Praise for "Amends":
"A true example of the art and magic of music."
- Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea (Monolith Cocktail), UK
"The Toronto-based singer-songwriter’s newest single is beyond characterization. Like the great experimentalists in Agnes Obel and Joanna Newsom, Stone merges the neoclassical with the post-modern, which come together to create a song that is surreal in its composition...Look out for Toronto’s next great artist."
- The Revue, Canada
"The slowly bewitching sound of Toronto based drone folk proponent Gillian Stone, this one meanders and then explodes."
- electric sound of joy, UK
Praise for "Shelf":
“‘Shelf’ [is]...ambient folk about 'the space between dissociation & belonging', simultaneously breaking new aural ground & yet reminiscent of Sally Oldfield & Kate Bush.”
- !earshot Digital Distribution System, Canada
“‘Shelf’ is a song that you have to look at with your eyes, literally. The rawness of the song is the key element to understanding its background, which reveals a sound in suspense that suddenly takes you out of reality. It’s one of those songs that traps you in the middle of a story, and doesn’t let go until you feel all of its authentic pleasure.”
- Indie Criollo, Ecuador (translated from Spanish)
“Gillian Stone's darkly drawn ‘Shelf’ feels like gazing at an Ellen Gallagher painting (painter, multi-media artist). First you are struck with the aura of beauty but the longer you gaze (or listen) you start finding dark abstractions that might stir feelings of sadness or things that might even disturb you...She beautifully pushes against the edge of what would be dissonant tones and the cyclical musical sounds feel like a weight that keeps rolling on top of you repeatedly.”
- Robb Donker Curtius (American Pancake), USA
Praise for "Bridges":
“It is a soaring, powerful and angsty vocal that is like a mix of Black Mountain, PJ Harvey and Weyes Blood.”
- Ming Wu (PhotogMusic), Canada
“‘Bridges’ is a dark and beautiful song; a song of many textures all of them warm in a very cold and brittle kind of way; a song that deals with life memories and all of their unbecoming and becoming raptures, it is the kind of song that one should only share with their closest and to be trusted friend. But that is the beauty of music as all listeners are the artist’s friends and this song deserves many friends as it is a lovely fragile tattered love letter to hope and remembrance of the dark and light in one’s life past and present. ”
- Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea (Monolith Cocktail), UK
“Stone’s latest single is the atmospheric and dramatic, Michael Peter Olsen-co-produced “Bridges.” Centered around strummed guitar, dramatic drumming and Stone’s achingly vulnerable vocals, the PJ Harvey and Shana Falana-like “Bridges” finds the Vancouver Island-born, Toronto-based artist telling a story of dissolution, shame and self-flagellation with a bold and unvarnished honesty.”
- William Ruben Helms (The Joy of Violent Movement), USA
Photo by Joel Gale