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Recent Reviews
Nick Storring
Mirante
Mirante, Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nick Storring's ninth studio LP, continues his knack for layering unprocessed electric and acoustic instruments into fascinating - and at times challenging - soundscapes. Storring's records are impossible to pigeonhole. They have thus far run the gamut from his earlier days as part of the experimental cello duo the Knot to more percussive explorations like 2021's Newfoundout to the glistening piano textures of his collab ...more
Fludd
...On!
"Only in Canada can you play Maple Leaf Gardens, get two encores, and go home on the bus."
That quote, often attributed to others but actually by Fludd's bass player Greg Godovitz, says quite a lot about the fledgling Canadian music biz back in the seventies, a time when you could have huge hits north of the 49th yet be virtually unknown elsewhere in the world.
Fludd certainly had their share of success, charting an impressive eleven singles in Canada between...more
The Crew-Cuts
Sh-Boom / I Spoke Too Soon - 7"
The Crew-Cuts owe their success in part to an obscure legal decision in a California court in 1950.
Supreme Records, a short-lived label based in Los Angeles, had issued a record, 'A Little Bird Told Me' by Paula Watson, that was a sizeable chart success in 1948. That same year, Evelyn Knight released a nearly identical version for the Decca label that topped the Billboard pop chart for seven weeks. Supreme sued Decca claiming that their arrangement of the song, which...more
The Four Lads
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) / I Should Have Told You Long Ago - 7"
There are no doubt some aging GenXers who remember They Might Be Giants' perky cover of 'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)', but probably fewer who realize that the Four Lads' original was a US top-ten hit in 1953. Actually, that novelty record traces its history back another 25 years to a group called Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. Whiteman, who at the time led one of the more popular dance bands of the '20s and '30s, issued a little-known slab of shellac call...more
Ian and Sylvia
Four Strong Winds / C.C. Rider - 7"
'Four Strong Winds' was once voted the greatest Canadian song of the twentieth century by CBC listeners. It has been covered by dozens of performers over the years - the Second Hand Songs site lists an astounding 136 - including by folk heavyweights Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and John Denver, as well as up here in Canuckistan by Neil Young, Sarah McLachlan and Blue Rodeo. Ian Tyson reportedly wrote the song in about thirty minutes while he and his singing partner, Sylvia Fricker, were...more
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