Shivering Songs And The Pursuit Of Winter Happiness

Mid-winter in the downtown core of Fredericton has a capricious disposition: the windchill flickers between pacific and caustic, the sidewalks are littered with icy pitfalls, and and our doses of heavy snowstorm seem wildly irregular. In spite of all this, the weather held at a moderate breeze over the weekend, and the temperature seemed to rise a few degrees for those of us who took in this year’s Shivering Songs festival. Continue reading Shivering Songs And The Pursuit Of Winter Happiness

New Music: Reversing Falls’ ‘Reversing Falls 2’

The Sophomore Slump is a very real and measureable thing that looms before every new band: the almost certainly doomed second album. There’s never any guarantee of safety for anyone – not The Doors, not The Who, not Arcade Fire, and most certainly not MGMT. For some, it’s a slight downward dip from the genius of their opening act to the level of ‘still pretty fantastic’. But for more, it’s their seemingly Deus Ex Machina powered debut sputtering out under the pressures of touring, of turning out a face melting follow-up, or simply admitting their drug-addled fledgling effort was a one-off. So if Reversing Falls needed a gap year or three to get their heads screwed on, who can blame them? Their second album has been worth the wait, and instead of a slump, it makes their debut look more like a warm-up. Continue reading New Music: Reversing Falls’ ‘Reversing Falls 2’