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Tune in to With Gay Abandon tomorrow from 1pm-2pm to hear an interview with Rae Spoon about their new book, First Spring Grass Fire, a collection of very short, linked stories about coming of age in a suburban Alberta Pentecostal family.

A recent study shows that university is a lot less affordable now than it was twenty years ago.

The report, done by the CCPA, looked at how accessible univeristy is for average Canadian familes by examining tuition fees and family income.

According to the results, education affordability has decreased since 1990 across the country in all provinces with the exception of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Reasons for the decline include growing household debt, complex eligibility for financial aid, and the inability of students to make enough money during the summer to pay for school as well as living expenses.

The report also states that if tuition and income continue to grow at the levels they are now, higher education will be even less attainable for students coming from families with low and medium incomes in the future.

I moved out of the plateau to get out of the bullshit frosh celebrations that McGill kids hold dear to them as the "best week of their lives". I'm also in a band, so we had to find a way to live and play loud music without disturbing anybody.  Put those two stipulations into priority, and you'll probably end up in St Henri like I have.

I live on St Remi and Acorn street in the Fattal lofts. It's only been two weeks since the move and it didn't take long to realize that I'm immersed in what I believe is a fracture in the veil of Montreal living. That is to say, I frequently forget that I'm in Montreal when I'm at home and I also forget what year it is. My brain keeps telling me it's the year 1984 and I'm in New York City with the rise of the crust punk.

On my first day, my boyfriend and I were greeted by a short, blonde haired and pouty lipped crust that asked us if we were moving in to the neighbourhood. When we responded "yes", he turned wide eyed with trepidation saying verbatim:

"Oh man, that's fucked up. I don't live here, but every time I come here my life gets ruined."

…and with that, he ran away.

Now, I'm not someone to give up on anything fast if I have a vision. I still believe that this loft I've moved into is one of the most mature, sensible decisions of my life for what I want to do. So I simply disregarded that encounter and started unpacking. The night came and we spent our first night in Fattal.

The next day, we slept in until noon. I cleaned the putrid state the bathroom was in and made some coffee. We started making a vision of how we wanted the loft to look like and what we would need to make it this way, it was all very coupley and exciting. So, left the apartment to face the outside world with dreams still fresh in our imaginations- to find them absorbed with a passed out, green-haired and all in black girl at our front door at 1:30 in the afternoon with the sun beating down on her. She wasn't moving. The only way we could cope with this was to give as much of a fuck as she was did about the situation and go on with our schedule.

Fast forward to the next morning, we woke up and I stepped out of the door to find a bottle of antifreeze, a pair of rubber boots and a cake swarming in bees, which I happen to allergic as fuck to (and I'm too poor to buy an epi-pen). The same day, our friends came to see our new place. As they were trying to find our place, some crusts asked them if they had any cardboard. This was because they had decided to spend all day constructing a pile of foam with a cardboard perimeter. None of us could figure out why exactly they were doing this, or why they were so excited. We found out at 8:00 that night when some guy climbed up to the roof. All the crusts, (some holding a dog in one hand and a baby in the other with a beer) were all cheering and bawling at the man on the roof. Finally, he jumped off resulting in a big poof of airborne foam and crust punks with their fists in the air basking in this flawless execution. The celebration lasted for about eight seconds before they all seemed to forget why they were shouting and walked away from the man in an abundance of foam chunks.

On the third day, I woke up early to see cop cars in the parking lot. I overheard a guy saying in conversation, 

"She must not have wanted to actually kill herself if she did it in the middle of the Fattal parking lot."

I went to work in disbelief. When I came back, I was unsure if my boyfriend (who had the only key to our place) had returned from home. So, I decided to enter through the side door that I had left unlocked in case of a situation like this. Approaching the porch to the side entrance, I found a baby doll that had been decapitated, covered in red paint and bound at the feet by a used (and filled) condom.

On the fourth day, my born-again Christian and newlywed friends came to visit me. As they entered, they seemed very nervous about my neighbours.

I said not to worry, that they do their thing and I do mine and we rarely interact. 

I told them they were crazy, but harmless. 

I told them they never get in my face. 

We hung out for about an hour and then decided to get a bite to eat. As we were leaving the hood, a voluptuous, bearded and sweaty crust dude double took my friend's wife and said;

"Gee willikers, you've got a hot friend there buddy!"

He then proceeded to lick his lips at my female friend and tell his crust bros about the POA he'd just seen. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more embarrassing, it did. We could see an obvious user approaching us with raccoon eyes and when I was about to believe thought everything would be normal, he flashed us.

These are events that have happened, un-embellished and presented here for your entertainment. My opinion so far for what it's worth is this; these people ARE fucking crazy, but I kind of love them. I'm happy to have stumbled into this world of disbelief. They don't care about anything but themselves, which is a good thing for me because that means they don't care what I do as long as it doesn't mess up whatever they're doing. I've stepped into a small piece of heaven in hell. I am living in Fattal.

The eight songs on Ty Segall & White Fence's debut collaborative album Hair have echoes of their other musical projects, but lean more towards late-sixties, early-seventies stoner rock with a major twist of psyche. On the opening track "Time," you might think you were hearing a lost song that never made it on the soundtrack of the 1969 film Easy Rider, until the heavy instrumental breakdown at the end of the song sets the tone for what's to come. There are many twists and turns that snake their way into a collection of songs that explore various musical identities, all of which have one foot in the past and the other planted firmly in the present.

Prior to the release of Hair, Ty Segall and Tim Presley stated they wanted to bring back the guitar solo, and they've made good on their word with psychedelic, crunchy-guitar sounds that intertwine throughout the whole album. The song "Black Glove/Rag" chugs along with acoustic and electric guitars, while Tim Presley's lyrics reflect the perfect narration for an altered state of mind. "Tongues" has swagger and boogie with a bass line that just begs you to get down. "Crybaby" delves into rockabilly territory, but never crosses too far into the genre to dislocate the song from the rest of the patchouli-scented garage artifacts on this album.

What works with Hair concerns its many left turns. The album never leaves you thinking that you're listening to one particular sound, whether it be "punk," "garage," "classic rock," or "psychedelic." While the album may confuse the listener into believing it is decades old, there is an underlying feeling that this is definitely an album of these times.

Ty Segall and White Fence have both released their best albums this year (Slaughterhouse and Family Perfume Vol.1 & Family Perfume Vol.2 respectively), so it should come as no surprise that when they decided to join forces and create a project that mixes Segall's penchant for raucous garage pink with Presley's DIY psychedelic leanings, the result would sound timeless and allow us all to let our hair down.

FINAL MARK: A