Share

Genre: Folk-Pop

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sample Track: Penmanship

Over the course of three albums, Share has shuffled through styles as diverse bossa nova to country folk. From Ukulele Tragic’s weary ruminations on rural life to Pedestrian’s genre collaging atlas pop, the band has acted to document Andrew Sisk’s departure from his hometown of Chipman, New Brunswick and subsequent travels.

With this in mind, it’s hard not to see Slumping in Your Murals as a return of sorts. No longer rooted in experiment and character study, the album echoes a slow settling reality. Starting with the strong foundation of “Date & Time” and “Broader,” it’s not long before the haunted warnings of “Horse & Rider” and “Awake at Dawn” claim its’ core. While the elegant strokes of “Penmanship” paint a warmer picture, under the surface lies a tale of distrust and hard choices. Sisk elegantly broaches such topics with a poetic grace, never wallowing, but interpreting and transposing.

While Slumping in Your Murals was shaped throughout 2008 in locations as diverse as an old farmhouse and the House of Miracles studio, the core of the album was recorded over two weeks in the summer of 2008. During this time, the band made up of Sisk (vocals, guitar), Nick Cobham (guitar, vocals), Kyle Cunjak (bass, vocals), Dennis Goodwin (synth, guitar) and Zach Atkinson (drums), retreated to a cabin in the backwoods of PEI with producer, Daniel Ledwell (In-Flight Safety).

“We wanted to make an album that captured Share as a band,” claims Sisk.  “It was the first time that Share was a band rather than a recording project so it was an entirely different process.”

Setting the site up as a makeshift studio, the band lost themselves in their work. Recording to all hours of the night, they experimented with new sounds and approaches to capture this diverse set of songs. Cohesive in mood and tone, Share has produced a document of the first troubled steps on the morning after the return.

Discography

Ruby Jean and The Thoughtful Bees

Genre: Electro-Dance

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sample Track: You Don’t Miss Me

Rebekah Higgs has proven to be an amazingly diverse artist in her latest project, Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees. Straying from her folky electro-pop style as herself,  she creates and masters a very different electro-dance persona as Ruby Jean. The band consists of Colin Crowell writing, arranging and producing the beats, Rebekah Higgs on vocals, Jason Vautour on guitar, and Sean MacGillivray re-interpreting looped drums as real ones in real time on a traditional rock drumkit.

Discography

The Got to Get Got

Genre: Pop

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sample Track: Rattle Off

The Got To Get Got release their debut LP, Sahalee (Noyes Records), on Tuesday, July 14. The band is led by Mark Mullane and started as a bi-coastal collective (with outlets operating simultaneously in Halifax, NS and Vancouver, BC), the band trimmed down to its East Coast line-up for the recording of Sahalee. The album was tracked in December 2008 in various studios around Halifax and Montreal. The band also had some guest appearances by many great artists on the album,  including  Samir Khan (Weights & Measures), Jennifer Mecija (Ohbijou), Annisa Hart (Ohbijou), Warren Spicer (Plants And Animals), Angela Desveaux, Ron Bates (The Memories Attack) and Leon Taheny (Sebastien Grainger and the Mountains).

“Sahalee was three years in the making but recorded in four short weeks,” claims Mullane. “The philosophy behind the album, much like our band, is to have as much fun recording as we do playing live and somehow capture that on the record. I wanted to make a pop record with some atonal/structural influences that I still hold dear.”

Discography

The Superfantastics

Genre: Indie-Pop

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sample Track: Rites of Spring

The Superfantastics are comprised of two members, Steph d’Entremont on drums and vocals, and Matt MacDonald on guitar and vocals. The Halifax Nova Scotian indie-pop duo have had great success in sharing the stage with fellow Canadian artists such as Julie Doiron, Shotgun Jimmie, Two Hours Traffic and Joel Plaskett. The pair released their first EP in 2006, titled Like Letters. They followed up their debut with their LP Pop-Up Book in March 2007 and their Choose Your Destination EP in February 2008. The band is heading out on a West coast tour soon,  so be sure to catch them on one of their upcoming stops. Raised on Indie is extremely happy to have Steph and Matt participating in From The Artists Perspective.

Discography