You think you know someone, then along comes their sophomore year.

Connu pour sa générosité légendaire, il était le frère des pauvres. Pour lui, il n’existait pas de différences de couleurs, de races… Il était surtout connu comme celui qui avait la détermination et la rage de débarrasser nos institutions gouvernementales d’habitudes malsaines, ce qui a fait de lui un adversaire redoutable pour ceux qui oppriment les pauvres et qui s’enrichissent aux dépens des Québécois.

These infectious anthems evoke archetypical images of triumph and victory: Maverick running flybys with Goose; Frank the Tank ‘doing one more’; Gandalf mowing down an entire army of Orcs in an M1 Abrams tank.

Golden Archipelago opens with the arcane chants of what sounds like a Hawaiian island tribe before flowing into acoustic strums and the falsetto’d cooes of frontman Johnathan Meiburg. And flow is definitely the right word.

Now, I’m not certain if this is Mercer’s attempt at some sort of atonement, but if so, it’s something of a puzzling paradox; typically when you’re trying to make amends to a jilted ex you don’t do so with your new beau hanging off your arm – especially if the rebound is the prettiest girl at the prom.

Offre-moi ton corps nous propose une immersion dans l’atelier et dans l’esprit d’une dizaine de photographes contemporains travaillant sur le corps humain, féminin en particulier.

Salvador Dali et Juliette Greco dansent le moonwalk sous le regard bienveillant de Michael Jackson, justifiant de ce fait à Giacometti que l’homme ne marche pas.

Listening to Eluvium has always sort of been like having a warm, chubby Buddha snuggle you for about an hour – all without saying a goddamn word. Now, with the release of Similes, it’s like having him snuggle you for about an hour whilst whispering sweet nothings and pearls of wisdom into your ear. Unfortunately, the babbling eventually gets a little tiring.

The patients all wave familiarly to Daniels and whisper sweet, cryptic somethings to him, leaving the audience to think, « Gee whiz! It’s almost like he’s been here before! » The saddest part is that I felt exactly the same way: we’ve all been to Shutter Island before.