always listening
“1-2-3-4” shouts vocalist Doug McBain as he counts in opening track “Tapping Out” a familiar bit of no-frills-punk-rock. The cover to The McBains’ self-titled debut features the band standing in a row, clad in sunglasses and leather jackets. The homageRead more…
Your Pal Bill: Ruins Everything is the long-awaited EP from multi-instrumentalist Bill Morton (Debt Cemetary, Wordplay). His last EP Plight of the Living Dead dropped in 2017. Heck, it’s been three years since single “Pay 2 Play” was released. ARead more…
Here’s a fun one. Moncton’s The Follow Ups deliver their second LP – the follow up (sorry, couldn’t resist) to 2019’s The Follow Ups … Don’t Like You Either. It’s 12 tracks of goofball nonsense (plus 2 semi-serious tunes) clockingRead more…
Bitter Days is the new record from Nothing Serious – a trio that lays claim to Basement, Ontario (a nebulous space known to be somewhere around the Durham region) as their home. It’s a continuation of the fast-paced, melody-driven precedentRead more…
Hurry Up and Wait is the latest from Toronto’s Wasting Time. It’s the immediate follow-up to 2023 EP Chainsaw Dynamos and sees the four-piece picking up right where they left off. It’s a succinct collection of tightly-spun punk-rock head-bobbers. Frontman/songwriterRead more…
Crossing Visual Field – the latest from London-based post-punkers Mononegatives – is the record we thought people would be making in the future back in the 80’s. While we now have scarily-accurate facsimiles of songs by famous artists created byRead more…
“All guitar strums were down” Avem proudly announces in the liner notes of their EP Nerdin About Birdin. For the uninitiated, Avem has embraced Ramonescore – a sub-genre of a sub-genre that embraces the fast, furious and melodic sound ofRead more…
Taxi Girls is a power trio from Montreal. After seeing them perform at Pouzza Fest earlier this year my first instinct was to compare them to west coast indie darlings Cub, but after a few listens I realize I’m wayRead more…
If you ever wondered “what would the Misfits sound like if Danzig got into sci-fi instead of horror?” have I got an album for you. While it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it affair (9 tracks in 15 minutes) Poison Fountains’s Terminal is hookyRead more…
Let’s talk about Eve 6. Earnestly. Unironically. With love in our hearts. Before we get to their newest album Hyper Relevisation (we’ll get to that later on. I promise) I wanna dig in on Grim Value. And just the EveRead more…