Finally, my unique expertise has value to someone! I was recently asked to be on the Sloancast, a podcast dedicated to the band Sloan, to talk about said band and their inextricable link to the music magazine I used to manage, Chart Magazine.
Some of the topics we covered: how we’d pick the Chart Magazine cover stars, the three separate times we did the Top 50 Canadian Albums Of All Time poll, and what members of Sloan are like as hockey players.
It’s quite a romp if you care about 1990s Canadian rock music and or Sloan, specifically.
If you told me in January that a rap metal record would win the 2020 Polaris Music Prize I’d have fallen onto a fainting couch in a swoon.
And yet here we are, Backxwash’s God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It album has indeed won this year’s Polaris and it’s entirely deserved.
We didn’t get to celebrate Backxwash’s victory at the traditional gala this year. Instead, the 10 Short List nominees were honoured with a series of commissioned short films.
It turns out making 10 short films in four months is a ridiculously bonkers thing to do. But we did it. And they turned out.
Every year for the Polaris Music Prize Long List reveal we travel somewhere in Canada to get out there and visit the people.
This year with COVID-19 shutting everything down we were unable to do that and instead had 40 past Polaris nominees graciously, and on short notice, come together to do video reveals of this year’s 40 nominated albums on the 2020 Polaris Long List.
Considering the whole country was pretty much in lockdown it turned out pretty well.
Sarah in Portmeirion, where The Prisoner was filmed.
Sarah’s first book I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir is being released April 18, 2020.
Below is a small list of other notable pieces she has contributed to various publications around the world:
Dysfunction, Drama, and Diarrhea: The Making of ‘The Magnificent Seven’
Diarrhea comes up in the Risky Fuel household quite often. The throughlines for this being a) Sarah’s Robert Vaughn fandom, b) Vaughn and the rest of the cast having diarrhea on the set of The Magnificent Seven, and c) Sarah finding this really funny.
Fire Walked with Me: Living a Real-Life Twin Peaks Twin Peaks eerily paralleled the crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka in the Niagara region. The impact these crimes had on a 10-year-old girl from the area linger still.
In Memoriam: That Time Daisuke Sasaki Had A Sword
Japanese professional wrestler and troubled dirtbag Daisuke Sasaki won a ceremonial sword in a match. And then a short time later he lost it. It was a journey.
There’s some cheek to Lord Buffalo’s “About” page, a place where they alternately refer to themselves as “leguminous drone-porn,” “forêt noir,” “crappalachian butt rock” and “mud folk.” The throughline for all these being that they’re all vaguely of the earth, loamy and natural, base element-y. In truth, though, those descriptions undersell what Lord Buffalo feels like.
Tohu Wa Bohu, the second album from the Austin, Texas four-piece musically captures a gauzy between-space. Featuring members Daniel Jesse Pruitt (vocals, guitar), Garrett Hellman (guitar, organs), Patrick Patterson (violin) and Yamal Said (percussion), what Lord Buffalo creates are sonic mysteries, the heat shimmers on salt plains, elf circles around the forest trees, blood falls in glaciers…
It’s a supernatural, otherworldly sonic experience that sets the stage for Pruitt’s tales of snakecharm and Old Testament mysticism. In this it’s no accident that Lord Buffalo get cited among the likes of fellow travelers Sixteen Horsepower and Swans.
Edgy, post-apocalyptic blues number “Halle Berry” is probably the “hit” here. With its jagged guitarwork it recalls a Nick Cave spiritual which has been stripped of any notion of fan service. Best though is probably the title track, a chanting, thumping, deliberate sprawl designed specifically to pierce the veil. Whether the listener can actually reach that place is unknowable. But only repeat listens will help the find that out.
Risky Fuel 