Music Recs from the Argus Staff
Sara (Thunder Bay Writer): Geese - Getting Killed
I was first introduced to Geese’s 2023 album 3D Country sometime last year. In Fall 2025, Getting Killed was released, and I haven’t stopped listening to it since. The eleven tracks are deeply emotional, wrestling with topics of love and contemporary life, complemented by lamenting vocals and vibrant instrumentals. “Trinidad” is a standout on the album for me. It’s super dynamic, shifting between calm builds and explosive vocals, drums, and screechy guitar. The brighter side of the album includes “Cobra”, “Taxes”, and “Husbands”. “Husbands” has this incredible interplay between the bass (the cornerstone of the song) and the vocals. It’s kind of stripped back in a way that still feels like an experimental rock song. I like it. Throughout the album, each of the songs carry it’s own weight on the track list; it has zero skips. The record is 45 minutes of beautiful songwriting that makes you want to look at the sky and be hopeful. It’s definitely a must listen, especially if you’re a performative male or a deeply feeling individual.
Fisher (Media Editor): The Cure - Desintegration (2010 Remaster)
Although this album originally came out in 1989, I can feel the modern music landscape shifting back towards a melodramatic state of entropy, where bands like The Cure have been fiddling with the boundaries of “music” for decades. This album is perfect for Thunder Bay’s dark winters – maybe put it on in the background, puff on a cigar, or pour a glass of blood-red wine to suit the occasion.
Eriel (Orillia Writer): Haley Heynderickx - Seed of a Seed
This 2024 album has a warm, dizzying effect, like the listener is trying to find their footing after getting lost in a redwood forest's dense underbrush. In her music, Haley Heynderickx often considers the relationship between nature and the self, metaphorically entwining the concept of self-growth with that of wild garden cultivation. The album begins with my favourite, lyrically absurd "Gemini", which references two versions of Heynderickx's self, the one singing, which is her "just out of context", and the 'in-context' version meant to draw her away from the numbing effects of technology and back towards nature. Later, in "Redwoods (Anxious God)", she again addresses the dissolution between our technologically-minded and naturally-minded selves, meditating on the question of whether a soul can "be saved by moving to the forest with no skillset" as "humankind is getting lost" and "not even little bugs want to talk to us". Bizarre, mindful, and environmentally-focused, Seed of a Seed left me with a much-welcome feeling of apricity.
Faisal (Orillia Writer): Slowthai - UGLY
The 2023 album UGLY (u gotta love yourself) is an introspective, gritty, and highly personal musical journey. The artist (Slowthai) is trying to communicate that accepting that you are who you are is a violent and, while rather on the nose, an ugly struggle. In his previous work, Slowthai was a voice for the disadvantaged and disaffected of Britain. In this album, he suggests that you cannot help the world if you are rotting from the inside. The track “Selfish” frames this. He explains that when in poverty, when you are mentally distraught, when you are “rotting from the inside”, you have to be selfish, selfish enough to fix yourself. These themes of how he survived his own life prevail throughout the first half of the album. The 2nd half of the album shifts; it gets less gritty and vulgar, and its conclusion explains how Slowthai does not feel anyone like him can be complete as a person. The song 25% Club is a sombre yet penultimate experience, where he explains that we all have this missing piece, a 25% that we spend our whole lives trying to fill, in his case with fame, drugs, or relationships. The “message” is the realisation that you will never be 100% whole, and maybe that’s okay. The last thing I’ll note about this album is its take on masculinity; it shows a version of masculinity that doesn’t find strength in being untouchable, but rather it finds it in being “ugly,” in being honest, and willing to rebuild from a broken state. As he says in the final line of the album: “I got some glue, so we can rebuild.”
Landon (Thunder Bay Writer): James K - Friend
James K’s 2025 album Friend is the concentrated liquor of her dreamy, rich sound. I like to say James K makes songs that you can feel in the back of your head and throat by the time the track is played out. This isn’t done frivolously in the way some ambient techno/shoegaze whatever-you-want-to-label-it type music can turn out to be. While heavily stylized she doesn’t send Cocteau Twins and keeps her vocals understandable if you’re listening with the right neural oscillations, preferably theta waves. I like to listen to James K when I’m getting sleepy since that’s when she tends to transport you to her own soundscape – like a stretching-onward-forever field filled with the most natural mist and greenery that look a little off under the full and a little-too-large moon above. Silly, whatever, but you can see the vision. Friend feels like a dream that’s trying to tell you something. James K was probably most known before this for collaborating with Yves Tumor on “Licking An Orchid.” That was a song that really launched many people, including myself, into the experimental scene as early as 2018. Needless to say, that song pulled me deeper and deeper into the desire to find innovative artistic styles, and fundamentally changed how I saw music. Friend isn’t a perfect album by any means, but it’s not trying to be. It only seeks to cohesively stitch together the roller coaster of emotion you can feel from track to track. Give it a listen if you want to hear something a little less like music and a little more like a soundtrack to those dreams that feel really important.