Top 20 Canadian Albums of 2011 Part 1 : 20-11

2011 was easily the most interesting year in Canadian music in recent memory. While 2010 was an extremely exciting year in the Canadian indie-scene, as an observer and a writer, by the end of the year I felt like the Canadian scene was becoming a little too uniform. While it was exciting to see the scene thrive and steal Grammy's from the Americans, I was craving variety from the indie-rock-pop template. Thankfully, 2011 seemed to be the year of variety, full of jazz-hip hop, deconstructed and disturbing R&B, hardcore rock-operas, creepy voodoo folk, and overwhelming amounts experimental and avant-garde music. My musical thoughts were also being published for part of the year, so I might be biased, but I feel like 2011 was a landmark year for creating diversity within a growing and thriving scene.

20. Junior Boys - It's All True

On their latest effort, the Junior Boys, a duo from Hamilton, effectively weave together 80's synth pop, R&B, and dance music. Songs like Banana Ripple restore a sense of fun and familiarity to the genre by taking dance music out of the club and restoring it's place at the house-party. Their slower, R&B and pop styled music provide an innocent counterpoint to The Weeknd's drug fueled R&B hell.  It's All True is an exciting and serotonin inducing experience.

19. Feist - Metals
A lot of people really hate Feist and a lot of people dislike this album even more than they hate Feist. It doesn't make that much sense to me, considering that Metals simply sounds like a further development of her previous work. A lot of the arguing seems to be centered around Metals as an extreme deviation from her previous work. Are these people high? Feist continues to make gorgeous pop music that is full of personality. Metals is definitely a stylistic progression from her previous work but it still fits comfortably into the Feist canon.
18. Library Voices - Summer of Lust
When I saw Library Voices, a Regina based band, at the Halifax Pop Explosion they mentioned a John Waters quote: "If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em." This quote seems to sum up Library Voices better than anything I can say. Summer of Lust is earnestly nerdy, quoting literature to bouncy indie-pop but also intellectually rebellious. Their music isn't necessarily all that unique or original, but it is played with such and energy and conviction that its hard to not be carried away.
17. Handsome Furs - Sound Kapital
Husband and wife duo, Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry, make odd electronica music inspired by their travels. The inspiration for Sound Kapital mostly comes from a trip to Burma, a country that is ran by one of the most oppressive existing regimes in the world with a mad dictator at its center. In Burma they played at secret shows and worked with bands that have to literally play underground. The result is an album that is filled with 80's sounds, lo-fi technology, paranoia, and has a revolutionary streak.

 
16. Hey Rosetta! - Seeds
Hey Rosetta! sound like a younger, more polished, less intellectual, and more immediate version of The Weakerthans. While this comparison comes with a lot of caveats, its hard not to hear a connection between the two bands. Seeds is an extremely well-made set of pop music that takes inspiration from every direction, most notably Jeff Buckley. The folky-pop music is full of interesting and profound reflections on life, love and aging. The entire production has a sheen that U2 would be proud of but is somewhat detrimental to Hey Rosetta! Seeds' production could definitely benefit from a little less polishing, but the damage is heavily outweighed by the beautifully orchestrated composition and thought-provoking lyrics.

15. Dirty Beaches - Badlands 
Alex Zhang Hungtai aka Dirty Beaches has not necessarily created an album on Badlands, instead he has created an entire universe on his lo-fi debut. One that is populated with dead crooners, noirish atmospherics, and a cast of characters that are as scary as they are fascinating. Musically, Dirty Beaches takes a lot of it's inspiration from 50's rock, songs like A Hundred Highways begin with Hungtai's cracked-out version of a 50's rock' n' roll crooner before collapsing into industrial noise and distorted guitar feedback.  Badlands sounds like a long lost David Lynch movie soundtrack. The album is as weird, disturbing, and intoxicating as the movies his cinematic counterpart makes.

14. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing
The Rural Alberta Advantage is easily one of the best bands making music in Canada (based out of Toronto, strangely enough). Departing, unfortunately doesn't live up to the lo-fi charms of Hometowns and is never quite as interesting or addicting as their debut. But despite these facts, Departing is an exceptional collection of emotionally driven rock. The album starts off with the violently melodramatic Two Lovers, as Nils Edenloff basically tells his lover that his love is going to crush the life out of her. The rest of the album is so full of grandiose statements and dramatic stories that Arcade Fire comparisons might not be unfounded.

13. BadBadNotGood - BBNG
BadBadNotGood is a jazz band from Toronto that covers rap songs. Or, at least thats what they say they do, BBNG creates something that is so novel and unique that to call it a cover seems like, not only, a disservice but also inaccurate. The music has a hip hop edge by the nature of their sources but also through the use of live sampling and even using a 40oz. bottle as percussion. But the album also has an improvised sound and a synchronicity between musicians that can only come from jazz. BBNG is not only a thrilling and enjoyable listen but it also shows a lot of promise for even better things to come in their future.



12. Destroyer - Kaputt

The descriptions that I read of Kaputt, unfortunately made me avoid this album for the better part of the year. Schmaltzy 80's smooth jazz is not something I'm ever in the mood for. But, the conversations and written pieces surrounding Kaputt were eventually too interesting to continue ignoring the album. Critics and listeners have attempted to explain what they liked about Destroyer's new album and mostly failed to properly articulate anything about it. It's true that Kaputt takes the cheesiest parts of 80's music and makes an album worth listening to, but the album is closer, spiritually and musically, to Leonard Cohen than Kenny G. I'm not necessarily guaranteeing that you will like this album but the discussions surrounding the aesthetics of this album are too interesting to not be involved.

11. The Weeknd - House of Balloons
I feel like I have written so much about The Weeknd lately that I don't know if I have much more to say. And honestly, it was listening to his latest mixtape/album Echoes of Silence that inspired me to start writing about music again. It was such a captivating, menacing, and disturbing deconstruction of mainstream R&B that I felt compelled to say something about it. House of Balloons is where the incredible journey of The Weeknd project started this year. The album starts with High For This, which at this point seems like more of a meta statement about the project itself than anything else. The song plays with the lines of consent, drugs, and sexual depravity, but listening to it now I feel like The Weeknd is offering advice to his listener and possibly even commenting on his own ways of dealing with the pain and emptiness that are featured on the majority of his music.