While directing the musical Once in Montréal, Andrew Shaver and Eva Foote began a beautiful friendship and musical collaboration. After splitting with his girlfriend, Shaver hit the highway and called his buddy Matthew Barber as he drove to Toronto. This was the beginning of a new chapter for Shaver that would see him bounce around a few winter sublets before heading to Australia to – as a buddy so wisely suggested – flip his chi.
Produced by Barber, Artefact, Shaver’s new album out January 20th, chronicles the journey of that flip. Clever Hopes was born when he got back to Canada and played those songs for Foote. Stream Artefact in full:
The LP’s latest single, “The Other Side,” refers to going to the other side of the world in an attempt to get some perspective – giving space for the other side of the story that took you there in doing so.
Hailing from Chico, California, Brittany and the Blisstones are a duo who specialize in elegantly adorned, heart-crafted songs. Brittany Bliss and Reid Givens make up the twosome, and their journey is a touching story of reinvention, reclamation, and second chances on love. In addition to warming hearts, the couple are opening minds to female artists and helping shift the narrative of women in creative fields through support and exposure.
Their new single, ”Mermaid” is a song about reconnecting with nature, but it also seems to be about reconnecting with Brittany’s own human nature. The lyrics brim with breathtaking imagery and awe-inspiring reflective moments. She sings: By the sea/A mermaid rewrote the pages of all my dreams, so I found fear and faith in the waves. The music is as majestic as its impressionistic lyrical passages. The song lilts on a vaguely Jamaican pulse and brims with jeweled trumpet melodies, vocals that are sultry and sensitive, lush layers of harmony vocals, and moody chord changes that have a sweet sadness.
The band says, “Our music is silly and playful. We don’t take ourselves too seriously but we have a strong personal growth focus.” They create a unique sound that is echoed
“With Brittany’s ear for melody and Reid’s focus on rhythm, we have been coming up with parts for songs from the very start of our relationship. Song concepts were plentiful as well because a big part of our relationship is sharing ideas and growth, which we often come at from different perspectives.”
Brittany and Reid write songs that sweetly seduce you into mindfulness. The mellow tones of their distinct island-pop draw from an expansive artistic palette of pop, orchestral, rock, jazz, reggae, ska, Latin, new wave, and beyond. Brittany contributes sultry vocals, jaunty ukulele playing, and co-writes the songs alongside her partner Reid, an accomplished drummer and percussionist with an expansive command of rhythms and a keen sense for the healing power of good grooves.
Since forming in 2018, Brittany and The Blisstones have managed to earn an engaged fanbase through organic online exposure and their warmly intimate live shows. The duo has performed in various musical settings around the local Chico area and beyond, including playing venues in Berkeley and Oakland.
Newly divorced and making baby steps to reinvent their lives, Brittany and Reid first met at an open mic in Chico, CA in 2017. The fateful moment Brittany met Reid he was a fixture at the open mic, and Brittany was braving making her solo artist debut. Her performance that night captivated Reid. “You could tell she was very nervous,” he recalls. “But when she started to play, it was like she was channeling something that just hits you in a very vulnerable place.” The two spoke briefly that night, but felt an instant connection. Two weeks later, they saw each other again but this time they talked for longer, and the couple have been inseparable ever since.
“I think we both lost ourselves in our previous marriages, and rediscovering music was a way for both of us to heal and move past the pain,” Brittany shares. “When I dropped my youngest son off at college, I vowed to make music a priority again,” Reid says.
Despite being flushed with love and the joy of rediscovering music, Brittany and Reid found they had trouble turning their seedling ideas into songs. Wisely, they enrolled in a few online classes—including classes hosted by Ryan Tedder and Alicia Keys—and through diligence, and their innate talents were able to break down writer’s block and bask in the open floodgates of creativity.
“Mermaid” is the first song Brittany ever wrote. It is a song about reconnecting with nature, but it also seems to be about reconnecting with Brittany’s own human nature. The lyrics brim with breathtaking imagery and awe-inspiring reflective moments. She sings: By the sea/A mermaid rewrote the pages of all my dreams, so I found fear and faith in the waves. The music is as majestic as its impressionistic lyrical passages. The song lilts on a vaguely Jamaican pulse and brims with jeweled trumpet melodies, vocals that are sultry and sensitive, lush layers of harmony vocals, and moody chord changes that have a sweet sadness.
Listen to “Mermaid” here:
One of the biggest lessons of Brittany and The Blisstones is it’s never too late. It’s never too late to pick up an instrument. “Brittany just had her first piano recital since the second grade,” Reid marvels. And it’s never too late for love. Brittany says: “We got another chance at love, and rediscovering who we really are as people. It’s been such a beautiful restart.”
“Brilliantly balanced between dream pop, new-wave, and post-punk, Toronto quintet Hollow Graves just might be our newest obsession,” declares kid with a vinyl.
Hollow Graves’ dreamy lofi album Mid-Century Modern (Jan 21) was inspired by life events before and during the pandemic. Songs touch on the loneliness of being secluded, relationship and personal struggles, while also offering glimpses of hope and enjoyment.
“Borderline”is a story about a person whose personal struggles are being spread to friends and family in a negative way. The band expands, “even though you may try to help a struggling friend, you might not be able to affect positive change until they can help themselves first.”
Toronto punk-rock quartet Sham Family’s eponymous debut EP is slated for release on Friday January 21st and marks the first outside release on Born Ruffians’ intriguing Wavy Haze Records. The four tracks are a handful of “hundreds and hundreds” of demos that lived long enough to pass as Sham Family songs worthy of inclusion.
This project has always kind of been my baby that I was always working on because I always needed to be working on some sort of music when I wasn’t working in other bands, and it’s gone through so many stages of its life. It started as just a four-track cassette-recorder wall-of-noise shoegaze project. Then it was gonna be this industrial-noise side-project thing that I just could not wait to unleash upon the world. – frontman Kory Ross
The EP’s latest single, “Plaque Protection,” was written about corporations exploiting certain communities for personal gain – to market themselves with symbols of allyship while running business practices and standards that discriminate against those same communities.
Toronto-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist SHEAL has found something worth saying with her sophomore LP Courage Again (out now). Writing the album over the span of several years with the constraints of being a mother and teacher, and recording most of it at eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child, Courage Again is deeply reflective of love, fear and motherhood.
Courage Again is about how love makes your inner and outer world expand and how fear makes your inner and outer world contract. It’s about my experience and learnings around pushing through fear rather than running away from it, hence the title of the album. – SHEAL
The album’s newest single, “Noa’s Song,” was inspired by the birth of SHEAL’s niece and completed after the birth of her first daughter. Dedicated to all of her siblings’ children, the lyrics are about literally pushing through pain and fear while also metaphorically relating to the themes of love and fear that weave through Courage Again.
Mear is an indie pop collaboration between singer-songwriter Frances Miller and electronic composer Greg Harrison. Together, their music combines catchy melodies and poignant lyrics with their shared love of experimental music. Miller and Harrison met while working at the music venue Massey Hall in Toronto and began collaborating shortly thereafter by sending tracks back and forth over social media.
“The Order” is a redemptive new single from their first full-length album, Soft Chains, slated for release on April 21st. Miller details her early experiences living with a chronic illness and grieving the loss of her health.
Miller reveals, “in 2014, I lost the ability to do a lot of things I had previously taken for granted. At the time I wrote this I couldn’t read for more than a few minutes at a time and a short walk around the block could leave me bedridden the next day. ‘The Order’ was an attempt to voice some of the pain and the loneliness of that; of not understanding what was happening to me.”
Modern Mystery 
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