Support independent journalism! #YQR

Folks, when Montreal lost our free English weeklies, the Hour and the MTL Mirror, it was devastating. We lost alternative voices for, and records of, the activist/non-profit/indie business/art communities (CultMTL rose from these ashes, thankfully). Regina, I urge you to recognize and celebrate all the ways that your true independent weekly the Prairie Dog supports your city, records your lives, and celebrates culture, by way of things like the Annual Best Of issue, Folk Festival guide, interviews with touring bands, restaurant reviews, alternate news coverage and more. Please share this link and urge anyone you know who’s read/been in/lined their kitty litter tray with the Prairie Dog to buy them a 20th anniversary birthday message:http://www.prairiedogmag.com/20/

Stuff I Like Today

1. Adding Monsters to Thrift Store Paintings by Chris McMahon & Thyrza Segal

2. Alex Ross’s Listen to This

3. Kimchi, as ever and Korea House (1427 11th Ave Regina, SK) right now!

Our delicious, delicious kimchi!

4. Prairie Dog Magazine’s 20th Anniversary celebrations! If you’re Regina-based, considering supporting Queen City’s only alternative weekly keep healthy and hale by placing a support message.

5. Jerusalem in My Heart’s track Yudaghdegh el-ra3ey walal-ghanam from the upcoming Mo7it Al-Mo7it on Constellation Records.

6. Blue Hawaii’s Try To Be from the up-coming Untogether album on Arbutus Records.

7. My partner Mike Rollo’s new film The Broken Altar about drive-in movie theatres which is all finished and starting to move out into the world. More soon!

Colour-grading The Broken Altar, photo + film by Mike Rollo

8. These 70s platforms

9. John Nugent‘s Studio in Lumsden, SK, by architect Clifford Wiens. Remember when I was exulted about finding an earth ship? Well, turns out that I now know the family of the architect who built that building for a local sculptor. It isn’t an earth ship, turns out, but it is a Heritage site.

View from above the studio

Inside the studio

My original snapshot from 2010

10. Regina’s YWCA Fitness program: affordable, not too busy, close to home!

Hello again, Grasslands, et plus!

Album art, y’all!

It’s been a really busy, long time since I last posted here! I wasn’t sure what to write as so many changes had gone on in my life, so I think I’ll list some of the fun, item-izable stuff:

1. I’ve moved to Western Canada, specifically Saskatchewan! Not sure how long I’ll be out here, but it’s neat cuz my band Cobra & Vulture have finally released…
2. …our prairie-themed album, Grasslands (do go on ahead and purchase a copy)! Since I can’t jam with my band on the regular, I’ve been…
3. …hosting an hour long freeform radio show called Natural Sympathies and DJing events under that moniker as well.
4. Have been writing for the free independent weekly in Regina called the Prairie Dog, doing mostly fashion and style interviews as well as music reviews.
5. Working on new tunes and writing, but nothing shareable just yet!

Ok, now that that’s all out of the way, I can start posting on the regular again.

A !

This is my desk which I have given to you, do this in remembrance of me

Hey folks >>> Change o’ plans! I’m going to head out west for a few months with my partner. Wanna apply for my sweet job? Here’s the deal:

CKUT 90.3 FM, a campus community radio station in Montreal, is hiring a Music Coordinator, responsible for the functioning of the station’s Music Department.

The responsibilities of the position include collective management of the radio station as part of the Steering and Programming committees, music volunteer coordination, supporting new and existing music programming, liasing with the music industry, managing the station’s music library, promotion of and outreach to the Montreal music community, and providing training opportunities for volunteers.

The ideal candidate posses a varied skill set including an in-depth knowledge of music and strong familiarity with the local music community, strong organizational and coordination skills, the ability to multitask and triage priorities as well as the ability to work collaboratively with others. Assets include previous experience in community radio and bilingualism.

Deadline for applications is 10am Wednesday, August 15th, 2012…Read the full job description here!

Goggles

My eyes have not been loving contact lenses for the last while which worries me a bit because I don’t like not being able to see properly. I have some great Warby Parker frames but I’m thinking that I might nab a second pair of glasses to have more styling options. I started trolling a couple of my fave style blogs and couldn’t find any great pix to use as inspiration…so I headed over to Advanced Style and found what I was looking for!

I practice riverside-ism; a spiritual balm for this city soul.

I took some tea and my binoculars and camera down to the river to let the wind blow right through me. Took some photos through the binoculars too. Spotted lots of different kinds of water birds as well as younger people setting off fire crackers. The river grass was at least two feet taller than me and there were secret trails hidden in them. I love Verdun.

Happy St-Jean!

A terrible photo of a heron.

An even more terrible photo of a new (to me) white water bird that was nipping up minnows for its supper.

An album for being or becoming sad. The saddest album.

There are some movies and albums that I can’t get too close to if I want to maintain an even keel, and White Chalk by PJ Harvey is one of those works. I realized this a couple of months ago while listening to it on my way in to work when I arrived at the job feeling introspective and not a little blue. But sometimes it’s nice to settle into a little sadness when you are already melancholy instead of wrestling with the mantle of being sociable, outwardly happy and ultimately likeable. I’m a pretty happy person, I feel very lucky and satisfied with most things in my life – but sometimes a little malaise is in order. Perhaps it’s a little like eating spicy food on a hot day, it makes you appreciate summer more fully.

In my opinion, White Chalk is the most introspective and fleeting of Harvey’s work, clocking in at just over thirty minutes. The spindly tunes make little use of her usual guitar attack, setting aside the comfort and ease of the six strings in favour of tinkling piano, banjo, autoharp and organ arrangements. The lyrical content is less angry and urgent sounding than her typical output, focused rather on loss, regret, leaning toward the more passive end of the spectrum of dark feelings.

Below is the album’s first single, When Under Ether, however my favorite song is the title track, White Chalk. Bring on the cooling sads…

I got bangs cut, y’all.

As a naturally wavy, fine-haired gal, I’d never seriously thought about getting bangs – just thought they were something that would never work for me and a few buds and former hair dressers confirmed my suspicions. I’d always wanted to give ‘em a go what with my somewhat tall (noble? filled with brains?), slightly-scarred forehead to see how it would change what I felt and looked like.

With all that doubt and nay-saying, I suppose it made sense that I would get them unexpectedly: my hair dresser (what a term) Mathilde over at Douze suggested a fringe out-of-the-blue when I walked into her salon looking for a trim and a new shape. And so, the bangs finally happened. Mathilde was quick to instruct me as to how to best style them for my hairtype while cutting and drying my new ‘do. They’ve been lots of fun ever since!

Moments after they were first cut, hair’s longer now, that’s for sure.

Goodbye Montreal Mirror

R.I.P. Montreal Mirror, best of luck to all of its writers and boo to English free weeklies going out of print! My heart goes out to all of the newspaper’s employees who were unceremoniously dumped without warning, many hearing of the closure via social media instead of, say, their employer. Here are a couple of interesting articles for you, via Bugs Burnett for The Gazette and Maisonneuve magazine, about the shocking death of English weeklies in Montreal.

MTL Mirror, love it or hate it, has long been an important compliment and supporter of Montreal’s diverse artistic and cultural activities for over 25 years. It has been a big part of my life (Best of Montreal! Rant Line! Noisemakers! Etc!) and I’d like to share my 2005 nomination to the Noisemakers list- thanks to Vince Tinguely, once again. I was such a baby back then.

PS: Plans are afoot to make sure the internet isn’t the only source of MTL cultural news…more soon!

A

Vocare

My band completed another EP called Vocare, by the way. It features tunes about “vocational shifts/heeding a call/healing rifts/bridging gaps.  Vocal swathed tunes with organ tones, steely beats, textured percussion, muted guitar strings.” Both of our EPs are now available on a cassette tape too.

Here are some videos I made for the latest and greatest- footage excerpted from a film featured on the VHS copy of the 1978 Fantastic Animation Festival, sourced from the Prelinger Archives: