, International (out September 5). I have a lot of feelings to process after having written that last sentence (the final album part), but in terms of upcoming releases, International is at the top of my highly anticipated list. Between “Take Me To The Pilot” and the previous single, “Glad,” I’m expecting this to be a powerhouse culmination of a thirty-plus-year career of immaculate pop, eclectic experimentation, and a peerless musical and visual aesthetic.

Vivek Shraya, “When I’m Overcome”

Speaking of welcome returns, the indomitable Vivek Shraya is set for a comeback with New Models on October 9, and has shared the first single, “When I’m Overcome.” The album is written, performed, and produced by Shraya, and she’s releasing it via Twin Fang Records, a label focused on representation for women, queer, non-binary and trans folks. I won’t call this synth-based and slower-paced sound a stylistic shift for Shraya, but anyone more familiar with her last couple of albums and less with her very early work is in for a treat.

Nation of Language, “I’m Not Ready for the Change”

It’s a couple of months old now, but so far, I’m most into “I’m Not Ready For The Change” from the forthcoming Nation Of Language album, Dance Called Memory (September 19 for those keeping track). The band have also shared two other tracks (“Inept Apollo” and “Under the Water”), but this delicate synthy song has all the hallmarks of what I love most about Nation of Language. Where so many synth-based bands end up sounding cold and clinical, Nation of Language have always felt innately human and flawed (in a good way), as if their synths are all held together by rubber bands and masking tape and powered by a couple of hamsters running on a wheel.

Jane Inc., “elastic”

Carlyn Bezic is back with a new Jane Inc. album on October 17. A Rupture A Canyon A Birth (how’s that for a title?) is inspired by a near-death car accident, a cancer diagnosis, and a breakup, and judging by the lead single, “elastic,” Bezic has bounced back from all those ordeals with a renewed sense of purpose, power, and presence.

Casey MQ, “Head Over Heels”

At some point in the Substack’s existence, I will discuss the important and persistent place Tears For Fears’ Songs From the Big Chair plays in my life, but for right now, let’s enjoy this subtle and synthy cover by Canadian composer/producer Casey MQ. Like the original, MQ’s version doesn’t end in the same place that it starts, but he comes to the track with a clear affinity for the band and the era that birthed it. That MQ’s also associated with Spoons, another artist from the 80s that’s played an important and persistent part of my musical foundation, will also likely be a topic of conversation around here before too long.

TOPS, “Annihilation”

I can’t wait for these Montreal-based pop purveyors to blow me away with their forthcoming album, Bury the Key (August 22). I had missed the fact that they had a new album coming until just recently (my attention has been elsewhere), and based on “Annihilation” and the handful of other tracks they’ve already shared, Bury the Key is dialling up the TOPs aesthetic of vintage chills, synthy thrills, and sugary bellyaches to 11.

wihtikow, “9”

amiskwaciy (the traditional name for the area referred to as Edmonton, Alberta) is home to electronic music producer wihtikow, who dropped ᐊᐦᒐᕽ (which translates in English as “soul”) earlier this year. He calls the album “a love letter to nature in all its beauty and ugliness,” and “9” is one of its most textured, shifting between those two poles.

Daphni, “Clap Your Hands”

Dan “Caribou” Snaith is sharing his first new music under the Daphni moniker since 2022. It’s a club-ready banger crafted specifically for a set at Japan’s Rainbow Disco Club, and Sanith says he’s “been playing it everywhere ever since,” prompting fans to ask for a recorded version. Presumably, there’s more coming from Daphni soon, as Snaith has “a whole bunch of unreleased stuff” ready for public consumption.

Big Thief, “All Night All Day”

I’ve never been a fan of Big Thief, which doesn’t mean I disliked their records; I just never got into them during the peak of hype around the band. But I’m digging what “All Night All Day” is putting down (or ‘going down on’ as per the lyrics?), and am curious enough to check out their forthcoming Double Infinity. “Swallow poison, swallow sugar / Sometimes they taste the same,” sings Adrianne Lenker, a line that hits the gut with a wallop.

Luke Haines and Peter Buck, “The Pink Floyd Research Group”

I had no idea Luke Haines and Peter Buck were collaborators, let alone that they’ve had multiple releases together over the last number of years. I’m still in the discovery stage of this curious collaboration, but I am intrigued by “The Pink Floyd Research Group,” the lead track off their latest release, Going Down to the River… To Blow My Mind, and thought it would be a nice fit here.

Included from recent posts:

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, “A Perfect Pair”
The Tears, “Refugees”
Tami Neilson, “Borrow My Boots (feat. Ashley McBryde, Grace Bowers & Shelly Fairchild)”
Quinton Barnes, “Sober for the Weekend”
Ghostkeeper, “Astum Ota”
Ribbon Skirt, “Off Rez”
KAYTRANADA, “Call U Up (feat. Lou Phelps)”
Devours, “Canada's Next Top Fat Otter”
Michael Cloud Duguay, “Holy Mountains of Disbelief”
Suede, “My Insatiable One”

Is Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter Fortunato Durutti Marinetti’s most direct record yet, or his most elusive? It’s hard to say, given how the record plays itself out like an emotional palindrome, its title suggesting listeners will find comfort in familiar sounds at first but will ultimately end up with a sour taste in their mouth (and they’ll like it).

Then there is the whole matter of just who Fortunato Durutti Marinetti is. Is he the “Toronto-via-Turin cantautore” responsible for a string of “poetic jazz rock” albums, including 2020’s Desire, Memory's Fool from 2022, and his 2023 release, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean? Or is he musician and songwriter Daniel Colussi, a stalwart of the Canadian indie music scene for years, both as a solo musician and with his bands the Shilohs and the Pinc Lincolns?

Colussi is Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, and Marinetti is Daniel Colussi, of course, and Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter isn’t going to resolve that identity loop anytime soon. Instead, it leans into its exploration of dualities right down to its mirrored title and its split-label release (We Are Time handling the North American version, Quindi Records taking care of Europe). The same record, twice. Almost.

It’s challenging to unravel the artist from the art when the two are as intertwined as Colussi is with Marinetti, but that is ultimately the point of making music, is it not: to blur the boundaries between persona and person, between what’s revealed and what remains obscured. Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter lives in that blur, and it does so with opulence and commitment —a “dive into excess,” as described in its release notes.

Colussi’s collaborators are an ensemble of soft-focus assassins who saturate his songs with sax, strings, synths, percussion, and euphonium that move through the arrangements like gentle, shifting weather, giving the songs colour and contour without overpowering them. The music becomes the heavy, pleated, velvet drapes enveloping Colussi’s colossus of a baritone, his timbre crisp like a freshly cracked knuckle, his tone raspy and worn like weathered hands.

If it all sounds a bit much—the heavy drapes, the cracked knuckles, the soft-focus assassins— that’s because it is. Deliberately so. Colussi is intentionally pushing his songwriting “to absurdist extremes,” and he lands there with complete conviction. Not by turning everything up to full blast, but by digging deeper into the quiet human dramas of his songs.

Colussi’s voice and vocal style are often compared to those of Dan Bejar of Destroyer. While Colussi thoroughly acknowledges the similarities he shares with his namesake, there is a distinct difference between the two. Colussi’s sing-speak style is more guttural, like the words are catching in his throat as he says them. When he breaks out into singing midway through the opening track “Full of Fire,” Colussi switches gears to an impassioned lounge singer who's got a story to tell, but you have to lean in close to hear it. The funky Rhodes on “Beware” finds Colussi shifting style, sounding something like a gangster offering up a litany of warnings with a chewed-up cigar stub between his teeth. It’s lovely and endearing, and when vocalist Victoria Cheong (aka New Chance) duets with Colussi on the later half of the track, we get further insight into the duality at play on the album: “Be cautious, too much closeness can be dangerous / But too much distance is also a risk / And be careful of too much contradiction / and remember, accidents happen when you’re not paying attention.”

Lead single, “A Perfect Pair,” is the closest Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter’s seven songs and two instrumentals come to having a classic pop song structure. That it’s followed in the running order sequence by “A Rambling Prayer,” the album’s longest and most stream-of-conscious track, only makes sense because Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter is constantly folding one feeling into its opposite. The album basks in the tension between its polished musical tones and the murky fog of Colussi’s memory poem lyrics. Duality is not just the theme of Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter; it shapes the whole record, looping Colussi’s detached delivery with the intimacy of his arrangements, highlighting the absurdity and precision of it all.

The conceit all comes to a head on the head-scratchingly meta“Call Me the Arthur,” where Colussi nonchalantly instructs listeners to make what they will of Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter: “Call this a story / Call it comedy or tragedy / Autobiography or fantasy / Bad poetry… call it anything you want.” He goes on to identify as a dog that refuses to bark, a bird afraid of the sky, and suggests listeners can call him a “dirty bird” (if they so choose). There’s also the story of failing to secure a role that was written for him, likely because Colussi is “a screw that wouldn’t fit / a mirror that did not reflect,” and “a fly drowning in this ointment.”

Absurd? Without a doubt. Purposely? Perhaps, but the crazy thing is: it works. For all his lyrical follies and foibles, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti feels authentically at home as the awkward outsider slipping through these immaculately arranged songs. It all sounds so natural, so right: sweet turns bitter, bitter turns sweet, and around it goes again. And you go right around with him, happily and willingly, drowning in the ointment right alongside him.

the act of just hearing [t]here 🎧

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

As I suggest above (or maybe I didn’t?), I’ve been a fan and follower of Dan Collusi’s music for quite some time and have reviewed a number of his releases for DOMINIONATED over the years.

It started with a review of Joy to the World, from the Pinc Lincolns in 2017:

DOMINIONATED

The Pinc Lincolns, Joy to the World

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9 years ago · DOMINIONATED

That was followed by a couple of reviews for Fortunato Durutti Marrinetti’s Desire (2020) and Eight Waves in Search of an Ocean (2024).

DOMINIONATED

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Desire

It’s hard not to listen to Desire without imagining Fortunato Durutti Marinetti has seen the present when it was the future…

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6 years ago · DOMINIONATED

DOMINIONATED

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean

Eight Waves in Search of an Ocean is transformative, slightly transgressive, and delightfully marches to an original beat…

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2 years ago · DOMINIONATED

I also suggest checking out this review of Memory’s Fool from my fellow DOMINIONATED colleague Tia Alandra, who's also new on Substack:

DOMINIONATED

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Memory’s Fool

Memory’s Fool is a real-time exploration of life’s leaps and falls, and is a reminder that we’re all time travellers…

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4 years ago · DOMINIONATED

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For all but seven years of my life, I have lived within a 20-minute drive of Niagara Falls. As of this writing, I am close enough that I can see the mist of the cataracts rising above the rooftops of my neighbourhood, and I can be standing at the intersection of Clifton Hill and Falls Avenue, looking up at the neon-lit thoroughfare teeming with tourists in less time than it took me to type this sentence. Being a local, I’ve never fully understood the draw and awe that visitors here feel. I think that’s common when a major attraction or landmark is commonplace to some and not others. What’s just “the Falls” to me is a once-in-a-lifetime marvel for many, a provocation and challenge for a daring few. And that’s the thing about landmarks of this sort: they’re emotional mirrors as much as they are physical structures and geographic locations. For some, they symbolize dreams, ambitions, or the life they’re chasing. For others, they’re just an oversized waterfall. Or a big neon cowgirl.

For Tami Neilson, the iconic neon cowgirl sign at Broadway and Third Ave. in downtown Nashville has always been more than just a kitchy icon or Instagrammable photo op. For Neilson — Toronto-born, raised on the road performing with her family as the Neilsons, and now residing in New Zealand — that landmark sign has been a symbol of aspiration. That sign has borne silent witness to Neilson’s hopes of one day gracing the stage at the nearby Ryman Auditorium. Every time she visited the city, she saw that glowing figure watching over her, a reminder of the stage she hadn’t yet reached.

Neilson got to walk across that Ryman stage, opening for fellow New Zealanders Crowded House in 2023, and if there’s any justice in this world, she deserves the chance to do so again soon in support of her crackling new album, Neon Cowgirl. Like many great albums, Neon Cowgirl comes with a serendipitous story so improbable and aligned that it feels scripted. Neilson had high hopes that the Crowded House opening gig would give her the chance to make inroads in North America in a way that her previous touring schedules just wouldn’t allow. Bringing her young family on the road with her, the plan was to capitalize on this “once-in-a-lifetime chance to really give it [her] all with [her] career,” but an unexpected run-in with sepsis had her fighting for her life in the ICU just two months before the tour started. Neilson recovered enough to head out on the five-month tour with her family, but her focus and priorities shifted: “Our trip changed from one of me going full throttle to make a good dent in my career to one of recovery and slow healing. It became a time of embracing life fully and savouring the precious time with my family in a way one does only after a near-death experience.” Suffice it to say that Neon Cowgirl is more than just a record of songs; it’s a reckoning of resilience and destiny, charged with an all-or-nothing spirit that suggests Neilson isn’t waiting for that neon cowgirl sign to call her number.

From the opening track, “Foolish Heart,” Neilson channels the spirit of Patsy Cline, her towering and tender voice belting out the song’s heartbreaking bridge: “They follow me, they let love lead / But I only lead them astray / And when they lose and come back bruised / There’s only one fool that they blame.” “Borrow My Boots” is a fiery anthem of empowerment, featuring Ashley McBryde, Grace Bowers, and Shelly Fairchild. Backed by a rocking rhythm section and foot-stomping beat, Neilson advises the sisterhood that “Sometimes the only way through / Is to knock it down, break it loose / Kick it in, you can borrow my boots.”

That same honky-tonk energy courses through “U-Haul Blues,” a song that connects to Neilson’s upbringing on the road performing with her family (“Gotta sing for your supper, gotta sing for the Lord / Sleeping on a mattress on a stranger’s floor / 3 kids on a Greyhound, rolling outta town”).

“One Less Heart” is cut from the same cloth as the best work of kd lang or Roy Orbison. It is a lovelorn ballad about learning lessons the hard way and vowing never to make the same mistake twice. It’s just one more example of Neilson’s storytelling prowess on an album rife with lyrics steeped in the kind of authenticity that comes from living between worlds. Each track on Neon Cowgirl feels like a postcard from a different stop on her journey, not just the 2023 North American tour, but her life’s trajectory so far.

On the title track, joined by Crowded House’s Neil Finn, Neilson asks, “Can I be the girl lighting up the sky / Shine like a star with a neon smile,” wishing for the fortitude and presence of a 20-foot, unmoving and unmovable giant. With Neon Cowgirl, Neilson gets her wish. Shining with the brilliance of someone who has weathered storms and come out luminous, Neilson is now a beacon in her own right, and a landmark others will measure themselves against.

the act of just hearing [t]here 🎧

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

Here’s is a review I wrote of Tami Neilson’s 2022 album, Kingmaker, for DOMINIONATED:

DOMINIONATED

Tami Neilson, Kingmaker

Kingmaker is a bundle of dynamite that should propel Tami Neilson into the stratosphere…

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4 years ago · DOMINIONATED

And here’s one my DOMINIONATED colleague Laura Stanley did for her 2020 banger, CHICKABOOM!

DOMINIONATED

Tami Neilson, CHICKABOOM!

It takes a lot of self-control to not stand up, clap and shout along with Tami Neilson’s CHICKABOOM…

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6 years ago · DOMINIONATED

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Let’s get this out of the way: Black Noise is not an easy listen. It’s not background music to which one folds their laundry or fulfills orders for ceramic jewelry from their Etsy store. Quinton Barnes doesn’t want to soothe the status quo; he wants to shake it—and you—up.

Followers of the Montreal-based/Kitchener-born artist’s earlier work, spanning five albums of genre-blending R&B that dive head-first into chaotic and confrontational soundscapes, may be accustomed to the unexpected bends and turns each subsequent release has taken. Black Noise is undoubtedly in the same lineage as its predecessors, but it’s not a detour. It’s a mission. Drawing from the dense theoretical frameworks of Afropessimism, a philosophy that critically examines the persistent and pervasive nature of anti-Black racism, and the sonic provocations of experimental drone and free jazz, Black Noise is a fearless, often harrowing exploration of Black identity, systemic negation, and the limits of musical form.

And it motherfucking hits.

This is Barnes at his most unfiltered. He’s not just experimenting, he’s dismantling. Black Noise began to take form in 2022 through a tweet Barnes sent out, soliciting collaborations with “noise/improv musicians.” Producer (and ace musician and songwriter in his own right) Michael Cloud Duguay put his hand up. The two connected, eventually pulling in Halifax-based pianist Edward Enman, who wrote a suite of music that Barnes and Duguay then disassembled and reformed as the basis of Black Noise, Barnes’ first release for Duguay’s label, Watch That Ends the Night Records.

The distortion, dissonance, and drone play into the pillars of Afropessimism and do not sugarcoat the realities of Black life under systemic oppression. Black Noise also expertly deploys the absence of sound, moments of eerie calm that feel like the whole record is holding its breath. If it all sounds a little high-concept, it’s because it is. It’s also highly effective and deeply emotional.

The production and performances of Black Noise are dense and volatile, credited to the Black Noise Ensemble, who unleash dissonant synths and brass that clash with freeform percussion while Barnes’ vocals veer from whispered confessions to guttural screams. “Sober for the Weekend” injects punk energy into the mix, while Quiet Noise” and “Movement 7” offer rare moments of melodic reprieve for the fury and fire to subside temporarily. These brief points of clarity allow Barnes and his listeners to come up for air, albeit like surfacing amid an uneasy calm that feels like the eye of a storm that’s about to start spinning once more.

“Art of Survival” is one of the album’s most haunting, riveting, and visceral moments. Its drone is overwhelming; an ominous chorus of distorted voices fills the static as an unseen weight pulls the composition downward. It’s followed by “Black Orpheus,” the album’s nine-minute centrepiece that is theatrical, chaotic, and emotionally exhausting in the best way.

Black Noise doesn’t follow a traditional narrative arc, but there is a palpable movement across its seven songs and 33-minute run time. It lurches from defiance to exhaustion, and seamlessly glides from rage to rebellion, but never once settles for acceptance and surrender. What makes Black Noise so compelling isn’t just its sound; it’s the intent behind it. Barnes isn’t making something pretty. He’s making something true. And in a world where so much music is polished to perfection and devoid of real depth and substance, that kind of honesty hits hard. It’s not an album for everyone, but it needs to be. Black Noise makes you sit with your discomfort and refuses to play by the rules, and refuses to be silenced by the rulers.

It’s messy. It’s brilliant. It’s Quinton Barnes at his unchained best (so far).

the act of just hearing [t]here 🎧

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

Among the many great releases since its inception in 2024, Watch That Ends the Night Records recently added Edward Enman’s We Are Here to their catalogue. Enman is the composer commissioned to write the suite of music that Quinton Barnes and producer Michael Cloud Duguay deconstructed and reasssembled for Black Noise.

We Are Here features improvisational pieces recorded while Eman was working on other projects (one of which would be his work for Black Noise), each recorded in a single take. Enman says, “These recordings were initially never intended to be a collection, but as they were all created in the same creative mission, they fit and live in the same world, with the same once-in-a-lifetime energy. They capture the experience of existing.”

Want to read more about Quinton Barnes? Here are my archival reviews of his work from DOMINIONATED:

AARUPA (2020)

DOMINIONATED

Quinton Barnes, AARUPA

As trippy as Quinton Barnes’ AARUPA is for listeners, the most important journey is the musical- and self-discovery trip that Barnes took in its creation…

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6 years ago · DOMINIONATED

As a Motherfucker (2021)

DOMINIONATED

Quinton Barnes, As a Motherfucker

As a Motherfucker is all Quinton Barnes all at once; confident and bold, tender and passionate, profane and profound…

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5 years ago · DOMINIONATED

For the Love of Drugs (2022)

DOMINIONATED

Quinton Barnes, For the Love of Drugs

For the Love of Drugs is Quinton Barnes’ most addictive, terrifying and radiant work yet…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

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There is something electrifying about witnessing a band shed its skin and become a new entity. The shift isn’t always telegraphed. There are no “some personal news” social media posts signalling the change, but it’s unmistakable nonetheless. A slow burn catches and becomes a self-fueling blaze. What once felt like coded language or cautious metaphor now arrives sharpened, louder, and less interested in being understood than in being acknowledged. The name and sound change, and so does the posture: more teeth, more tension, more truth. This isn’t about becoming something new. It’s about becoming more fully what was always there, just beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment to bite down.

That moment comes early on Bite Down, the debut album from Ribbon Skirt (formerly known as Love Language), a duo featuring Anishinaabe musician and singer Tashiina Buswa and multi-instrumentalist Billy Riley. The album opens with “Deadhorse,” a smouldering pyre that feels like a spiritual reckoning. “How do you stop a ghost from getting up and leaving?” Buswa asks, before answering herself: “Sit down / Calm down / Breathe in / Breathe out.” Her voice is low and deliberate, like she’s casting a spell or breaking one. The ghost isn’t just metaphorical. It is a version of the band shaped to be palatable to a non-Indigenous audience who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, conceive of an Indigenous post-punk band.

“Deadhorse,” like the whole of Bite Down, feels like Ribbon Skirt laying that version of themselves to rest. It’s not mournful, exactly, but it is heavy with the weight of release. The song doesn’t build so much as it unravels, peeling back layers of performance until what’s left is raw, unfiltered, and real. This is perhaps most evident on the gnarly pop snarl of “Off Rez,” where Buswa delivers one of the album’s best lines: “They want 2000’s Buffy Marie / They want my status but they’re getting my teeth.”

Bite Down is more than just an album about anger. An undercurrent of survival runs through its synth lines and shoegaze-shifting melodies. “Cut” and “Look What You Did” are darkly catchy, sliding from deadpan motorik rhythms to heart-in-your-throat beats that feel vital and urgent. “Wrong Planet” confronts the MMIWG crisis with a fury that is both righteous and deeply personal.

“Cellophane” incorporates Anishinaabe musical elements, not as decoration but as foundation. It is a grounding reminder that even in their most distorted, industrial moments, Ribbon Skirt is rooted in something deeper than genre. It is the song that best encapsulates what makes Bite Down so compelling. Ribbon Skirt is no longer trying to be something they are not. They are allowing themselves to exist in their natural state: louder, sharper, and unapologetically hard to ignore.

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If Devours’ 2023 album Homecoming Queen was about returning to the past to reconcile with it, their latest, Sports Car Era, is about flooring the gas pedal into the future. It’s unabashedly queer, defiantly self-assured, and refuses to let anxiety or uncertainty take the wheel. Through his Devours “gaylien” superhero persona, musician/producer Jeff Cancade continues to explore the complexities of queer identity. But this time, he’s doing it with sharper teeth and a louder synth line.

You won’t hear Sports Car Era blaring from a Shopper’s Drug Mart-sponsored Pride float or at a white party—but you should. It’s not sanitized for mass appeal, and that’s precisely the point. On the cusp of turning 40 after 10 years of toiling to build a respectable and devoted fan base, Devours find themselves at a crossroads. While Cancade calls it an album about male mid-life crises, Sports Car Era is also a pugnacious punch in the face to anyone who thinks that artistry and relevance come with an expiration date. In a statement to Exclaim! Cancade described the album as bieng “about self-empowerment in adulthood… forging my own path without music industry support, and recognizing that I might not have even reached my prime yet.”

Homecoming Queen was introspective and sometimes melancholic, and while there are still wistful moments, like the poignant and devastatingly beautiful single “Loudmouth,” much of Sports Car Era is bolder and more confrontational. There’s a confidence to the music that feels earned and unapologetic. From the frenetic opener “Bodyguard,” which blasts 8-bit bullets through your speakers, to the warped brilliance of “Armageddon Mood Ring,” which folds in on itself like an origami unicorn made from RuPaul’s discarded wig receipts, Devours refuses to settle into predictable patterns. Besides the aforementioned “Loudmouth,” a personal favourite is “Canada’s Next Top Fat Otter,” a title that’s as cheeky as it is poignant, masking heartbreak in layers of self-aware camp.

Sports Car Era’s sonic palette (retro synths, glitchy textures, and shimmering beats) feels like a bridge between Devours’ past and future, their grief and joy. It’s a sound that’s familiar to fans of their last four albums, but is also forward-sounding in how it puts a pin in Devours' story arc so far. What emerges from Sports Car Era is not just a portrait of a queer artist in midlife, but a roadmap for how to keep creating, feeling, and evolving when the world tells you you’re washed up and done. Devours isn’t slowing—they’re shifting into something more honest, more expansive, and more themselves.

Happy Pride, bitches.

the act of just hearing [t]here 🎧

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

My love affair with Devours started in 2021 with Escape From Planet Devours:

DOMINIONATED

Devours, Escape from Planet Devours

Escape from Planet Devours is an intense six-bit fuelled orgy of synths and strobes. Yet, behind the flash is the beating (and sometimes bleeding) heart of a consummate artist…

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5 years ago · DOMINIONATED

And my admiration grew tenfold with 2023’s Homecoming Queen:

DOMINIONATED

Devours, Homecoming Queen

On Homecoming Queen, Devours’ extra-terrestrial persona feels closer to human than ever…

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3 years ago · DOMINIONATED

And for something a little more ambient, a little more glam—he calls it “glambient”—check out Devours’ other alter-ego, The Golden Age of Wrestling:

DOMINIONATED

The Golden Age Of Wrestling, Scorpion Deathlock

Scorpion Deathlock is a fully realized manifestation of the Golden Age of Wrestling’s ambient electro-pop ethos…

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2 years ago · DOMINIONATED

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This year, the Polaris Music Prize celebrates its 20th year, kicking off the celebrations by unveiling their 2025 Long List last week. While my initial reaction to the long list isn't one of overwhelming excitement, I suspect this has more to do with my own evolving tastes drifting away from what my fellow Polaris jurors are gooning over rather than any fault of the list itself. These are my initial musings on the long list, some early thoughts for the upcoming short list (and the 2026 edition), and a rapidly growing list of music I'm eager to delve into and write more about later this summer when time allows.

What’s Missing

Devours, Sports Car Era

It’s a crying shame more of my fellow jurors didn’t get behind Devours’ bold and bodacious Sports Car Era, especially after putting their last effort, Homecoming Queen, on the 2024 Long List. Sports Car Era is a next-gear level-up for Devours, and my personal fave of their canon. It’s also a crying shame that I haven’t given this record a deeper dive yet, which I promise is forthcoming (as soon as I have some more time on my hands). With the announcement of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, I’m hoping that our favourite gaylien gets some love and recognition on that prize’s forthcoming long list for one of the year’s best bangers, “Loudmouth.”

Kaytranada, Timeless

Speaking of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, I would love to see Kaytranada’s “Call U Up” on that list to make up for the irrational exclusion of his third album, 2024’s Timeless, from this year’s album long list. As with Devours, I feel that Timeless is superior to either 2016’s Polaris-winning 99.9% and 2020 short-lister, Bubba (and last year’s Kaytraminé, his collaboration with U.S.-based rapper Aminé, which also long-listed). Timeless is just that - a further refinement and distillation of Kaytranada’s signature style, a blend of genres, samples, live instrumentation, and spot-on features that make the perfect soundtrack for any summer.

Ghostkeeper, Cîpayak Joy

Another album that should have made the cut is Ghostkeeper’s Cîpayak Joy. Born from improvisational sessions between Ghostkeeper main members Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle and their longtime engineer, Brad Hawkins, Cîpayak Joy is a beguiling exploration of sound and creativity, blending trap, ambient experimentalism, R&B, and synth sounds into a deeply textured sonic palette.

Michael Cloud Duguay, Wobbly Yonder

I’ve made no secret of my love for Michael Cloud Duguay and his wonderfully woozy Wobbly Yonder, and though its April 25, 2025, release date made it a little too late for serious consideration for Polaris 2025, I’m hoping that Duguay finally gets his due and gets the long list recognition for 2026 (as the qualifying period for next year’s prize will be albums released between April 1, 2025 and May 1, 2026 that were not previously long listed).

Happy to See on the List

Backxwash, Only Dust Remains

I loved God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It, mainly for its cathartic chaos at the height of pandemic fever. Still, Ashanti Mutinta’s subsequent Backxwash albums didn’t click as immediately as her Polaris-winning sophomore release, until this year’s Only Dust Remains. Having concluded the trilogy started with God Has Nothing to Do with This…, Backxwash gives her music and her muse room to breathe, expanding her sonic palette and dynamics to stunning effect. A strong possibility for the short list, for sure.

Ribbon Skirt, Bite Down

I highly anticipate seeing Bite Down get a much-deserved spot on this year’s short list. Ribbon Skirt, the Montreal duo of Anishinaabe songwriter Tashiina Buswa and multi-insrumentalist Billy Riley (who were formerly known as Love Language), have emerged not as a dark horse in this year’s race, but a bright shining light. Ribbon Skirt are too in your face to be shoegaze, too slick to be grunge, and too political to be pure pop, but somehow the band finds a way to make something new out of these all-too-familiar guitar-based musical tropes. Bite Down is another album I need to delve into further in the coming weeks.

Quinton Barnes, CODE NOIR

CODE NOIR, Quinton Barnes’s fifth album (and first of two released in 2025), feels like the culmination of an era that began in 2020 with AARUPA, wherein Barnes breaks down and rebuilds hip-hop, R&B, punk, and pop into a creature of his own making. Barnes says CODE NOIR “reflects all the influence I've been soaking in from my time living in [his current home of] Montreal. I felt it was necessary to make something upbeat, warm, celebratory but reflective, euphoric and occasionally overwhelming.” CODE NOIR has landed Barnes on the long list for the first time, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t repeat next year for the recently released creative giant leap, Black Noise ( another album I’ll be going longer with very soon).

If there is anything I’ve learned about the creative process from writing about music over the last two decades or so, it is that art and inspiration are not linear. Admittedly, that’s not a profound observation, but it’s one most tend to forget easily. An artist’s chronological discography belies the impact and influence of their personal relationships and events in the world around them in shaping how their art manifests over time. Sometimes that leads to a sense that a musician like Michael Cloud Duguay is following loose threads of inspiration or jumping from idea to idea, when in reality, they are laying the foundation of a career arc that is entering an imperial phase that will make most sense with hindsight and time.

Duguay’s successive releases have consistently left me gob-smacked over the last two years. I’ve well documented my love of The Winter of our Discotheque, 2023’s lost album, Saint Maybe, and 2024’s Succeeder and To Cry Out in the Wilderness from his collective project Scions, and the love extends to Wobbly Yonder, his latest solo release on his independent imprint, Watch That Ends the Night. Wobbly Yonder maps its genesis back to a time well before any of the above-mentioned albums were even a glimmer in Duguay’s steely eyes.

It starts with an unfortunate incident while playing with the Burning Hell at the 2009 Pohoda Festival in Slovakia, where an unexpected storm decimated performance spaces and led to the death of two attendees. Bearing witness to nature’s indiscriminate whims at the festival started Duguay down a personal reckoning and creative path where he immersed himself in understanding the phenomenon of “Föhnkrankheit,” an illness experienced by people exposed to a dry and warm wind that occurs on the downwind side of a mountain range called a foehn (similar types of unexplainable illnesses are experienced by people living in specific regions around the world, like a mystery brain disease in New Brunswick).

Duguay’s life since that 2009 incident has been marked by mental illness and the abandonment and eventual return to music, leading to Wobbly Yonder, his most concise and coherent collection of songs yet. Joined by a cast of collaborators that includes the Burning Hell’s Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt, Duguay’s latest takes form from a bed of remote recordings in unexpected spaces across three islands (Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Wolfe Island). Captured in lighthouses, open fields, and abandoned buildings, Wobbly Yonder smells like a bouquet of fresh plucked flowers and feels comfy like a bed of loamy moss cradling your body. There’s an organic simplicity at the core of the songs, but the real beauty comes through in how Duguay and his collaborators colour in the blank spaces on songs like “Immutable White Light” and my personal favourite, “Holy Mountains Of Disbelief.”

Like a foehn, Wobbly Yonder is a force of nature whose effects on your soul and psyche are impossible to describe with mere words. To appreciate its full impact, immerse yourself in Wobby Yonder and let its specialness wash over you. And then do it again and again and again.

the act of just hearing [t]here 🎧

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