From the category archives:

MUSIC

Burns So Good

Faust, Opéra de Montréal, to May 26

by Lev Bratishenko
21.05.2012

Two gentle people of the better sort were waiting for us at the opera. They had paid something like a firstborn for the privilege and I was not about to disappoint. I wore the gown normally reserved for Café Cleopatra, and the Standard Opera Companion wore nothing at all; just a litre of burning gasoline that had to be messily replenished every forty minutes. We didn’t expect to be upstaged by the show.

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MUSIC

A Cynic’s Delight

Horse Feathers frontman makes beautiful indie-folk album out of his own personal Groundhog Day

by Lora Mathis
05.05.2012

Horse Feathers frontman Justin Ringle spoke to Rover over the phone from his front porch in Portland, Oregon where he was “trying to soak in the last bit of home” before heading out on tour for the indie-folk five-piece’s latest album, Cynic’s New Year, which the band brought to Montreal this past week.

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MUSIC

Good Krief!

Respected Dears guitarist and solo artist Patrick Krief finally makes an album he can listen to

by Lora Mathis
04.05.2012

Multi-instrumentalist, musical prodigy, guitarist for Canadian indie rock band The Dears and fellow Montrealer Patrick Krief took some to discuss his latest solo venture, Hundred Thousand Pieces, with The Rover on the eve of its release, April 17.

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MUSIC

Not Keeping Their Cool

Icelandic indie band Of Monsters and Men enjoying the comparatively warm embrace of North American fans

by Lora Mathis
26.04.2012

Following their April 11 Montreal show at Sala Rossa, Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdóttir of rising Icelandic indie band Of Monsters and Men spoke with Rover about the band’s first, and immensely popular, album, My Head Is An Animal.

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MUSIC

Swedish Secrets

REVIEW: Swedish sisters First Aid Kit brought the healing power of music to Sala Rossa

by Lora Mathis
23.04.2012

Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg of First Aid Kit have voices you’d expect to hear singing of freedom under a full moon or while exploring an abandoned Western town. Honest and powerful, they are of the sort that deserves to be heard.

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MUSIC

I Could Have Danced (Baroque Music) All Night

Review of the Mont-Royal Baroque Collective, The Rialto, April 13

by Lev Bratishenko
21.04.2012

I didn’t see much of the Rialto theatre while arriving—one never does from inside a litter—but once the boys put me down and I’d got out of the awful velvet and silk swaddling, I was pleasantly surprised. What a grand place to begin something.

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MUSIC

A Look into the Future

Kiwi crusader Bachelorette mounts a multi-genre one-woman show that is so much more

by Lora Mathis
11.04.2012

New Zealander Annabel Alpers, known as Bachelorette since she created the solo project in 2004, has a gift of blending genres. Her girl-group pop, psychedelic, folk and electronic songs caused her to be likened to a “lo-fi, one-woman version of Animal Collective” by Q Magazine in 2009.

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MUSIC

Return to the Ballet

The Rite of Spring, Les Grands Ballets, Théâtre Maisonneuve

by Lev Bratishenko
31.03.2012

Ding! Ding! Was not a sound that I expected to ever hear, but it happened last week when we reached the bottom of the caviar bucket. Without any opera business on the horizon, daddy was forced to improvise, and so we went to the ballet.

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MUSIC

What It’s Saul About

The most in-depth, and intense, interview with slam poet, musician and actor Saul Williams you will read, well, maybe ever…

by Shayne Gryn
21.03.2012

Saul Williams gained notoriety when he starred in the 1998 indie film Slam – winner of the Grand Jury Prize for a Dramatic Film at Sundance that year – which tells the story of a young man from Dodge City balancing his aptitude for poetry with the harsh reality of the social strata he lives [...]

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MUSIC

Everybody’s Working for The Weeknd

Fans line up behind Toronto-based R&B artist who defies comparison

by Rima Hammoudi
20.03.2012

This time last year, The Weeknd dropped the first instalment of what has now been dubbed The Balloon Trilogy. Each of the nine-track mixtapes were released in 2011, just a few months apart, and all available for free download via the artist’s website. To describe what ensued as a flash in the pan would be [...]

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MUSIC

Nature’s Songbirds

North Carolina indie band Bowerbirds have no difficulty living the simple life

by Lora Mathis
16.03.2012

Bowerbirds’ lo-fi indie-folk songs include hauntingly beautiful harmonies and poetic lyrics – the perfect combination for singing about a simpler time. On their just-released third album, The Clearing, their sincerity is present in a much more grandiose sense.

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MUSIC

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It… Oh

Elfin Saddle heat things up even more at this year’s Under the Snow indie music festival

by Jamie O'Meara
13.03.2012

It seems somebody with a fully paid-off attention deficit actually took the time to tally up all of Montreal’s festivals throughout the year, and the magic, wholly unsourceable number is 106. Actually, make that 107.

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MUSIC

The End is a Long Way Away

Montreal indie rockers Plants and Animals build forward momentum with new album

by Lora Mathis
06.03.2012

Montreal-based indie rockers Plants and Animals have created an album that marks a significant step in their progression. The End of That is the band’s third studio album and features both their standard catchy guitar riffs and lyrics that are more honest than ever before. No doubt about it, this album is one that asks [...]

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MUSIC

Listen Up!, Vol. 2

Rover reviews of albums by Adam Cohen, Brixton Robbers, Markéta Irglová, Gypsophilia, David Guetta and more...

by Rover Staff
13.02.2012

Cleaning a little house here in the music department at Roverarts, and discovered these previously misplaced record review gems from the end of the year past…

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MUSIC

Student Operas, Best Operas?

Opera McGill & the McGill Symphony Orchestra presents Mozart's Don Giovanni

by Lev Bratishenko
29.01.2012

Butler and I were at stalemate over my pneumatic tube subscription. He thinks it’s a waste of money, but he doesn’t know opera companies. Yesterday I had my glorious revenge when the old tube rattled and spat out an invitation. There, I screamed from the lavatory, not everybody went over to email. I went, of course, and though the ticket lady found my canister suspicious she judged it unwise to argue. Four stars for the ticket lady at Pollack Hall.

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