The Oscars Project: Week 7 – My Fair Lady
For 82 years, the Academy Awards have purported to choose the year’s best film. For the next year, I’ll be watching one best picture winner per week, starting 52 years ago and working up to The Hurt Locker. Some of the films are rightly regarded as classics. Others, decidedly less so. But each of them … Continue reading
Tattoo director chooses design carefully
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seems like unlikely fodder for runaway success. The top-grossing film in Swedish history, like the bestselling novel by Stieg Larsson on which it’s based, is an exceptionally dark piece of crime fiction that deals bluntly and provocatively with violent rape, sexually charged murder and the depraved excesses of the … Continue reading
Interview with Yukon Blonde
Barely three months after releasing its self-titled debut, Vancouver’s Yukon Blonde is already making waves across Canada. The album finds the band indulging in classically minded folk-rock, purveying a mix of jangling guitars, immaculate harmonies and an abundance of perfectly crafted pop hooks. Its live show, meanwhile, is considerably more raw — the harmonies still … Continue reading
The Oscars Project: Week 6 – Tom Jones
For 82 years, the Academy Awards have purported to choose the year’s best film. For the next year, I’ll be watching one best picture winner per week, starting 52 years ago and working up to The Hurt Locker. Some of the films are rightly regarded as classics. Others, decidedly less so. But each of them … Continue reading
Jónsi — Go (XL)
Otherworldliness has always been Sigur Ros’s stock in trade, from the band’s impossibly lush soundscapes to singer Jónsi Birgisson’s impossibly gorgeous falsetto. The language barrier helped, too — singing in a mix of Icelandic and Birgisson’s own gibberish tongue made it easier to believe that the band emerged from some distant galaxy or higher plane. … Continue reading
The Oscars Project: Week 5 – Lawrence of Arabia
For 82 years, the Academy Awards have purported to choose the year’s best film. For the next year, I’ll be watching one best picture winner per week, starting 52 years ago and working up to The Hurt Locker. Some of the films are rightly regarded as classics. Others, decidedly less so. But each of them … Continue reading
Trunk Show captures Neil Young in all his ragged glory
Of all the rock legends still making the rounds, few have Neil Young’s vitality. Unlike, say, The Rolling Stones, there’s never a sense that Young’s latest album is just an excuse for another tour. His current output may not live up to the albums he produced in his prime, but there’s little doubt that Young … Continue reading
Forward Thinking: Kerry Clarke
Throughout 2010, Fast Forward Weekly is tapping into Calgarians to get their take on Calgary’s future. What would you be doing if you weren’t working at the Calgary Folk Music Festival? I once thought I wanted to work at the CRTC or the Canada Council, being their music officer. Or in radio, that’d be the … Continue reading
Savk — Savk (VK Records)
For his self-titled debut, former Beija Flor singer Stephen A. van Kampen (or, more briefly, Savk), has built a sound by stripping down. Without his previous band’s kaleidoscope of noise to distract, the spotlight is squarely on van Kampen’s pleasantly strained falsetto and his intricate guitar work. Opening track “I Can’t Wait” sets the pattern … Continue reading
Dr. Dog — Shame, Shame (Anti-)
Dr. Dog is one of those quintessential “hard-working” bands, plugging away since the turn of the millennium without ever quite reaching big-draw status. Maybe that’s because its The Band-like blend of psychedelia and pure Americana has never quite aligned with the other revivalist trends that cropped up over the decade — it’s too straight for … Continue reading
The Consumption 