Rediscovering Old Hobbies and Making Art for Yourself

So in another article, I mentioned learning how to roller skate during the pandemic as part of something I had always wanted to try but was too worried about embarrassing myself to try, but my focus in this writing is about rediscovering old hobbies. 

 

Growing up my skill set was always in arts, as a child I was obsessed with drawing and sculpting and for a while, I thought I would be a stop motion artist one day. Kids change their minds though and I changed “what I wanted to be when I grow up” several times before I was even out of grade 9.

I was serious about sculpture and illustration in the years leading up to graduation, in many ways art became the only thing I liked, and I expanded my horizons into fabric and foam costume building, and I even had a lot of work done on a comic book of my own that I had at least made it to an IP lawyer for. 

When I went into university though, everything was different. Suddenly I wasn’t one of a handful of prodigious young artists in my high school I was just a regular art student with dreams that were seemingly too big for my skillset. I also couldn’t draw a background to save my life and that’s kind of a necessity if you want to draw comic books. 

I ended up going into my university’s film program and that’s where I discovered that I was actually pretty decent at coming up with ideas, and I liked how much work went into the process of making films. It turns out what I really love is telling stories and much of what I learned, even in those fruitless endeavors built up skills that I still use today.

 

But art school as I came to learn was not always the artistically free landscape they tell you it is, like definitely there can be some really out there, bizarre projects that art students come up with but the concept is right and the execution is too, you’re golden. 

 

There are however things people really didn’t like. One area I’ve always been fascinated with is toy design, as a kid, I loved dolls, action figures, and animal toys, and if I wasn’t satisfied with what I had sometimes I made figures out of clay. In the age of the internet, something started to really catch my eye and that was artists doing “repaints” of dolls or My Little Pony and I was blown away that someone could turn a pink girl horse into one of the brother Clydesdales with just a bit of clay and some paint.

What I found from seeing artists online documenting their process of how they turned one toy into something completely different is that I learned a lot about materials that I would have never otherwise learned about in school or on my own. For example, the “clay” you use on a vinyl pony toy isn’t really clay because most clays need to be baked and I don’t know if you ever stuck a My Little Pony in the oven before, but vinyl melts. 

 

Instead what these artists liked using is a home and hardware product called “epoxy putty” and it’s essentially a two-part epoxy glue but in a putty form. You mix the two parts together as you would the liquid glue but it cures without having to go into the oven. It’s literally perfect for what I was doing but I never would have learned about it if not for the internet, because it’s less of an art supply and more of a plumber’s product (there are hobbyist brands as well).

Epoxy putty

At the end of the day though I was a film major, and there wasn’t really much use for my toy customizing. Even if there was I was largely too afraid to talk about it because really what 21-year-old is interested in dolls and toys? As I also learned there are a million criticisms you can make about the human body and the plastic representation thereof, and sometimes people don’t want to hear about the ways you’re trying to make it different or subvert and that’s just the way it is.

https://dollswellthatendswell.tumblr.com/post/150646797845/were-getting-there

 (I built the leg from epoxy putty)

So I kept it to myself, and where I couldn’t find the support in real life for my modified toys but there are a lot of toy modifying communities on the internet and I found myself with a healthy subscriber count on my doll Tumblr. It felt great to have support from people who liked what I was doing but also the people who in my eyes were also talented artists. I felt like I was in a happy space of being able to have recognition for my skills but also where I could share my tips with other new artists and I loved it.   

(Below is work from of my favorite artists from the Tumblr era to now)

I graduated in 2018 and with that came a tsunami of depression from both the roughest academic year of my life and the feeling that I no longer had guidance for being an artist anymore.  My main film-oriented interests were starting to dip, I worked on a couple of productions but it didn’t spark any joy, and eventually, the apathy I felt trickled down into everything else, from cosplay to doll making, I just bottomed out.

 

When the pandemic hit filming obviously shut down, and I hadn’t painted a doll in probably a year but with the lockdown came the great boredom, and one day I started looking at all the parts I had the urge to create again. 

I grabbed one doll who had always just hung around but wasn’t really special to me on her own and I got to work changing her face, her hair and even giving her big epoxy putty elf ears. When I finished up I felt the weirdest feeling. For the first time in forever, I was actually happy with my own work. 

 

Since then I’ve tried to make time for this hobby, it doesn’t always happen the way I want it to but it makes me happy, and that happiness goes to the other areas I work in. No to equate myself or other artists to farm animals, but happy artists make better art, so always try to make time for your own projects too.

Last Minute “Mask on” Halloween Costumes

So it’s another Halloween in a pandemic year, I love costumes and dressing up. Before the pandemic made big gatherings a distant memory, I used to be very enthusiastic about cosplay and costume making. I still am, despite not having a place to wear any costumes I make but I look forward to Halloween for the opportunity to dust one-off. But at the same time, I am someone that really likes to wear a new costume every time, because hey I don’t always get the chance to wear a costume at all, I want to make it special

Personally, I have no problem with mask-wearing in costume, though I understand how the pop of the white surgical mask can really take you out of the look you were going for. That’s why I’ve been brainstorming ideas for costumes that incorporate a face mask. That way you can have your cake and eat it too.

Phantom… of your Workplace:

Every opera needs a phantom, but why limit yourself, be the phantom of YOUR workplace. In the style of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous musical, the Phantom’s mask conceals the right half of the face from the forehead down just before the lips. As much of a stickler as I can be for following established designs, where there are scissors and plastic Halloween face masks, there’s away. Additionally, you could add mod podge and newspaper in strips to reinforce the mask and add some texture, once that dries you can paint it with acrylics, and then you have a totally unique mask. The lower half of the costume is really a Value Village run but you can make do with a suit shirt, vest or jacket, and a cape (think overdramatic). Really the key with the phantom is dramatic and dark, but I’m not condoning terrorizing your coworkers or overloading your office with candles. 

Sheet ghost:

The humble sheet ghost can be delightful on its own, but in a pandemic year, it works even better because the sheet just covers up everything including the mask. Anyone who’s ever made a sheet ghost costume will tell you it’s harder than it seems, you can’t just throw a sheet over yourself and call it a day because it will just slide around constantly, and once you factor in the eye holes it’s a lot better to have the top attached to your head so that it stays put. There’s a couple way to accomplish this but a lot of people sew a hat in a similar color to the sheet underneath, and that will keep your head and the eye holes lined up. Alternatively, you could also use a round bike helmet or skate helmet and adhesive-backed velcro on both the helmet and the sheet. The sheet ghost is a good last-minute costume because there are more options you can go about it and the material you need are probably items you already have or are cheap to buy. 

The ghost with the most

Considerate vampire: 

My favorite last-minute costume idea is always a vampire, the reason being all you really need are fangs, a touch of makeup, and a can-do vampiric attitude. Vampires run the gamut in terms of the dress so there’s not really a wrong way you can do the outfit, it’s really the teeth that are the special part. The funniest part about vampire costumes to me is the act because if you’re a vampire you can be out there dressed to the nines like Dracula and announce yourself as a vampire OR you can play it subtly. Dress like a regular human, just trying to blend in with your human workmates but subtly letting them think something weird about you. The fun part is in the reveal, which in pre COVID times was a little harder to pull off. Generally, I would keep my head low while talking to someone before flashing a cheeky fanged smile at them at the end to make them laugh. Incorporating the mask is even more effective at getting a laugh because they can’t see the teeth, to begin with, and when you drop the mask in an appropriate setting it’s pretty much guaranteed to get a laugh from somebody. 

You’re just a considerate, workplace vampire. 

 

 Dune Sandworm 

With Denis Villeneuve’s Dune hitting the big screen this weekend, there’s only going to be one costume to rule them all and I’m not talking about Timothee Chalamet I’m talking about the real hero of the story, the mighty sandworms of the Arrakis.

My design is one that is more of “the last week” before Halloween costume, but I feel confident someone with more skills could finish it faster than that. Additionally, my version lacks the teeth but mimics the shape, so you can also hide a face mask under it. 

I’ve included the directions on the pages themselves and there are two methods using sheets and pillowcases, so hey maybe you and a friend both want to go as sandworms? Always say yes to more sandworms.

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Additionally I think that you could apply a nontoxic glitter spray to the mouth part of the worm if you really wanted to take it to the next level but I do recommend a spritzing of spicy aromatic body spray to the worm suit as it will add a layer of authenticity to it (remember it is said that you could smell the worm before you saw it)   

 

I came up with a design before I researched other people’s but I found this great tutorial here for a more accurate sandworm, and this one also has teeth. https://www.instructables.com/Dune-Giant-Sandworm-Shai-Hulud-Costume/

Opinion: Superhero Fatigue is Real

I want to preface this article by saying I do not hate superhero media, rather there’s just so much of it that I’m just getting fatigued. 

How many times this year have you been asked if you’ve seen one of the Disney Plus Marvel tv shows this year? How many did you watch? The answers going to depend on the reader of course but say you watched all 4 of the currently available Disney Plus series you would have effectively watched 19 hours and 40 minutes of just the television series. 

Wandavision runs a total of five hours and 50 minutes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier runs 4 hours and 25 minutes, Loki runs 4 hours and 53 minutes, What If…?  approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes

I get that we’ve had a lot of free time over the course of the pandemic but at a certain point, I hit a wall with how much Marvel I could handle because I’ll be honest with you I couldn’t finish all of it. Even Loki, which I would have ordinarily loved a couple of years back just kind of fell through my interest and I hate that because I’ve loved Tom Hiddleston’s version of Loki since Thor came out in 2011. As much I wanted to cheer for my favorite reformed villain, my interest just kept dipping, and eventually, I just forgot to finish the series.

I used to eat up everything Marvel put out in the earlier days of the MCU, I was REALLY into it actually, one of the pieces I used in my first ever university art portfolio was an Iron Man Mark 7 Suit that I painstakingly made from EVA floormats and wore to a comic convention in 2012. I made a couple more marvel cosplays included Deadpool and the Winter Soldier and up until the pandemic made FanExpo a distant memory I was planning more Marvel cosplays, I really just loved everything they made. 

 

Like I said earlier though, I’m getting tired and I was only watching the Marvel television series. I still want to see Shang Chi when I get the chance but it kills me a little bit every time I see a joke on social media about how “nobody knows” or cares about The Eternals because I actually did read the Neil Gaiman version of the series during my highest interest point in the early 2010s and when I heard that it was going to be a movie I was genuinely excited to see it, and even though I love the director, Chloe Zhao as well as cast it’s probably going to join the other Marvel movies I get to when I get to.

I think part of what’s been tiring me with the MCU is the focus on “family-friendly” which I understand the reasons for keeping a superhero franchise child-friendly but I think it limits the scope of what the characters can talk about to a degree. 

Amazon’s The Boys has really stood out as a non-Marvel superhero tv series. The Boys is the furthest thing from the family-friendly superheroes we find in Marvel, and as dysfunctional as the team of Avengers could be in the MCU, they don’t even come close to the levels of workplace toxicity that we find in The Boys’ respective top superhero team “The Seven”.

In the world of The Boys, heroes are little more than a product for a corporation that is elevated to superstar status, and while they dazzle the public on billboards and films of their own, the luster is lost when your loved one is accidentally killed as part of the “collateral damage” part of superhero movies we don’t always get to see. 

 

I’ve also been really impressed by is the writing and themes of the show, I love the way the series is able to critique the entire superhero film genre so cleanly and thoroughly and the casting is really excellent. I personally love Anthony Starr as Homelander, he’s the leader of “the Seven”, he gets to do hero jobs while getting to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous and while he has a carefully crafted public image of being a very good, moral superhero, his off-camera behavior is appallingly cruel and often extremely violent for no other reason other than he seems to enjoy inflicting pain on people. The real heroes in The Boys are the gang trying to bring down Homelander and the corporation he works for, Vaught. 

The show in the second season also deals with subjects like White Nationalism, and identity politics that in the years since 2016 have often found themselves coming to the forefront of news and politics. It’s very timely, thought-provoking, but also has superheroes. 

Another superhero film I liked from 2021 was James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Gunn famously directed the first two Guardian of the Galaxy movies for the MCU and is returning to direct the third and final installment this year. The Suicide Squad is part of the DC’s Extended Universe and focuses on a group of incarcerated villains (they’re really more anti-heroes) as they try to take down a rogue scientist in an enemy country at the behest of the US Government. Part of what makes this movie work so well in my opinion is that James Gunn has a great sense of style for action, gore, and body horror and that marries really well with the nature of the characters we see in The Suicide Squad. Gunn also has a really good way of working emotion and humor into his stories, and I love that he’s able to show the human side of the super-powered characters and I really appreciate that.

As I said earlier, I don’t hate superhero media, I just am tired of so much of it happening every single year, I think there will continue to be productions that I will watch but there are also going to be many that I don’t end up seeing, and maybe that’s for the best.

Learning New Things as an Adult

Do you ever want to try something new but you’re scared of making a fool out of yourself? I’ve spent most of my life backing out of new things because I was scared to look stupid in front of people around me, but equally, there’s always part of my brain that desperately wants to learn new things.

During the initial months of the lockdown in 2020, when I thought I was quite literally going to die of boredom, I started taking serious interest in roller skating. For those who are not familiar, there are rollerblades that have inline wheels and then there are roller skates or “Quad” skates, and they’re the old school ones that sit on top of four wheels. I first became interested in roller skating a couple of years prior to the pandemic, I was always interested but too sheepish to try. I love the look of the quad skate, there are a million different ways you can dress up your skates and I was captivated by the thought of moving around so weightlessly. The thing was I wasn’t happy with my body and I didn’t want to be the chubby girl making a clown of herself in front of everyone, because I had kind of spent my entire husky child life doing that, and after a while, you get scared of what others might say because you kinda know what they might say. However, where I thought my body type might be a hindrance, I met people in my university class that actively roller skated and I remember one day they eyed me up and down before asking “you ever try roller derby? You have a great build for it”

Roller Girls of the Apocalypse

As I learned that day, it turns out having a stocky build with a little extra natural padding is actually good for roller derby, and much to my surprise there were a lot of people with similar bodies to me out there. The thing with derby is that you kinda need to know how to skate, and you should be able to do it well because you’re going to get bumped around A LOT and I definitely wasn’t there yet having never put my foot in a roller skate.

 

Returning to 2020, I was bored out of my mind not working or going to school and so I looked at roller skating again. I found a local skate supply company by the name of Roller Girl in Vancouver and after some consideration, I picked up a pair of skates, helmets, and pads. I was very excited but also I had no one to show me what to do, so I looked it up on YouTube and by George there were good roller skating souls out there who had the demos for skate basics that I so desperately needed. 

I didn’t leave my garage for about a week, I needed to learn how to roll, and most importantly STOP, and the garage worked because it was flat and easy to glide on. There’s a few different ways to stop on quad skates but the obvious one uses the stopper at the front of the boot, this is called a “toe stop” and it was a learning curve for me especially since the minimal experience I had was on inline skates and those have the brake pad at the back of the skate.  

Moxie Roller Skates

There are a lot of different styles of skating, there are different cuts of boots, trucks, and wheels depending on if you are going up ramps at the skate park versus tearing up an indoor derby rink, but what I was doing is basic sidewalk skating. My boots are high cut and the wheels are much softer than the ones you find in a park or rink setting, the idea being that when you run over rough concrete you won’t go flying. That was probably the hardest thing to learn for me, because I am kind of a chicken when it comes to getting injuries and even though I had padded myself up to the max I just didn’t want to go flying. 

Find Inline Skates Reviews at Myinlineskates.com

Learning how to fall was probably the most important step though, as I quickly found myself wanting more space to skate on than on the garage floor, the second I put my skates on in the cul de sac and stood up I was freaked out about not being able to control myself and falling, so I just kinda stood there. My younger sister had a pair of inline skates and she was a lot more skilled on hers than I was on mine, and I felt a little stupid just standing there while she was gliding around in the carefree way I wanted to be. A valuable thing I learned is that, you can wipe out just standing there, and that’s exactly what happened because my legs were not bent, and if you don’t keep your knees bent on quads you literally fall over backwards. 

What I learned from Youtube was to keep your knees bent and if you are wearing your knee pads (which you should) you can crouch lower and if you fall you just land on your knees. It turns out practicing falling on your skates teaches you to anticipate the movements and after a while you fall less because your body knows how to correct itself.

Elbow Pads

What I found, which might be more obvious to the more fearless readers out there, but for the ones like me who are too afraid to learn something new for fear of making a fool out yourself is that the less afraid I was to fall down, the better I got at not falling altogether. You don’t become good at something without making mistakes, sometimes you literally have to fall on your butt to learn, but the more you practice the more you can anticipate correcting those mistakes, the important thing is to always at least try. No one can make fun of you for having the nerve to try something new.

How Vampires Became Fun Again

If you told me 11 years ago that one of my favorite television shows in the future was going to be about vampires I would have told you to get lost, because as much as I loved the concept of vampires, in 2010 it was hard to find anything current that didn’t involve the type lovelorn teenage vampire found in works like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. Sure there were shows like True Blood that were aimed at an older audience that I didn’t mind watching, but I wanted something to scratch the itch I felt when I first read Dracula and became fascinated by vampires.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/mediaviewer/rm3327707392/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

It wasn’t until 2014 when Taika Waiti and Jemaine Clement released their low-budget, independent mockumentary “What We Do In The Shadows” that I was thoroughly enamored with the vampire again. The story is that a documentary crew has been given access to film a group of vampires living in a flat together in New Zealand and document them as they prepare for “The Unholy Masquerade” which is essentially a vampiric ball. Clement stars as Vladislav the Poker, a medieval era vampire very reminiscent of the Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, Waititi plays Viago, the “fussy” leader of the household, who in life was an 18th-century dandy who eventually came to New Zealand to chase after a human love.

The pair also live with Deacon, an even younger vampire that considers himself the “bad boy” of the group but really seems to bother the others more with his laziness and then in the basement resides Petyr, an 8000-year-old, Nosferatu looking vampire who can’t really be bothered to attend the group’s flat meetings. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3416742/mediaviewer/rm3025644545/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

Much of the humor is derived from the absurdity with which the vampires live life in modern society; unlike the vampires in Twilight that wear high-end clothing and drive around expensive cars, the vampires in Shadows live very differently. They don’t really go clothes shopping, a lot of their clothing comes from the people they kill, they also cannot see their reflections in the mirror so they draw pictures of each other to show them what they’re wearing. They don’t have anything super fancy to drive but they can transform into animals such as bats. Additionally, they struggle to get into clubs because they can’t enter another property without being invited in and their conflict with the werewolves is less epic showdown and more rude banter mostly caused by the vampires. 

It’s as if the glamor that we had come to associate vampires with had been removed and what was left was grosser but truer to the original monster and it reinvigorated the entire genre for me and many others who fell in love with the peculiar crew of undead.

In 2019 the world of Shadows got bigger with the debut of the FX television series by the same name. The show follows a different set of vampires sharing a house on Staten Island and while it can be a difficult move to make a spin-off work, this iteration is just as delightful as the film was, and in many areas expands even further than the original. This vampiric household consists of Nandor the Relentless, an Ottoman empire-era warlord who was run out of his village (for eating villagers) and now spends much of his time posturing over the other vampires or exhausting his dutiful familiar Guillermo. Nadja and Lazslo are a married couple of vampires that also live in the house and spend perhaps too much time enjoying the more hedonistic, carnal desires of undeath than they do actual vampiric business and the last vampire in the household is unique in that he is an energy vampire, who instead of subsisting on blood, drains the life force of humans (and other vampires) through exhausting, or angering conversations. His abilities and weaknesses compared to the other vampires, plus the fact that he literally survives off of irritating the people around him makes him a comedic goldmine. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8479420/mediaviewer/rm3655886080/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

I think ironically what keeps the vampires refreshing in Shadows is also what keeps them classic. I think people are free to interpret the vampire as they will but there are lots of subtle nuances to the mythology of the vampire that got lost over time. Dusty, unsexy rules for travel that include bringing dirt from your ancestral homeland with you, or risk becoming trapped on the property in a perpetually weakened state are a real problem the vampires in Shadows find themselves having to contend with. One episode from this 3rd season saw the vampires becoming stuck in a hotel-casino in Atlantic City after their ancestral dirt is unceremoniously vacuumed up by housekeeping. They then need to rely on the help of the human familiar Guillermo to get them out of their situation by going back to their home countries to round up a bag of dirt for them. 

https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1524204169113-3359e888bc3c?ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHx8&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=387&q=80

Guillermo is also a really refreshing character, and being one of the few humans in a show full of supernatural beings he still manages to stand out. Guillermo acts as Nandor’s servant, mostly running the house, doing errands, and most important sourcing and disposing of the vampire’s “meals”. That’s another modern trope that Shadows moved away from, the idea of a “vegetarian” vampire who will find any other source of blood before biting a human. Instead, the vampires in Shadows regularly consume human blood, and that comes with the grim task of Guillermo having to bury the bodies in the backyard once the victim is empty. Guillermo does this because as with many humans who have become familiars, he too hopes to become a vampire one day and Nandor has promised him that he will. Well, he promised 10 years ago, and that’s the problem, most vampires don’t make good on their word. 

 

The series stars Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, and Mark Proksch and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a bloody good time.

Vancouver Duo Fionn Are Back With A Brand New EP Candid Constellations

Vancouver singer-songwriters Fionn are back with a brand new EP Candid Constellations. The 8 track release follows their 2020 EP Everyone’s A Critic and features an array of 80s, pop influenced songs like “Spark” “Cold” and “Hold Off”, the latter being a writing collaboration with the iconic Josh Ramsey. I grew up listening to his band Marianas Trench and to this day I still find myself remembering their music, and not because I have a good memory but because Ramsey is a really good writer and his music is super memorable. I think his style also translates really well in this project with Fionn, and I think the twins both have really great voices for this style. 

Fionn says some of their influences on this EP were Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia and The Weeknd’s After Hours and I really think they pair well with that sound. I also think the sisters are also good writers and not only do they capture the sound but their lyrics really make it feel more local for me and I like that. I think my favorite track is “Spark”, I love the synth heavy melodies in the chorus but I like the sound of their voice against the more stripped down drumline and that little Phil Collins-eque kick peppered through-out. It’s already on my playlists and I think you should definitely check it out. 

Less about the music but  I also really like their aesthetics and branding for this EP. I think in the social media age it’s extra important to be memorable and I think the kind of Y2K, Lizzie McGuire aesthetic is really fun and makes me just as eager to follow their fashion and makeup side as I am their music.

You can checkout Candid Constellations right now on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.

Haunted Mansions, “Reformed Baptist Blues” & The Tragically Hip

Earlier this week The Tragically Hip surprised us with their Saskadelphia  EP release. The band, having retired after the 2017 passing of lead singer and lyricist Gord Downie, recovered 5 of the 6 tracks during a recording period in New Orleans back in 1991 and believed they had been lost in a studio fire back in 2008. At the time these tracks were recorded The Hip had just gone platinum with their debut album in Canada and were attempting to branch out into the US and maintain their success going into their second album. 

A really fun fact about this EP is that the 5 songs recorded in 1991 were done at the now, closed Kingsway Studio, a mansion in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. The walls are 14ft tall and it was built in the 1800s. As a studio, it saw many album recordings by some of the industry greats like Emmylou Harris, U2, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, R.E.M., Robbie Robertson, Sheryl Crow, and Pearl Jam, among many others. The local legend goes that the house is haunted by the spirit of Germaine Cazenave Wells, a former Kingsway owner and alcoholic, who died as the result of falling and hitting her head. Though she may have moved on from the physical world, the story is that you can still hear her partying from beyond. 

In context with Saskadelphia I would describe these 5 songs as having a deep south influence in the instrumentation and I loved Gord’s vocals and lyrics as well. My favorite track on the EP is “Reformed Baptist Blues”, it feels like one of those songs I would describe as “all gas, no brakes” in the energy it’s giving off. The recording has a gritty quality to it, the lyrics and the riffs are super memorable. The drums are also killer and overall it’s a rip-roaring good song that really feels like a young band firing creatively on all cylinders, playing for restless ghosts and picky execs in a bayou mansion.

The whole EP is solid in my opinion and I think it comes from a variety of factors. I think the fact that it had been lost for 30 years is part of what gives it this feeling like it was unearthed in a time machine, and mostly recorded at an earlier point in the Hip’s run where they were hot off the success of their first album and getting ready to make their second. 

I also think because Gord Downie was such a prolific and skilled lyricist that each song feels unique and I think it’s better that it’s come out now in 2021 than it would have if it stayed just for a b-side on Road Apples. You can listen to “Reformed Baptist Blues” along with the whole Saskadelphia EP on all streaming services.