Blair Colwell and Skyler Cafferata‘s latest project, Grimelda, has spent the last 10 years dragging itself across the country, blasting chaotically joyful punk rock into the precious ears of any soul within arms reach. Their unhinged rock songs take art-punk to weird levels of amazing awesomeness and the brand new EP, It’s So Feeling When You Rock, is a collection of tracks that embellishes rock ‘n roll tropes as much as it tears them apart with its bare hands.

I wanted to reach out to see if you had heard the new Odds single. Be great if you could share at Parx-e Zine.

Singer and guitarist Craig Northey and his fellow Odds – bassist Doug Elliott, drummer Pat Steward, and guitarist Murray Atkinson – may be firmly rooted in the present, but they certainly know a thing or two about the past. Founded in 1987, Odds burst onto the recording scene in 1991 with their rambunctious, self-produced major label debut, Neopolitan.

After a 10 year break since their last release, their new album Crash The Time Machine is a welcome comeback, a vibrant painting of struggle and the community that both feeds it and transcends it. The band goes in new and exciting musical directions while retaining the dark ironic signature that has earned them a place in the hearts of listeners for over three decades. The album will be released August 4th.

In the words of Aldous Huxley and Jesus Jones, the title track “Crash The Time Machine” may be summed up in three words: “be here now.” There’s anger and sadness pouring out as you get carried away by the rock ‘n roll, and it truly represents Odds exploding out of themselves that day that they wrote it.

The Weather Holds is the latest project and supergroup formed by Montreal-based producer and composer Devon Bate whose career is rife with secret contributions to contemporary Canadian music, theatre, and dance.

As the producer behind JUNO Award and Polaris Prize winning albums for artists such as Jeremy Dutcher and Jean-Michel Blais, Devon has built friendships and relationships that have shaped his compositional voice. He partnered with artist Julia Milz to direct the music video for new single “With the Heat, Move Slowly” who “interpreted, and understood, the song so intimately.” The Weather Holds is fundamentally about recognizing those connections, bringing disparate worlds of Canadian indie and contemporary classical music together, grounded in prairie soil and nourished with a Montrealaise spirit of experimentation.

Devon prefaces “With the Heat, Move Slowly,” advising that “if it feels like you have the ability to see into the future, and you don’t like what you see, sometimes it’s best just to stop looking – if we’re heading towards something bad, let’s head towards it slowly.”

Forthcoming debut LP (out May 20th), You Couldn’t Ask For a More Beautiful Day, is a precarious return to his folk roots with the electroacoustic influences of his musical training: a nostalgic remembrance of busking in Winnipeg, the careful curation of CDs on bus rides, and fog-ridden memories that sound like experimental country but smell like forest fire smoke. 

Leanne Hoffman performs a tightrope walk between the sensual immediacy of pop music and poetry’s revelatory nuance on her upcoming album, The Text Collector. Using the swirling melodies and glitzed-up production of Top 40, The Nova Scotia-based multidisciplinary artist builds tension between soundscapes primed for pure pleasure and lyrics that address the interconnected relationship between desire and despair.

“Pity Party” is one of many songs on the album that was born from 365 poems that Hoffman wrote over the course of the year, from her poetry collection also called The Text Collector. Because of the gap in time from when the lyrics started out as poetry, Hoffman realized that she had a new perspective by the time they became songs. 

Though Hoffman usually writes a lot of emotionally complicated lyrics and sad songs, this one is just a frivolous way of poking fun at the party poopers in your life. 

Vancouver four piece band Slightest Clue is like the secret after-school project of four kids who would have passed each other without a glance in the hallway at school – but once they’re plugged in and ready to play their distinct blend of post-punk, alternative rock, and dark pop, all bets are off.

With their vigorous new release, “Zipper,” the band had a rough idea of what the song might end up becoming, since a big inspiration to get it finished was the idea of playing it live. There’s an electric current that gets all four of them hyped up whenever they play it live together, and they knew that this crazy energy had to be translated into the final recorded track.

The lyrics came from frustrations with one’s own mental state, and feeling trapped when you can remember a happy feeling but your brain won’t deliver it when you need it most. The song title comes directly from the initial demo Sean Ries sent, titled “so many zippers” which references the tone of his guitar.

Vicki Lovelee is a Chinese Canadian alt-pop singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Markham, Ontario. Her music combines pop with dark, dramatic sounds; fused with orchestral instrumentations.  With an eccentric and raw persona she is a combination of fierce vibrant and honest vulnerability. 

An adamant champion of mental health awareness and the beauty of diversity, her latest single “Retaliate” encapsulates her artistic voice in an invitation to the pop slayers progressive world that she escorts you to with open bejeweled arms.  

The single is a hypnotic alt-pop bop with hooky and dynamic production building to a triumphant crescendo.  An anthemic banger meant to remind the listener, it’s okay to have feelings, it’s okay to be affected and stand up again with retaliation for that is the human condition.

“Ugly emotions in motion, sudden explosions of feeling blue, then feeling green. Everyone around me telling me how obscene, but I don’t give a fuck”