Interview

Here's What Makes Bad Album Art Awful, According to the Guy Who Wrote the Book
PUBLISHED Jan 17, 2024
Every year, it gets harder to assemble our annual list of the worst album covers. Countless artists self-release albums from their bedrooms...
Meet Exclaim!'s Class of 2024: La Sécurité, Sunnsetter, OLGA, the Royal Family
PUBLISHED Jan 16, 2024
Temperatures dropped in Toronto over the weekend, and Rachel Bobbitt's closing words from "Two Bit" rung out as a prelude to the frigid jou...
Protest the Hero's 'A Calculated Use of Sound' at 20: How They Got Over Embarrassment and Learned to Love Their Debut EP
PUBLISHED Jan 11, 2024
For a musician, revisiting one's early releases can be a double-edged sword. It can reveal intricacies in the work that may have been lost...
Meet Exclaim!'s Class of 2024: Bestfriend, Thermal, nodisco., Camille Léon
PUBLISHED Jan 2, 2024
Happy New Year! It feels a bit aggressive to be tossing out the word "happy," given the everything, but maybe the manifestation girlies are...
Jeffrey Wright on the Truths of 'American Fiction': "I Was Living a Pretty Near Approximation to That Myself"
PUBLISHED Dec 20, 2023
"There can be something cathartic in the process of working on a project such as this," actor Jeffrey Wright tells Exclaim! during a press...
Hand Drawn Dracula's Founder on "How to Run a Label Without Losing My Shirt"
PUBLISHED Dec 13, 2023
Before there was the label, there was the aesthetic. James Mejia, Toronto indie label Hand Drawn Dracula's founder, was a graphic deisnger,...
Danny Brown Breaks the Cycle: "It Was a Matter of Life and Death"
PUBLISHED Nov 28, 2023
By his own admission, Danny Brown is not a birthday person, and prefers to treat his special day like any other. "I act like I don't exist,...
'Scott Pilgrim' Returns to a "Cool Cartoon Version of Toronto" That Maybe Never Existed
PUBLISHED Nov 23, 2023
Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of the wildly popular and acclaimed Scott Pilgrim comic book series, arrived in Toronto the day before his pres...