Music of the Week

With a brave new future on the horizon, the people will raise up and call out for a new musical revolution. And we're standing at the forefront, to Shape The Future With Music. We are your leaders of this new future known as JET SET RADIO! And we will lead the way with the JSRevolution!

First and foremost, we here at JSRevolution would like to give a big congrats to the winner of the 2008 Presidental Election, Barack Obama. Let's hope, just like the rest of you, he will Shape The Future.

Now, on to business. This week, we have a band that's been around for quite a while, with a sound that just sends chills down your spine! From Thousand Oaks, CA, let's hear it for Halifax!


Halifax was just another in a myriad of unsigned but resolute indie outfits rolling the highways and byways of North America. Sharing van space, shitty hotel rooms, bodily aromas, Old Milwaukee and a collective dream in between crappy jobs in chain restaurants and landscaping, the group recorded and supported its initial EP, A Writer’s Reference. Within a year’s time, Halifax found itself among the lower echelon of the 2004 Warped Tour, but its reputation continued to grow. By early 2005, after establishing friendships with Drive-Thru founders Richard Reines and Stefanie Reines – and bowling them over during a New Jersey gig with The Early November – the label tweaked and reissued Reference. Appending an acoustic version of the band’s beloved “Sydney,” a track Hunau scribed in tribute to his late grandfather, Halifax continued touring and building its fanbase while concocting what would become The Inevitability of a Strange World.

When Mike, Chris, Adam, and Tommy landed in Austin, Texas for the renowned South By Southwest Music Festival last year, little did they know how a routine night in the world of rock & roll coupled with a few television cameras might sensationalize their image. “A lot of people who only know us from the TV will come to our shows and think we’re drunk off our asses or something,” Hunau chuckles. “But we didn’t do anything on the show that we don’t do normally. Bands go out drinking and get drunk and have fun and hang out with friends and chicks. It’s not like we’ll play with other bands and they’ll say, ‘Oh my god! Halifax is out of control.’ Yet anyone with an objective ear might garner such a notion in a positive sense by turning to The Inevitability of a Strange World. Take the contagious, exhilarating motion of “Better Than Sex,” for instance. Here, Brandt and Charles’ machine gun riffing escalates amid Hunau’s memorable, melodic intonations. Catapulted by the rhythmic drive of Peyton and Guindon, it’s evident that Halifax deserves the attention they’ve yielded so far.

If their intentions seem simple, they also seem pure. “No matter how shitty we’re feeling, there’s redemption when we go out and rock a crowd,” the singer acknowledges. “We definitely don’t just get up there and play our songs. We have a blast every night on stage.” Like we said, Halifax can party. Listen and live in the Strange World.

For more on Halifax, visit their official website and their MySpace.

Well, that's it for this week! Until next time, this is the JSRevolution, and we're Shaping The Future With Music!