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The Antlers returned to Toronto at The Great Hall on June 3rd. This was their first time back in the city since they played “Hospice” from front-to-back in 2019. With The Antlers being one of my absolute favourite bands, this was a very special show that I’ve been looking forward to for several months. Following these last couple of challenging years with minimal live music, it was extremely rewarding and even slightly surreal to see and photograph one of the most beautiful live shows you can see these days. When the show began, singer Peter Silberman welcomed us to join the “journey” we were about to endure, and that it certainly was. He took us through the eclectic catalogue of The Antlers by playing a few songs from each album at a time, allowing the audience to morph into the emotions and vibes each album portrays. As expected, this was one of the most beautiful shows I’ve seen in awhile. If you get the chance to see The Antlers, you’ve got to go. Check out my photos below: On a side-note- their three for $75 vinyl deal was pretty sweet – other bands, take note. All photos and review by Gemma Mastroianni

Charlotte Day Wilson played in Vancouver on June 9th, 2022 at Commodore Ballroom, with Luna Li opening the night and also joining Wilson onstage for “Take Care of You.” Check out our photo gallery below. All photos taken by Dakota Arsenault. Luna Li Charlotte Day Wilson

Flume played to a sold out crowd in Toronto at RBC Echo Beach on Tuesday, May 31st following the release of his latest LP, “Palaces.” Check out the photo gallery below! All photos taken by Gemma Mastroianni

On Saturday May 28th 2022, alternative pop singer-songwriter Keshi played a sold-out show at the Danforth Music Hall, with Rei Brown opening up the evening. Keshi performed songs off his new album Gabriel such as *“*Angostura” and “Somebody”, as well as other hits like “drunk”. Lo-fi R&B singer Rei Brown opened for him, performing “Could I Be Somebody”, “Thinking Bout You” and more. Check out the photo gallery below. All photos by John Mendoza. Rei Brown Keshi

nothing,nowhere played in Toronto at The Opera House on May 24th. Check out the photo gallery below! All photos taken by Josiah Botting:

California based Indie-Rock band Hot Flash Heatwave came to Toronto last month for a show at The Monarch Tavern. Before the show, Ted (Bass and Vocals) and Adam (Guitar and Vocals) sat down with me for a chat at Track & Field Bar. We chatted their new album Sportswear, artistic processes, TikTok, and more. Check it out: How is touring going right now? A: It’s definitely more complicated. Our Euro tour got rescheduled and a few of our bandmates have gotten covid. Ted got it, but somehow I didn’t get it. T: It definitely adds stress and I don’t think everyone is really comfortable going out. A: I think on the other-hand it’s also sweet to be back and playing again! It feels really good in that way. Where are you guys most excited to play on this tour? A: I’ve been looking forward to Montreal. We went there years ago and it was a really cool experience so going back will be super fun. T: I’m stoked to go to all of our stops! It’s been a long time since we had a tour. A: I’m stoked to be back in Canada, and to go to the south, we haven’t been there in a long time. Every show is exciting. Congrats on ‘Sportswear.’ I love the album – talk to me about it. Why is it named ‘Sportswear’ and what does the album mean to you guys? T: We kind of had this new wave sound that we were consciously bringing inspiration from some of our favourite bands from that era of music and we had this name in mind that ties in as this tongue and cheek reference to the commodification of music. It’s like a category of clothing (category of music) that’s a label that misrepresents it as a whole. At one point those labels mean one thing, and then as a Sportswear trend proliferates then it means something else. It has an interesting quality to it that’s kind of sarcastic to me, which I love. A: When I think of Sportswear, I think of sleek, shiny, decals and motorcycles and all of this different stuff, and I feel like the way we produce our songs kind of have a similar quality; something polished, in motion. It’s an ambiguous blanket term that describes the record. The artwork is bright and busy (in the best way possible), who made it? A: It’s kind of nauseating with the bright greens and reds, like a neon Christmas vibe. We collaborated with a design company in San Diego. They had a lot of cool ideas! Who are some artists who influenced the album? T: 80’s artists like – The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, the Banshees. Some more modern bands who pull from that soundscape that we like are Men I Trust and Porches. Where did you spend most of your time writing the album? A: It was pretty spread out across three years. We started individually and then there was some time during the pandemic where my relatives had me house-sitting their house and I moved our band and all of our equipment in. We lived there for 9 months and recorded every day. After that, we moved back into Ted’s place in the country in the Napa Sonoma area. T: It’s been our HQ for awhile now, my Mom’s house. We did that and then we added some finishing touches in Oakland with Jason. My current favourite song on “Sportswear” is “m o t i o n s.” I’ve perceived it in two ways: one being stuck in the same motions every day, but then also going with the flow of life and allowing things to happen and being okay with the ups and downs. I’m curious to know what the deeper meaning of this song from your perspective? A: I feel like it can be applied to anything. Just going on autopilot it can be like, “Every day I wake up and drink coffee and feel sad and talk to this person on the phone,” ya know? But part of it for me, personally, was about this cycle of time where I kept breaking up with the person I was dating and then getting back together and doing that over and over. In some ways I tie that in, but I also leave it ambiguous because it can be applied to a lot of situations. Ted did a lot of lyrcizing on that as well . T: I thought it was interesting how we have all of these phrases that apply physical movement to an emotional space, or a feeling of being stagnant in your life. You’re moving around and going through the motions, but you feel stuck. All of our words for that are related to physical place and yeah. We were playing with that a lot in the lyrics. It also references this Cookie Mueller book “Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted black.” It’s a really sick book that’s a collection of her stories and has a metaphor that’s about moving, but not being able to see where you’re going. In addition to the song, I thought the video was so abstract. I love how you play with colours, camera angles, and locations. Id love to hear about the process of making this video. Ted: We worked with our friend Ryan Molnar who we’ve done a lot of photos with. He’s very talented as a photographer and expressed interest to us in trying to direct a video. We embarked on that project with him and got help from some of our friends who we’ve worked with in the past. Our stylist Stone from Portland who came out to help us partially to credit for all of the colourful outfits, she’s a very talented stylist. A lot of it was also Ryan scouting out good places with his photographic knowledge. We drove so much, like 500 miles in one day. We were in LA then we drove hours to the coast and then to this salt flat, and then we drove all the way to this beach in San Bernardino which is where we did the shot driving on the beach. But, the first day that we drove there, they were at capacity so we have to drive three hours out of LA to get there, and we couldn’t even shoot. Ted: And, our stylist had already flown back so he was styling us on Facetime. Where were the desert shots? That was a salt flat two hours out of LA, west of Bakersfield. It was pretty far out there. It was trippy because you’re just driving in all of this deserted flat land and then theres just this salt flat. It makes sort of an infamous drive because its so bare out there. We’ve played in Bakersfield and we asked locals what to do out there and they were like, “There’s nothing to do!” I’ve spoken to a lot of artists who have seen growth on Tiktok. What are your thoughts on the platform and has it impacted your work at all? For us, it took us a second because when we first started messing with it, my impression was that it was for teeny boppers doing dances. But, then I realized we can just do what we do all the time, because we’ve been making a ton of videos forever since high school, funny little skits or just us being weird. We’ve been applying that and just doing silly shit that shows who we are as people. We haven’t had that much success, but it’s really fun because even with not many followers you can get thousands of views on a video. In this weird way, I feel like your’e gambling. Ted: The thing I’m interested in that you were bringing up is the social media affect on music. I think it goes deeper than music though, it’s how we engage with everything. I feel the affect of doing shit for Tiktok. It seems like you can sort of commodify everything if it’s just through social media, everything’s on a playlist. Music wise, music is sort of cheapened to just a vibes playlist where you don’t really engage with an artist or have that relationship with them anymore, so that’s what it brings up for me. We’re down to play the game but we also try to make a record that’s really special. I think it’s really cool to have a more in depth experience listening to a record chilling in your living room instead of just playing Indie Vibes on Spotify, doing your workout or whatever. A: I think being able to blend the worlds in my mind is ideal but yea, it’s easy to see it as one or the other and I feel like the algorithm makes it seem very heartless, not about the soul. It’s about what’s going to have the most likes or views. When making music or art, I feel like it’s always important to remember the reason you make it, because it can be hella discouraging to be like, “okay i need to make something that’s going to be viral and capture the attention of someone in like 10 seconds or I’m fucked.” There is still a lot of music that is classic and when The Beatles documentary came out, everyone was talking about The Beatles and everyone still loves them,s and they weren’t making music for Tiktok but they’re still one of the most classic bands of all the time. I think its good to give back to the basics. T: I think what Adam is trying to say is that were the next Beatles. Any artists you can recommend from San Francisco? Small Crush, they’re a really cool girl fronted dreamy/surfy classic San Francisco sound, west coast music. Interview by Gemma Mastroianni. Follow Hot Flash Heatwave on Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Music.

PUP played two nights at HISTORY in Toronto on May 14 and 15th and our photographer Katrina Lat rocked out at night two. Check out her photo gallery below: Pinkshift PUP

Three-time Grammy® Award-winning artist and genre-bending musician Jacob Collier played two shows at HISTORY in Toronto on May 10th. He performed tracks like All I Need and In Too Deep from Djesse Vol. 3, the more R&B focused installment of his four-volume, 50 song mega album. Collier also played some of his older works such as Time Alone with You and Hideaway. Check out the photo gallery below. All photos by John Mendoza.

It was the final and hottest day of Coachella yet. At the peak of the heat in the middle of the afternoon, we took a break from the heat and sat down with Eyedress in an air conditioned trailer for a quick chat. We chatted the intimate songwriting details behind his platinum hit “Jealous”, his new album (coming out soon) with HOMESHAKE, and more. Check it out below: How are you doing? I’m fine, how are you? I’m good. How are you liking Coachella? It’s great, hot. I like it better at night. Same here. I understand you’re from the Philippines, how has this influenced your sound? Because I grew up in America for a bit, I always just followed what was happening in LA. I was always paying attention to all of the music and bands coming out of there. In the Philippines nobody really likes the kind of stuff I make so it’s easy to stand out and just be me. That’s fantastic. I know you used to make your beats on FL studios, I use that for my podcast. What’s your process like now? Do you still use FL? I still fuck with FL but I use Ableton. I just bought a bunch of synths so I try to play everything. What’s your favourite synth right now? Oberheim Matrix. Talk to me about your latest track “SMOKE AND MIRRORS” which is an excellent collaboration between so many artists. How did you contribute and what was that collaboration process like? That’s a decent amount of people! That was one of the first official Eyedress rap songs. I’ve been pretty shy about my rap songs. I usually put them out as LIL DMT usually. For this album, I feel like a lot of my rapper friends are down to be on the record so I was like, “I guess I’ll make some rap shit.” It was very different and out there and I wasn’t sure how you contributed. I’m on the second verse. Amazing – I’ll listen to that back. So ‘Jealous’ has obviously become an iconic song on TikTok and it’s trended multiple times and never seems to get old. It’s definitely a moody track. Talk to me about why you wrote this song? I was going out with this girl that wasn’t my girlfriend. We weren’t trying to commit but I wanted her to be my girlfriend, but she was seeing other musician guys. I didn’t want to be possessive so I was just like, “I’m gonna make this song because I’m pissed that you’re going to see another guy after you just saw me,” and you know, I’m not controlling, but that song was my only way to vent about how frustrated I was. They didn’t want to have a relationship like that. What a way to come out of that! It’s one of the biggest songs so that’s cool. I didn’t make it to shit on her, but all of these platinum plaques! It wasn’t for that- it was a song that I made so I could be like hey, I care, but you don’t, Would you say it was at all influenced by Joy Division? More Sonic Youth, 90s rock. I like Joy Division though, I have some Joy Division inspired songs but not that one. What are some key pieces of gear you used on the track? I used a Teisco, which is a Japanese guitar from the 60s, about 500 bucks. I didn’t use anything fancy. I had a 100 dollar mic. It’s not what you use, it’s how you use it. Can you tell me about your new single ‘House of Cards’ coming out and what we can expect from that? That song is about betrayal lyrically but that’s my best keyboard work. I’m not good at playing the keys but when I made those chords I was like, “Finally, even something that’s impressing me!” because i’m very novice at the keyboards. What’s your live show like for someone who hasn’t seen it before? Lit. I encourage everyone to mosh but if people are shy it’s all good. I just like to be energetic so people don’t get bored. Do you have a lot of graphics? Oh yeah. We have a visual guy doing visuals and some blow up sphinx’s and random things to get my vibe, and Egyptian stuff. Cool. Anything else exciting that’s coming out? I have an album coming out with Homeshake. We recorded a full album a couple of months ago and we’re working on it. He’s definitely got one song on my next album, it’s called “Break the Law.” It was going to be “Full Time Lover” but “Break the Law” sounds better. And I’m playing “Break the Law” tonight. Interview by Gemma Mastroianni. All photos by Razy Faouri. Follow Eyedress on Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music. Check out his website.