he loud, naive sound of 90’s garage rock, beneath earnest vocals from the days of third wave emo, tell the story of da nang. “To be born in paradise,” the band takes its name after Đà Nẵng, a picturesque coastal beach town in Vietnam. Fronted by queer Viet lead singer John Thai —a first-generation Canadian, born to refugees in small-town Ontario—da nang is an intentional revisit to 90’s adolescence; a time when queer voices were never heard, or at least never this loudly. 

Thai prefaces their new single, “don’t hate me,” explaining that “social anxieties and fear of being my authentic self made it near impossible for me to feel comfortable making music. There were no out and open musicians at the time who I could relate to, certainly not Asian ones. ‘don’t hate me’ is a retrospective anthem for that queer adolescent kid who so desperately wanted out.”

Distorted guitars, a driving bass and drum beat and aggressive vocals come together to create a feeling of anxiety and excitement, the kind that comes from getting bullied, or giving the bully the middle finger.

Over the past few years, Toronto electroacoustic harpist and film composer Grace Scheele has emerged as a distinct voice within the Canadian landscape, interweaving an eclectic mix of cassette sampling and electronic effects with a thinly-veiled irreverence towards the pedal harp’s traditional sound.

The landings EP was originally conceived as a live performance for the Aga Khan Museum’s Moon Landing Festival in July 2019, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. 

The second track on her seven song EP, “pomposity,” is an invitation to be curious, to wonder. To reflect on our spaceward ambitions and explorative nature as humans. Within the context of the Space Age, the moon landing was presented as a final frontier for innovation and exploration. “pomposity” taps into the American cultural narrative of the pioneering nature of manifest destiny as expressed in 1962 with President John F. Kennedy’s speech “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort”, sampled halfway through the track. 

With this occasion in mind, Grace envisioned the journey of the astronauts on the Apollo 11 Mission. She had always been drawn to liminal spaces, the in-betweens where you can’t really do much but pass time as you’re waiting for an arrival or departure. 

The Apollo 11 Mission embraces that liminality; there is the overarching journey between here and there, but there’s also 48 minutes of radio silence in each lunar orbit and the 6 day journey in-between. Time spent separate, and in a way to us earthbound folks, every time the astronaut’s communication was publicly broadcast it was that slight peek into Schrödinger’s box to see what the cat’s up to.

Years later after her performance at the Moon Landing Festival, Grace had the opportunity to record the performance at Silver Street Recording, which became the landings EP. 

“I really wanted to stay true to the improvisatory nature of the performance, so I decided to limit myself to one-shot improvised recordings, with no overdubs, editing, or splicing,” explains Grace. “Each take was unique, but shared the common thread of sample choice, instrument, and electronic effects to some extent. Thankfully it only took a few takes for me to feel like we ‘had’ it, with the second take becoming the EP itself.”

Universal Honey has been a mainstay in Canada’s music scene, with seven albums and numerous featured tracks in movies and television under their belt.

Formed by platinum recording artists Johnny Sinclair and Leslie Stanwyck after playing in the band The Pursuit of Happiness, Sinclair and Stanwyck’s songwriting partnership has spanned across three decades, 100+ tracks and hundreds of gigs across North America.

2023 marks their 30th anniversary and brings Dandelion, referenced by the duo as a remarkably resilient flower. Co-produced with Dan Marfisi, this is their first Universal Honey album in 18 years. Newcomers and old fans alike will enjoy its fresh, modern sound. Click here to stream Dandelion.

Love and loneliness swirl in the focus track “Time Blindness,” written around the time of the passing of musician Al Stanwyck, Leslie’s father. Thinking of his life and our own mortality, she tapped into the sweetness of the memories and the sadness of time being gone.

Folk duo, Crowes Pasture, have penned a new song which addresses finding commonalities within American society. 

The Bostonians’ touring has led them to tour up and down the East Coast, granting them insights into the political perspectives of a wide array of individuals.

The plaintive and acoustic “Agree On” is what the duo considers to be a “prayer that we will be able to find common ground in a deeply divided democracy.”

“We are struck by how much people actually have in common as parents, children, workers, Americans, brothers and sisters.

For this country to move forward in a positive way, we need to acknowledge and respect differences, but we also need to appreciate the humanity that exists in everyone.”

Andrea Superstein is one of the most versatile voices in Canadian music today. Adding savvy vocals to whatever she touches, from nu-jazz and downtempo electronica to Latin grooves, Andrea lures listeners in with killer improvisational instincts, exceptional storytelling, and a red-hot band. Her music exemplifies powerful vocals evoking the gentle and the strong, the light and the dark, deep blues to pop confection, often in the same song. 

In jazz, it’s common practice to reimagine existing songs. Andrea’s inspiration to arrange this particular song was a desire to focus on the present. She chose to cover Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” to pay homage to a song that was part of the soundtrack of her younger days. It’s a song that many people from her generation know and love, which is why it was the perfect choice for her to revisit from a fresh perspective and different instrumentation.

This single will be followed by a full length album later this year, Oh Mother, of mostly original songs. It chronicles stories of motherhood, rooted in Andrea’s own experiences and those of over 50 mothers who so bravely shared their stories.

“I really enjoy the challenge of taking a song that’s meaningful to me and finding a new way to interpret it while still honouring the original,” says Andrea. “I love that a listener might not recognize the song at first. I love that a less adventurous listener might say, ‘Hey, maybe this kind of jazz is worth checking out.’ Weezer is the gateway drug to jazz!”

https://found.ee/AndreaSuperstein_SayItAintSo/ms-spotify-0

The Halifax synth-pop duo, Smaller Hearts, began as a game. Kristina Parlee and Ron Bates tore up a bunch of pieces of paper, and on each they wrote a word that could describe a song: slow, fast, quiet, loud, odd time signature, with or without certain instruments, et cetera. Then they’d mix the paper all up in a bowl and pull out a few. The results were treated as instructions: the corresponding song would be written and recorded to the random spec of the draw.

When Smaller Hearts first started, Parlee and Bates enforced a firm rule of no guitars allowed, as an effort to get out of their comfort zone. They stuck to this through three albums, but eventually this rule that was initially liberating had become a limitation. The synths are still at the forefront, but by permitting their earlier punk and indie rock styles to influence their current interests, Smaller Hearts believes that this song is one of the truest expressions of the sounds they love.

This song is partly about trying to escape reality by sleeping and dreaming—but also about the limits of that approach. Sleeping through your problems can feel like a relief; but at some point you might notice that you’re accidentally escaping a lot of good stuff as well as bad. Parlee and Bates wanted it to feel dreamy and optimistic, but tinged with melancholy. There’s a cloud of background noise throughout that frames the sunnier guitar melody and vocal harmonies—the hope is that it reflects the moment of pleasant confusion you feel upon waking from a hopeful dream.

“The title ‘Sleeper Agent’ doesn’t appear in the lyrics,” explains Bates, “but it metaphorically can stand for the song: our agency in deciding what parts of life to engage in versus what parts to tune out; and the change that can happen if a person who’s sleeping through their life becomes activated and wakes up.”