RJD2 – History Repeating #Not Back in the early to mid 2000s, many musicians had great success by blending cool new beats with key loops, often from old blues or soul, to create new music. It started with hits such as History Repeating in...
PLANTS & ANIMALS – That Montreal Summer Feel… The Montreal trio has gained a lot of experience since their fantastic debut, "Parc Avenue", back in 2008. On top of the 4 albums and 2 EP they made together, each member of Plants & Animals became an...
ISLANDS – Too Darn Easy Everything seems too easy for the talented musicians that form Islands. In 2016, Nicholas Thorburn, Evan and Geordie Gordon and Adam Halferty launched not one but two albums simultaneously. Both include great...
METHYL ETHEL – Perfect Balance It is tough to find the balance between catchy music and solid artistic direction. Some fall into the more pop side of things (e.g. LaRoux) while others are more on the art side (e.g. Blonde Redhead's "23"...
LAURA SAUVAGE – Extraordinormal Indeed! There has been a trend in the last few years of strong-minded heavy-guitar female musicians that have gathered respect for both their playing and rock attitude. PJ Harvey, St. Vincent, and Corin Tucker and...
IGGY POP – Rebirth at 69 Music legends are falling one after the other. In the last few months, we have said fairwell to Scott Weiland (48 years old) Lemmy (70), Bowie (69), Glenn Frey (67) and Prince (57) and Lonnie Mack (74) just a...
DAN SAN – Close to me Now, this is an interesting album. I found it a bit by accident as I always throw all new albums we receive at RREVERB into a random mix in my cell to listen to when I commute to work (Yes, I do work. Can’t...
LAURA GIBSON – What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger Laura Gibson has been singing folk songs since 2010. Her 4th album "Empire Builder" shows how much experience and talent she has accumulated since her start. Songs like Damn Sure feature the high quality of...
TRAVIS – This guy’s got soul Back in late 90s, rock music was reinventing itself (as it is constantly doing), somewhere between lounge music, electronic experiments as grunge days we're close to be over. Morcheeba, Amon Tobin and...
GREYHOUNDS – Heart and Soul This album is unique. Every song on this album is unique. Greyhounds could be compared as a rock and soul mix of TV on The Radio, The Black Keys with Danger Mouse-type of production. Two middle-age (white)...
AIR paved the way Before Daft Punk took the pop world by storm with Get Lucky, the most prominent French band outside of France was Air. At the turn of the century their dreamy lounge music traveled efficiently in international...
ASHLEY RILEY – Pursuing Dreams Ashley Riley is a singer songwriter in the true meaning of the word: her own voice, her own music, her own path. On "All the Pretty Things", she displays her talent in various styles: Made of Dreams is a pure...
GIRLS IN HAWAII – The Missed One There aren't many albums that are focused on the death of a loved one that are fun to listen to. Belgian indie rock band Girls in Hawaii have released a beautiful and thoughtful album in 2013, entitled...
JON COHEN – Smooth Talking, Groove Dancing I had noticed Jon Cohen's musical project in 2006 when his “Self-titled” album landed in my Inbox, when I was writing for the indie rock magazine emoragei, back in the day. I was pleased by his mix of rich...
CROSS RECORD – Not Every Musician is an Artist… …and not all artists are musicians. Every musician is an artist, but not necessarily at the same level. The ones that target the charts as a goal in their career, or dumb beer drinking rockers have a way...
HEARTSTREETS: Montreal Girls Crawling South A few years ago, two girls from Montreal started posting some great tunes on YouTube and a lot of people paid attention. I definitely felt they would get snapped up by a label, do an album and go big. It...
TRSTSS – LoFi Garage Panache Indie hard punk rockers TRSTSS have put out a solid 4-song EP last autumn where we sense influences from power alt-rock à la Strokes (Problems) and deeper Velvet Underground lofi garage art style. On...
TY SEGALL – The Strange Animal Indie art-rock freak Ty Segall could have been the persona Gowan was referring to when he sang "You're a Strange Animal, I've got to follow" in 1985 (click here if you really have to). Segall wasn't even born...
DONOVAN WOODS – The Woodman’s Vulnerability I first became aware of Ontario-born singer-songwriter Donovan Woods through an UNCUT Magazine Cd Sampler that featured his song, No Time Has Passed from his 2011 album, "The Widowmaker". It was love at first...
THE BESNARD LAKES – Makes You Wander Masters of sound Jace Lasek and his band The Besnard Lakes strike again. The Montreal crew that handles the Breaking Glass studio where Jace Lasek recorded some of their best work creates an awesome opus of...
MEN I TRUST – Perfect Beauty For guys and gals who miss the cool loungy feel of the late 90s that bands like Morcheeba used to infiltrate in our bodies, here's Men I Trust. This Quebec City band nails the soft lazy sexy and spleen-esque...
10 FT GANJA PLANT – Grows on ya’ Great roots reggae are hard to find these days. Melodies and arrangements are important in reggae that, otherwise, can become a very redundant music genre. The upstate New York-based band 10 Ft Ganja Plant got...
OUR BOOK AND THE AUTHORS – Many Pens, One Style The Montreal-based band serves great music on its 2015 EP. Electro jazzy songs like Bus Ride are somehow a mix of very different types of ambiances. A little of James-Blake-type of cold electro beats mixed...
BASIA BULAT – Pop Goes The World Singer songwriter Basia Bulat, 31, isn't a newcomer anymore. We have been seeing her on every Montreal and Toronto stage since her 1st EP came out in 2005. She played everywhere in Canada and the US since...
OLAFUR ARNALDS & ALICE SARA OTT : A Bold Reinvention of Chopin’s Work Composer Olafur Arnalds took the bold bet to re-write Chopin's music. In a pop or rock, we would say that he "covered" Chopin: he brings a new reading of music that is 175 years old. That's something that...
LORDE – Beauty in Boredom Lorde's rise to fame late 2013, was a refreshing one. The young lady made a few statements right off the bat refusing her pictures to be photoshopped, and her dark kind-of-gothic look changed. By doing so, she...
RIHANNA: The Soul Woman, The Badass Chick and The Cheezy Ballad Singer… We all know it. Rihanna is a world-wide pop superstar that seems to spend too much of her time flashing her boobs and smoking joints on expensive yachts with her female crew. But she's also one of the best...
THE HIGH DIALS bring back the good part of the 80s This Montreal band (previously called The Datsons) is making a name for itself, since 2003. More and more, their Smiths-influenced new wave rock is finding its own route, thanks to strong music riffs (Echoes...
CASS MC COMBS is all about contrasts Cass McCombs is an indie-rock artist that combines garage art rock with strong Velvet Underground influence. You can hear the VU through his chord progression and guitar distortion (A.Y.D., which stands for At...
DRALMS – Dark and Hypnotic Explorations Imagine you're in a dream. It's nice, not freaky, but you kind of feel that something isn't normal. You are not scared but you aren't 100% comfortable either. Vancouver-based band Dralms's new album "Shook" is...
CALEXICO – Welcome to Broken Heart Country In the late 90s and early years of this century, the Tucson, Arizona-based band Calexico was one of the most interesting ones of the indie rock world. Their unique Mexican music tainted folk rock was one that...
DUSTED: Far away, dirty and beautiful Brian Borcherdt is a genius. He has all the skills. This guy can get pure melodic gems out of lo-fi garage rock. Like Cobain could. Like Corgan could. He considers guitar like Neil Young does. He can play...
Remember the pre-weird BJÖRK? To many ears, the Icelandic elf always has been weirder than your average rocker, but in the early days of her solo career, she still created pop songs that were way more melodic and danceable than her later...
DAVID BOWIE nails the perfect pop album If this album would have been recorded by anybody else but David Bowie, we would all be in awe. “Let’s Dance” is one of the best albums of the 80s decade, one of the best pop albums of all times. But,...
What’s hot in JAZZ in 2015? A top 10 list is very hard to do as there is so much more out there to enjoy. I tried to keep it as local as possible, because here in Montreal and the Quebec area we have so many talents and wonderful jazz...
Melancholia, mood and melody: here’s the BEST OF MY 2015 year At RREVERB, we have the great honor of reading Andre Papanicolaou's thoughts on life, and views on the music business, in the eyes of the professional guitarist he is. In 2015, he launched a new album which...
Epic Orchestration and Electric Blasts of Metal in our TOP METAL ALBUMS of 2015 list Our NYC based collaborator Mick Stingley picks up the 10 best metal albums of the year. Here's why he chose these 10 over all others he heard in the last 12 months. 1. ENSIFERUM, “One Man Army” (Metal...
MOON DUO – Hypnosis under the Stars Have you ever been hypnotized by music? Had the feeling where your brain cannot get out of a musical loop that almost makes you dizzy? That's exactly what Moon Duo is trying to do. With success! If you never...
KINSKI, Like There’s No Tomorrow Kinski is a rock band in the true sense of the word. You sense right from the first chord that these guys don’t anything else in life than look for the perfect sonic feeling, for the best riff or beat. Then,...
Who Will Mend ANGELA DESVEAUX’s Broken Heart? Angela Desveaux signs beautifully. We don't get to hear her enough. It has been seven years since this small format blonde Montrealer has released an album, and I miss her music. Her music is carefully...