THE PLAYLIST
Dylan Hudecki, aka The Dill, is a Canadian indie-rock vet having played in many different bands, including By Divine Right and Junior Blue. He’s a proud Hamiltonian and has joined HAMILTON CITY Magazine to cover local album releases.
TERRA LIGHTFOOT
Healing Power
Healing Power is Hamilton’s own acclaimed recording artist Terra Lightfoot’s fourth studio album. Her growth and maturity as a musician and songwriter show in spades on this one.
The album’s cover photo sets the scene for the album. The story goes she was alone in Austria, ahead of a string of solo European dates, and she found herself on a mountaintop beneath that tree, singing, playing guitar, touching grass and drilling into the depths of her emotions.
“Everything comes back around. It was my idea to call the record Healing Power, and I thought of the most healing place that I knew in the world,” she says. “That tree taught me about perseverance. It was the only tree living at that altitude. It just kept growing. And I knew I had to be like that too: just to keep growing and changing.”
On Healing Power (out in October on the Sonic Unyon label), Lightfoot showcases her charm, grit and grace as a pop songbird, delivering a doozy of an album, stacking well among so many of her other accomplishments. This LP delivers the peerless pop-rock album that fans have long known that she always had in her. Most of the album finds Lightfoot backed by bassist Elijah Abrams and Blue Rodeo’s Glenn Milchem on drums.
Stand-out tracks are “Cross Border Lovers,” “Someone Else’s Feelings” and “Keep You In My Pocket,” particularly with Lightfoot’s vocals and knack for a good melody. Healing Power is for fans of high-energy, guitar-driven pop-rock, with no shortage of melodic hooks, and her always charming emotive wordplay.
Excited to see where she goes next!
THE CROWLEYS
Strange Seasons
Local indie-psych band The Crowleys have spent the last three years completing their first full-length album Strange Seasons, which was self-produced by guitarist-songwriter Cohen Wylie along with Mike Keire at Threshold Recording Studio.
Equal parts synthy and ’80s as it is ’70s dance glam, it’s psych-indie pop, and at its core, it’s a group of friends making music using the magic they found being together. According to the band about the album, “No single theme or inspiration drove the songwriting, but a lot of messed up things were (and still are) happening in the world and around us. So we often wrote about that, or we would write about the things we did to escape it.”
The Crowleys are Stuart Downie on drums, percussion, vocals and synth, Collin Horlick on bass and synth, Justyn Horlick on synthesizer and guitar, Giulana Frontini doing vocals and Wylie on guitar, vocals and synth.
Each member of the band brings their musical interests and expertise to the table in a collaborative songwriting process. The finished product, underscored by Wylie’s consistent and distinctive production style, is a high-energy psych-pop soundtrack steeped in nostalgia.
RIYL: Tame Impala, Flaming Lips, Grimes, Ariel Pink, T-Rex, Donna Summer
ELLIS
no place that feels like
Hamilton’s Ellis got a lot of emotions and stories off her chest with her vibey new album no place that feels like. The 2020 pandemic stalled her first album and career motivation, but I think we can expect more great things from her in the future, fingers crossed.
RIYL: Ellevator, Boy Genius, Mitski, Phebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy.
CADENCE WEAPON
Rollercoaster
Cadence Weapon, a Polaris Music prize winner and Canadian critically acclaimed legend who now calls Hamilton home, has dropped an eclectic album solidifying him once again as an underground hip-hop staple. Lyrically, the album focuses on the contradictions between technology and modern culture while using industrial-leaning drum 'n' bass, and 8-bit beats to get there. Dystopian yet surprisingly human.
RIYL: Grimes, Richie Hawtin, Junior Boys, Jpegmafia, Buck 65.
