MUSIC PREVIEW: Enchanting Basia Bulat
This Sunday, sensational folk songstress Basia Bulat will play at Festival Place in Sherwood Park. With her mom teaching piano and guitar, the Ontario native has been surrounded by music since the youngest of ages, so it’s no surprise that the bug hit her whilst at college, and Bulat released her first EP by 2005. […]
PLAYBOT: Stage mom goes overboard in Miss Teen
What it is with stage moms becoming obsessed by their daughters’ beauty pageants? Could it be a faded rose from days gone by? You want to be supportive for your kid and all, but some mothers go way overboard. Many ridiculous cases both real and fictional are evoked in Michele Riml’s new play Miss Teen, […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Odds are pretty good
Here’s a blast from the fairly recent past: The XTC-like Vancouver quartet that called themselves Odds. Not THE Odds, just Odds, as in probability. Like what are the odds that Odds would rule the 1990s with such offbeat anthems as Heterosexual Man, Eat My Brain, and Someone Who’s Cool – and then disappear without a […]
PLAYBOT: Sweat hits Alberta nail on the head
So now we wonder when seeing a yellow vest: “Is that a protester or just a construction guy?” Terribly confusing. It sucks that an allegedly unsavoury political group has co-opted such a common article of safety clothing designed for visibility, but what are you going to do? Judge all yellow vests accordingly? Switch to hot […]
Gush for Singin’ in the Rain!
The answer is a triumphant, “Yes!” Yes, Sherwood Park’s Festival Players’ Christmas gift to Edmonton, Singin’ in the Rain: The Musical, does manage to create a quite dazzling job of the joyous deluge in which Gene Kelly danced the title tune in the 1952 MGM musical. For one thing – there’s real rain. It comes […]
PLAYBOT: Singin’ in the Freezin’ Rain
The appearance of the dependable musical warhorse Singin’ in the Rain at Festival Place Dec. 15-30 is disturbing for a couple of reasons. They’ve been running Stanley Kubrick’s ultra-violent masterpiece A Clockwork Orange on TV lately, and there’s an edgy scene during which the title song Singin’ in the Rain plays. The music is now […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: No devices at Jack White!
Like communism, a cellphone-free concert experience is a beautiful idea – in theory. In practice, security will be on your ass if you pull it out at Friday’s Jack White concert in Rogers Place. If one makes a rule to benefit the greater public good, one needs to enforce it. Otherwise what’s the point? Communism […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Crash Test Dummies make smart return
Winnipeg alt-folk act Crash Test Dummies are best known for their 1991 single Superman’s Song, but the band has managed to propel that into a lengthy career in the music world that now includes a total of nine full-length albums, plus a couple of compilation albums and even a live album. The band plays a […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Rise Against vs. NERDS
If you’re doing punk rock cosplay at the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo on Friday night, take care not to get into the wrong line – because Rise Against is playing a separate event in the same building. Could be some healthy cross-over here: Straight-edge hardcore band from Chicago whose very name suggests – nay, […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: No Problem amps up doom
Edmonton’s punk rock pride No Problem have always been a bit dark – and in these dark times, what do you do but literally amp it up? The band’s new album Let God Sort Em Out – their seventh since 2010 – is a bold work filled with raging punk rockers interspersed with spooky bookends […]
Into the Woods: The end justifies the beans
From The Princess Bride to a little piece of cinema called Frozen, we have seen a proliferation of musicals about storybook characters – none more effective and long-lasting than Into the Woods, the 1987 Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine effort at unpacking modern moral lessons in the stories of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Geoff Berner stays on message
Rachel Notley is on the record for being a “huge” fan of Geoff Berner. “I love his sense of humour, his angles on issues, he’s very cutting, he’s very witty,” the Premier of Alberta told GigCity in 2016. And Geoff Berner – the klezmer-loving accordion-squeezing political folksinger from B.C. – is on the record for […]
