BEEHIVE CANDY

Carleton Stone - Hard Day's Work. There’s a fantasy about show business that we’ve been fed since performers started offering up their hearts on stage for public consumption. The glamour, the jet-setting, and the parties all get played up over the reality of the whole thing: a career that seeps into your real life and can dismantle your relationships, the exhaustion of the road, and more than a few hangovers. On his third solo album, the self-produced Papercut—armed with a couple lifetimes of songwriting and touring in his rear view mirror—Carleton Stone gets honest about the toll of devotion to craft while illustrating his mastery of it. Through sax-blasted Americana, power-pop laced with ‘80s synth, and dreamy, sophisticated pop melodies, the Nova Scotia songwriter blurs genres to explore a tumultuous few years and some of the scariest questions someone can ask: what the hell have I done? What if I’d gone down some other path? “And what are some of the things that you lose when ...

Photo - Rachel Bennett Scarves - Delicate Creatures. Over the past few years, and through a few different iterations, Seattle-based math-rock emo-punks Scarves has established themselves as, “One of the city’s top notch rising acts,” according to KEXP. In that same paragraph, the words “jarring” and “abrasive” also appear so that starts to paint a picture of the dichotomy that has been at play for the band and its frontperson/founder Niko Stathakopoulos. On “Delicate Creatures,” Scarves ponders human fragility through an ordinary day that changed in an instant. Inspired by a friend who maintained her composure after busting her lip open on a basketball court, “Delicate Creatures” conjures up the character of “Jackie,” a person who comes to embody the attempt to be strong within an unrelenting world. “A regular moment can explode into blood so quickly.” Stathakopoulos says. “What does that mean for a human? What are we pushing against by existing?” As he paints the portrait of Jackie, ...

Basement Revolver - Dissolve. Basement Revolver has always centered around the friendship of bassist/keyboardist Nim Agalawatte and guitarist/vocalist Chrisy Hurn. Lead guitarist Jonathan Malström and drummer Levi Kertesz round out the band’s larger-than-life sound. The band’s catalogue spans back to their breakout single, 2016’s “Johnny.” That single, and their self-titled EP from the same year, led to their signing with Fear of Missing Out in the UK, and later, Canada’s Sonic Unyon Records. Heavy Eyes, their debut LP, built on their aesthetic which merges hardcore-inspired indie and ambient dream pop. In support of that they toured throughout the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany. With tour plans on hold through 2020, Basement Revolver found time to wrestle with questions about identity, faith, mental illness, and sexuality. Their sophomore LP, Embody, is explicit about these new ideas and new thoughts, addressing them with a deeper sound and crisper production to adroitly express the...