Shay Lia is a Djiboutian-Canadian soulful musician based in Montreal. She is best known for her collaborations with Kaytranada and being longlisted for the 2019 Polaris Music Prize.
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You have to give credit to the artistic communities of this city: Even in a pandemic, enough stellar music has come out to supply us with the best new Montreal albums of 2020.
Montreal is an artist city. From Leonard Cohen to Backxwash, artists from Quebec have long been making the 514 a world-renown stage in the industry. With it’s cheap (although rising) rent, its accessibility to great baguette (something Torontonians say they can do better, which is an outright lie), dep beer, and long brooding winters, it’s a perfect breeding ground for art. It’s not easy to see the silver-linings in a global pandemic, but the emphasis on supporting local is arguably one of few. In a year of unending surreality, nothing has been more comforting than these albums.
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