The Salty Scent of Home offers hopeful twist on newcomer storiesYasmine Kandil learned a lesson while teaching at Brock University in Ontario: newcomers to Canada don’t necessarily want to see their stories as narratives of struggle. While her students worked with a community group for a class assignment, some of the recent immigrants “were sad when they saw some of the scenes that the students […] Continue Reading |
Open for all: a look at upcoming fall open-mic eventsI enjoy writing poems, but I’ve always been anxious about sharing my work with others. When my best friend took me to my first open mic back in March last year, I was eager to go check it out but told them I would not be performing. That was not the case in the end, […] Continue Reading |
New Music Revue: Bec Lauder and the Noise show promise with edgy debutBec Lauder and The Noise The Vessel (Killphonic) 3.5/5 Bec Lauder and The Noise is a three-piece rock-grrl group who started their music journey in East Village, Manhattan, and convey their city upbringings in their music. The band—consisting of Lauder, Soph Shreds and Maggie Bishop—released an EP, Before Everything Changes, in 2023 and have now […] Continue Reading |
New Music Revue: The Cords deliver joyful summer indie pop on debutThe Cords The Cords (Slumberland/Sleep Wax) 4.5/5 The Cords is a band made up of sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi from Scotland. The two had an interest for indie music from the ’80s and ’90s as kids, which eventually led to the formation of The Cords, with Eva as the guitarist and vocalist and Grace […] Continue Reading |
Belfry’s 1979 has good fun with Canadian politicsI’ve written often about how much I love reviewing local theatre. I love going out to see the plays that are put on by many of our own local actors and directors and getting to view the creative and individual sets. It’s always an adventure, always a learning experience. On Friday, September 12, I had […] Continue Reading |
New Music Revue: Yasmine Hamdan offers cathartic pleas for hopeYasmine Hamdan I remember I forget (Crammed Discs) 4.5/5 To listen in length to an unfamiliar language is to become fluent in a spirit. When listening to Yasmine Hamdan’s latest album I remember I forget, I do just that—understand not the words but the distress, the devotion, the tenderness. She carries in her tune a […] Continue Reading |
Intrepid Theatre’s Metro Studio closing after 20 yearsAfter two decades of running the Metro Studio, a small venue in the southwest corner of the Victoria Conservatory of Music that has provided a performance space for independent theatre initiatives since 2005, Intrepid Theatre will soon be closing its doors. Confronted by a large rent increase, the organization has made the decision to not […] Continue Reading |
Victoria Fringe Fest returns with mixed bag of performancesThis year, going on their 39th, Victoria Fringe Fest returned with over 35 shows from small creators across the country. As a reviewer I’m limited in my ability to see all of them, and as such, I have to base my observations on an extremely small sample size. This time, two out of three shows […] Continue Reading |
New Music Revue: Aversions deliver upper-tier post-punk with Empty CenturyAversions Empty Century (Independent) 4/5 Vancouver’s Aversions have found themselves in a very particular niche on third album Empty Century, which follows up 2023’s excellently titled You Wanted the Bike. The band are firmly in the post-punk world but have found a slightly more aggressive approach, and the end result is mainly fantastic here. The […] Continue Reading |
AGGV exhibit looks at Indigenous ancestry, identity through nuanced lensMeryl McMaster’s exhibit Bloodlines, which is running now at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV), blends aspects of her Dutch/Scottish ancestry with her Plains Cree/Métis lineage, taking the form of an imaginative series of breathtaking photos bolstered by historical documents and culturally resonant sculptures. AGGV chief curator Steven McNeil says that the idea for […] Continue Reading |
