Author Archives: Mackenzie Eide

Featuring Arcade Fire

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With all the music that is played on the radio daily, how many songs can you identify as Canadian? A regular to Canadian stations is Arcade Fire, an indie rock group from Montreal. Arcade fire has seen massive international success while still keeping their roots strong into Canadian soil.

Thibault Trillet / Pexels

What are your thoughts on orchestral rock? I used to get in arguments with my dad on this topic, mostly in regards to the band Iron Maiden – he disliked them because they were too “orchestral”. Personally, I love orchestral rock and roll, it adds such a unique sound to the track. Arcade fire throws this spin onto the indie genre, and it works so well. 2004 was the year the group released their first album, Funeral. If the name doesn’t ring any bells, the track Wake Up might. It was their breakout single that pushed the Canadian band in to the international spotlight.

Out of all the Canadian groups I’ve featured so far, Arcade Fire is the only one to have won a grammy. It was for their 2010 album, The Suburbs. Arcade Fire won Album of the Year for that record in 2011 and it propelled their career to where it is today. If you aren’t familiar with the band at all, besides just being orchestral, Arcade Fire writes their music around themes of community, loss, family, and growing up.

On May 1st of this year the band released their newest record, Open Your Heart or Die Trying – 12 years after their debut album, Funeral. I want to give you another band or artist to compare Arcade Fire to so you can get a better feel for their sound but it is really impossible when Arcade Fire themselves seem to be the blueprint. This group has been so influential to Canadian music throughout their time that they became their very own style of music. The best comparison I can give is if U2 met David Bowie and combined with The Arkells then – very roughly – out came Arcade Fire.

Give Funeral a listen a compare it to their newest album, Open Your Heart or Die Trying, bring some of that Canadian spirit in to your fall season!

 

Featuring The Tragically Hip

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You can’t have a Canadian music blog without mentioning the Tragically Hip at least once. It was only a matter of time before this was written, I bet you were almost waiting for it. Bobcaygeon, Ontario has never been the same since this band’s conception. Where do you even begin to write about these guys?

I can’t remember when I heard my first Tragically Hip song. It had to have been in my dad’s car, as an outro to a segment on an AM station, surely. I do remember when I fell in love with my first Tragically Hip song though.

I was gifted a well-loved copy of Phantom Power by a family member and fell in love with the track, Membership. It is still my favorite Tragically Hip song to this day, the drums and the vocals drown everything out until the chorus of the song – it is so well produced and incredible to listen to for the first time.

What was your first Tragically Hip song? I think a lot of people feel unusually attached to this band, do you have a strange love for the Tragically Hip? In my hometown on every street corner is some form of a Tragically Hip cover band, small Canadian towns would never have survived without this band.

Emanuel Pedro / Pexels

They are an older Canadian band, having released their debut self-titled album in 1987. Despite this, I find their fanbase to be split rather evenly between young and older fans. The love for this band is passed down through generations in Canada, and especially here in British Columbia.

The legacy that the sound and music of The Tragically Hip left behind has inspired an entire generation of music here in British Columbia. Their strong, melodic guitar and deep bass, as well as an energetic drummer with a sharp snare are all elements that have influenced Canadian music.

I think it is safe to say that all alternative rock with that roots/folky feel can be traced back to origins beginning with a Tragically Hip album somewhere.

 

 

Bringing the 90s Back

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Do you know what year it is? Is it 2026, or 1996?

There was a discussion on a local Facebook page recently that made me laugh. Somebody had found a dropped camera on the ground and uploaded one of the photos on it to Facebook hoping someone would recognize the two people in the picture. The photo saw two men with digital cameras hung around their necks, one was smoking a cigarette, and both were dressed in baggy clothing: flannels, JNCO jeans, and a band shirt. All of the boomers in the comment section took one look at the photo and assumed it was from the 90s, they wouldn’t even consider that the photo was from modern day because of their clothing and equipment. The photo did look exceptionally vintage, except for the massive iPhone 14 in one of their pockets.

The 80s and 90s are coming back into rotation, and the best part of this trend cycle for us music lovers is that they are bringing the music back with them. 90s shoegaze, grunge, alternative rock – you can probably find more local bands taking up that sound in modern day than you did back then!

So what has changed?

When you listen to a local alternative rock band here in British Columbia, you are not going to hear that polished, overly-produced sound. There are certainly artists out there who embody that sound but the majority of British Columbia bands are rough and unpolished in the best way.

In your local music guitar is becoming much more prominent. Not that it ever truly went away, but those crunchy or distorted sounds are being heard a lot more again and the synth heavy tracks are losing popularity. Just being in Vancouver means your musical influences are naturally dark, distorted, and bass driven. There are a combination of loud and soft dynamics that shape how a song is played and produced, and those stylistic choices are very prevalent in British Columbia.

Trends come full circle every now and again and I am so happy this year’s cycle is swinging the 90s back at us. Has your recent playlist been seeing a lot more music made in the 1990s, and is your newer stuff beginning to sound like the older records?

 

Featuring Mother Mother

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If you were anywhere online between the years 2016-2022 you probably discovered the group Mother Mother. Their song Hayloft, released on their 2008 record O My Heart took the internet by storm with its repetitive lyrics, unusual harmonies, and unique tone. So much so, that Mother Mother came back years later with Hayloft II in 2022 on their record titled Inside. O My Heart was such a unique release. It really came out of no where, going from humble beginnings in post-financial crisis Vancouver to becoming an international sensation in 2026.

The first thing you will notice about the music of Mother Mother is their vocals. Their approach to vocal harmonies is truly impressive. The group utilizes three different vocalists, Ryan Guldemond on lead with Molly Guldemond and Jasmin Parkin to support. One male voice and two female – their range of tones is extensive and creates an otherworldly sound. Mother Mother connects with you through their writing, the group will take a serious topic and turn it into a catchy, repetitive, almost ironic song with how upbeat and energetic the track is.

keksopad / Pexels

It really is something special – I was 14 when I heard Mother Mother for the first time and at that point in my life, their music made a lot of sense to me. The band connects with so many generations that no matter where you are in life, you can find something safe within their music.

What is your favorite Mother Mother song?

Everybody has a different “first Mother Mother song”. Older fans of the band probably fell in love with them in their heyday and have an extensive list of their favorite Mother Mother songs. Fans on the younger side who discovered the band through platforms like TikTok and Instagram may only know a select few songs that they overplay into obsession.

My favorite Mother Mother song is Burning Pile because it was the first one I heard and the song that sold this band for me. Burning Pile is the second track on O My Heart and a cult favorite for it’s deep bass and quiet melodies.

How did you discover the band, was it through social media or perhaps you heard them on the radio?

Everyone knows Everybody

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If you spend a lot of time at shows and concerts around British Columbia, do you see a lot of the same people? It seems like everyone is connected in the music scene – and why is it the bassists who know everybody?

You can’t ever escape the scene, for such a large area, every element in the lower mainland is overlapped. The bands, venues, promoters, photographers, and even audience is overlapped across cities and genres. Perhaps it’s a sign of a shrinking industry, with jobs now rotating a small select group of people.

Connor Scott McManus / Pexels

If you have been in the British Columbia music scene for a while, you can probably attest to the fact that it has always been like this, one guy in each venue, band, etc. is the great uniter. Last week I wrote two features on The Zolas and Said The Whale, if you remember those bands this will make more sense, I recommend checking those out because these two groups are an example of this interconnectivity within the scene. Zachary Gray and Tom Dobrzanski are both founding members of The Zolas, an alternative rock band formed in 2009.

Tom Dobrzanski went out to produce much of Said The Whale’s early material. Said The Whale are an indie band formed around the same time however, they encompass a much different scene than The Zolas. Tom Dobrzanski brought both bands together by acting as a major force in both of their beginnings, and those bands went on to become massive within the local scene, even reaching a large international audience. As a result of this, if you know one of those bands, you probably know both by extension. You can’t be a Zolas fan without being a Said The Whale fan, they’re so different yet so similar.

Your favorite musical groups and artists all have that one thing connecting them to each other, whether it be their producer, a member in the group, or even a stage hand. The next time you go to a local show in British Columbia, see who you recognize from other gigs. It is amazing that we have such a strong local scene here with people who keep showing up to support British Columbia music.

Best New Canadian Releases – End of September

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October is closing in fast, and you have just had your last Friday of September 2026. How does it feel? But the good news – Fridays usually mean new music releases! Your new Canadian release radar for the end of September is filled with artists of all kinds: big, small, and unexpected.

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Sam Louis is a solo act out of Toronto and on Friday he dropped his newest single, cave in. Sam Louis is a hidden gem amongst the usual indie crowd that comes out of Ontario. He specializes in atmospheric guitar and a modern alternative production style. His new single cave in has a very unique vocal modulation to set the tone of the song.

You either love or hate modulators, I don’t care for that production style, but I can’t ignore how popular it is in the genre. What do you think about them? Some bands even dedicate themselves to keeping some kind of voice modulation on every track – it becomes their brand.

It is so easy to abuse them though, and it can make or break a track if it isn’t mixed properly. Sam Louis did an amazing job with this single, everything in this song blends seamlessly into each other to create a perfect sensual listening experience

An important album release that came out on Friday was Les Shirley’s Hail Mary. It is the Montreal based group’s third studio album, and if you are a fan of modern alternative/punk rock, you will adore this record.

Les Shirley are an all-female power trio, and Hail Mary is their best release yet. The group has been together since 2018 and already put out three full-length albums, their dedication to music is very clear, and that is what has built them a growing, dedicated fanbase. If you like artists such as Avril Lavigne, Jimmy Eat World, and The Offspring, give Hail Mary a long listen to.

Les Shirley’s music tackles issues like women’s rights, toxic relationships, queer identity, fear, anger, and lust, and turn them all into a wicked rock record. My favorite song on the album is the fifth track, Jungle Speed, it is a song very reminiscent of the early 2000’s pop-punk/alternative rock. It has great energy, clean riffs, and a catchy rhythm.

Give these two artists a listen and find something new to listen to this week!

Featuring I Mother Earth

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What scared you the most as a child? For me, it was the album covers put out by I Mother Earth, specifically Scenery & Fish from 1996. I have since faced my fears, but that album haunted me for years, it was something to do with the creepy doll on the front. I Mother Earth are a sensational Canadian rock band from the late nineties. And like many other Gen X parents, my dad had a massive CD collection featuring many Canadian bands, including I Mother Earth.

I did not give the record a listen to until I was much older, as in just last year kind of older. Did you have an I Mother Earth record?  I have to tell you, these guys do not sound like you expect with an album cover like that. If you’re familiar with the Butthole Surfers, a hardcore industrial rock band from the 90s, also Bevis and Butthead’s favourite band – yeah, that’s more along the lines of what I was expecting. Their sound is high energy and exciting, the front man of I Mother Earth, Edwin Ghazal, has such a unique voice and addictive energy it is impossible to overlook this band.

One More Astronaut is the hit single off Scenery & Fish, you had to have been out of the country between the years 1999 and 2010 to not have heard this track either on the radio or online. Their sound is impossible to describe, their Spotify page describes it as – and prepare yourself – a combination of Rush, Santana, and King Crimson, with inspiration taken from The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Jane’s Addiction, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Can you imagine what that might sound like? Because I can’t. If anything, this should make you even more curious as to what these guys could sound like. Give One More Astronaut a listen and see what you think.

After I listened to the track for the first time, their long list of influences made perfect sense. There is so much to break down in the music of I Mother Earth, it is no wonder they took the alternative rock scene by storm in the nineties.

After listening to Scenery & Fish, and understanding what I Mother Earth is all about, I think it’s safe to say their album cover fits the band completely.

Why Does Vancouver Love Sad Music?

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The first official day of fall was a few days ago, can you feel the season change yet? It was almost immediate this year, with a downpour of rain the second day of fall. If you live in Vancouver or around the Lower Mainland, you know just how much rain this part of the province gets. What I have noticed about this climate though, is that it cultivates the perfect atmosphere for moody, sad music, and our local indie and alternative rock bands pick up on that!

Melancholy just seems to stick to the culture around the West Coast of British Columbia, it’s something that is everywhere around you. In Vancouver, the stereotype is strong: lots of rain, grey skies, walled mountains, long drives, and anti-social people. Our music is what ties it all together to form that culture.

The bands around the lower mainland love their minor chords, reverb, slow tempos, atmospheric guitars and rough recordings. If you travel east to provinces like Ontario or Quebec, their music sounds much brighter and more polished, they could never create music quite like we do down here. I think bands like Mother Mother are a great example of this. Their music grew in popularity in 2020 when I was in middle school. Their albums O My Heart from 2008 and Touch Up from 2007 were staples in the dreary playlists around that time. Songs like Burning Pile and O Ana sound just like a fall day in British Columbia.

Now is the time of year where this kind of music is put back into regular playlist rotation, what kind of songs have you been listening to lately? Is it the same stuff you had on repeat at the beginning of June? I would like to bet your music taste has become a lot more melancholic than previous months. Vancouver has an incredibly unique atmosphere that you can’t feel anywhere else, and that is ever present in our music.

Malcolm Gillanders / Pexels

 

The next time you listen to your favourite British Columbia bands, listen to the tone of their music and see if you can feel the atmosphere in the sound.

The Indie Name Epidemic

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On Evolution, we play and feature a wide variety of the best British Columbia has to offer in the indie and alternative rock categories. Your favourite band is probably on our list, listen for yourself here! I always laugh at the names of some of these bands when they come up on our radio logs. Indie bands are notoriously bad for this. I want you to think up a list of all the indie bands you know, how many of their names are obscure nouns, oddly specific phrases, or even surnames?

Probably a quarter of them, maybe even more. What is it about being an indie band that requires you to have a name like this? Going down a broad list of Canadian indie bands, I see names like Peach Pit, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Land of Talk, July Talk. The hardest part about being an indie band must be picking your name, because every possible combination of words has already been taken by another indie group. You are really into animals, what about The Unicorns? Nope, taken. Try something more obscure, Wolf Parade. Taken. Okay, let’s take a different direction on your name, The Pursuit of Happiness. Isn’t that a Will Smith move? Doesn’t matter, someone already has it. Somebody even took the name The Lowest of the Low, so don’t try going the opposite route.

These are all fantastic groups, but the names are so bizarre, it has become an epidemic in the indie community. What is your favourite band? The New Pornographers? Personally, I’m more of a The Hidden Cameras fan. That must be a typical conversation between Canadian indie fans. If you are not a fan of the genre though, both names immediately raise questions. Maybe that is why the Canadian indie community is so tightly knit.

Vancouver Indie Band Starter Pack

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An oversized wool cardigan, loafers, and a Fender Stratocaster; what genre does this band play? Yeah, you guessed right – it’s indie rock. I love the Vancouver music scene, but you can’t argue that there isn’t an easy stereotype there. The singer of said indie band probably owns multiple pairs of basketball shorts, smokes Newport’s, and you can’t quite tell if they are 15 or 35.

Aleksandr Neplokhov / Pexels

 

Chances are one of the members either works at or co-owns a record store or recording studio, and they have probably performed on The Peak at least once in their career. As someone who has written numerous articles on alternative and indie rock bands across the province, from bands ranging from less than 100 monthly listeners on streaming platforms to hundreds of thousands, their Wikipedia pages all have the same three elements. What radio station did they perform on, what level of Warped Tour did they perform on, and a feature for their newest single that is releasing next month that only took 6 months to finish!

You either love them or hate them, but you can’t deny that indie rock is a fun genre. We love our local indie bands, check out some of the features I’ve written on local artists and find someone new to fall in love with. Give their Spotify and Bandcamp pages some love and count how many of them start their bio with… “Vancouver-based indie,” or if the Bandcamp page hasn’t been used. The ultimate Vancouver indie band starter pack contains a band photo taken somewhere in an alley, or in somebody’s living room, at least one song about Vancouver, and a drummer who has already been in 3 other indie bands.

I want you to think back to the last indie performance you saw, whether it was online or in person. I’d like to bet they fit one of these boxes written in this article. Indie has so many sub-genres that you can’t just generalize indie as its own entity. Indie pop, rock, and folk all have massive communities and fanbases from all different backgrounds and to categorize them all into one stereotype isn’t fair. But you have to admit, it is accurate.