There are few local bands that make us giddier than 36?
Especially when they have new music on the way. The brainchild of sweet, sweet idiot savant Taylor Cochrane, when the collective drops something new you pay attention, because their sonic journey is unlike so many others — challenging, exciting, disarming, wonderful and so extraordinarily unique.
Another excellent Calgary band will take the stage tonight as part of Sled Island. The fantastic pop quartet released their debut last year, Sweet Despair.
At the end of 2021 we put the spotlight on the best Calgary albums we heard from the year in an attempt to get local folks more acquainted with the amazing talent making music in the city.
If you recorded the first song you ever wrote live with your band Teenage Jesus & The Jerks at Max’s Kansas City — New York’s Ground Zero of bohemian wrecksody — when you were 16 years old, well, it just ain’t gonna get any more real than that.
Calgary songwriter Carter Felker’s new album, Even the Happy Ones are Sad, is a medley of moments snatched out of the parlours, bedrooms and evening news stories of the characters who inhabit his songs.
A start to a story that doesn’t usually end well.
In fact, it’s usually followed by a missing person’s report and possibly a cross-Canada manhunt and standoff in a motel on the outskirts of town.
Indulge me.
One of the first sentences I was paid to write, almost 30 years ago, was one that kicked off a profile and interview with legendary guitarist and vocalist John Hammond, who was coming to town that week.