Hillsburn Could Be The East Coast’s Next “Big Thing”

The Halifax-based pop/folk group Hillsburn has been slowly and deliberately building up a powerful head of steam on the East Coast’s always fertile music scene. First spotted by many in the CBC’s Searchlight Talent contest last year, the band has recently released its first full-length CD, In the Battle Years.

Their music is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Using the Nu-Folk scene populated by the likes of Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers as a departure point, Hillsburn distills the stark acoustic sound of that trend and punches up the pop aspects, bringing short, sharp musical phrases, hooky chorus lines and curious constructions all together to make for a startlingly original sound.

The songs come from guitarist and singer Paul Aarntzen. His whole approach speaks to current youth culture concerns, full of yearning for the fleeting notions of escape into meaningful activity. Less obsessed with old tropes like rebellion, alienation and opting out, Aarntzen’s ideas speak to issues like hanging on and fitting in during an era where the only constant is change.

With the band just bursting out of the gate, I have no hesitation in saying that Hillsburn has the potential to become the East Coast’s ‘Next Big Thing’, rivaling the success of the Rankins and Sloan.

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The Top 20 Albums by Nova Scotians

Nova Scotia has always punched above our per capita weight when it comes to creative output, and nowhere has that been more pronounced than in our music. From folk to rock to pop to country to classical, some of the biggest stars in Canadian history have come from this small and sometimes overlooked region of the country, and if more than a few of them had to leave in order to make it big, well, that’s okay – consider them a fifth column sent out to remind our fellow Canadians (and the world at large) that we’re still here. In this list, former musicians and current filmmakers Ron Foley Macdonald and Paul Andrew Kimball take an in-depth look at what they consider to be the best albums ever made by Nova Scotians.

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