Photo by Carrie Musgrave

Obviously no one wants to look past what’s left of the Summer, but you must admit that when there’s as much going on in September as there typically is, it’s not the worst thing for the trees to start turning colours. For example, there’s the annual Word On The Street book and magazine festival taking place on September 28 this year. And while there will be the usual many booths and stalls closing off Queen’s Park and celebrating (and selling) the printed word, this year there’ll also be a music stage sponsored by eye featuring some choice local talent.

Starting at 11AM, there’s be music and literary-type shenanigans from Chris Eaton of Rock Plaza Central, Forest City Lovers, $100, Dave Bidini, Castlemusic, Laura Barrett, Ibi Kaslik, Eric Chenaux, author Nathan Whitlock accompanied by Alex Lukashevsky and capped off by members of Ohbijou. All for frees, of course.

And it’s less in the interests of disclosure than simple pride that I point out that Laura Barrett, my former bandmate gone on to bigger and better things will release her debut full-length album, Victory Garden, on September 23. Congratulations! While the strength of her songwriting always allowed her to transcend the potential pigeonhole of her girl with a kalimba act, I’m pleased to hear that the record evidences some serious growth. A little slice of quirky-to-say-the-least orchestral folk-pop, Garden demonstrates that her lyrical approach has evolved such that they’re not just curious and eccentric, but also intriguingly oblique, and also incorporates much more expansive musical arrangements and also showcases her piano skills. But fear not, fans – there’s still plenty of kalimba.

She’s playing tomorrow night at the Theatre Centre as part of the finale of the Summerworks Music Festival alongside the Sunparlour Players, and both The Montreal Mirror and NOW have feature interviews with her. CBC Radio 3 has also made the recording of her show at NxNE this past June available to stream.

MP3: Laura Barrett – “Robot Ponies”
Video: Laura Barrett – “Robot Ponies”

JAM talks to Duffy.

Oklahoma’s Evangelicals are back for what must be their fiftieth local show this year, this time at Sneaky Dee’s on September 27. Tickets $7.

And the band they played with last time through – Shearwater – you can watch their show in New York City from the past May wherein they played the majestic Rook in its orchestrally augmented entirety at Baeble Music. Glorious.

I realize that this has been a fairly light week, content-wise, but there’s simply been a dearth of stuff happening the likes of which I can’t really recall. Next week, however, should be better. For starters, I just got accredited to cover and shoot Radiohead at the Amphitheatre tonight. Yes. I had planned to just spend the night watching TV, but this could very well be better.