Partner’s music merges technical prowess with slacker predispositions

--taken from: The Globe and Mail (read more here)

by Josh O'Kane

When Partner cold-e-mailed demos to Grammy-winning producer and engineer Chris Shaw, admiring his past work with Ween, Shaw immediately thought of another band: Weezer. “I’m really big into ‘W’ bands,” he says by phone from Texas, chuckling, as tends to happen when Partner comes up in conversations.

Shaw engineered Weezer’s 1994 eponymous debut, a sea of crunchy guitars and eager themes that became one of the decade’s loudest alt-rock statements. He saw parallels in Partner, and happily agreed to mix Lost Time. “It was a real nineties thing,” he says. “The material is just ridiculously good. I found myself laughing most of the time because the lyrics were so great.”

That attitude has given them a growing list of admirers. Jay Ferguson of Sloan – who’s also worked with Shaw, because the world is always smaller than you think – was “blown away” when he got a sneak peek of Lost Time from band manager Mar Sellars. The nineties references keep piling on: Ferguson hears the Breeders meeting Nirvana. “It makes for a really exciting record,” he says. The riffs, the humour, the atmosphere: “It sounded like a hit record – like, a top-20 album.”

--taken from: The Globe and Mail (read more here)

Sounds of Home at Toronto’s Harbourfront 2017

--taken from: Cashbox Canada

Harbourfront Centre’s 2017 summer season celebrates Canada’s cultural heritage with Sounds of Home, a sonic tribute to the strength of the diversity found across the land known as Turtle Island. The season kicks off on June 27 with Here in the 6ix: Celebrate Multiculturalism Day, a program offering a full day of free events reflecting Toronto’s rich cultural mosaic.

Four distinct weekend festivals in July form the core of a programming vision that gathers Canadian talent from coast-to-coast-to-coast for an array of evocative and entertaining events ranging from concerts, comedy shows, family activities, culinary events, and late-night afterparties. Audiences and visitors are invited to join us throughout the summer on Toronto’s waterfront to relax on our lakeside vista and enjoy these curated festivals, your favourite annual festivals, and season-long events, such as the Summer Music in the Garden classical music series, and our weekly Free Flicks outdoor film series and Dancing on the Pier events.

“As one of Canada’s leading international centres for contemporary arts and culture, Harbourfront Centre’s waterfront campus will continue to be a meeting place for artists and cultural enthusiasts seeking relevant artistic, cultural, educational, and recreational experiences,” says Marah Braye, Chief Executive Officer, Harbourfront Centre. “Our summer festivals bring together artists from across Canada reminding us of the multitude of voices that create our Sounds of Home.”

Shield to Shore (July 14–16)
From the ruggedness of the Canadian Shield descending onto the Great Lakes to the shores of the Atlantic, Shield to Shore offers a snapshot of the contemporary and traditional musical forms of this celebrated region. Performances include TUNS, featuring Mike O’Neill of The Inbreds, Chris Murphy of Sloan and Matt Murphy of The Super Friendz. Other weekend highlights are Montreal’s multi-lingual hip-hop artist Boogat, Franco-Ontarian sister folk group,Ariko, Lisa LeBlanc and The Sadies.

--taken from: Cashbox Canada

Harry Styles's new direction as a solo artist: modern punk

--taken from: Vox (read more here)

by Sarah Sahim

That’s not really the case with Styles. Take the lead single “Sign of the Times,” whose title evokes Prince but which explodes into a Goliath post-apocalyptic allegorical anthem that sounds more like Never Hear the End of It–era Chris Murphy than, say, going crazy, crazy, crazy. In discrediting the accusations of his music being manufactured for him, Styles has opened up himself — and his loyal fans — to an entirely new sound.

Going beyond that single, Harry Styles invites listeners to mellow down with the folk-rock Dawes and Jackson Browne–inspired harmonies of “Ever Since New York” and “Sweet Creature,” (a.k.a. “Thirteen” by Big Star lite), only to then smack them in the face with the raucous lasciviousness of “Kiwi.” But it’s on “Only Angel” where Styles feels most at home: The song is an illegitimate, sparkly glam-rock baby sired by Electric Light Orchestra and T. Rex, dumped on the doorstep of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and Sloan’s Navy Blues. He’s having fun with his references in a manner reminiscent of the Replacements’ notoriously erratic live sets, where they’d drunkenly perform everything from the Jackson 5 to Lloyd Price.

--taken from: Vox (read more here)

What singer-songwriter Moe Berg is listening to, watching and looking forward to

--taken from: The Globe and Mail (read more here)

by Brad Wheeler

It was in 1986, on the Pursuit of Happiness’s breakthrough hit I’m An Adult Now, that Moe Berg sardonically sang that he “couldn’t take too much loud music.” We didn’t believe him then, and now that he’s 58 years old, we still don’t. He was recently spotted at a show at Velvet Underground by punk survivors Dag Nasty and he’s currently part of the power-pop supergroup the TransCanada Highwaymen, with Chris Murphy (Sloan), Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies) and Craig Northey (Odds). On June 2, a live Pursuit of Happiness radio taping from the early 1990s will be released as part of an anthology, the Braves New Waves Sessions. In the meantime, Berg lets us know what else has him turning it up to 11 these days.

What he’s listening to: “I’m enjoying the new side project by my bandmate in the TransCanada Highwaymen, Sloan’s Chris Murphy. It’s called TUNS, and it’s an East Coast supergroup he has with Matt Murphy from the Flashing Lights and Mike O’Neill from the Inbreds. Fans of great melodies and singing will love the band’s self-titled debut from a year ago.”

--taken from: The Globe and Mail (read more here)