Steve Lambke has trouble with names. Despite this self-professed challenge, he has made one for himself in the world of Canadian music as a vocalist and guitarist for the Constantines. And he’s making headlines again with his solo side-project, an acoustic endeavor that seamlessly skates between blues, folk and rock influences, under the moniker of Baby Eagle.

All too often, it seems being a fan of indie music means accepting the synths and dissonance that have come to define the genre. Sometimes the computer-generated squeaks and grainy sounds can sate a listener’s expectations, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting some good old-fashioned atchy pop tunes once in a while.
Duo Georgie James understands this basic need and fills their debut album Places with hooks and jangly guitar riffs that insist on being danced to.

For most of us, movie-going is a solitary experience—even in a theatre filled with people, going to the movies somehow lacks the social and critical perspectives that are central to concerts, art receptions and other cultural rendezvous.
Wendy Huot saw that as something worth changing in Kingston.

New technologies are constantly changing modern human interactions not only with each other but with sound. In an increasingly digital age, we communicate using many different technologies on a daily basis. E-mail, MSN, text messaging and phone calls all involve different forms of dialogue that’s honed to be appropriate to the medium which carries the message.
Conversation Pieces displays the work of five contemporary Canadian artists, each using new media to explore issues of communication and sound.

Finding a suitable name for a musical endeavour can be complicated. They’re often provocative, catchy, sublime, humourous or culturally obscure—perhaps all at once.

Who: Jocelyn Purdie, MA ’08. Medium: Presently focusing on curatorial work, in the past she has worked with multimedia, textiles and installation.

It’s fitting that the film Juno takes its title from the name of its 16-year-old main character Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), as the two have much in common. Both initially present themselves with a hard veneer of irony and quirkiness before allowing the sweetness that’s hidden underneath to show.

When you search the Internet for The Luyas, a three-piece Montreal-based band, you’ll find their official website listed under the title “i am a sad website working hard for a living.” Though the bandmates themselves don’t seem to be all that sad, they can certainly relate to the feeling.

Big, brash and so full of volume that it risks splitting its ends, Hair has been a musical phenomenon since it revolutionized Broadway in the late ’60s—even when it’s in desperate need of a slight trim.

‘Tis the season for end-of-year best-of lists, and Journal staff have gathered to present their picks for the best five albums of 2007.

If you have only visited Kingston twice, and the experiences climaxed with discriminatory antics and a heated tussle, the third time may not be the charm.
For the Hidden Cameras—a pop-meets-folk-meets-controversy musical blend—these adventures are all the more incentive to return.

Looking back at the last 30 years and mining for definitive moments that have turned into blurry memories seems a little daunting. To then take that fog of detail and render it into a historical work of conceptual art is no easy feat.

Chaos Theory is about four things: we’re about creating environmentally sustainable theatre from a green perspective, we’re about creating interdisciplinary discourse between the university and the community, we’re about bringing back the concept of storytelling to theatre and finally about making the most engaging, exciting and fun theatre we can.

Sharon Muilwyk’s en route is a vibrant display of colour—an abstract palate that features both the blurred and the bold. Colours pop off the brick walls of The Artel with a vivid and phosphorescent gleam.

Once they’ve started to play shows and promote themselves, most bands don’t change their name—especially after reviews in national newspapers, an appearance on MTV Canada and a variety of festivals, the prospect would seem like a publicity nightmare.

This September, the Weakerthans released their fourth studio album, Reunion Tour, to the absolute delight of their followers. Reunion Tour is the first album the Weakerthans have offered up in four years, and it’s everything their fans could have asked for.

Love Will Tear Us Apart, the infectious title of Lisa Visser’s new collection of work at the Sleepless Goat, brings with it connotations of Joy Division’s hit single—heartbreak and musings on a bleak life outlook.
The dark and obsessive notion of the song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” intrigued Visser, so she created an exhibit to explore the meanings of this phrase and the history of the song using different media including photography, video stills, book-based artworks and textiles.

Toronto’s Rock Plaza Central pay more than just lip-service to the idea of creative improvisation in music. Going beyond on-stage songwriting—although they do that, too—everything from the folk-rock band’s membership to its name was made up on the fly.