Alberto E. Rodriguez, Getty The Besnard Lakes' Jace Lasek might not be working hand-in-hand with his fellow Montrealers Arcade Fire on their long-awaited fourth album due out later this year, but he's heard a few songs and says they're going in a Talking Heads direction. It was at Lasek's Breakglass Studio where Arcade Fire held a secret ...

Erik Leijon Godspeed You! Black Emperor -- the ever-elusive purveyors of dystopian gloom and doom -- have emerged from the woodwork (i.e. their Mile End, Montreal abodes) to release their first album in a decade, entitled Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! Musically speaking, the album contains the sort of long-form apocalyptic crescendos ...

Arts & Crafts Vancouver's Dan Mangan is the current reigning Juno Awards Best New Artist of the Year winner, which is weird for two reasons. First of all, Oh Fortune, the album which garnered him the win, is his third and not his debut. Secondly, and he understands the confusion, Dan Mangan isn't an "artist" anymore, but a "band." "On ...

Kisha Bari Soul revivalist Charles Bradley is a courageous man, capable of belting out deeply personal tunes on a nightly basis, but nothing could prepare him for seeing his life on the silver screen at the premiere of the documentary Charles Bradley: Soul of America. The doc chronicles the 63-year-old Florida native's unlikely music career, ...

Brad Barket, Getty It's been three years since Dashboard Confessional released their last album, but don't expect one to pop up on the immediate horizon. If all had gone according to plan, band leader Chris Carrabba would have finished his follow-up to 2009's After the Ending a year ago, but a technological snafu left his hard drives wiped ...

Secret City Don't tell OK Go, but former Polaris Music Prize winner Patrick Watson thinks the music video format is totally passé. "I don't think anyone cares about music videos anymore," Watson told a small contingent of journos in Quebec City last week. Instead, he thinks an artist can make a more lasting impact by creating videos ...

Festival d'ete de Quebec Festival d'été de Québec, or Quebec City Summer Festival if you're insistent on not integrating, isn't really all that much different from the other major summer festivals that take place along the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. Enough that the bands should travel by giant flotilla next year to ...