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.

Top 10 Mixtapes of 2011

2011 felt like an amazing year for hip hop. The year kind of felt like watching one empire fall while a new one began to emerge from the rubble. Watching the old kings of hip hop flop around like fish on dry land, gasping for air while trying to find a new puddle to pollute was kind of pitiful. The bloated excess of Kanye West and Jay-Z's collaboration was particularly alienating, their diamond-crusted and gold-plated grasp for relevancy sounded like Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake." In the face of recessions, deep-seated poverty, and Occupy Wall Street protests they released an album that was filled with Donald Trump style arrogance.

Thankfully, a lot of other voices emerged this year who refuse to be limited by the old barriers that divided up the hip hop world. Not only that, but a lot of the amazing music that was released this was for free. This list is by no means definitive and if you have any suggestions for what I've missed feel free to leave your suggestions down below. Also, I have provided download links for almost all of the mixtapes, but there are a couple mixtapes that aren't being given away for free anymore, for those ones you will have to figure out your own way of getting ahold of them.

10. Kendrick Lamar - Section.80 
Section.80 is probably the only 2011 hip hop album you will listen to that is framed as a critique of Ronald Reagan's economic policies. Kendrick Lamar has the unique talent placing himself within the stream of events, often avoiding many of the typical problems that 'conscious rap' runs into.  He never sounds like he is lecturing or sermonizing, instead he simply makes observations about himself and his generation. A.D.H.D is probably the best example of this strategy, where Lamar places himself as both an observer and a participant of a party. In between lines about doing drugs and having a good time he intersperses his observations about the erosion of values within his generation. A flirtatious encounter with a women becomes an opportunity to critique the war on drugs, or the intake of drugs is used as a way to explain generational apathy. While Lamar always situates gangster culture as a product of economic and cultural forces he also raps about the influence it has had on himself and the youth around him. "I used to want to see the penitentiary, way after elementary, thought it was cool to look the judge in the face when he sentenced me," he raps on Poe Man Dreams. The narrative depth on Keisha's Song is as interesting as the plot of a novel and the twists and turns are heart-breaking and chill inducing. Section.80 isn't without its problems though, and Lamar can go from sounding like a young prodigy to embarrassingly immature in matter of a few sentences. Certain parts of Section.80 are cringe-inducing, whether it is the over earnest skits or his attempt to make a political statement out of a high-elevation sex fantasy. These stumbles are forgivable, partially because Section.80 is clearly designed to be a mixtape. One of the most fascinating aspects of this album is watching Lamar try out different styles and voices, and his growth and experimentation as an artist is already clear.

9. AraabMuzik - Electronic Dream

Electronic Dream is essentially a collection of remixes that seem relatively simple until you try and explain them. AraabMuzik has taken Top 40 style club songs and cut them up into what could best be described as electronic shoegaze hip hop.  Even though most of the songs feature vocal tracks, the majority of them feel like instrumentals. The world that AraabMuzik inhabits reminds me of what The Weeknd has done this year, though their music is extremely different in style and method they have both created sonic worlds that are insular, dangerous, and nocturnal. It probably isn't hard to tell that I am struggling to describe this album and I think it speaks to how familiar yet unique this album sounds. This is an album of paradoxes, warm yet chilly, paranoid yet comforting, accessible yet challenging. Araabmuzik strips down dance songs to their melancholy cores, revealing the dark heart of club music.

Download at this link:
http://hulkshare.com/f0rgsyvjaekf

8. Death Grips - Exmilitary
Exmilitary begins with a sample of Charles Manson ranting over an ominous base line. To hear Manson say "the game is mine, I deal the cards" is blood-chilling but that statement is also the easiest way to describe the rest of the following album. Its a chaotic, noisy, challenging, and uncomfortable listen that challenges every genre convention of a dozen musical genres. I've heard this album called punk hip hop or punk rap and while those labels have a certain amount of accuracy, for me it brings up unfortunate images of nu-metal or other rap-rock creations. Exmilitary doesn't really fit into any genre, instead the Death Grips seems to use and discard genres for a purpose that lies outside all genres. Their vision seems to be an extremely aggressive one that mixes mythic metal style imagery with sludge and industrial rock. Except this is a hip hop album that regularly samples classic rock and punk rock. "Cold blood night of serpent's breath exhaled like spells from the endlessness," the MC yells at the top of his lungs as he declares "I am the beast I worship." Listening to Exmilitary can be exhausting but the determined listener will find a lot that is rewarding here.

Download at this link: 
http://thirdworlds.net/exmilitary.php

7. The Weeknd - Echoes of Silence
Over the course of the year, The Weeknd has released an entire careers worth of material. Not only was it all free, but the quantity seemed to have little to no negligible affect on the quality. This plus, The Weeknd's disturbing material and his ambiguous and low profile made him one of the most talked about artists of the year. Echoes of Silence has its fair share of disturbing material, some of it, including songs about gang-rape and emotional abuse is easily the most disturbing ground he has carved out yet. But at the same time Echoes of Silence includes some of The Weeknd's most accessible moments. Songs, that if they are taken out of the context of the album, can be listened to without the moral balancing acts that The Weeknd often forces his listeners to do. Not only that, but some of these songs, including the superb Montreal, are beautifully created pop songs. Echoes can certainly be viewed as part of a series of mixtapes, but it also deserves to be evaluated on its own. Unlike The Weeknd's sophomore act, Thursday, Echoes is a piece of the puzzle that is even more interesting when viewed outside of its larger concept.

Download at this link: 
http://the-weeknd.com/

6. Keys N Krates - Blackout EP
Including the Blackout EP on this list definitely stretches my definition of a mixtape, so while this is an EP I think the fact that it is legally free hip hop music is justification enough for it to be on the list. Also, Keys N Krates is a really interesting band that deserves to be written about and they fit in but stand out from the revitalized instrumental hip hop scene. Keys N Krates is a Canadian live remix band from Toronto that consists of a drummer, keyboardist, and a DJ for live sampling. While the results aren't always as interesting as one would hope, certain songs stand out as some of the most exciting music of the year. Uncle Otis takes the Otis Redding sample that Kanye and Jay-Z used on Otis and uses it in a much more creative and interesting way. The sample grunts and yells over top of malicious-sounding synthesizers. The sounds of old and new juxtapose violently which makes Redding's vocals sound aggressive and intimidating. The best song on the EP is easily Luv To Luv You which initially sounds like a long lost Daft Punk hip hop cut before it bursts into triumphant pop styled chorus with epically pounding drums and cut up trumpet and pop-diva samples. The manipulation of these samples is a masterwork as the band uses the same sample cut slightly differently to convey different emotions and layer complexity. Like their peers in the instrumental hip hop...(I hesitate to call it a scene, maybe more of a movement or trend) Keys N Krates are hard to define and deftly maneuver through genres with songs that defy them.

Download at this link: 
http://www.toflo.com/category/all/music/download-keys-krates-blackout-ep/

5.  Cities Aviv - Digital Lows
Digital Lows bounced around my top ten list in the making, at one time sitting in last place and another time sitting in first place. Digital Lows is a frustrating and rewarding listen that constantly confounds expectations. Beats unexpectedly lurch in between smooth jazz and industrial beats built out of Depeche Mode samples. Sweet love songs are sandwiched in between misogynistic shock-rap songs. Cities Aviv is fairly representative of the change that was felt in hip hop this year. Artists seemed to reject the expectation of conscious, gangster, club rap or any other cultural or musical expectations. It seems to have come out of the necessity to not be pigeon-holed to one subject or to one type of material. Instead rap music this year has been messy, expansive, unpredictable and most of all exciting. Digital Lows is exactly that, an album that will keep the listener on their toes, never allowing the listener to completely relax or settle into a groove. Digital Lows is mostly about everyday living whether you are negotiating cultural expectations or just trying to stay alive for another day. While there are fantastical elements and hilarious brags such as "in this eight-bit world I'm Bowser," but Cites Aviv's raps mostly sound like he is walking through the city making observations. The journey that he leads us on through this "beautiful hell" is profound and fascinating.

Download at this link: 
http://citiesaviv.bandcamp.com/album/digital-lows

4. The Weeknd - House of Balloons
With the release of House of Balloons this year, The Weeknd created one of the most fascinating anti-heroes in an artistic culture that has recently been populated with many Walter Whites and Don Drapers. The Weeknd's character stands out partially because the world he inhabits is gorgeously created that seems to be an intentional subversion of the current themes that are being played out in popular music. But also partially because he is one of the most despicable and least sympathetic anti-heroes to stand apart from the sleazebags that inhabit HBO dramas. House of Balloons starts with one of the catchiest/creepiest songs I have ever heard, High For This. The song mostly consists of The Weeknd advising a girl that she will be able to better deal with the horrible things he is about to do to her if she was high. From there on in, things don't get any less despicable, but The Weeknd never seems to try and get our sympathy or glorify his party life style. The Weeknd truly sounds miserable when he describes the parties he is at. The title track has him singing "this is fun" on the chorus but he sounds like he is trying to convince himself as much the listener. At the end of the night on Glass Table Girls, the cocaine comes out and he sounds desperate and trapped, looking for escape. The music stutters and shakes and when he sings "bring out the glass tables" there is the sound of fear in his voice. There have been many critics who have condemned the actions and situations that The Weeknd describes on his trio of mixtapes but I'm pretty sure that is the very point.

Download at this link: 
http://the-weeknd.com/#

3. Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4Eva
Return of 4Eva is a mixtape that you will probably see in second or third spot on a lot of top ten lists this year. Part of that has to do with the fact that Big K.R.I.T has created a mixtape that sounds more like a complete statement than any other mixtape released this year. It doesn't sound like a mixtape, it sounds like an album. It also speaks to the level of professionalism that K.R.I.T. brings to his work. It makes his work more accessible and often more satisfying than a lot of other indie rappers but at the same time it makes him less exciting and more predictable. But K.R.I.T. also refuses to stick to one genre or musical statement like his indie peers he mixes conscious raps with club bangers. The perspective as a black rural southerner is one that is fairly novel. Musically, Return of 4eva is gorgeously produced southern hip hop, but not necessarily anything that breaks the mold. A lot of criticism around Big K.R.I.T. and this album has been based on the idea that as an artist he doesn't necessarily do anything that truly stands out or breaks the mold. And for the most part that is probably true, but it also ignores the fact that K.R.I.T. is mixing old and new hip hop sounds and themes to create a sound that stands out as  different from both.

2. Danny Brown - XXX
Danny Brown claims that 50 Cent wanted to sign him until he saw how tight his jeans were. Whether this story is true or not, it is one of the most telling stories about Brown, rap's most fascinating weirdo. Brown is charismatic and clever, but also disgusting, violent and scary. He can sound silly yet scary, often at the same time. Danny Brown is most interesting when he is describing growing up in poverty in Detroit. In Fields he describes being mugged for food stamps or being beaten up for living in the wrong area of town. In the chorus he describes the areas of Detroit that are rapidly becoming ghost towns, "and where I live it was field, field, house..." "Sitting on porches of abandoned couches or sitting on the field of bed bug ridden couches. Its like they all forgot, man, nobody care about us," he raps, describing the plight of living in an area most of us will only see on Google Maps. His observations from this point of view allow him to note that the no wins "the gun games" and only the mothers lose. On Scrap or Die he describes the process of stripping abandoned houses for scrap metal, these desperate measure rarely seem to help though because he is either ripped off by construction companies or busted by the police. Most of XXX is populated with some of the most vile and disgusting shock raps you will ever hear. Brown's narritive is one that always contains the threat of violence, even when he is at his most charismatic or silly. The perspective that he brings to hip hop is a fascinating one and the way he describes poverty is realistic and brutal.

Download at this link: 
http://www.foolsgoldrecs.com/xxx/ 

1. Clams Casino - Instrumental Mixtape
Clams Casino is a producer who before this mixtape had done some notable work with Lil B. Instrumental Mixtape removes the mostly inane rapping of Clams Casino's collaborators and lets his music breathe and come to life. The result is easily one of the most beautiful and atmospheric records of the year. The samples used on the mixtape are mostly unrecognizable and Clams Casino has kept mostly tight-lipped about them, but the source hardly matters because the songs that he has created here have become something entirely different from their ambiguous sources. Clams Casino has the incredible talent of taking a sigh, a breath, a tiny vocal sample and then echoing it through the entire song, using distortions, reverb, and filters to build an entire narritive out of the smallest pieces. To me, the album evokes the experience of wandering through a fog covered ghost town. The music is cloaked in mystery but also filled with emotion. If nostalgia had a sound, it would be similar to this album, the strange mixture of joy and pain that makes up the process of looking back on one's memories. Instrumental Mixtape has made Clams Casino the new face of instrumental hip hop and arguably the most important artist within the genre.

Download at this link: 

http://hulkshare.com/10nsi8mxqvzw

Review: The Weeknd - Echoes of Silence

4/5 stars
At first glance, Echoes of Silence might sound similar to The Weeknd's two previous mix tapes, but this album definitively takes the charming, seductive mask off of the R&B genre and reveals the creepy, pathetic movie-monster that hides behind it. This may not sound like praise, but I mean it as exactly that.

 Over the past year, the Canadian artist The Weeknd has released three fantastic mix tapes, in which he has distorted and stretched the perimeters of what is considered R&B. Part of that has been musically, his music has sampled everything from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Beach House, which isn't typical terrain for artists within his genre. The other way has been lyrically, specifically through the hedonistic night world he portrays and the predatory character he inhabits. Pitchfork has written that:

"Debauchery is obviously nothing new in R&B, but this takes it a step further-- the drugs are harder, the come-ons feel predatory and lecherous, and the general feeling is self-hating rather than celebratory."

Just to be clear, The Weeknd makes some seriously creepy music. The ethical issues surrounding his music have been debated to death in a thousand think pieces this year, but I feel like most of the debate has missed the point. The Weeknd does not seem to be attempting to create a sympathetic character. The parties and the drugs seem to only bring self-hatred, while his dealings with women are portrayed in such a creepy light that it becomes clear that The Weeknd isn't trying to create a misogynistic fantasy but rather a nightmare. This means that critics who write about living vicariously through The Weeknd are also missing the point, and in a way that is as creepy as the music. The night life that The Weeknd illustrates is one where there are real consequences for hedonism and the man trying to pick you up at the bar is probably a well-dressed and charming psychopath.

Echoes starts out with The Weeknd showing off his vocal chops on a cover of Michael Jackson's Dirty Diana. The risky move of covering M.J. pays off and The Weeknd opens his album with an update that mixes the smooth sounds of R&B with stadium drums and underlying, brooding industrial noise that often simmers to the surface. D.D. and the next few songs seem to paint the most sympathetic face that The Weeknd has shown yet and Outside almost sounds romantic in a nihilistic and damaged sort of way.

The album very quickly turns into a horror movie with the two center pieces of the album, XO/The Host and The Initiation in which The Weeknd evolves from the opportunistic creep he has been on previous albums into a full blown monster.  It is like the charismatic mask accidentally fell off and all the empty charms of the R&B genre have melted away leaving the victim in the hands of a manipulative psychopath.  These songs legitimately creeped me out. I first listened to them last night on a midnight stroll, the experience being similar to the thrill one gets from watching a scary movie. On XO, he takes advantage of a desperate girl who has been evicted from her apartment, portraying himself as her saviour as he uses her desperation to his own advantage. The Initiation has The Weeknd electronically distorting his voice, speeding it up and slowing it down, probably as a way to sonically represent a drug trip. The affect is menacing and frightening and the lyrics are as predatory as ever.
"No more crying, heart rate's low, put that rum down you don't want to die tonight," he sings while declaring that it is a "fucking celebration."

The effect of these two songs on the rest of the album is profound.  Same Old Song immediately follows these two horrifying songs, and could be considered as a run-of-the-mill song about jilted love. The two previous songs infect this song with a menace that it could not have on its own.  The second half of the album, seen separately from the rest of the album seems to paint the character as one who has seen his fair share of heat breaks and has been used and taken advantage of by previous girlfriends. Out of these songs, The Fall is definitely the best. The song seems to constantly try to break free from its chains and evolve into a dance floor beat but The Weeknd refuses to release the tension.

Viewed as part of the larger narrative of the album the songs take on a victim-blaming tone, especially the title track in which he pushes fault onto a girl who has come over, telling her that it is her masochistic tendencies that have led her there. The Weeknd's character comes across as pathetic as he pleads for her not to leave him while he declares that she has no one to blame but herself for the results. On this track, I can't help but be reminded of stories about abusive husbands who after beating their wives will beg them not to leave, and result is chilling.

I might not be making a very good case for anyone to listen to this album, but The Weeknd's music is interesting as one of the few voices that paints the club scene as dangerous and scary nightmare. In popular culture and music this year, pop has been invaded by the club style of euro-house and dubstep. The results that I often hear on the radio illustrate the club as a place of sex and fun that has few consequences. The Weeknd, on the other hand, goes in the complete opposite direction. The clubs and the nightlife are scary and full of misery and the only pleasures to be had are masochistic. The Weeknd doesn't paint this picture from an outside perspective, instead he tells his story from an insiders perspective, as one of the predators that haunts the dark corners of the club.

An issue that I would like to avoid, but feel obligated to address is a comparison of this album to his previous work. Over his three mix tapes, The Weeknd has obviously evolved and improved as an artist, but I still feel that his initial mix tape House of Balloons is still the best out of the three.  Echoes is an improvement on the over/under-rated Thursday but it still doesn't quite reach the heights of his debut. I was hoping to avoid this issue because I feel that comparison undermines just how good this album is. Though it shares a lot of similar themes and sounds from the previous two albums it feels like a complete narrative on its own and I think it deserves to be evaluated in that way.

I have included a link to download his mix tape below:
http://the-weeknd.com/

Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On

An earlier version of this article was previously published in The Omega.

4/5 stars
Timber Timbre’s new album, Creep On Creepin’ On, is dreary, creepy, weird and for the most part, brilliant. Considering the title, that’s probably to be expected.

     After the success of their 2009 self-titled album—which made the long-list for the Polaris Prize—Timber Timbre build upon the sound of their previous album while simultaneously moving away from their folk roots.  Timber Timbre is a trio made up of Taylor Kirk, Mika Posen and Simon Trottier. They’re sometimes based out of Toronto and other times out of Montreal.  For their current album they have also enlisted the services of pianist Mathieu Charbonneau and saxophonist Colin Stetson.

     The array of musical instruments that these five are able to employ is at times astounding, but the songs never become crowded or convoluted. In fact, Timber Timbre’s music often sounds deceptively simple, giving Kirk’s vocals the centre stage.  The closest description of the music I can give is that of folk-blues infused with noir and chamber pop.  The difficulty in explaining Timber Timbre’s musical style is unsurprising considering that Kirk has said that “the idea was to make music we love and therefore embrace the risk of sounding like all the music we’ve ever loved, all at once.”

     Kirk’s vocal style hovers somewhere between Leonard Cohen’s sing-speak poetics and Nick Cave’s croon. His voice never seems to betray his emotional state and almost sounds disinterested. This is hardly a negative, as songs often unexpectedly switch from love songs to murder ballads and Kirk sounds like he barely notices the difference.  The effect can be quite chilling.

     Highlights include “Black Water”, in which Kirk sings “all I need is some sunshine” without a trace of irony in his voice. The verses are particularly hushed as he describes dead fish floating down rivers, as if he is sharing an important secret with us.  The excellent “Too Old to Die Young” has Kirk channeling his best Nick Cave bad boy croon and the song often sounds like a straightforward British rock song. That’s until the chorus kicks in and Kirk tauntingly sings “I’m givin’ it, givin’ it all up,” over scraping strings. As if that wasn’t weird enough, a gospel chorus kicks in after the second chorus.

     I definitely recommend Creep On Creepin’ On to the musically adventurous. It takes the sounds of chamber pop and noir and exploits them for all their strangest elements.  The album doesn’t seem to be crushed under the weight of its influences either, in the way that Destroyer’s schmaltzy-sounding Kaputt was earlier this year.  Timber Timbre is an exciting band to follow as they continually build on their previous sounds without being repetitive or discarding past elements.

Their original sound and relative success is a testament to the diversity and robustness of the current Canadian indie scene.

Mother Mother - Eureka

 An earlier version of this article was previously published in The Omega.

2.5/5 stars

Mother Mother’s recently released album, Eureka, sounds like a bid for mainstream success.  The Vancouver based band has always had a sound that is firmly rooted in pop music, and their ability to create infectious and catchy melodies through spastic tempo changes, strange and simple metaphorical lyrics, and a refusal to be loyal to a single musical genre are what have made them one of the most interesting up and coming bands. 

           

            The current album still contains many of the characteristics that define Mother Mother, such as their unique three part harmonies, but the band has moved in the direction of a traditional rock sound.  This isn’t to say that Eureka is a terrible album, but Eureka is definitely a less interesting effort than their previous creations.  

           

            The first single, The Stand, is a deliciously misanthropic call and response song that seems to represent lead singer, lyricist, and band-leader Ryan Guldemond's absolute distaste for the human race.

            “Tell me your fears.”

            “Okay, its everyone here.”

            “You mean just all of the people?”

            “Yeah, and all of their peers.”

            The catchy chorus then begins with “I can hardly stand the sight of it all...”  Guldemond’s lyrics are consistently more abstract and bizarre than his previous work.  In The Stand he sings “I forgot about handfuls,” which within the context of the song is a sexual euphemism, but he sounds so uncertain and confused by his own words that the meaning becomes obscure and ambiguous.

           

            The lyrical quality never reaches the heights that it did in songs like “Ghosting,” but it is only in the absolutely dreadful “Original Spin” that they reach a level of stupidity.  A note to future artists: in a post-Rebecca Black world, no matter how ironically you say “fun, fun, fun” it will still sound like self-parody. 

           

            Musically, Eureka is Mother Mother’s first rock album.  Mother Mother has always shied away from comparisons to other indie acts, such as the New Pornographers, trying to maintain an identity that is separate from the Canadian indie scene.  Yet, Eureka seems to embrace the so-called indie rock “sound” for the first time in Mother Mother’s history.  Simply Simple has the sound that is currently being used to advertise the hipness of department stores.

           

            The best song on the album is Problems, which seems to entirely ignore the rest of the album that surrounds it.  The song begins with a Buddy Holly inspired guitar lick which leads into a bouncing bass led verse.  The screeching chorus line, “I’ve got problems, not just ones that are little, its those people problems that’s something to consider, when you come for dinner at my place,” unexpectedly erupts from the song.  It is the only song on the album that seems to have its tongue firmly implanted in cheek. 

           

Which is something that Mother Mother should consider, because for the first time they seem to be taking themselves too seriously and the results are often bland and unexciting.  It might be a bit cynical to say that Mother Mother is making a bid for mainstream success, but the truth of the matter is that their current musical direction seems to be a dead end.  Let’s hope that by the time they release their next album they are feeling more playful and inspired again.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

An earlier version of this article was previously published in The Omega.

2/5 stars

The most surprising thing about the new Radiohead album “The King of Limbs” is how unsurprising it’s content is.  Radiohead is a band that has continually reinvented themselves with each subsequent release.  The band has had a brilliant history of frustrating expectations and carving out a niche that is purely their own.

After the success of their masterpiece “OK Computer,” an album that pushed the ideas of what rock music could be, the band went on to produce albums that were full of glitches and stuttering drumbeats, Thom Yorke’s unearthly vocals became indecipherable, and song structures began to eschew hooks or choruses or song structure all together.  Despite these attributes Radiohead is a band that has always remained in the mainstream’s subconscious and is regularly regarded as one of the biggest rock bands in the world.  Even Britney Spears has been seen carry their previous album to her car!

This changed for the first time with a brief return to accessibility with 2007’s “In Rainbows.” “In Rainbows” seemed to be a summary of everything the band had done thus far.  Not only that, but the album was full of hooks, snarling guitars, crashing cymbals, unearthly wails, and bombastic strings, even on the quietest ballads. 

“The King of Limbs” doesn’t do any of these things, it doesn’t present something new and it doesn’t create a cohesive package; what it does present is a quiet, minimalist album that seems to be made up of previously discarded ideas.  This is certainly not surprising, as Radiohead spent the majority of the 90’s fashioning a glitchy-electro-rock sound.  The reason this album is such a disappointment is its inability to create a unified vision, or much of a vision at all in its brief 37 minutes. 

The first half of the album is easily the weakest part of the album.  The songs sound like a cross between Thom Yorke’s solo work on “The Eraser” and Radiohead’s “Amnesiac.”  These songs could have easily been B-sides to either of those albums, but the music isn’t nearly as unsettling and interesting as the “The Eraser” or as inventive as “Amnesiac.” 

The album highlights begin halfway through the album with “Lotus Flower” and “Codex”.  The latter sounds almost like a spooky Coldplay (aka Radiohead-lite) concept.  After half an album of cold and insular electronic sounds the warm piano chords are incredibly welcome.  The second half of the album becomes less dense and easier to listen to. 

As the shortest Radiohead album, “The King of Limbs” seems to end prematurely, every time “Separator” ends on my IPod I keep waiting for the next song to start.  It is hard not to feel ripped-off by the album, not only is it short, but it seems to be populated with throwaway songs, songs that might have better suited on a B-side collection. 

A lot of music critics have labeled “The King of Limbs” as an in-between album, one that represents an evolution from an old sound to a new one.  This description seems like a way to try and excuse the albums mediocrity.  The hard truth is that “The King of Limbs” seems to symbolize for the first time in their long and successful career that Radiohead is running out of new ideas and concepts. 

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

 An earlier version of this article was published in The Omega.

4/5 Stars
LCD Soundsystem’s  This Is Happening was easily the best American release of 2010.  LCD Soundsystem is one of those rare bands that started out at a high point with their 2005 self-titled debut and has only gotten better with every subsequent release. 

For front man, James Murphy, the last five years seem to have been one long hipster midlife crisis.  Whether he was singing Losing My Edge as he watched “the kids” take over his scene, or he was looking back at past booze-filled friendships in painful nostalgia in All My Friends, Murphy has been slowly watching his coolness fall apart(in an extremely cool way, I might add). 

Despite this, Murphy falls apart like he has never fallen apart before on This Is Happening, and while this might sound like a depressing album, LCD Soundsystem’s particular brand of post-punk dance never allows Murphy to wallow for too long. 

LCD Soundsystem’s ability to take simple sounds and chord progressions and make them interesting is astounding. While LCD Soundsystem has always had their own distinct sound, bringing together dance, punk, new wave and 60s pop music into a twisted collage of music, This Is Happening is heavily influenced by the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop.  This seems ironic considering earlier comments by Murphy.  "It’s kind of soul-crushing in a way to listen to ‘Perfect Day’ and say ‘I’m gonna go write a song like that’ and it’ll be fucking horrible by comparison,” he said in an interview with Pitchfork.com.  The creeping sound of Somebody Is Calling Me is so close to Iggy Pop’s Nightclubbing that it almost seems like a form of musical plagiarism.  It’s Murphy’s clean voice that raises the song above its roots—he sounds lost in a sleazy Iggy Pop inspired world, enjoying himself but looking for an escape route. 

The album opener Dance Yrself Clean, begins with a pitter-patter beat and Murphy mumbling about his difficulty with social situations. “Walking up to me expecting words, it happens all the time,” Murphy mumbles in despair.  But three minutes later an unexpected synthesizer rips through the speakers, and Murphy is back out on the dance floor, singing “I miss the way the night goes with friends who always make it feel good.”

While, Murphy bares his soul at times, as when he tries to convince a lover not to leave on “Can Change,” This Is Happening is also lacerating at times. Pow Pow takes jabs at his critics while fighting off the “the kids” who are taking over his scene.  “Your time will come, but tonight is our night, so you should give us all your drugs,” he says cheekily, only to rage seconds later that “you don’t know shit about where I am from that you didn’t get from your TV.” 

This line between cheekiness and anger is again played with on the nine minute song You Wanted A Hit.  It is the brazenness of the album that makes it seem fitting that Murphy has said that it will be the LCD Soundsystem’s last work.  His musical midlife crisis seems to have hit a peak and he seems ready to move onto new things. 

Top 5 Canadian albums of 2010

An earlier version of this article was previously published in The Omega.

The start of a new year and top ten lists seem to go hand in hand.  It allows us to look back on the year that just passed and sum up what we liked and didn’t like about it.  Whether it is movies, or books, or music, we can then decide whether it was a good, bad, or mediocre year. 

 Looking back on the past year of Canadian music made me realize how rewarding of a year it has been for Canadian music.  It was exceedingly difficult to pick my top five albums of the year, mostly because there was so much great music to choose from. 

 

5. Caribou – Swim

Daniel Snaith, the man behind Caribou, has often been commended for his chameleon-like ability to change styles and inhabit multiple genres.  Because of this, describing his music can be challenging.  Swim sounds almost like being a DJs pet goldfish because the music sounds like dance music filtered through water. His mixture of 60’s pop and electronica ripple and warp to make something more soothing than danceable.  

 

4. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record

Broken Social Scene is so ubiquitous in other forms that it’s easy to forget that they haven’t released anything for five years.  But with current and former members (including Fiest, Emily Haines of Metric, Stars, Jason Collet, and many more) constantly releasing their own material, it almost feels like Broken Social Scene is always creating music.  Forgiveness Rock Record isn’t a perfect album, and it isn’t the bands best either—but even some of the albums duds sound better than most bands at their best.  Broken Social Scene is often described as Canadian indie-rock royalty, and here they certainly live up to that moniker.  

 

3. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles(II)

Crystal Castles is surprisingly still around.  After they released their first album there was meltdowns on stage, they sometimes didn’t show up for gigs, and then they were sued for stealing artwork. Their new album, however, is easily one of the year’s best.  While the sound is still harsh and distorted, II is surprisingly melodic.  The best songs such as Celestica or Suffocation have pop melodies that have an almost soothing quality to them, but at the same time, they are still full of the duo’s signature fuzz and distortion.  The album can be a challenging listen at times, but it is always a satisfying one.

2. Shad – Tsol

Tsol is not only a great hip hop album, but it is a distinctly Canadian style of hip hop.  Whether he is fighting for the empowerment of women, preaching tolerance, swinging imaginary punches at Glenn Beck, or shaking his head in disgust at the religious fundamentalists, it all seems very Canadian.  But that’s not the only reason to love this album, Shad’s ability to weave together pop culture, political, and biblical references into complex word play is astounding, and sometimes only reveals its brilliance after a couple listens.  

1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Arcade Fire’s success, not only in Canada, but across the border isn’t surprising.  Heavily influenced by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, their music has always had a distinct American sound to it.  The Suburbs is not only arguably their best and most successful album yet, but it also wears its influences the most candidly.  It is over top of this classic style that Arcade Fire tries to come to terms with growing up.  One second they are musing about their teenage fantasies of rebellion and the boredom of growing up in the suburbs, and the next they are trying to reconcile it with their own life goals of family and stability.  Suburbia is often a place that bands use to relive teenage anger, but Arcade Fire, whether they are searching for old friends or having children, have used suburbia as a place to grow up.  It is a beautiful and bittersweet album that will haunt you long after you have listened to it . 

 

Review:Nine Inch Nails-The Slip

4/5 stars

Trent Reznor is sure keeping busy this year, recording and releasing two albums, genius marketing, touring, and proclaiming to the world the evils of corparate music(take that Rolling Stones).  His most the recent release, "The Slip," is being given away for free over his own website, which is not an unprecedented move.  Radiohead beat him to it, but as Trent Reznor pointed out, Radiohead backed out, saying that it was just a marketing scheme to drum up publicity.  So is this album the sequel to "Year Zero" that he promised, or is this back to business as usual?  I'm not totally sure, some lyrics are very direct references to the "Year Zero" theme, "you train us how to act, you keep the fear intact," or "your armies full of hate, believing your charade."  Other lyrics are just as suicidal as "The Downward Spiral," "put the gun, in my mouth, close your eyes, blow my fucking brains out, pretty patterns on the floor."  Personally, I could care less what the theme of this album is, Trent Reznor has never been a lyrical genius.  Nine Inch Nails has always been more about the emotion you hear in the vocals and music, rather than what he is actually singing about.

"The Slip" is the best Nine Inch Nails album since "The Fragile," and it is the noisiest music he has created since "The Downward Spiral."  The album opens with the ambient white noise of "999, 999" and then "1, 000, 000" comes right after with a blast of distorted guitars and crashing drums.  It is a song that would have easily fit on the "Broken" EP. The song, much like the rest of the album is filled with suicidal lyrics like "I jump from every rooftop, so high, so far to fall."  Then the even noisier "Letting You" comes right afterwards, filled with guitar notes that seem to be picked at random.  Easily the best song on the album, this song sounds like it was written for "The Downward Spiral."  The first single "Discipline" is a slinky song that grows on you with each listen.  Trent Reznor's misery hasn't sounded this sexy since 1994.  About a halfway through the album the music completely changes from the heavy industrial into piano ballad "Lights in the Sky" which is a relatively weak song.  What saves it from the skip button, is the rawness of it, almost sounding like you are sitting right on the piano bench with Trent, as he composes the song in his whispered vocals.  After that the album starts to sound like "Ghosts" with ambient instrumentals "Corona Radiata" and "The Four of Us are Dying" which are both superb.  They feel like short glances into Trent Reznor's totally fucked up head.  The album ends with "Demon Seed" which is probably the worst name for a song ever, and also the weakest song on the album.

"The Slip" is incredible, adrenaline charged music, that has a sense of urgency to it.  The two halfs of the album don't fit together very well, with such a huge change in tempo.  But for the most part the quality of the music makes up for any flaws in the order of the songs. 

Review:Buck 65-Situation

3.5/5 stars

"Situation" isn't nearly as haunting as "Talkin' Honky Blues," the lyrics aren't as interesting or poetic as the majority of songs on "Secret House Against the World," and the music is fairly bare for Buck 65.  But against all that "Situation" has a lot going for it.  It is the most straight forward hip hop album he has done in long time, instead of the avant-garde folk rap he has been creating lately.  Buck 65 still isn't the most talented MC in the world, but his skill has come a long way since his last album "Secret House Against the World."  His flow has become a lot more fluid and at the same time, more immediate.

For "Situation" Buck 65 has created an entire concept album around the year 1957.  Instead of being a history lesson, this allows him to do what he does best, tell the stories of a very wide cast of characters.  Righteous cops, killers, gangsters, high school jocks, rebels, stalkers, pornographers, pin up girls, and beat poets populate the many different view points in the music.  "Shutter Buggin'" is about a pornographer  who sees his job as a "funny biz, I'm not saying I like it, it's just where the money is."  "Heatwave" has one of the many cops on the album, who is "comin' to get ya" if you're the "scum of the earth."  It's an interesting and refreshing view for a hip hop artist to take.

For his new concept Buck 65 has ditched the folk and country influences, for a more modern hip hop sound with turntables and samples.  Its not nearly as exciting or groundbreaking as previous efforts but it suits the album.  The piano loop in 1957 is dramatic and enticing, and the organ in "Way Back When" has single written all over it.  His gravely voice sounds better over more layered songs than the minimal ones like "Spread 'em" and "Lipstick."  But even with all its faults, Buck 65's rich characterizations and newly discover MC skills, hold the album up.

Review:Vampire Weekend

4/5 stars

How do you review the debut album of the most hyped band of the year?  The funny thing is that about 50% of the blog world, that promoted Vampire Weekend, have already turned their backs.  You don't have to look far on the Internet for the haters.  Indie fans can be arrogant and fickle, and if you've had your face on "Spin" magazine as band of the year, and mainstream critics are also giving your debut album rave reviews, you've lost a lot of indie cred.  In the indie music world, success equals failure, I guess?  They're aren't many other bands, especially successful ones, that are as independent as Vampire Weekend.  They've recorded their own album, booked their own tours, designed their own artwork, and they own their masters.  If that doesn't get indie respect, then I don't know what does.

On first listen, Vampire Weekend's self titled album can be a little overwhelming, with dramatic strings, African percussion, new age keyboards, pop melodies, and guitars that sound incredibly reminiscent of Johnny Marr and The Smiths.  After a couple listens the arrangements all begin to sound very natural, though.  This is one of those albums that gets better with each listen.  "Mansford Roof" starts with sweeping strings but quickly deconstructs into a strange new age beat, and from there the band adds new layers to the song.  Songs like "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" and "M79" are built with scattered musical ideas and influences, which Ezra Koenig's vocals and simple pop melodies pull together.  The majority of the lyrics are light and abstract, "eyes like a seagull, no Kansas born beetle could ever come close to that free" and don't weigh down the music.  The African influenced percussion gives the music a relaxed summer vibe.  The album surprisingly falters with songs like "Walcott" and "Bryn" when the music is simple and more repetitive.  But even the songs that aren't the greatest have enough redeeming qualities to them, that you are unlikely to skip them.  

The question is will Vampire Weekend make it past their first album, or will they disappoint and disappear next year like many of the Internet hyped bands seem to do(coughArtic Monkeyscough)?  I think it is unlikely, Vampire Weekend has a lot of room to grow, and their debut shows an ability to adapt that should keep them around for a long time to come.