Jessica Moss is a well-respected and talented musician currently based in Montreal, Quebec. Perhaps best known for her membership in Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Moss is a violinist who has also played prominent roles in Black Ox Orkestar, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, and collaborated with Vic Chesnutt in the last years of his life. Though accustomed to working with others, Moss recently made her first solo record; it’s a compelling one called Pools of Light, now available via Constellation Records, prompting her to tour across England and Ireland after upcoming shows in Montreal and Brooklyn respectively. Jessica and I caught up for a conversation, in which we discussed meeting Leonard Cohen during a Silver Mt. Zion recording session at the Hotel2Tango studio, being abroad when Trump was chosen to turn the United States of America into a failed casino, parenting in a weird world, working with Kevin Doria and receiving encouragement to write her own music, global warming, and much more. Sponsored by Pizza Trokadero, the Bookshelf, and Planet Bean Coffee.
Cold Specks is Al Spx, a talented and fearless singer, musician, and songwriter who calls Montreal home. Originally from a Toronto suburb called Etobicoke, Spx has garnered international attention for her powerful voice, dark-hued lyrics, and post-punk aesthetic, which is all the more unique given the rather folk-oriented feel of her 2012 debut album, I Predict a Graceful Expulsion. In late August, Arts & Crafts and Mute co-released its follow-up, a decidedly more forceful and sinister record called Neuroplasticity. Beginning November 5 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cold Specks is on tour across the world for the foreseeable future but we connected for a candid conversation at the Halifax Pop Explosion last month. The discussion covered topics like living in Montreal and visiting Halifax, Loel Campbell and Tim D’Eon of WIntersleep, living in England, the concept of neuroplasticity and how it might apply to Cold Specks, getting bored, trying to perform songs from I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, destruction of melody and subtle aggression, London and Glastonbury, hills and pagans, corporate witchtowns, no socks, sonic goblin, wearing capes and goth people, the trumpet of Ambrose Akinmusire and the voice of Swans’ Michael Gira, growing up in Etobicoke with her Somali parents, Rob and Doug and the Ford family, not quite apolitical, Al’s oud-playing, soul-singing dad ‘Dr. Love,’ the late, popular Somali singer Saado Ali Warsame, Swans, Bill Callahan, the Strokes, Tom Waits, and Nick Cave, the Strokes on Letterman and emerging after 9/11, the Backstreet Boys have come up on two straight episodes now, having a persona, creative pursuits, loving True Detective, Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, and Rachel McAdams, Band of Brothers, shooting a cannon at The Nutcracker, meeting Joni Mitchell who is awesome, the art of the interview, yelling at a Q guest host and other bad journalists, why I talk to people, being and not being a diva, touring a lot behind a record that came out kind of quietly, the Hotel2Tango and Howard Bilerman, why Montreal is good, not wanting to interact with anybody, the song “Absisto,” a nervous breakdown, and then the exit plan.
Related links: coldspecks.com halifaxpopexplosion.com vishkhanna.com
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