Luna FM
Some Party is a newsletter sharing the latest in independent Canadian rock'n'roll, curated more-or-less weekly by Adam White. Each edition explores punk, garage, psych, and otherwise uncategorizable indie rock, drawing lines from proto to post and taking some weird diversions along the way.
The Burning HellGhost Palace
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
The Burning Hell are two or three albums into a dance with the apocalypse. Their early attempts maintained a nervous edge while wrestling with the unspeakable, treating societal collapse with gallows humour and powerless anxiety. The specific means to our collective doom was never the focus, though, and Mathias Kom lent his dense wordplay to chronicling ground-level stories of the survivors. Sometimes, that manifested as playful anti-folk songs cataloging the messy cultural detritus left in our wake. As that vision matured, as on 2023's Garbage Island, the focus shifted from humanity and addressed the surviving birds (it's not their first rodeo, either).
On Ghost Palace, the disaster, whatever it is (and we're free to take our pick), feels further out of focus, never forgotten but almost mundane in its inevitability. The Burning Hell's outlook remains less dystopian than it is curiously bemused. This is best expressed in the funky psych-rock highlight "Luna FM," told from the perspective of the moon's premiere and loneliest DJ. It's a one-way dialogue between the bored radio operator and a listenership that's maybe entirely vanished. The song's one of several stylistic swings on the 11-song record, which hops nimbly between tropical beach jams, quirky synth-rock, and even twangy, fiddle-driven country. Kom's lyricism remains an unparalleled firehose of cultural references and wry outsider observations.
Ghost Palace arrived in early March through You've Changed Records and BB*Island. The Burning Hell's core remains the PEI-based pair of singer/songwriter Mathias Kom and the multi-talented Ariel Sharratt. Their band again features St. John's-based producer/instrumentalist Jake Nicoll and fiddler/vocalist Maria Peddle. Guest composer Carlie Howell (The Electric Storm Collective, Beverly Glenn-Copeland) appears on the record alongside Constantines guitarist Steven Lambke, José Contreras of By Divine Right, and Amy Nicoll.
As a critic (or whatever I am), I realize that the external state of world affairs shouldn't colour my objective view of a piece of art. Still, existential threats abound, and it's hard not to perceive the band's exploration of post-apocalyptic idiosyncracies as an expression of hope. We're still here, after all. I think The Burning Hell ultimately finds our dishevelled humanity endearing, with Kom never succumbing to angst or bitterness in the face of upheaval and near-certain ruin. Given the vibe in the country, it's something we could all aspire to.
Jake NicollOn Hold
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
While we're in the orbit of The Burning Hell, we should take note that Jake Nicoll recently issued a solo EP to mark a significant milestone. Released in early February, the five-song On Hold captures the nervous anticipation of impending parenthood. Nicoll wrote and recorded the set while he and partner Pamela Mackenzie waited for the birth of their first child last year.
The EP's opener, "Waiting Room," directly references the Fugazi anthem of the same name, pairing vintage synths and gated drums with samples from the hospital's phone tree. "Galloping Horses" builds a synth-pop earworm around the pulse of a fetal heart monitor, giving the young Mackenzie Nicoll their first album credit. The high BPM of the Doppler drives the track towards a "synthy love-child of Kraftwerk and Men Without Hats."
The 25-minute collection follows Nicoll's 2024 release Lonely Mission, an accomplished full-length that focused the producer on "the larger questions of life and the future of this warming planet." That music emerged from pandemic-era isolation on Nicoll's family farm in Ontario, where Jake built a cabin studio with a workshop full of vintage recording equipment. In 2023, Jake and Pamela issued the split indie-folk album End Daze under the name Pami and Jake.
Michael Cloud DuguayWobbly Yonder
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Peterborough luminary Michael Cloud Duguay recently announced Wobbly Yonder, a new solo LP arriving April 25 through Watch That Ends The Night. The album finds the introspective singer-songwriter amassing a staggering roster of 19 collaborators from across the Canadian indie spectrum. That list includes the aforementioned Mathias Kom, Ariel Sharratt, and Jake Nicoll of The Burning Hell (if the through-line in this edition of Some Party wasn't already obvious, I've been sitting on a serendipitous tangle of connective tissue). You can preview the album through the lushly orchestrated dream-pop of "Immutable White Light." On the single, the artist revealed:
"'Immutable White Light' is about the seemingly fixed nature of our internal lives, and the inability to witness spiritual progress in oneself except for in hindsight. It is about how, in my darkest moments, my true inner self was never lost but was obfuscated by external concerns. It's about how grace and light can be found through connection with a higher power and one's authentic self."
"The Only Angel In Sight," co-written by Toronto's Sara Jarvie-Clark (Analogues of May), is also available to stream. The press release describes a slow-burning folk epic that "explores themes of social paranoia and inhibition" and "the psychedelic experience and fuzzy contracts of fledgling romance."
While increasingly prolific, Duguay doesn't issue new material lightly. It often feels that each step in the artist's career is hard-won and the subject of much consternation. Wobbly Yonder has similar roots, stemming from a traumatic 2009 experience when Duguay performed as part of The Burning Hell at Slovakia's Pohoda Festival. A catastrophic storm struck the event, claiming two lives and injuring dozens. "The experience cracked something open in me," recalls Duguay, who stepped away from music for an extended period following the incident. The artist's output in the years since often explicitly addresses mental illness.
The new album finds Duguay reconnecting with The Burning Hell principles, with Kom and Sharratt sharing performance and production credits. Furthermore, at their urging the Duguay recorded with Jake Nicoll in The Scamper, a solar-powered studio built in a 70s-era camper RV. This mobile setup allowed the artist to record exclusively in unconventional spaces, from beaches to an abandoned farmhouse to the lantern room of PEI's East Point Lighthouse.
The eight-song Wobbly Yonder features appearances from Eliza Niemi, Andrew MacKelvie (New Hermitage, Scions), Jamie Kronick (Scattered Clouds), Carlie Howell (Beverly Glenn-Copeland), José Contreras (By Divine Right), and Owen Davies, among others. Stylistically, the record leaps from ambient interludes to anthemic rock and hushed folk ballads.
This release follows a productive 2024 for Duguay, which saw him crystallize his "experimental heartland totalism" on the full-length Succeeder. That year also saw the acclaimed debut of the experimental ensemble Scions. They issued To Cry Out In The Wilderness through Idée Fixe.
Eliza NiemiProgress Bakery
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Eliza Niemi's new LP is something special. It so singularly captivates that I've spent the past week listening to either Progress Bakery on repeat or nothing. In 2025, we cling to whatever slight reprieve we can find. You all know why. It's survival. That Niemi can hook you while favouring quiet moments and sparse arrangements makes her new album a welcome salve. Whether she intended it that way doesn't much matter. It could be a happy accident, but it's a perfect counterpoint to the turmoil du jour.
Progress Bakery arrived last week through Vain Mina and the UK-based Tin Angel Records, delivering 15 songs that percolate with clever observations and a deft sense of minimalism that's always friendly, never austere. The record features a notable cast of Toronto indie musicians, including Mother Tongues' Jeremy Ray, Evan Cartwright (Tasseomancy, US Girls), Louie Short, Little Kid's Kenny Boothby, Ed Squires of the Badge Époque Ensemble, Steven McPhail from Mr. Joy, and Dorothea Paas among others. Short and Ray co-produced the album alongside Niemi.
Progress Bakery follows Niemi's 2022 solo debut, Staying Mellow Blows. You've undoubtedly heard her on various Canadian records over the past few years, often adding depth on the cello. Pre-pandemic, she co-led the Montreal indie rock act Mauno. Progress Bakery surpasses it all, and it's one of the early standouts of 2025.
Cassia Hardy"Empress"
Preview and purchase at Bandcamp
Wares principle Cassia Hardy recently shared a long-in-the-works ode to the defunct Edmonton venue, The Empress Ale House. The venue had a 13-year run from 2007 through 2020, employing many musicians from the city's local scene. "Empress" builds Hardy's specific recollections to reflect on the community's broader loss of shared cultural spaces. The artist describes the rollicking-yet-wistful noise-pop track as "a composite photo of a few places close to my heart as a patron and a worker." She elaborates:
"Head and shoulders above them was The Empress. I can still see the way it looked at last call, when the house lights went up. Animal skulls lined the blood red walls, the dark wooden tables at once sticky and slippery. We served beer by the imperial pint, free pretzels, and a petrified $30 hungry man dinner in the freezer to satisfy the license.
As unique as it was, like so many other places, the landlords got greedy and didn't know what they were messing with. Some folks who went might never know what happened, some might not care to, and more and more will never have seen it at all. Sometimes the sweet things in life don't burn out or fade away, they are taken."
Matt McKeen recorded the song, which Hardy dedicates to Empress owner Sue Kiernan. It's the first we've heard from Cassia since Wares' 2023 singles "Graceless/Cloudless," which followed their 2020 album Survival. The new tune arrives via Mint Records.
