Latest news with #Puddle
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Saya Gray: Saya review – oddball heartbreak anthems bounce around pop history
If not a genuine oddball, Saya Gray is at least a very entertaining self-stylist. A self-proclaimed 'vagabond', she has talked about having ESP and perfect pitch from birth. The Toronto producer and vocalist's debut album proper can't possibly live up to all this bluster but it is a thoroughly enjoyable ride: a set of elastic, translucent songs that draw equally from quirked-up TikTok music – think Kate Nash-style vocals, dreamy Frank Ocean production – as they do yacht rock, country and AOR. Most contemporary genre-mash music is unsatisfying because it feels like the result of an inability to commit; Gray's clear, direct, idiosyncratically referenced songs don't have that problem. Puddle (of Me) sounds a little like Björk covering America; Thus Is Why (I Don't Spring 4 Love) is a three-and-a-half minute survey of every popular sound circa 2009. There's a universality to Gray's lyrics – which, on Saya, are generally about heartbreak – that feels particularly sturdy and comforting on a crisp, serene song like Thus Is Why. The more traditional songs here – Puddle and How Long Can You Keep Up a Lie in particular – place Gray in a lineage of sharp-tongued romantics, though their effect is blunted some by self-consciously 'experimental' passages, like the percussive breakdown on Line Back 22 or the trap beats at the beginning of HBW and Exhaust the Topic, which feel drawn straight from a playbook titled Weird, But Not Too Weird, Things to Do on a Pop Album. In these moments, she sounds like everyone else. But elsewhere on Saya, Gray has the makings of a true original.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Yahoo
Crown withdraws environmental charges in N.S. highway-twinning case
Prosecutors in provincial court in Halifax have withdrawn environmental charges relating to a highway-twinning project on the South Shore. Eight charges were laid against Dexter Construction and a sub-contractor, Design Point. The charges stem from work the companies were doing on a section of Highway 103 near a brook in Queensland. Sediment from the construction got into the brook and eventually into a lake known locally as "the Puddle." "The issue at trial would have been whether the parties took reasonable or lawful steps to prevent the releases from occurring," Crown prosecutor Brian Cox said outside court Friday morning. "There was no actual harm to plant or animal species disclosed by the evidence in this case. It was the potential for that harm." Charges were to go to trial next month The eight incidents of sediment release stretched from late 2021 to late 2022. The charges were to go to trial next month. Cox said many considerations went into deciding not to proceed to trial, including the circumstances of the alleged offences, what steps may have been taken to comply with the environment act, what omissions may have been made, the actual impact on the environment and the impact on interested parties in the community. Cox said they also weighed the benefits of having the highway twinned and of saving the time and expense of a full trial. The Crown also stayed charges against the Department of Public Works. Cox said the stay will enable the Crown to revisit those charges in future to see whether promised remediation has taken place. MORE TOP STORIES
