Tegan and Sara show their pop side
It’s been both inspiring and weird to witness the evolution of Tegan and Sara from folk-singing Calgary twins to the hippest Canadian indie darlings around to the electro-synth dance-pop group they are now. Weirder still is that they’re getting more radio airplay than ever – yet the draw doesn’t equal the high rotation. Barely 2,000 […]
REVIEW: Drake takes the cake
While Keith Urban was the artist who christened Edmonton’s shiny, new downtown arena last Friday night, it was Drake who gave Rogers Place its first landmark concert. On Tuesday night, the Canadian hip hop mogul brought his Summer Sixteen tour to E-town for a sold-out concert, the first of two at Rogers Place. It was […]
Tears of joy for Dolly Parton
“I couldn’t sing a lick without my rhinestones!” Dolly Parton told nearly 20,000 fans at the brand new Rogers Place in downtown Edmonton on Saturday night. Pure and Simple is what she has called her show and new album – and really it was, down to the stage, the instruments and the raw storytelling. The […]
REVIEW: 5 Finger LIFE Punch
Five Finger Death Punch turns out to be more kind and sensitive than their name suggests. Oh, sure, they showed their hard side at their concert in Northlands Coliseum Saturday night. Their badassed side. They even brought a bunch of children on stage to take part in a rousing rendition of Burn MF. The former […]
David Crosby passes Canada test
A lot of American celebrities joke about moving to Canada if Donald Trump gets elected – but David Crosby sounds serious. The ‘60s survivor with the trademark silver skirted eggshell mentioned it a whole bunch of times during his beautiful but talky show at the Winspear Centre Monday night. He said he was checking out […]
The Lumineers turn Sonic Boom to folk
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment where the mainstreaming of folk music reached maximum saturation and jumped the shark. Certainly that recent KIA commercial with Nathaniel Rateliff is very embarrassing. Some point to the X-Ambassadors having their lead single, Renegades, an otherwise fine song, permanently branded to the Jeep Renegade. Can’t hear it without […]
Rockers rock Edmonton Rock Festival
People like Kim Mitchell and Randy Bachman have played here so much that we take them for granted. These guys are world-class artists who’ve put a lot of rock standards on the scoreboard, but around here they’re just part of the landscape, ignored, sometimes even scorned by younger generations. If you miss them now, hey, […]
Folk Fest ends on a high note
That’s it, that’s all, folks. Here we are at the end of another iteration of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, and Sunday certainly closed out the weekend on a high note. There was an undeniable current of excitement resonating throughout the crowd on what turned out to be an ideal summer evening, with not a […]
Session acts upstage main stage at folk fest
Day Two of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival kicked off just in time for the after-work crowd to hustle down to Gallagher Hill and take in a slew of “Session” performances before the main stage acts got underway. The shorter schedule during the first two days of folk fest always feel like a primer for […]
The Tragically Hip’s heartbreaking goodbye
Gord Downie is wrong about one thing: Courage does matter, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Without courage, he could never have mounted what may well be the last Tragically Hip tour ever – in the face of a devastating diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. The 52-year-old singer is obviously feeling well enough […]
Women rule at Interstellar Rodeo
The theme for the whole weekend at Interstellar Rodeo has been about broken hearts – or maybe that’s just what indie folk is all about. To paraphrase Donovan Wood during his musical interlude: All the best songs are about a couple mad at each other while coming home from a party. “I ain’t nothin’ but […]
Peter Gabriel and Sting make magic
This was a match made in heaven – and the result was a religious experience. So it works out. Two British rock Gods, Sting and Peter Gabriel, have put their own great music above rock star ego to perform together in what will surely go down as the best collaboration of the decade. At their […]
