Music

She and Him

Ward, otherwise known as M.Ward. Now, we didn’t put Zooey and Matt on the cover just because they’re easy on the eyes, they’re easy on the ears too. After much success with their first album, Volume One, Zooey and Matt have stepped back up to the plate with their aptly named follow up, Volume Two.

Humans

Somewhere among the rain-filled streets of Vancouver is a neighbourhood called Main Street and within this “hood” is a light blue panelled house with a tire swing out front, just like the one in The Wizard of Oz.

The Pointed Sticks

The Pointed Sticks, though only in existence from 1978 to 1981, played alongside DOA, Devo, Avengers, Dishrags, Buzzcocks, toured in the States, pressed four highly acclaimed 45s, performed in Dennis Hopper’s cult classic Out of the Blue and eventually became the first Canadian band to be signed to England’s Stiff Records.

Sun Wizard

Vancouver used to suffer from a small town complex. For a city of its size, it always felt kind of insular, isolated, even low key. You’d see the same people every day, there’d be little or no hustle and bustle downtown, the night life was always shitty and the music scene was so underground and cliquey it almost
seemed covert.

Sondre Lerche

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Norway. With its abundant natural resources, one of the world’s highest standards of living, universal health care and subsidized university education, Norway is a bit like Canada’s smarter, more attractive, Scandinavian cousin. We know that if we just hit the gym a little bit more, maybe learned a new language or two, we might be interesting and popular like Norway—heck, maybe we’d even get to pick a Nobel Prize winner—but we don’t and we resent them for their accomplishments.

Love and Electrik

I meet up with Love & Electrik on a Friday afternoon on Granville Street, the main strip of Vancouver’s nightlife industry. Our destination is one of the last vestiges of a seedier, less-commercial Downtown Vancouver, a filthy arcade sandwiched in between a pizza-by-the-slice place and the Vogue Theatre. I have a bottle of whiskey and five dollars in quarters. They arrive with their entourage, managers Jeff Herrara and Aidan Wright from The Hastings Set, ready to go. We are so punk.

Gwar

GWAR is a theatrical thrash metal band, formed in a former milk bottling plant by a group of art students in Richmond, Virginia in 1985. They’ve been nominated for two Grammys, seen multiple line-up changes, been shot at, arrested, sponsored by golf companies and charged at by skinheads, all the while spewing chunky fake blood, semen and vomit over adoring fans at their live shows for the past 25 years. And that is basically why they are nearly a household name. It is hard to find someone my age who is unfamiliar with the legacy of GWAR.

Pages