Tess Parks and Teenanger are two of our favourite acts, not just out of Toronto, but anywhere. We smashed them together because we wanted to play God. They interviewed and took photos of each other and this is what we got. “There’s peanut butter in my chocolate! There’s chocolate in my peanut butter!” Together they taste like this.

Jinx, the new album by Slumberland’s Weekend is awash with gloomy, tempered, British shoe gaze and post-punk sounds.  The first time ION’s interviewer Bryce Dunn heard the track “Mirror” and the refrain “I feel sick, sick, sick in my heart…” from San Francisco-bred, Brooklyn-based group Weekend, he had a feeling these guys weren’t exactly singing about sunshine and lollipops. 

It may be cliché, but art is a universal language. It speaks to everyone, transcending the boundaries of culture and tongue, and appeals directly to the heart and mind of the individual. It unites people. Perhaps this is why Montreal stands out as a city of artists. In the largest bilingual city in North America, the pervasive presence of art, from street to gallery, seems particularly relevant, as it promotes expression, understanding and unity in a place where things sometimes get lost in translation.