Hope & Social - Sleep Sound

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Sometimes in life, by chance you stumble upon something really great. One day on Bandcamp.com, I was browsing through albums by genre, probably the difficult to define genre of “alternative,” when I stumbled upon this record. I think I was caught by its beautiful cover art. I clicked and then I listened and I knew that this was quality work and from that moment on I was a Hope & Social fan. I was actually planning on reviewing this months ago, but then I moved and forgot about it for a time. But I have now remembered and I wish to share my enthusiasm for this record with anyone who is willing to read.

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Duover - Christmas Volume 1

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Well, it's that time of year again. No matter where you go, you hear the inevitable Christmas tunes playing in shopping malls, television, Starbucks, and anywhere else you find yourself visiting around December. There is a charm to it all, but often it can get repetitive. And just about every popular artist has recorded a Christmas song, if not an entire album. Some of these songs are original, but for the most part you'll hear the same old traditional songs with a slightly different voice. And I have to say, I can't take anymore contemporary versions of Silent Night or The First Noel, or those other songs. Occasionally they're done very well and in a unique way, but more often than not it's just the same old song with maybe a country twang, or new beat or something. Christmas is a wonderful time of year and should continue to be a source of inspiration from artists so I don't understand why there aren't more original Christmas songs.

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Josh Garrels - Love & War & The Sea in Between

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - With the music industry in a state of flux, it can sometimes be a bit challenging to find new music that is engaging, innovative, creative, and fully developed. While by no means do I praise the old ways that music was produced and marketed, I can still appreciate how the old record labels made it easy for music fans to be, dare I say, lazy with simply allowing labels to tell fans what was good music. Today, things are a little different. Many honest music fans can recognize that what they hear on the radio simply is not good music, but instead music that will sell. The music that is the most profitable today is hip-hop and pop music, neither of which are showing many reasons to have hope for the future. Since mainstream record labels are cautious and are dropping the ball, it has resulted in new avenues to develop to fill the gap for distributing good music. Among them Bandcamp and Noisetrade stand out as the most promising in my opinion, but even still, that doesn't mean that everything that is on these free music sites is good, in fact, some of them make it quite clear as to why the music is free: because no one in their right mind would pay for such garbage. Nevertheless, there are many wonderful gems to be found on both of these sites. A music colleague of mine recommended that I check out Josh Garrels, so I did, leading me to feel that I must review this album to get the word out about this fantastic album. There, I spoiled the surprise. You already know what I think about this album.

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Dan Mangan – Nice, Nice, Very Nice

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Out of Vancouver's independent music scene, there has recently been a huge success story of a local singer/songwriter who has been garnering a large fan base. I'm of course talking about Dan Mangan, a recent addition to Canada's very own Arts & Crafts record label. His name buzzes around Vancouver and is infecting women everywhere. He was even the main headliner on the final night of Vancouver's live music 125th birthday party event thing that I went to and didn't actually watch him at. I had heard a number of his songs, and while I admit they were pretty good, I didn't buy into the hype so much. Still, I feel it's time to give the album a proper review to see what he's all about.

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Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

- Vancouver, British Columbia - In March 2010, I was perusing through the iTunes Top 200 Alternative charts and near the bottom, I found this unknown band, Mumford & Sons with an explicit warning next to its track, "Little Lion Man." With a name like Mumford & Sons, my initial suspicion was that this was some old man group, but the explicit warning made me take a second look. Today in March 2011, Mumford & Sons is practically a household name, recently coming off of Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Rock Song ("Little Lion Man"), and two singles, "Little Lion Man" and "The Cave" both performing very well on the charts.

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