Haley Blais is a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter who has turned out defiant scream-into-your-pillow pop songs since 2014. Wisecrack (Released September 15, 2023), her sophomore album, was conceived as a conceptual record about the formation of new families amidst the dissolution of her parent’s relationship; Wisecrack is textured and wryly poetic, oscillating somewhere between cherished childhood memories and the creation of a new self. The existential, everyday worries we all contain but rarely share are laid bare across eleven songs exquisitely performed with profundity, grace, and humour. Tongue-in-cheek lines like “I want my therapist to think I’m cool” give the melancholic mood a biting edge. “Can I be responsible for things that I did years ago? / I guess it could be good for just a laugh”, Blais sings — that’s Wisecrack in a nutshell. Funny and raw at the same time.

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How do you come back to yourself? Perhaps it’s important to first understand you have become lost, and admit you’ve veered off path. How then do you begin to piece yourself back together? 

This is the journey Gabrielle Shonk, the JUNO nominated singer and songwriter, takes us on with her sophomore album, Across The Room, released in winter 2023.  

It has been five years since her self-titled debut. For this delicate, brimming sophomore offering, Shonk—now on Arts & Crafts—brings herself fully into view. Across The Room is an eleven-track chronicle of the enormity of heartache and hope that comes with endings and new beginnings.