Chris Stapleton shows his love in Edmonton
In true country music fashion, many of Chris Stapleton’s songs are about drinking – which resonated with the crowd at Northlands Coliseum on Saturday night because everywhere you looked there was beer in hand. Except for the underage fans, of course. Being 17 years old and just 3 months away from the legal drinking age […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Tea Party still getting oolong
While the Tea Party’s heyday was definitely in the 1990s, with such hits on alternative radio as The River, Temptation, Psychopomp, Heaven Coming Down, and The Messenger, the band broke up in 2005 and went their separate ways – but then finally reunited in 2011, much to the delight of their fans. That reunion met […]
HISTORY: From Hawaii to hockey to Hollywood
Get ready to feel super old, People of a Certain Age: The “Super Oldies” record label has reissued the self-titled 1980 album by the Edmonton band Footloose. Meanwhile, the Wayne Gretzky statue has been uprooted from its original home at Northlands Coliseum after 28 years, and moved to the new Rogers Place arena. It’s no […]
PLAYBILL: Go Into the Woods, we dare you
There’s a weird sort of fractured hindsight at work in the musical Into the Woods. We’ve all seen it – in our bedtime stories. Written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, this award-winning musical is a willy nilly hodge podge of almost every Grimm fairy tale that has since made into an sanitized-animated feature by […]
Blood in the Cut: Pop music gets edgy
Before a beautiful rock show by Mother Mother at the Shaw Conference Centre on Thursday night was an opening act that has really hit a nerve. K.Flay’s Blood in the Cut has been all over the radio lately, a song about a woman who deals with a heartbreak by expressing ideas of self harming. It’s […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Jaunty Plume array
The Prodigal Son returns! After a long sojourn in Nashville, Mike Plume has moved back to Edmonton. He’s from Bonnyville, actually, but close enough for rock ‘n’ roll. At the Almanac Saturday night, the singer-songwriter has been keeping a fairly low profile since he and his family moved back last summer. Why? “Trump,” he explains. […]
PLAYBILL: Elektra electrifying
Today’s spooky teens have nothing on the ancient Greeks. Kids in those days didn’t have smartphones – just lots of time on their hands and easy access to a wide variety of poisons and deadly weapons. Got a lot of rending and hewing to do. Edmonton Opera’s latest show Elektra is about as edgy as […]
The Believers an unbelievable scare
The first thing you notice is a deep blackness, a dark menacing cloud that hangs over everything. It bleeds down in ragged sheets of rain. There is a wall, a staircase and a table. After the creepy preamble, around that table are two people engaged in a heated argument. They are slowly and painfully trying […]
Prostitution play fails to grasp serious subject
When it premiered in Toronto in 2014, Erin Shield’s new play Soliciting Temptation conflicted the reviewers. The Globe and Mail could only eek out “tolerable” while The National Post found it “the season’s best new play.” A new co-production from Calgary’s Sage Theatre and Edmonton’s Shadow Theatre – at the Varscona Theatre until March 26 […]
Eric Church stages epic bender in Edmonton
It was rather fitting to have outlaw country artist Eric Church perform at Northlands Coliseum rather than Edmonton’s shiny new Rogers Place on Friday night. This self-proclaimed outsider has an affinity for the good ol’ boy Albertan stereotype of the hard-workin’, beer-swillin’, truck drivin’ bro rather than the slicked up executive suits of downtown. Operating […]
Crazy for You makes old hat new again
You want an escape from the March blahs? Crazy for You, the joyous “New Gershwin Musical” playing at the Citadel Theatre until March 26, is just the medicine you need for melancholy. This two hours and 40 minutes of grace, wit and great music is part screwball, part vaudeville, part Busby Berkeley and all cheerfully […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Women have the power
We definitely need more than one day to celebrate International Women’s Day – seeing as it’s surrounded by the 364 Days of Men. How about a week, better yet, a month? Make it six months, or hell, the whole damned year. Women deserve no less for what they’ve done. Meanwhile, the unofficial spillover from the […]
