Shoeb Ahmad’s "quiver" is a moving, intricate rock record, made singular by its tender, sometimes gut-wrenching, vulnerability.

"Part of me wonders whether some of this nostalgia for male pop-punk bands of yesteryear stems from a longing for a time when questionable lyrics, bad behaviour and the complete centrism of men’s pain went unchallenged..."

Who said that being older is a prerequisite for being wiser? At nineteen, songwriter Lindsey Jordan, who performs under the name Snail Mail, is in the thick of a typical calamitous youth – yet she possesses a clear-sightedness usually reserved for hindsight. Jordan’s insightful lyricism invites listeners into her world – one that is still forming and changing just as she is.

In 2015, at the end of his headlining set at Glastonbury, Kanye West looked out into the crowd and declared, "You are watching the greatest living rock star on the planet." In 2017, on Playboi Carti’s single "Woke Up Like This", Lil Uzi Vert croons repeatedly, “I’m a rock star.” Rappers crowning themselves rock stars is hardly anything new, but in 2017, hip hop culture has latched on to the idea more literally than ever before – no one more so than 23-year-old Atlanta rapper and iconoclast, Lil Uzi Vert.

Looking around at the crowd shortly before Ho99o9’s (pronounced “Horror”) headlining show at the Velvet Underground in Toronto, the audience is mildly perplexing. A group of backpacked, barely legal teens grasp for a spot in front of the stage next to an older punk sporting a fluorescent mohawk. A few bespeckled white dads hang near the back while a cohort of fellow black femme punks square themselves in the middle of the pit.

“I put a lot into this album,” wrote Jen Cloher on Facebook. Never someone to do anything by half measures, Cloher has always had a strong ethic around honesty and hard work. But with her latest self-titled release, its immediately apparent that she’s taken her art to the next level.