http://www.vueweekly.com/ Vue Weekly: Edmonton's 100% Independent News & Entertainment Weekly Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com COVER The real Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme haven't seen each other in decades. Not since the '50s: permanent separation was one of the conditions that had them spend only five years in a New Zealand jail for the murder of Pauline's mother, a sensational crime that had all sorts of accusations being levied at the pair of then-teenagers: their unusually close relationship was called out as lesbian, their fanciful imaginations were seen as hints of insanity and it was suggested that, when together, their mutual willingness to chase down a shred of fantasy allowed both of them to commit murder. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14528 Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com FRONT The man who brought us Alberta's official mushroom now believes the key to attracting investment is an international beauty pageant. Carl Benito, MLA for Edmonton-Millwoods, has decided the best way to reinvigorate Alberta's economy is to bring home an international competition for who looks best in a bathing suit. Unfortunately, Benito's suggestion is not too far off what finance minister Ted Morton will be proposing this week with the release of the Alberta competitiveness plan—a way to look pretty to his hard line right wing critics and corporate business friends who may have been worried they've been forgotten. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14499 Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com FRONT Population boom Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14500 Russell Charlton / russell@vueweekly.com FRONT The realization of human rights for the Lubicon Cree has suffered a major setback. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada's (INAC) recent imposition of third-party management on the Lubicon has Amnesty International and other local and international organizations expressing serious concern. The recent move by INAC comes after more than 35 years of conflict between the Lubicon Cree and the federal and provincial government, which has brought international attention to this Indigenous community of Northern Alberta and their fight for the recognition of their land rights. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14501 Ricardo Acuña / ualberta.ca/parkland FRONT Now, imagine that your jurisdiction, the province of Alberta, has recently exited from the biggest boom period it has ever experienced.  Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14502 Laura collison / laura@vueweekly.com FRONT In response to an increase in reports of sexual assault in Edmonton, Police Chief Mike Boyd announced on March 4 that the Edmonton Police Service has partnered with organizations in the community to create a group called Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton, or SAVE, to work toward preventing sexual assault in the city. EPS superintendent Danielle Campbell calls the increase a disturbing trend and notes the increase is significant among 18 – 24 year olds. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14503 Tiffany Brown-Olsen / tiffany@vueweekly.com FRONT 'Aboriginal women have always been in a care-giving role in our communities, but it has never been recognized or acknowledged, because we haven't received formal education to take on those roles." Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14504 Michael Geist / mgeist@vueweekly.com FRONT With the increasing shift from analogue to digital, some election officials are unsurprisingly chomping at the bit to move toward Internet-based voting. Last year, Elections Canada officials mused about the possibility of online voting trials, noting the potential benefits of increasing voter participation, particularly among younger demographics. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14507 Gwynne Dyer / gwynne@vueweekly.com FRONT There are some bombs going off, but apart from that the election in Iraq on  March 7 is a model of its kind. There are more than 6000 candidates for the 352 seats in parliament, and the country is flooded with foreign observers who will monitor the process. Unlike last time, no major group is boycotting the election—and nobody knows who is going to win it. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14510 Connie Howard / health@vueweekly.com FRONT It turns out I didn't get an inch past the shoreline when I dipped my toes into the Andrew Wakefield Lancet paper retraction story a few weeks ago, so I decided to revisit it. To give the man at the centre of the controversy the opportunity to respond to media statements being made about his ethics and integrity, I contacted him. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14512 Dave Young / inthebox@vueweekly.com FRONT The Oilers spent last week looking somewhat like a real NHL team again with two wins and a loss. The Oilers beat Minnesota 2-1 and shut out New Jersey 2-0 here at Rexall. But just when it looked like a return to the heady days of early December 2009 when the Oilers last won some games, the Oilers dropped a 4-1 decision to Ottawa. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14515 Lucas Crawford / lucas@vueweekly.com FRONT In June of 2009, the High Line Park opened in New York City. Built upon the long-defunct High Line train tracks running down the west side of Manhattan for 22 blocks, from 1934 to 1980, trains on the High Line helped deliver goods to the meat market or "meatpacking district"—a neighbourhood recently designated by NYC as the "Gansevoort Historic District." The tracks perch above street-level at a distance of 29 feet, a feature meant to curb the train-related deaths associated with mixing train traffic and foot traffic. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14544 Jan Hostyn / jan@vueweekly.com DISH For those of you who are still firmly ensconced on the carb-o-phobic bandwagon and have cut out pasta as a result, Ernesto Rizzi wants you to know something: "Pasta has gotten a bad rap. Good pasta is made with semolina flour. It's not processed like your typical white flour. It's high in protein and easy to digest." Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14517 Jenn Fulford / jenn@vueweekly.com DISH Decadence and indulgence are two words that instantaneously come to mind when salivating over thoughts of the savoury, spicy world of Indian food. But what to drink to temper and complement the food? Decades of tradition has held that beer is the better pairing with Indian food and, in many corners, the opinion still holds sway, judging by last Fall's Flavours Magazine article "Sour Grapes," which stated, "Sorry wine, but Indian food is best when paired with beer." Many a critic of pairing wine with Indian Food is out there, not quite ready to embrace the newfound meshing between the winos and ethnic kitchens. Tradition and beer aside, sample a few of the suggested pairings, as wine can be a delicious option to enhance your Indian food experience. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14521 L.S Vors / vors@vueweekly.com DISH The merging of two distinct entities to create a new one is widespread among many disciplines. In linguistics, it's a portmanteau, the blending of two words and meanings. In biology, it's a hybrid, the offspring that result from the breeding of two distinct species. The gastronomical equivalent is fusion cuisine, which combines aspects of at least two specific regions or culinary traditions. A popular dyad is Mediterranean and Asian; both regions are home to highly refined and renowned techniques and ingredients and share quarters in the kitchen of Lazia. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14524 Pete Desrochers / desrochers@vueweekly.com DISH It's not surprising that many parties might claim to have invented the world's number-one fast food. Some culinary historians say it began with the Mongols, who stashed raw beef under their saddles as they endeavored to conquer the known world. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14532 Jeremy Derksen / jeremy@vueweekly.com SNOW ZONE Fat flakes fall on my neck as vapour clouds rise from the centre of our nine-person huddle. I'm one of eight students in this Avalanche Skills Training 1 class now linking arms in what instructor Harry Allard calls "The circle of knowledge." Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14536 Bobbi Barbarich / bobbi@vueweekly.com SNOW ZONE Whitewater Ski Resort, Arc'teryx and Mountain Gear hosted skiers and boarders from every snow-bearing continent this past weekend at the fourth annual Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder Fest. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14538 Hart Golbeck / hart@vueweekly.com SNOW ZONE Paralympics take up torch Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14541 Adam Waldron-blain / adamwb@vueweekly.com ARTS Gerald Beaulieu's gell-wax and mixed-media sculptures in Bodily Functions are attractive. The strange objects are unmistakably made to evoke bodily organs and cells, albeit ones of a possibly alien nature. Happily, Harcourt House's staff will probably tell you to feel free to touch the sculpture's surfaces carefully, and so you can explore them very close up, and wonder at questions like, "How were they shipped and stored?" and, "But won't the transparent and shiny but slightly sticky surface get terribly dusty?" Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14530 Fawnda Mithrush // Fawnda@vueweekly.com ARTS Last weekend, our town was subjected to more contemporary dance than you can shake a pointe shoe at, thanks to the Expanse Festival rocking the Roxy from twilight on Thursday to Sunday afternoon—and it all happened pretty much at the same time that the Brian Webb Dance Company was finishing up its 31st season across the river with Wen Wei Wang's animalistic stunner, Cock-Pit. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14531 Josef Braun / hopscotch@vueweekly.com ARTS It's been 30 years since the publication of Camera Lucida. This 25th of March marks 30 years since the death of its author, French literary theorist, philosopher and semoitcian Roland Barthes. After having lunch at François Mitterrand's he was hit by a laundry truck and died exactly one month later. Truthfully, I have yet to really delve into Barthes oeuvre, to get a firm grasp of the breadth of his achievement. Yet however limited my understanding of his work in totality, I attest to his final book's enormous effect on my life. It changed the way I consider the role of photography in our lives and what distinguishes it from the movies. It changed the way I look at photographs, and ultimately how I look at countless other things. It remains a favourite, stimulating, unabashedly personal, deeply moving, occasionally strange. As Barthes would have it, Camera Lucida, were it a photograph, vibrates with both studium and punctum. (As if to ensure its importance in my errant education, I was given the book twice by two different people, neither of whom knowing the other and the second giver unaware that I knew of the book in the first place.) Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14533 Adam Waldron-blain / adamwb@vueweekly.com ARTS The various parts of Maria Whiteman's De Anima—including close-ups of a dog, blurry shots of taxidermied museum monkeys, portraits with wildlife T-shirts, noisemakers by composer Scott Smallwood and a menacing installation including astroturf and large drawings—seem at first disconnected and arbitrary, but exploring the collection establishes links between the works. Ranging from the silly to uncomfortable, with lots of uncertain in-betweens, the show is certainly interesting. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14534 David Berry / david@vueweekly.com ARTS One of the more endearing things about Jake's Gift is Julia Mackey's portrayal of its eponymous character, a cantankerous though sweet-natured coot who is returning to France for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He is the rare kind of character who feels both unique and fully realized, as if he was plucked from the ranks of Canada's veterans for his irascibility and touching story rather than simply created. That anchor is as good a reason as any for the play's phenomenal success, including a lauded run at our own Fringe in 2008 and the cross-country tours that have kept Mackey busy ever since. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14548 Brian Gibson / brian@vueweekly.com FILM It's sadly appropriate that, in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) is 19 and on the cusp of matrimony. The movie itself, it turns out, has a kind of chastity belt locking it into predictable place. Carroll's fantastic prose and Burton's fanciful eye turn out to be a marriage made in purgatory, with this adaptation dulled down by a leaden epic formula: heroine flees here and there, meets strange creatures who help her, realizes her destiny, slays a beast, heads for a rosy new horizon. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14535 David Berry / dvddetective@vueweekly.com FILM If you're going to avoid the term "mumblecore," as most appreciators of the genre have taken to doing, then the only real way to describe Joe Swanberg's films is as a type of realism, although one that's even fairly different from our normal associations with the term. Basically entirely devoid of any kind of social responsibility—Swanberg's milieu has been almost exclusively in the emotional relationships of the creative middle class, even to a greater extent than any of his other contemporaries—they are the kind of films you might assume are straight documentary, if it wasn't such a production to get a film up. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14537 Jonathan Busch /jonathan@vueweekly.com FILM Three cops, three stories, three deeply felt fantasies of cash, corruption and jaded masculinity. If it sounds too easy for a crime drama auteur like Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter) to pull off, you might be right. Luckily, three fairly paperback tales are weaved nicely into a layered imagining of Brooklyn undoubtedly inspired by the most recent Grand Theft Auto instalment, and time feels surprisingly well spent. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14539 David Berry / david@vueweekly.com FILM To Save a Life is another example of a Christian ministry trying to woo followers through film, though this is a pretty different kind of Christianity than the evangelical brand of the Sherwood ministry, the baptist church that brought us the choke-you-with-Jesus films Fireproof and Facing the Giants. The New Song ministry that produced this is obviously more the minister-with-an-electric-guitar-and-shirt-sleeves type of church, a point hammered home by the band set-up that remains constantly on the stage where the helpful minister of this particular tale preaches. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14540 David Berry // david@vueweekly.com FILM It's kind of odd how ethnic minorities can get away with a kind of latent hostility towards each other. Not that, by any stretch of the imagination, Our Family Wedding is any kind of exploration of race relations, but that's sort of the point. It's incredibly doubtful that if, say, it was a white family who was nervous about their daughter marrying a black man, it would be played as a wacky comedy/sentimental story about the importance of family. But a good chunk of the attempted humour here comes from a racist Mexican grandmother spouting off Spanish-language insults, or Forest Whitaker's entitled father insinuating bad things about Hispanics (to say nothing of the canned and stereotypical portrayal of a "Mexican wedding," complete with Mexican hicks and a goat). I guess as long as all parties concerned aren't part of the majority, racism is still just a funny throwback or something. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14542 Jonathan Busch / jonathan@vueweekly.com FILM Garbage scares a lot of us—it's hard to talk about, and practically nightmarish in how we imagine it ends up following its grand departure from our backyards and alleyways. Even recycling remains mysterious, considering we are at most responsible for sorting through it in its preliminary stages. What methods used to deem them anew are vague in the minds of non-experts, not to mention how much of what gets tossed in blue bags is actually included in the process. But waste no doubt represents for many a kind of shame or guilt that is better left in another's care. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14543 David Berry // david@vueweekly.com FILM This Sunday's showing of Morocco is the first in a mini-series of the films of Josef Von Sternberg, but it's Marlene Dietrich that leaves the most lasting impression in this tale of a cabaret singer who falls in love with a Legionnaire. Notwithstanding Von Sternberg's intricate production design and soft lenses, which certainly add a romantic charm, Dietrich elevates what is otherwise a trifle of a romantic story with her magnetism and presence, summing up more with a smouldering look than her phonetically-learned English could ever hope to. You very quickly begin to understand why movie stars became such a big deal while watching an actress like Dietrich: there is no charm quite like the one captured by the camera, and Dietrich was one of the original naturals—with Von Sternberg's soft lighting serving as her backdrop, she is allowed to shine all the brighter. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14545 Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com FILM St John's, NFLD. The White Stripes—singer/guitarist Jack White and drummer/occasional singer Meg White—takes a stage in front of a crowd of gathered fans, all huddled as close to the stage as possible and buzzing with excitement over the thrill of being right there on the ground as the duo, cutting its way across the North on a high profile tour of Canada, performs a surprise show ahead of the scheduled full-meal deal. Anticipation hangs heavy overhead as Meg sits behind the drums, Jack takes his guitar, and the two of them play ... a single note. They wave, turn around and leave. The crowd falls into step and a chant begins: "One more note. One more note." Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14546 Roland Pemberton / roland@vueweekly.com FILM Nobody watches TV anymore. That is to say, no longer in the traditional sense. If CTV.ca's crisp Olympics streaming has taught us anything, it's that you don't necessarily need a TV to watch programming originally intended for that medium. Paying for cable seems extravagant during a period where we control our entertainment more than ever. You can buy a DVD of a worthy program to support the people behind it directly or you can just download or stream it like everything else we enjoy and drape our personalities around. Appointment viewing is no longer about Seinfeld and Friends back-to-back; it's become isolated to live events (Super Bowl, Oscars, MTV VMAs). And when you take it out of the sporting realm, most people just wait for the greatest hits to get uploaded to Gawker. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14547 Brian Gibson / brian@vueweekly.com FILM “It was she who first tempted him,” we’re told about Wendy by the disturbingly confused narrator in J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, the basis for Peter Pan. But it’s Alice who’s tempted so many filmmakers for so long, the Alice of Lewis Carroll’s two classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872). With the latest take on the tales, from Tim Burton, now out, let’s get “curiouser and curiouser,” drop down the rabbit-hole and figure out why these children’s books are so tantalizing for filmmakers yet ultimately impossible to grasp. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14550 Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com MUSIC Hawksley Workman is officially into his second decade of life as a professional musician, having begun with his 1999 debut For Him and the Girls and continuing in 2010 with the recent Meat and the upcoming Milk. Workman spoke with Vue at length about his new album and life in the music business. Here are some of the highlights. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14505 Carolyn Nikodym / carolyn@vueweekly.com MUSIC They say that it is better to give than receive—but could that be because once you give, the other party feels compelled to give back? Because giving leads to receiving? Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14506 jprocktor / jprocktor.com MUSIC Sat, Mar 6 / Blue Chair Café Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14553 jprocktor / jprocktor.com MUSIC Fri, Mar 5 / Starlite Room Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14554 Gravy MUSIC Order of Chaos / Gravy Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14555 Maria Kotovych / classical@vueweekly.com MUSIC The Academy Awards have just passed, so the first thing I want to do is acknowledge the winner in the category that partially shares its name with this column: Best Original Score. This year, that award went to Michael Giacchino for the movie Up. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14556 Steven Sandor / steven@vueweekly.com MUSIC By now, everyone in the music industry has jumped on the vinyl bandwagon: sales of the format are increasing astronomically, and the record stores that are still standing are increasing the amount of vinyl on the shelves while reducing the CD space. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14509 Mike Angus / mikeangus@vueweekly.com MUSIC For Canadian folksinger-songwriter Stephen Fearing, the road to success has had its share of detours, but none that he seems eager to complain about. In fact, when I talk to him over the phone from Calgary, he's affable and energetic when discussing both the potential pitfalls of releasing a "greatest hits" album, as well as his growing fame with the iconic roots-rock outfit Blackie & the Rodeo Kings. Having picked up the guitar at age 13 while living in Dublin, Ireland, Fearing had developed determination—"stubbornness," as he calls it—about going it alone until his later collaborations with B&RK. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14511 David Berry / david@vueweekly.com MUSIC When Darren Frank pulled up his roots in good old our town and headed for Vancouver, he did so for the reasons familiar to any number of young Edmontonians: new opportunities, a chance to live in a dynamic and unique city, and just a little touch of wanting to leave behind some of a particular history. It was, as is often the case, a fresh start: but it hasn't quite been everything Frank envisioned. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14513 Mary Christa O'Keefe / marychrista@vueweekly.com MUSIC The desert changes people. No other landscape is sealed in the human imagination as a sort of open-air cathedral, a forbidding place of private, intense communion with the self and the grandest forces of the universe. It's transformational magic unfolds in the gaps between the scales, between the overwhelming majesty of the bold-stroked features of land and sky and the beauteous plenty hidden in the illusion of sausterity, from shattered quartz sand to toehold-niched biota. This mythic cradle of reckoning may at first be a landscape of deprivation, but a closer eye discerns both its permanence and fragility. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14514 David Berry / david@vueweekly.com MUSIC The runaway success of Billy Talent has brought its members a host of opportunities they never could have imagined when they were just a quartet of Mississauga lads starting a pop-punk band. Besides its recently-embarked-upon stadium-headlining tour of Canada, the band has toured Europe both as club-hoppers and festival bright lights, and took home a handful of awards from across the spectrum. But most exciting of all for drummer Aaron Solowoniuk was the chance to record its latest, chart-topping album, Billy Talent III, with legendary producer Brendan O'Brien. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14516 Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com MUSIC Sun, Mar 7 / Shaw Conference Centre Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14557 Roland Pemberton / roland@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS How did this happen? Warp has transformed into one of the leading fringe pop labels of the new decade after being a boutique for recluses who built their own keyboards and collected obscure Detroit techno white labels during its earlier years. And in a new year that promises releases from Born Ruffians, Jamie Lidell, Flying Lotus and Autechre, it seems that the label's best achievement in ages could be the genre-defying debut effort from a Nevada desert-dwelling yoga instructor called Gonjasufi. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14518 Justin Shaw / justin@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS Spoon River wears its influences like an inherited family quilt. Pieced together using traditional sounds and weathered tales, it is strengthened with bright new songs and the vibrant colours it's sewn with. It's warm and a bit ragged, and if it sounds as hauntingly familiar as fog on the pond that's because it's meant to. Tapping into a sound that picks up where groups like the Band, the Byrds, and Neil Young leave off, Spoon River weaves personal stories using the poetic needle of a collective North American sound. The songs "I'm So Tired," a wide open and wandering confession, "Buried in the Sun," a saddened and lonely wish and "Fool," a warning to a friend, are truthful and soul baring, never compromising and never pretentious. There are no digital voices, no guitar synths, no drum triggers here. It's all as real as the wood harvested to build the bending guitars and saloon piano that are played on the record, and as real as the vocal harmonies woven together to create this dirty quilt of sound. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14519 Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS The Canyon Rose Outfit sounds exactly like its name suggests that it should on its new full-length: soulful yet ragged, dripping in the springs of country rock with a decided bent towards outlaw branding. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14520 Maria Kotovych / maria@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS With today's music industry offering all kinds of technologically enhanced albums, I really enjoy coming across a stripped-down disc where it's just about the vocals and an accompaniment by a single instrument. This is the strength of Jay Malinowski's Bright Lights & Bruises: he sings with a background piano or guitar, and the simplicity of the approach creates an immediate and intimate connection between music and listener. Think of a solo musician performing in a coffee shop: that's this album's ambience. Malinowski's voice does stray into a strained vocal tone, perhaps the only weaker point of the work. Still, songs such as "Narceritos" offer a political commentary, adding an extra dimension to the music.  Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14522 Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS Moka Only's dropped the "Moka" moniker to revisit an older one, Ron Contour. It's a persona morph that can't hide the fact that his character voice on Saffron is kind of a bland, forgettable one. At least "Cheese Toast Feast" makes you hungry for something, if only the toast it mentions. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14523 Paul Blinov / paul@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS Taking the basic components of a rock band and keeping them fun and light and a little self-aware, but without undermining the musical bite or veering into parody, Hollerado makes uncommonly good rock 'n' roll. The gritty drive of "Do The Doot Da Doot Do" and harmony howls on the chorus of "Juliet" highlight two guitar-led power rockers that reverberate in Record in a Bag's early moments, while "Americanarama" and "Got to lose" offer further takes on the same parts: bigger riffs, layered harmonies. Hollerado isn't new or revolutionary, but maybe just a little tighter, faster and funner than the next rock band. And maybe that's enough to set it apart from its peers. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14525 Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS As if somehow his love of and obsession with pop music wasn't glaringly apparent from his work as lead singer of Art Brut and his many songs about appearing on the now-defunct Top of the Pops, Morrisey and albums that are available at the supermarket versus albums that aren't, Eddie Argos's new project with Dyan Valdes of Los Angeles-based band Blood Arm—the lengthily labeled Everybody was in the French Resistance ... NOW!—will make it blindingly so. Designed as a response to the call of pop songs of the past, each track is set up as a direct answer to another artist's work. So "Billie's Genes" is written from the perspective of the child fathered out of wedlock by Michael Jackson and the titular Billie Jean and "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N (You Know I Got A)" responds to the odd behaviour of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." Though the songs are catchy in their own way, the album is best as a concept as opposed to something you could listen to over and over. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14526 Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS Yngwie Malmsteen Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14527 Whitey Houston / quickspins@vueweekly.com ALBUM REVIEWS My Brightest Diamond Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14529 Vue Staff CONTESTS Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 http://vueweekly.com/article.php?id=14549