Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Few indie rock bands have made as big an impact as Arcade Fire. The Montreal collective burst on to the scene with stirring strings and bracing brass. Its concerts, ecstatic performances that resembled emotionally charged, church-based gospel, attracted a fervent following with celebrity fans like David Byrne and David Bowie. The group’s first two anthemic CDs, the best-selling Funeral and Neon Bible, topped year-end polls. Now Arcade Fire, led by Win Butler and his wife Régine Cassagne, has released its third CD, a provocative concept album about suburbia. Arcade Fire knows of where it speaks. Win grew up in the suburbs of Houston, before settling in Montreal and marrying Régine, the daught...

Nobody could accuse Lhasa de Sela of taking the easy route to stardom. The Montreal musician insists on singing songs entirely in Spanish at a time when other Quebecbased acts going for a wider audience—even francophone ones— have opted for English. Yet Lhasa’s exotic sound, steeped in melancholic Mexican ballads, has clearly struck a chord. The 25-year-old singer’s debut album, La Llorona, recently went gold in Canada with sales of 50,000 and earned her two Juno nominations, for best global album and best new solo artist Meanwhile, her performances have drawn rave reviews for their intense theatricality. Born in upstate New York to a Mexican father and an American mother, a teacher and phot...