I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU!
Michelle Kennedy is a Registered Psychologist in Alberta, lover of the arts, cat mom and “very opinionated” human.
A somewhat well-known Canadian playwright once said that good writing, good art and good thinking should fetishize one specific question and one questions only: who are you now? (Who am I now? Who are we now?) and clearly he isn’t alone in this thinking. Continuing from the heartbreaking beauty and grief of her 2010 release, Are You My Mother?, Kathryn Calder seems obsessed with that very question.
Thirty-some years ago, Rick Carnes uttered the five most argued about words in combination in the history of rock and roll: “Rock and Roll is dead.” Since that utterance bands across the globe have been working hard to prove Carnes wrong – the Arkells are not among them. Instead, they are making completely competent, crisply produced and brilliantly inoffensive “rock” music.
As Canadians we are constantly struggling to define what it means to “be Canadian” – what is that unique little kernel of truth that defines us as us? At a recent screening of Hard Core Logo at The Toronto International Film Festival someone, possibly Hugh Dillon, remarked that as Canadians we are defined, at least in part, by our love and dedication to our musicians. And it’s true, isn’t it? As Canadians when we love an artist they can do very little wrong and on the rare occasions when they falter we deny the misstep, or ignore it, or make excuses for it. Leslie Feist’s hotly anticipated Metals is one of those missteps.
Wilco is arguably one the best alt-country-rock bands on the planet and has endured through a history that would have destroyed most bands. Since the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco have become known as innovators in their field, consistently releasing strong albums. The Whole Love however doesn’t quite meet the standard that fans have come to expect from Tweedy and co.
Annie Clark chose the moniker St. Vincent after St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centre where Dylan Thomas died saying, “it’s the place where poetry goes to die, [and] that’s me.” While the name has stuck and Clark’s ethereal voice certainly has a near-religious ephemerality, she is absolutely incorrect in her assertion that she is the place poetry goes to die.