Elle Barbara’s Black Space, Word on the Street 

From making a cameo in Madonna’s recent Montreal show to staging a lavish wedding to herself, Elle Barbara is an aficionado of spectacle. She brings this maximalist approach to her latest record under Elle Barbara’s Black Space, a concept album that’s as likely to foreground weighty themes of religion, politics and apocalypse as it is to touch on everyday topics, like a delicious side of mac and cheese. Backed by Montreal musicians who are notable artists in their own right, including experimental composer Markus Floats and violinist Ari Swan, Barbara has created a multifarious epic that changes styles between, and even within, songs. The track “Justice Complice,” for example, starts as a lovely, almost jazzy ballad, builds to a hooky glam-rock chorus, then suddenly shifts to a banging electro-pop beat before retracing its steps. 

Barbara has asserted that she aimed for a classic on the level of Purple Rain or Ziggy Stardust. My own comparisons are only slightly less lofty. To me, the album evokes the eccentric pop act Sparks—with its frantic synth pulse and snappy digital snares, “BBQ All-Dressed” recalls the duo’s 1979 Giorgio Moroder-produced album No. 1 in Heaven—or André 3000, if he split the difference between The Love Below and the flute album. At any rate, Word on the Street is a fabulous, funny, heartfelt, gloriously extravagant production. 

Kara-Lis Coverdale, From Where You Came 

Kara-Lis Coverdale is another genre-mashing artist, operating in distant realms. The influence of her one-time day job as a church organist, where she sometimes snuck snippets of contemporary pop hooks into the sacred compositions, is felt on From Where You Came’s leading track “Eternity,” which seems to channel Christian choral music. It’s also the only song with lyrics. Elsewhere, Coverdale straddles the lines between classical composition, abstract soundscapes and electronic minimalism. At times, the album flirts with an ambient feel—listening on transit, I occasionally lost track of where the music ended and the industrial whirring of the bus began. “Offload Flip” features something like a dance beat, albeit one that sounds like it’s coming from underwater. By the time we get to closer “The Ceremonial Entrance of Colour,” Coverdale is in full orchestral mode, filling the song with swelling horns and strings. Having composed sound installations for saunas and music for psychedelic therapy, Coverdale is an expert creator of sonic environments, and here she immerses the listener in an infinity pool of elevated mood music. 

Ribbon Skirt, Bite Down 

Tashiina Buswa and Billy Riley changed the name of their band from Love Language to Ribbon Skirt in 2024, just as they were picking up steam. At the time, it seemed to me a counterintuitive move; hearing their new record, Bite Down, the switch makes sense. While Love Language made genteel indie rock with a strong melodic flair, Ribbon Skirt swings for the fences with bombastic classic-rock swagger. The big grunge power chords on “Mountains” and Buswa’s Dolores O’Riordan-esque lilt on “Cut” nod to the early nineties, but this is no retro revival. The playful hip hop cadences of “Off Rez” and the autotuned vocals on “41” ground the album in contemporary production. It all makes for a grandiose, flamboyant statement of purpose, held together by heavy riffs and Buswa’s passionate delivery. 

Sparkling Water, Routine Gives Me the Space to Dream 

Of all the musical trends I’ve seen flutter on and off the radar, one of the most mysterious has to be the hipster revival of New Age music, which I always felt was the single most uncool genre. But then again, what’s cooler than not caring about being cool—and, furthermore, who doesn’t need to chill the hell out these days? Sparkling Water is the latest project of Thunder Bay’s Adam Waito, who spent time in several Montreal bands of the early-mid-2000s (including Telefauna, Miracle Fortress and solo project Adam & The Amethysts) before decamping to Toronto. He’s mostly worked as an illustrator and animator since, so it’s nice to hear him get back to music with Routine Gives Me the Space to Dream, a new collection of mellow instrumental tunes. 

It’s not all woodwinds and rain sticks—although those are both present here—and it’s not all downtempo. “Wish 2 Dream” picks up the pace with a groove recalling turn-of-the-millenium indietronica, while “Equinox,” with its funky bassline and synth horns, might even get you busting out some eighties dance moves. Waito says the album was inspired by the “optimistic, sometimes naive vibe” of North American New Age music from the eighties and nineties, and this gentle, positive spirit suffuses the album’s eight tracks, creating an oasis of chill in the scorched-earth hellscape of contemporary life.