Melissa Erin on “Settle On Down”, Her Influences, and This Whole Crazy Year
2020 has been a year marked by anxiety and trauma. Beginning with the raging wildfires that spread uncontrollably across the Australian heartland back in January, the last eleven months have given us a bottomless pit of catastrophic events too numerous and disheartening to enumerate. “When life gives you lemons”, the saying goes, “make lemonade.” But […]
“Green Tea” by Winter Beach: An Unexpected Memento Mori
Famed Polish composer Frederic Chopin is quoted as saying that “simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes… it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” This, of course, is a predictably Victorian, prolix way of rephrasing minimalist architect Ludwig Miles van der Rohe’s oft-quoted maxim: […]
“Abattoir” by The Ninth Wave: Things Fall Apart
Looking at Van Gogh’s Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background, produced during his troubled stay at Arles in the southern French countryside, it’s almost impossible not to experience the emotional tumult that, by then, had come to define the ill-fated artist’s day-to-day. His deft use of intense undulating brush strokes makes out of […]
It’s Not Easy Being Young and Urban: Malady’s “London, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
Sometime in the late fall of 2008, Kermit The Frog took the internet and the music industry by storm. In a video that quickly went viral and that’s since received almost 4.5-million views on YouTube, the pleasant and well-meaning star of The Muppet Show is seen alone and sitting on some rocks at sunset along […]
“Maggie” by Cedar Sparks: A Ghost Story
In the final act of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta come upon the two missing couples as they wake up in a glade and begin to recount vivid anecdotes of magic and witchcraft. Bemused, Hippolyta remarks on how strange yet strikingly similar their stories are, to which her fiancé […]
Greta Morgan and the Art of Acceptance: “When The Sun Comes Up”
Life, as we’re all well aware, is unpredictable. And no matter how much we prepare or how hard we fight against it, change is inevitable. As George Harrison declared in his presently-relevant ballad “All Things Must Pass”: “sunshine doesn’t last all morning/ a cloudburst doesn’t last all day… all things must pass/ all things must […]
The Besnard Lakes’ Latest Philosophical Dive: “Raindrops”
As someone who was born in October, fall has always held a degree of personal significance that has set it apart from all the other seasons. Throughout my life, I’ve equated it with introspection, and have been hyper aware of the predictable mix of nostalgia and eagerness that kicks in the moment that the leaves […]
