“Is this a breakup song?” I ask Natalie Lynn of Loviet. Every time. It’s a pattern that we’ve fallen into over a series of releases and subsequent interviews.
Invariably, they are not. She and her partner, Ryan, have endured the pressure cooker of 2020 and more, and they have come out the other side all the stronger for it. Given Loviet’s continuous development as an artist and her perennial subject matter of critical growth, the question hasn’t been entirely unprompted.
America is having a moment. The last four years have been like watching Gollum and Smeagol fighting over the country as the presidency is carried all the way to Mount Doom along with our democratic values and the remaining shreds of human decency. The unreality of the situation has led to frustration, disenfranchisement and, ultimately, ennui with our brain cells winking out after sustaining a fatal number of eye-rolls.
From the moment we hit play on Robbie Tucker’s Peppermints, his self-proclaimed “first and only Christmas album,” Tucker runs wild with descriptive lyrics and deft storytelling, amounting to one of the strangest Christmas records you’ll ever hear. Peppermints sounds like a cast recording for a non-existent Christmas production just waiting to be created. Continue reading Robbie Tucker Crafts One of the Strangest Christmas Records You’ll Ever Hear With ‘Peppermints’→
Fredericton’s Go, Homeboy!, AKA Matt Walls, shuffles on up to the mic to pioneer “sloth rap” on his debut album Tale of the Mixtape, bringing his laid back, unique, and supremely referential interpretation of hip hop to the masses. As he proclaims on “Don’t Trip,” “This is hip hop for hippies, hip hop for nerds, this is hip hop for anyone that likes flipping words.” Continue reading Go, Homeboy! Welcomes Us to His World on ‘Tale of the Mixtape’→
