Best Shows of 2013: Martha Wainwright at the Rio Theatre, March 9

I’ve been a huge Martha Wainwright fan for years. I still think she has one of the greatest voices today. I’ve seen videos in which she’s played to entire opera houses, so I was shocked (but delighted) that I was able to see her for the first time at the Rio Theatre for only thirty bucks or so.

Surely enough, her voice was as huge as I expected, and she had a personality to match. One of the best parts of this show was that Andrew Whiteman, one of the core members of Broken Social Scene, who plays under the solo moniker Apostle of Hustle, filled in on lead guitar (his band with his wife, AroarA, opened). But it wasn’t great just because Whiteman played with Martha; it was great because his lightly ocean spray, lightly Latin-influenced guitaring came through in her songs, and being the underrated guitarist he is, his style totally worked.

This show was also my first published music review. Read the entire piece at Vancouver Weekly.

Aggregate! Aggregate! Aggregate!

I don't know how the whole writer-publisher-property relationship works yet, but I assume publications don't like their articles being posted in full elsewhere even if it's on one of their own writers' personal blogs. So every once in a while, I'm just going to post the links to my reviews for Vancouver Weekly. This batch includes my reviews of Martha Wainwright with AroarA at the Rio, Crystal Swells with Juvenile Hall, Hole in My Head and Ornament & Crime at LanaLou's, the Strokes' Comedown Machine and Kurt Vile's Wakin on a Pretty Daze.