Articles by John Lucas.

Blog - Music

New Jonsi video: "Go Do"

This track from Jónsi Birgisson's forthcoming solo album brings a thumping beat.
Blog - Music

SNL pays tribute to '80s hardcore

Saturday Night Live's tribute to '80s hardcore, featuring Fred Armisen, Ashton Kutcher, Dave Grohl, and Bill Hader. How many of the references can you spot?
Recordings

The Zolas' Tic Toc Tic straddles two aesthetic spheres

Tic Toc Tic (Lotus Child Music/604)
Music Features

Editors find the ghosts in the machine

It’s pretty clear right from the start that In This Light and on This Evening is not going to be just another Editors record.
Music Features

Album Leaf's Jimmy LaValle lets bandmates in on the action

There are fans, and then there are superfans. Jimmy LaValle has plenty of the former, and he's lucky enough to have a growing number of the latter.
Recordings

Dear Malachai, your album Ugly Side of Love is great fun

Ugly Side of Love (Domino Recording Co.)
Music Features

Wildbirds & Peacedrums mixes darkness and light

Sweden’s Wildbirds & Peacedrums plays music of such depth and complexity that it might take the average listener a while to realize there aren’t any chords in it.
Music Notes

Showing some skin has benefits for Album Leaf fans

Let’s face it: a KISS Army tattoo won’t get you anything other than dirty looks, but Album Leaf ink will gain you free admission to that San Diego band’s gigs.
Recordings

Shining's Blackjazz gets major points for trying

Blackjazz (Indie Recordings)
Music Arts Reviews

So Percussion brings minimalist music to the masses

The Heritage Hall audience on Sunday night was much more appreciative of what was probably the program’s most challenging music.
Music Features

Busy Adam Franklin keeps shoegazers' dreams alive

To music fans of a certain vintage—those whose tastes were formed back when shoegazer was still a putdown—Adam Franklin has immediate name recognition.
Blog - Music

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (featuring Teddy Pendergrass): "If You Don't Know Me By Now"

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, featuring the late, great Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocals, in a Soul Train appearance from 1972.
Arts Features

Nevermore tells wild tales of Edgar Allan Poe, from real to surreal

Edgar Allan Poe’s self-mythologizing made creating Nevermore, a musical fable which attempts to construct a narrative based on his life, a little difficult.
Music Features

Woodpigeon flies the coop

Calgary singer-songwriter Mark Hamilton admits he has an obsession with the notion of finding a home.
Blog - Music

Indie rocker Jay Reatard found dead

Prolific indie rocker Jay Reatard has died.
Blog - Music

Unreleased Johnny Cash material set for release

When country icon Johnny Cash died in 2003, he left behind a number of unreleased recordings.
Payback Time

Where are your top 2009 Canadian albums eh?

You box up the music section’s Christmas presents and ship them back to Santa, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt and two tickets to a Live Nation club show of your choice taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whinge.
Blog - Music

Avenged Sevenfold drummer dead at 28

James Owen Sullivan, drummer for popular metalcore band Avenged Sevenfold, was found dead in his Huntington Beach, California home on December 28.
Blog - Music

R.I.P. Vic Chesnutt

The Athens, Georgia-based cult favourite passed away on December 25 after spending two days in a coma brought on by an overdose of muscle relaxants.
Blog - Music

New Julian Casablancas video: "11th Dimension"

If there's a message here, it seems to be summed up by the lines "Forgive them/Even if they are not sorry". Not that Julian Casablancas wants to tell anyone what to think.
Straight Talk

Mount Pleasant fire continues to burn

The blaze in Mount Pleasant continues to burn.
Straight Talk

Christmas-morning fire rages in Mount Pleasant

At this hour, a three-alarm fire is raging in the area of Main and Broadway in Vancouver.
Music Features

High notes of the year

We take one long, last look at the most notable shows, singles, surprises, and washouts of 2009.
Recordings

Now! Christmas 4 is the Charlie Browniest of all holiday albums

Now! Christmas 4 (Universal)
Recordings

Music for your not-so-silent nights

Hopefully, you’ll find something that will make your Christmas just a little merrier. And if you don’t, feel free to take some solace in the fact that there’s always next year.
Blog - Music

New Midlake: "Acts of Man"/"Rulers Ruling All Things"

From the forthcoming Midlake album The Courage of Others. Epic, prog-folk-rock goodness. I like. You like?
Recordings

Phil Spector's remastered A Christmas Gift for You continues to endure

A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector (Phil Spector)
Blog - Music

Neil Diamond covers Adam Sandler's "The Chanukah Song"

Perhaps Neil Diamond is trying to atone for recording the rest of this?
Recordings

There's a thread of ambivalence woven through Clipse's Til the Casket Drops

Til the Casket Drops (Columbia/Sony)
Recordings

Top 10 albums of 2009 - John Lucas

Sadly, I lost my copy of the latest Dirty Bear Collective opus before I could give it a proper listen. I’m sure it’s a work of life-altering magnificence, but I had to settle for the following.
Music Features

Mew explores space on No More Stories

Let’s get the full title of the latest Mew album out of the way right off the bat. It takes a while to say (and type), but that seems apt, since the music that the album contains is worthy of spending some quality time with.
Recordings

Top 10 albums of 2009

It wasn’t a particularly stellar year for music, but our critics managed to find a few things that didn’t suck.
Recordings

Norah Jones stays sleepy on The Fall

The Fall (Blue Note/EMI)
Music Features

Boxed sets hold musical delights

What's hot this holiday season? Let our veteran reviewers be your guide to the best and brightest CD boxed sets.
Music Features

Tristeza takes inspiration from far-flung sources

When the three core members of a band all live in different cities, working together can be a challenge.
Recordings

Who wins the Kris Allen vs. Adam Lambert post-American Idol debut album battle?

Kris Allen (Jive) / For Your Entertainment (RCA)
Blog - Music

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young: "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"

Not sure what point he's trying to make, if any, but it's somewhat amusing.
Blog - Music

Adam Lambert shocks the American Music Awards

American Idol runner-up and recent Rolling Stone cover boy Adam Lambert caused a little Madonna-style outrage at the American Music Awards last night.
Blog - Music

Bob Dylan "Must Be Santa" video

The first Christmas video of the year!
Blog - Music

Jason Segel propositions the Swell Season's audience

When the Swell Season performed at the Wiltern in Los Angeles on November 18, actor Jason Segel appeared to perform a song of his own.
Blog - Music

Shakira meets "Danzig": "Hips Don't Lie"

Kind of funny. I don't know why.
Music Features

Julian Casablancas stretches out on his debut solo effort

Julian Casablancas has some advice, but feel free, as the song says, to take it or leave it.
Arts Features

Haruki Murakami's frog hops to life in after the quake

The appearance of the man-sized frog is the most obviously surreal aspect of after the quake, which otherwise deals with people reassessing their priorities in the wake of disaster.
Pop Eye

Video provocation just isn't what it used to be

Viewed through the lens of 2009, it seems scarcely possible that a) there was a time when MTV and MuchMusic broadcast music videos, and b) a clip showing a few cross-dressers and a blink-and-you’d-miss-it flash of nipple would be considered too racy for cable television.
Book Reviews

Where Men Win Glory is a chronicle of a death mistold

Jon Krakauer uses excerpts from soldier Pat Tillman’s diaries and interviews with his widow to paint a vivid portrait of a man motivated by more than blind patriotism.