Jokes about Kristian Matsson’s height are well past their expiry date. Yes, the odd class clown who never grew up may be tempted to make a jab at the Swedish singer-songwriter’s decided lack of stature given that he goes by performing name of The Tallest Man On Earth, but he more than makes up for it with his natural musical talent.
Oft subject to lazy comparisons to Bob Dylan just because of his gravelly voice, a three year period between his last release sees Matsson seeking to distance himself from the folk legend with a fiercely individualistic new record. Entitled Dark Bird Is Home, Matsson’s fourth full-length record is largely concerned with the dissolution of two marriages; the first being Matsson’s recent divorce from his wife, and the second between his voice and his guitar. Normally one for vague lyrics, Matsson explores his personal challenges with a newfound directness. Having plied his trade as a one-man show for three albums, Matsson opted to pick up a slew of instruments during the recording process and will be backed by a full band on upcoming tour. The results, if anything else could be expected from Matsson at this point, are terrific. Certain albums could be found guilty of stewing in misery solely for the sake of it, but Matsson’s albums have never been lacking in intent. Dark Bird is Home shares this characteristic and always seems to be trying to uncover a new leaf and move on with life all while taking one’s losses on the chin.
Album-opener, “Fields of Our Home”, finds Matsson resorting to his usual pastoral references, but the way he cavorts through them has changed. Gone is the almost panicked strumming of days past in favour of a more lackadaisical approach. With his older records so full of youthful urgency, the more considered and decidedly slower sound is a stark departure for Matsson who now seems focused on slowly building up in order to achieve a massive moment of catharsis.
“Little Nowhere Towns” is another standout for how Matsson takes the piano, which has featured prominently in his old songs like “Kids on The Run”, and produces the same nostalgic tone. Joyous at some points, mournful at others, the track serves as a worthy one capable of serving as midpoint in the album and tying things together with aplomb. “Seventeen” is perhaps the best indication of what Matsson is capable of when he combines lush instrumentation, with his voice and guitar. While not the greatest vocalist you’ve ever heard, Matsson’s charm lies in how he inflects his voice with subtle intonations that pull at your heartstrings, which grow more and more vulnerable with each verse.
Dark Bird Is Home serves as an impressive shift in style from the Swedish artist that fans old and new can latch onto for a comforting listen.
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By: Chris Chiu
What do you get when you cross the action of a James Bond film with the humour of The A-Team, and the recklessness of This is the End? Answer: A helluva good time.
For many, James Bond has long been the gold standard of what a spy should be. Whether it was the suaveness of Sean Connery, or the ruggedness of Daniel Craig, Bond has always been the template, until now. However, with the release of Kingsman: The Secret Service, viewers are given a convincing case for why Bond could be dethroned.
Based upon the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, Kingsman is the story of Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a young adult living in one of London’s rougher districts. Eggsy’s unfortunate involvement in a carjacking and an incurred debt causes Eggsy’s life of petty crime to coincide with the lavish world of the Kingsman Secret Service. With the help of his mentor (Colin Firth), he transforms from a delinquent to a member of Kingsman, a collective of elite spies. From there, Eggsy is thrown into an adventure filled with humour, action, and self-discovery, all while he fights to save the world from a genocide-obsessed megalomaniac played by Samuel L. Jackson.
Kingsman brings together an eclectic mix of veteran and novice actors, resulting in a compelling final product. In particular, newcomer Taron Egerton’s chemistry with his co-stars is evident, especially Colin Firth and Sophie Cookson, further adding to the appeal. In contrast however, scenes with Samuel L. Jackson’s character often left me annoyed. While it’s clear the movie set out to be light-hearted and quirky, the eccentricities of Jackson only made him less convincing.
Still, the strengths of Kingsman outweigh its flaws. Specifically, the cinematography of Matthew Vaughn, the maestro behind X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass, lent his signature fun and edgy style to the film. All the tiny details of the film, including the costume and set design, all congregate to create a stunning visual for viewers
What makes Kingsman stand out from other spy films is it never takes itself too seriously. Unlike a Bond movie, where the directors strive for realism, Kingsman is much more like abstract art. This allows for some over-the-top scenes—including a thousand-man brawl in a church—to not feel out of place in the film.
The result is a whimsical spy movie for this generation—one that carries itself with a lot more panache than your average spy flick, and maybe even a little more swagger than Mr. Bond himself.
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After putting out two EPs in 2013, BANKS released her debut full-length album Goddess in 2014 and quickly established herself as a frontrunner of the surging minimalist pop movement. Collaborating with a handful of producers including Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Sohn, BANKS manages to craft a seductive and intense body of work that bleeds emotion. She is vixen-like on some tracks with her voice wailing like a siren, lustful and tortured. On others, she shows a more vulnerable dimension, switching to a softer, more cautious tone.
Goddess is a prime of example of how opposites attract with the polished production often juxtaposed by the rawness and emotion in BANKS’ voice. But perhaps it is this juxtaposition that manages to capture interest throughout the 14-track (18 for deluxe) affair.
I am really enjoying the experimental path pop music is heading towards at the moment and I put my faith in BANKS whose quiet passion is leading the uprising and breathing fire into the revolution.
Deeply moving and atmospheric, The War On Drugs’ third album is nothing short of impressive. Combining foggy instrumentals with Adam Granduciel’s mournful vocals, Lost In The Dream creates a tingling sensation that persists throughout the album.
Granduciel is incredibly creative with his direction of the band’s sound, the most notable example being the opening of the first track “Under the Pressure,” which sounds eerily like a kettle as it starts to heat up on a stove.
Admittedly, Lost In The Dream is an album that requires the listener to be in a specific mental state. While the single “Red Eyes” has gotten its fair share of radio play in recent months, the album as a whole is definitely not meant for sunny Friday afternoons as you leave your last class. Rather, it demands a kind of focus that can be found when writing an essay at 3 a.m. or walking a great distance on a drizzly day.
This is All Yours is a delicious mix of the catchy riffs, and soothing melodies that define Alt-J’s unique sound. The British stalwarts’ lyrics are both poetic and vague, and at times Joe Newman’s vocals are almost entirely unintelligible. The catch here is that discovering the meaning behind Newman’s lyrics as the album progresses is as enjoyable as it is challenging.
“Warm Foothills” is a sweetly charming addition to the album. Its gorgeous harmonies paired with a light-hearted guitar riff and the beautiful imagery that’s offered by the lyrics is a sure-fire recipe for an amazing song. It’s impossible not to feel moved, especially when the voices croon out “I tie my life to your balloon and let it go.”
Alt-J’s sophomore effort is full of equally compelling songs, and is one to seek out for those who are keen on experiencing something a little bit different from their usual fare.
Lykke Li’s latest album, I Never Learn is another thematic step forward for the Swedish songstress that highlights the unavoidability of her favourite topic, heartbreak.
Having explored the immediate pain of a breakup in Youth Novels and charted the effects of ever-clinging despair in follow-up Wounded Rhymes, Li seems to embrace her fate with aptly titled I Never Learn. While riddled with the same mournful darkness as her previous albums, I Never Learn has a more powerful underlying cohesion that results in greater depth than her previous efforts.
“Just Like a Dream” is a standout that put listeners in a somber trance with its consistent deep vocals and powerful drumbeat throughout. The loneliness found in the rest of the tracks will be relatable to anyone who has endured having their heart broken.
The emotions in I Never Learn are devastating when considering how they consume Li, but leave you wanting to delve deeper into both her mind and music.
2014 brought about the resurrection of Ben Howard’s electric licks and transcendent timbre with the release of his sophomore album I Forget Where We Were. Howard’s mellow tone was one that was dearly missed by his nucleus of fans, a following that has grown exponentially since his first venture into the Indie scene. The album features tracks marked by simplicity, yet is intricately layered with eclectic sounds, electric echoes, and an overall permeation of his soulful, burning voice.
The shift from acoustic to electric guitar comes as a surprise, but only works to complement his electrically charged wails. His tracks may build and crash in the background but his whispery voice carries every track from its burgeoning start to the final chord. Among all other galvanic album releases this year, Ben Howard’s second album is a refreshing alcove of soothing tracks that will make you — if even for a second — forget where you are.
Born Tahliah Barnett, FKA Twigs owns an aesthetic that is eerie and unconventional. From her album covers to her music videos, her works emulate a distortion of beauty that adds to her eccentric persona and allure. In LP1, crystalline beats puncture through flesh and bone, though her breathy voice never fails to linger and heal these wounds. The album is filled with punchy beats and crafty synthetic hooks. Her lyrics, though not cathartic, are intimate and relatable.
A standout track is “Pendulum.” It emulates the vibe that defines the rest of the album; beautifully tragic. Twigs manages to convey a desperation that so many of us are familiar with in a way that doesn’t make her a damsel in distress. This song is her autopsy, and though she lays disassembled on the track, you still can’t figure her out.
FKA Twigs manages to merge a cavalcade of electronic beats and orchestral instruments with her tantalizingly warped vocals. She is clandestine and provocative, and every whimper or lustful sigh that fills the occasional silence in LP1 further imposes the mystique behind this extraterrestrial seductress.
Some go to church on Sundays, I listen to What is This Heart?. The emotional expansiveness of Tom Krell’s third record under the How To Dress Well moniker renders it every bit as cathartic as religious gatherings are supposed to be.
While Krell suggests, “ there’s no design, no god,” on opener “2 Years On (Shame Dream),” the message he sends with the remainder of his album is not morose, but rather uplifting. Krell abhors easy cynicism, and this deeply earnest effort serves to counteract it.
The tall falsetto-voiced singer grapples with existential issues deftly, perhaps aided by the work he has done on his dissertation on nihilism and German philosophy. Although the subject matter is lofty, Krell’s honeyed vocals and the immersive production all bring one back down to earth to engage with his demons in an experience that won’t fail to induce tears. Far from depressing, the record combines a whirl of emotions into a rehabilitative sonic experience. If you embrace What is this Heart?, it’ll return the favour.
Through brilliant production, back-and-forth chemistry between Killer Mike and El-P, and willingness to be completely unapologetic in its lyrics, the second collaboration between the duo never feels stale or bloated underneath its middle finger to almost everyone and everything. Run The Jewels 2 is not for the light-hearted or easily offended. Hooks like “Lie, cheat, steal, kill, win, win, (everybody doing it)” set up the duo to aggressively persecute any critics in their way while providing transitions into serious topics such as police brutality, racism, drug usage, war, death, and government hypocrisy.
What makes the album particularly amazing is the ability to balance all of this. Every song could easily be a single on its own due to the ability to stand separated from album context, and the sheer quality of every track from top to bottom. Each feels completely unique from the last. Each invites you to rage and to build up feelings of rebellion against whatever may be holding you down. Good luck finding anything else quite like RTJ2, but look out for the cat-inspired (seriously) remix Meow The Jewels.
When I first heard Alvvays I didn’t think much of it. Their track “Adult Diversion” had been posted on a music blog I followed, and while I liked the song, I never followed up on it. Months later multiple friends of mine started telling me I had to listen to this band that “was like Best Coast, but with better lyrics.” While I could see the similarities, after endless loopings of “Archie, Marry Me,” “Next of Kin,” and “The Agency Group” I quickly realized Alvvays was so much more.
It’s hard to pin down just what it is that makes the Canadian indie-pop’s self-titled debut so compelling. Maybe it’s Molly Rankin’s ethereal voice, or the perfect balance of the “less is more” production philosophy, or even Alec O’Hanley’s expert use of dissonance in his guitar playing. What is clear is that each listen of Alvvays builds on the dreamy summer soundscape that I’ve come to love. Proof that Canada makes music to be proud of; Alvvays doesn’t disappoint.
Annie Clark, better known as the effervescent St. Vincent, has always been somewhat of an anomaly. From her butterfly wing-wearing days touring with Sufjan Stevens to her latest self-titled album, she has never played by the rules, but it’s always worked for her.
St. Vincent is jarring, mismatched, often dark, but always sounds exactly as it should. Without trying too hard, St. Vincent has fashioned herself as an art-pop icon by refusing to be anyone but herself. In a world where the weirdos are rarely celebrated, St. Vincent has delivered the best album of the year, a pop-rock-electronic album that allows for both introspection and intense dance sessions guaranteed to up your self-esteem and overall mood. From the ethereal aura of “Prince Johnny” to the retro simplicity of “Huey Newton,” Clark manages to produce her best album to date that somehow captures the essence of the past and the future effortlessly.
Without a doubt, McMaster English majors will have already had the pleasure of taking a class taught by James King and be familiar with his wry sense of humour and wisdom, while those outside of the program looking for a stimulating elective quickly become acquaintances with it.
Having taught at McMaster since 1971, King has become a fixture in the department for his amicable lecturing style and the bevy of influential works he has published. Since obtaining his PhD from Princeton, King has written a slew of well-received biographies on subjects ranging from English poet William Cowper to celebrated Canadian writers like Margaret Laurence and Farley Mowat.
Of late, King has been focussing his creative energy on polishing his prose through the release of five novels between 1999 and 2011. King’s latest work, Old Masters, was published Oct. 2014 and finds him toying with a different method of telling what might seem like a fairly conventional story.
As indicated by its title, the novel is concerned with the artworks of the celebrated Old Masters, European painters who worked before 1800. For those immediately turned off by the prospects of reading a poorly disguised textbook, fear not. The book does not concern itself with critical appraisals of said Masters’ works and shares none of the heft of a stuffy art history course-pack.
Instead, Old Masters boasts a compelling, tightly-wound plot that still leaves room for ample introspection over the span of its 202 pages. The novel’s protagonist — or anti-hero, depending on your own pessimism — is Guy Boyd, a struggling writer who is surprised to find himself appointed to the task of writing a biography, but is nevertheless encouraged by the hefty advance thrown his way.
Ever the cynic, one of the first thoughts that Boyd entertains after coming down from the high of being given a shot at redemption is that he must keep his newfound finances a secret, lest his ex-wife demand more in the ways of child support for their thirteen year-old son Jacob.
In the wake of the death of Gabriel Brown, a famous art dealer who was renowned for his ability to find previously undiscovered work by the Old Masters, Boyd is tasked with writing a slim volume concerned with the man’s life. Not much is expected of Boyd — a hundred pages would suffice given that the book would be accompanied with full-colour reproductions of Brown’s most famous discoveries — but he immediately becomes frustrated by the lack of any apparent juicy personal details that normally grace the pages of biographies.
Fearful of producing a work with nothing to say about Brown that everyone does not already know, Boyd eagerly takes up the offer of Brown’s secretary to move into the late Canadian expat’s London estate. Aside from aiding him in his task of writing the biography, the house also notably succeeds in winning the favour of Boyd’s son Jacob, who begins to look forward to the weekends spent with his father, if only to cavort through the halls with his friends.
While now a different man in the eyes of his son, Boyd is frustrated by the fact that there are no loose ends to follow in his project of fashioning Brown into a more three-dimensional figure. Rendered anxious by the comfortable interviews with Brown’s colleagues that break no new ground and financially bolstered by the generous advance, Boyd revolves to travel to Canada where both he and Brown hail from in the hopes of unearthing new material.
Boyd immediately unearths a thrilling development, whether he welcomes it or not. An unsuccessful probe into the University of Toronto archives leads to a chat with one of Brown’s cousins who drops a bomb on Boyd’s biography; the Gabriel Brown seen in obituary photos is not in fact Gabriel Brown.
Through further research, Boyd learns that the man in the photographs and who built his reputation as one of the world’s foremost dealers is named John Martin, and he was as honest in his dealings as he was about his name.
In his search as to how Martin made such a name for himself, Boyd discovers an unpleasant truth that would shatter the lives of those who thought themselves close to Brown, as well as blow the entire art world into shambles. Equally disgusted with Martin as he is amazed, Boyd now finds himself in a moral quandary: deliver the safe biography his publisher wants, or reveal the truth about Martin’s rise to fame. The struggle to choose becomes an all-consuming one that threatens to break apart Boyd’s carefully forged relationship with his son, and one that highlights the complicated relationship between artist and subject.
No doubt aided in the writing of the novel by his own experience as a biographer, King proves to be up to the task of turning this dual character study into an entrancing page-turner. King’s prose deftly skirts away from being too flowery while still leaving you with no doubts about the extent of his own education. Taking up a familiar topic in the middle-age crisis, King weaves an interesting metanarrative that is well worth picking up in the event that you have any spare time this semester.
Sarah Kay makes stories into poetry and poetry into therapy, a war cry for the fallen and a fireplace for the restful. No Matter the Wreckage is a collection of her poems which you may have heard spoken out loud at a poetry slam contest or during her iconic TED Talk. For those who yawn at the mere mention of a poem, Kay will change how you see poetry.
Kay shines a light into all the corners of life that are rough and cracked, the ones most of the rest of us try so hard to hide from. In one of her poems, Kay describes people as boats. Some of us are battle ships, others rowboats. Some of us are hole-ridden, but we still say we’re only a little banged up. But all of that doesn’t matter, because “no matter [our] wreckage, there will be someone to find [us] beautiful.”
She tells tales of love – motherly love, passionate love that consumes you, lingering love for a ghost of someone that has moved on, and unconventional love. In “Hands”, Sarah talks about hands holding hands, hands holding pencils, hands making fists. She says hands are about love, not politics, yet “each country sees its fists as warriors/ and others as enemies, even if fists alone are only hands.”
In a moment of anxiety, Kay frets about the importance of making our actions meaningful now because we don’t know how much time we have left. Which words will be our last, and will they be worth it? What about all of our constant doubt? We are so obsessed with the past and enamoured with the future, that we are surprised when the present has passed us by. “The Paradox” takes a look at our constant worry that there is something better that we could be doing, when really we should be thankful for all the things we did, or at least all the things we knew for sure we didn’t want to do.
In one of my personal favourites, “Hand-Me-Downs”, she compares hatred that makes its way down generations to hand-me-down clothes. At first the clothes fit a little loosely, but as we grow into them they mould to us, become a part of us. And so we are part genetics and part expectation, when maybe we should be a little bit less predetermined and always a size too small for our hand-me-downs.
The cover on my copy of No Matter the Wreckage is a drawing of a woman playing an accordion in a boat on choppy waters. Kay is the woman and the accordion her poetry, a dry haven for when the winds become wild and the waters are choppy. Kay should never worry if her last words will be worthwhile, because the words seen in this collection provide reassurance to anyone who reads them.
By: Anthony Manrique
Brad Pitt returns to Germany to kill Nazis, although this time, he’s fighting in the frontlines in David Ayer’s war film, Fury. Pitt portrays tank commander Sergeant Don Collier fighting deep within enemy territory in Germany as the war approaches its end. His five-man crew consists of Boyd “Bible” Swan (Shia LaBeouf) as the main gunner, Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis (Jon Bernthal) as their loader, and Trini “Gordo” Garcia (Michael Pena) as the driver.
At the beginning of the film, Collier and his crew emerge as the only survivors of their armoured division in a graveyard of destroyed American tanks. The crew’s original bow gunner has been killed in a prior battle and his replacement turns out to be a recent recruit, Norman Ellison, played by Logan Lerman. Having only been in the army for eight weeks, Ellison displays reluctance in shooting and killing the enemy, saying, “my conscience is clean; I’m keeping it that way.”
In one scene, Collier tries to educate Ellison to the harsh realities of war by forcing him to shoot a German POW begging for mercy. As the story progresses, the crew, now transferred to a new armoured division, moves on to capture a small German town as their objective. The scenes in this part of the movie start to become even more intense, with battles accompanied by astounding visual effects, from exploding tank shells, whizzing bullets, to bursts of flame and glowing tracer rounds enveloping the battlefield. It is also in this scene that Ellison starts to transform into a more determined and relentless killer, shouting curses at the Nazis that he kills during the course of the battle.
The climax comes shortly afterwards, as a landmine disables their vehicle, while 300 elite German S.S. infantry approaches the crossroads. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination until you see the film.
Overall, the movie’s action-packed fight scenes, stunning visuals, and gritty, appealing atmosphere give a lasting impression of what war would look like: hell. Some of the aspects of the movie’s plot are borrowed from other contemporary WWII films, like the climax that bears a similarity to the end of Saving Private Ryan. Pitt continues to play a rugged, violent, and ferocious warrior for the most part, akin to his role in Inglorious Basterds, but with his character’s deep sense of morality and vulnerability to the horrors of war, this role is an outstanding exception. Lerman’s portrayal of Ellison, however, is a bit cliché. His innocent kid-turned-killer persona has already been used in the characters of Pvt. Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, or Cpl. Upham from Saving Private Ryan, and unlike them, the portrayal seems to try too hard. All the action and the drama that is needed in a good war film make up for what the film lacks in its distinctiveness. Nevertheless, Fury still manages to deliver a satisfying experience for fans of war movies and moviegoers alike.
By: Mike Nisiak
Last Friday saw the release of Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, after a year of waiting since the second movie in the series, Catching Fire. In this film, Katniss is taken to District 13, where she becomes the Mockingjay, a symbol used to inspire the revolution.
I’ll start with the good: There were some parts in the movie that were very touching and, dare I say it, one part that even brought a tear to my eye.
Jennifer Lawrence gives a great performance that effectively shows her helplessness and her inner turmoil during the film. Katniss is hesitant about inspiring people to overthrow the capitol because of the lives that it will cost, but at the same time, she knows that it’s the only way that peace will come to Panem. As such a strong character, it’s very potent to see her breaking down in this way.
As the film creates such strong tensions, it also creates hope. Potential can be seen in the people in District 13, as they work together and have a useful variety of skills amongst them. This is a good setup for Mockingjay Part 2, where everything will depend on this very teamwork.
Now for the bad: Once the movie ended, I realized that not much had happened over the two hours of watching. It seemed to be more about setting up the story for the final movie, in which everything will happen all at once.
The book doesn’t really lend itself to being made into two eventful movies. But I can’t necessarily say that it shouldn’t have been broken up. If it had been one movie, a lot of setting up would have to happen within an hour and way too many things would need to be jammed into the second hour. I suppose that it’s best to have this movie as a sacrifice in order to make the last movie even better.
Overall, the movie serves its purpose of building the tension between the revolutionaries and the capitol. My main complaint is that, even though it serves its purpose, maybe the purpose itself isn’t quite enough to make an eventful film out of just part of the book.
“However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at it. While there is life, there is hope.”
Eddie Redmayne graces the big screen for the first time since Les Misérables in a breathtaking performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. His ability to convey emotion is unparalleled, and his portrayal of Hawking’s story will tug at your heart.
The movie begins with Hawking’s years at Cambridge University, where he meets Jane Wilde at a campus party in a classic but not yet worn-out case of boy meets girl. From there, they seem to gravitate towards one another, their attraction magnetic but nonetheless clumsy in the ways teenage relationships have always been. They are the perfect case of opposites attracting – a brilliant physicist and a religious language major. You will fall in love with their love story, a simple but beautiful journey that builds until the moment he gets diagnosed with motor neuron disease at the age of 21. In love and faced with the fact that Stephen was given little more than two years left to live, Stephen and Jane get married in the midst of floating white rose petals.
As a married couple, the two struggle with normal family pressures alongside the added stress of Hawking’s slow deterioration. Stephen completes his doctoral thesis on his singularity theorem, which states that the universe started as a singularity and is constantly expanding. All the while, he continues in his search for the theory of everything, an equation to explain all the forces in the world. Throughout his life, Stephen’s passion for his work is one that never falters – the complexity of time perplexes him, astrology mystifies him and he never falls out of love with physics.
Stephen fights valiantly against his inevitable physical weakness, his mind never faltering, constantly churning, plotting, inventing. He falls in and out of depression as he gradually loses his ability to walk without a cane, then to eat, then to climb the stairs, then to talk. In what is perhaps the most heartbreaking scene in the movie, Stephen struggles to pull himself up the stairs alone, silently suffering as his wife and friends celebrate his success over laughter and clinking glasses.
The movie continues to follow their story as a couple through snapshots, cutting in and out of their life at various intervals, with as much as several years spanning between scenes. Their relationship is not without its bumps and bruises – what relationship ever is? – yet at the end of the day, no two people could care about each other more.
For a movie that is so character-driven, there could not be a better cast for The Theory of Everything. The most powerful scenes are those where no words are exchanged – every emotion is so clearly written on each character’s face. Your heart will break along with Jane’s, you will smile along with Stephen and you will learn to trust that no matter the obstacles in your way, “only time, whatever that may be, will tell.”
By: Alexandra Florescu
The This is Me, This is Also Me exhibit at the McMaster Museum of Art curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki will run until Mar. 21, 2015, and features an extensive collection of self-portraits by both Canadian and international artists. From polaroids to paintings to videos, no artist’s rendition of themselves is alike.
Among my favourites is a collection of four black-and-white prints by Làszló Moholy-Nagy. What sets his work apart is his use of negative space to represent people doing everyday things like jogging and talking. Instead of someone standing in a doorway, there is a solid black door with the white cutout, its missing occupant hanging out in the bottom of the page. In the space where the man used to be is a sniper aiming to take out the cutout of the other man, who is talking to a woman. This piece, titled Jealousy, is my favourite of the four prints for its simplicity and the way in which seemingly unrelated shapes and objects make a cohesive piece.
Another interesting piece is one that appears to be a wall-sized painting of three men lying in bed. As you cross the length of the room to get a closer look at the painting, you realize that there is one very clear difference setting it apart. Instead of being made out of standard paint brushwork, it is completely comprised of small blue, yellow, red, black paint splatters on a white canvas. It is remarkable that the only difference between the men’s faces and the white pillows behind their heads is how close together the splatters are. Details like the rosiness of cheeks, shadows on the face and even a faint trace of stubble were captured with only four different colours of dots. The piece is titled Baby Makes 3 and is done by three artists A.A Bronson, Jorge Zontal and Felix Zontal to portray an unconventional nuclear family.
Rebecca Belmore’s iconic White Thread is even more impressive in person than it is on the museum’s website, the ink-jet red a powerful contrast against the starch white of the cloth behind the model. From head to toe, her body is wrapped in a red cloth. Her contorted pose is provocative and shocking, creating the exact effect that Belmore, an Anishinaabe-Canadian artist that has been creating performance art for years, wanted. This specific photograph is representative of war in Iraq, and falls along the same lines as her past pieces, which portray the politics of identity.
Another personal favourite can be found in the back room of the exhibit, where Baaba Maal’s “Akkag-Addu Jam” is set to a silent video of a woman wrapping, unwrapping, and rewrapping a red cloth around her head. The woman, Grace Ndiritu, is first concealed completely by the cloth, but as the drum beat-driven “Akkag-Addu Jam” picks up in tempo, the cloth falls away and is contorted as she manipulates it. The piece is a representation of the use of cloth in different cultures, a passion that was sparked during her travels and has now become a vehicle for her empowerment of the silenced.
Other pieces in the exhibit includes a spoken word piece that uses heritage to define identity, Andy Warhol’s Portrait in Drag, Edvard Munch’s Self-portrait with Skeleton Arm and Cathy Daley’s criticism of female fashion. It isn’t hard to find parts of your own identity in every piece. It makes for an exhibit that is both a vulnerable and powerful portrayal of what it is that makes us, us.
Holy Oker’s debut EP Diamonds is a collection of six electro-dance tracks that combine house-drenched kicks with emotional lyrics. Holy Oker is the solo act of Greg Bevis, drummer from electro-dance group Bear Mountain. Having already found success on the indie scene, Bevis is stepping out on his own to explore electronic music through a more personal approach. His style is a mix of arpeggiated synth hooks and syncopated bass with euphoric melody. Bevis’ tracks, though infused with infectious beats, are not your typical tunes for fist-pumping Fridays at the club – they are fragile and personal, precisely what makes this EP so refreshing.
Every track is a little piece of heartbreak. Synth chords act as the soft overlay of hopefulness, creating a juxtaposition of pain and optimism. The title track, “Diamonds,” is an intimate and personal track from Bevis. Attentive ears will pick out a quiet sigh near the beginning of the song as the synth hook blends with the simple guitar riff, a detail that highlights an unusual vulnerability in his music. My favourite track off the EP is “Love Like A Gun,” where the minor key and dark lyrics bring you pangs of melancholy, only for the syncopated rhythm to carry a soft, airy feel that takes you back to sweet dreams and good memories. The rest of the EP follows a similar formula, one that allows the collection of six songs to work incredibly well with each other.
Perhaps what makes this EP so pleasant is that it doesn’t follow expectations. Holy Oker is a crossover between the electronic beats of CHVRCHES and the breathy voice of Sufjan Stevens, with hints of bands like Haim and, of course, Bear Mountain. His distinctive orchestral arrangements are reminiscent of the works of Jon Brion. Here is a soft, almost fragile voice, combined with strong synth-pop chords and powerful bass beats. The tracks are punchy and edgy with a touch of whimsical, unexpected in the periodic bursts of electronic energy, deep bass, and unreal beats. Bevis’ personal spin on electro-dance has an oddly likeable dissonance that sets him apart from similar artists. His lyrics tell stories about a complicated and disillusioned addiction to love – and his music is a kind of self-medication I’d gladly take.
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