Adaline – Aquatic Acoustic

As its titled implies, the new EP features a selection of stripped-down versions of songs from Adaline’s most recent record. Previously released single “Entertainer” made the cut for the acoustic album, as did “How Could We Know,” “Criminal” and “Stronger.”(Exclaim!)

Christian Carrière – Field of Containment

But that’s not what you’re hearing. It’s actually all a “no-input mixer” – a rig that makes use of controlled feedback rather than any other source of sound. It is, as Montreal-based composer Christian describes it, the sound of the circuits inside the mixer singing. And while you may associate feedback with angry distortion, here it’s beautifully tranquil, the rich tones of the circuitry themselves transformed into oscillators. The patterns and layers are all made with a looper.(CDM)

Maude Audet – Comme une odeur de déclin

“D’abord, ne pas se fier au titre, austère, du troisième album de Maude Audet : c’est dans les chansons plus allègres, dans ses airs pop aux formes arrondies par les guitares chaudes, mieux encore que dans les ballades folk planantes, que l’auteure-compositrice-interprète se révèle pleinement. Comme une odeur de déclin a le titre d’un disque d’automne qui s’écoute aussi bien par une journée de canicule, tiens. « Ah oui, hein ? Y’a les deux. J’admire les artistes qui entrent dans leur son, dans leur monde. Moi, j’ai besoin de la lumière aussi », dit-elle avec cette voix apaisante qui nous happe dès la première écoute du disque.(Le Devoir) First, do not rely on the austere title of Maude Audet’s third album: it’s in the more lively songs, in her pop tunes with rounded shapes by hot guitars, even better than in folk ballads, that the singer / songwriter is fully revealed. As a smell of decline has the title of an autumn record that can be listened to as well by a day of heat wave, would like. “Oh yes, right? There’s both. I admire the artists who enter their sound, into their world. I need the light too, ” she said with that soothing voice that caught us from the first listen to the record.(Google Translation)

Mo Kenney – The Details

The devil is in “The Details” with Mo Kenney’s new album. Kenney’s third album is laden with dark and personal subject matter that’s veiled under crunchy, fast-paced, pop-punk overtones. Mo has stated that she feels that this album is the most “Her” out of any of her previous works. She uses black humour on some tracks to bear her real feelings of her struggles with depression and alcoholism, while in other songs she lays her feelings out like a new pair of jeans on the first day of school.(Halifax Bloggers)

Nick Ferrio – Soothsayer

Here are two words I never thought I’d apply to a Nick Ferrio record: cool and bangin’. A far cry from his trad-country debut Introducing Nick Ferrio & His Feelings or the emotional folk-pop of Amongst the Coyotes & Birdsongs, Ferrio has whittled his band to a core of Sean Conway on bass and Brandon Munro on drums, and formed a tight little power-pop and indie rock trio.(Electric City Magazine)

Propagandhi – Victory Lap

If you were going to grow a pop-punk voice in a lab, you couldn’t do much better than Chris Hannah, the man who has led Canadian institution Propagandhi since he and drummer/co-founder Jord Samolesky were teenagers in Winnipeg more than 30 years ago. Hannah’s voice is a near-perfect fusion between the adenoidal needle-whine style that NOFX’s Fat Mike perfected and the burly growl that I tend to associate with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba. He can carry a melody and hit a big hook, and there’s enough ragged passion in his throat that his choruses can lift toward anthemic status whenever he wants. But he’s also a quick-witted, malleable vocalist, and he can cram storms of syllables into his lines without ever sounding like he’s forcing it — which is good, since that’s what he likes to do. Hannah was a big deal during the ’90s pop-punk boom, at least in part because he found ways to sound both more obnoxious and more committed than anyone around him. And his voice has weathered beautifully with age; on Victory Lap, Propagandhi’s seventh album, he sounds sharp and muscular. He’s got a hell of an instrument. And here’s a line that he uses that instrument to deliver on Victory Lap’s very first song: “When the free-market fundamentalist steps on a roadside bomb outside Kandahar bleeding to death / I swear to Ayn Rand I’ll ask if he needs an invisible hand.”(Stereogum)

Shania Twain – Now

When Shania Twain took a break from the music industry more than a dozen years ago, she exited as a country-pop queen. Her songs were ubiquitous on both sides of the Atlantic, with Come On Over – her third album of blockbuster ballads and radio anthems, produced with equal parts gloss and grit by hard-rock heavyweight Mutt Lange – standing tall as the world’s best-selling record by a female artist. She was unmatched. Unbreakable, even. (Rolling Stone)

This weeks tenuis excuse for inclusion is

Ibeyi – Ash

Titled Ash, the sophomore effort from Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz arrives September 29 through XL Recordings. Twelve tracks in length, the LP features an array of guests, including Kamasi Washington, Chilly Gonzales, Meshell Ndegeocello and Mala Rodriguez.(Exclaim!)