Mattiel

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Watching her onstage, that brown bob of hers whirling like a cyclone as she unleashes her brash and husky riot of a voice, it’s hard to imagine Mattiel Brown was ever anything but a natural-born performer, a tried-and-true self-empowered presence. “Honestly though I never even believed I could do this,” Mattiel, one of rock’s most thrilling young talents, says. Still, dig deep and she’ll admit to those times when she’d let herself dream: of one day stepping onstage, gripping that microphone and showcasing her skills. Then, she imagined, could at last let it all go, unleash that deep-seeded passion of hers for melody and rhythm and intricate storytelling and channel her pent-up ferocity into something real and palpable and powerful.

Calvin Love

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There is a palpable mood at the heart of Canadian perennial Calvin Love’s work. Only once in every blue moon comes and artist that seems so familiar yet out of space. Love arrives an enigma, a crooning, haunted voice. A person who peers into himself to reveal something about the world that might otherwise go unarmed, or perhaps merely felt and never properly articulated. I see Calvin at an intersection in every city on earth, unmasking the hidden wonder, and the past as construed by movies and the archetypes that populate our minds.