Top 10 Canadian Indie Albums of 2006

Top 10 Canadian Indie Albums of 2006

1. Amy Millan - Honey From The Tombs
2. Pink Mountaintops - Axis of Evol
3. Melissa McClelland - Thumbellina's One Night Stand
4. Matt Mays - When The Angels Make Contact
5. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
6. Les Breastfeeders - Les Matins de Grands Soirs
7. Magneta Lane - Dancing With Daggers
8. The Golden Dogs - Big Eye Little Eye
9. Sam Roberts - Chemical City
10. Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

While I spent most of 2006 catching up on some great albums from 2005 from artists like The New Pornographers, Immaculate Machine, Novillero, Cuff the Duke and the Diableros (among others), there were a number of spectacular releases this year including Polaris Prize Winner Final Fantasy and the stunning solo effort of Amy Millan. This list is by no means in order save perhaps for the #1 of 2006 which goes to Honey From The Tombs.

Let me know what you think of the list and where I've gone wrong and I'll send you one of my last two invites to the best music site on the net.

The Art of the Clap + The Bicycles

When it comes to catchy pop tunes, Toronto's The Bicycles have written the book, or should I say the album, by which I mean their new CD The Good, The Bad, and The Cuddly. 17 tracks measuring on average 2 minutes each solidifies The Bicycles as icons of a different age. Listening to the album once from afar and again close-up clearly brings back a '60s-esque lo-fi feel, with slightly scratchy vocals, rattles and hand-clap rhythms. Which brings me to my next point, the art of the clap. When used strategically, as it is on this week's track "Australia" it adds a completely new dimension to the music. Acoustically, the clap cannot be duplicated. What instrument in the modern pop-band ensemble comes close? Certainly not the guitar, bass or drums. Even our ancient friend the tambourine, one of the most ancient instruments still in use today, is incomparable to the sharp yet warm sound of two hands in unison (if you want to know the sound of half of one-handing clapping listen to Joel Plaskett's ode to Kelowna in "Love That Town"). Its staccato snap punctuates the music as if from without. Perhaps it was my youthful years spent listening to bootlegs and audience recordings that have sensitized me to the lovely sound of hands in motion, but even without that historical tidbit, I'd still say the handclap is an instrument all to itself. Listen to its crisp albeit seldom sound in "Australia" and judge for yourself! For an over-indulgence of handiwork take a listen to "Paris Be Mine."

Other stand-outs on The Good, The Bad and The Cuddly include the first track, "B-B-Bicycles" and the airport lounge mix of (what sounds like) "My Guy" (or was it Whoopi's "My God"?) which comes out altogether new in "Ghost Town". "Cuddly Toy", the eleventh track on the album is very reminiscent of a Beatles track which means fans of 60s pop that are more knowledgeable than I will get a kick out of matching songs, albums, artists and influences to the The Bicycles.

Returning to "Australia", the hypnotic foot tappin' bass-line is rivaled only by the Golden Dog's Dynamo from last month and the layered cascading vocals is like something straight out of The Mamas and Papas or the Archies.

NewMusicCanada had this to say about my fellow Torontonians:

The Bicycles want their music to reflect who they are as people, as a band, and their outlook on the world, which sounds really boring, but think of all that set to a crisp bit of tambourine. Snappy! Basically, the Bicycles like to have fun.

So give it a spin yourself and those of you who know your classic pop better than I, let me know how you'd describe it!

The Bicycles - Australia.

PS. As I post this I'm heading out the door to fly back to Kelowna, BC for the holidays. I hope to be able to update the blog over the break, especially to post my top list of albums for 2006, so stay tuned. Lastly, as a Christmas gift to anyone who reads this blog, I will be handing out 5 invites to a top-rated music torrent site for serious audiophiles! If you're really into music and want a quality virus-free way to *sample* music from the Canadian indie scene and beyond shoot me a message or post on the board and I'll get one out to you!

CBC Radio 3 Recap of 2006

CBC Radio3 has published on their blog a collection of Canadian indie music nods from across the entertainment spectrum, including Amy Millan's spot in Rolling Stone's 100 Best Songs and The Wailin' Jennys CD success on the Folk Alley Top 10. A few other favourites posted on this blog right here have also made some noise internationally including Emily Haines' Metric and the Golden Dogs - which just goes to show you all I have excellent taste in music! And if you doubted it, why not try out some Les Breastfeeders for size. This Quebec band left a permanent mark when they headlined the Lamplighter back in Vancouver last March and did an equally impressive job here in Toronto performing hits from their latest CD Les Matins de Grands Soirs. So if you haven't been paying attention to the music tracks I've painstakeningly posted and raved about on this blog, click the "indie music" label at the bottom of this post to get a showcase of the who's who of the Canadian indie scene and stay tuned for more in the new year!

The CBC Radio 3 Top 94 of 2006 and the first annual Bucky Awards are fast approaching; but Canadian artists are already hitting 2006 best album lists around the world.

Tokyo Police Club and Amy Millan have both made it into Rolling Stone's 100 Best Songs of 2006. Of Millan's song "Skinny Boy", they write, "Singer from Canadian indie-pop outfit Stars applies angel-voiced cynicism to delicious Mazzy Star-style tune. Best line: You've got lips I could spend a day with.'"

Meanwhile, Tokyo Police Club get a whole new word made up for them in the description of their great song, "Cheer It On": "They're not from Tokyo, they're not cops and the only club they could get into is probably the Strokes Fan Club -- but these mods score with a gloriously dumb garage-punk thrash-terpiece."

Destroyer's latest CD, Destroyer's Rubies, is number 9 - and the only Canadian pick - on Metacritic's 30 Best-Reviewed Albums of the Year, which tallies its results based on major critics' reviews from around the world. The Vancouver band beat out internationally acclaimed releases by groups including The Roots, Arctic Monkeys, Neko Case, The Decemberists, The Hold Steady and even The Beatles.

Right now, NME's Top 50 Albums Of The Year is only out on newsstands, but Metric's Live It Out, which was released in the UK in July this year, is ranked at number 38, above Beck, Bob Dylan, and Wolfmother.

The Wailin' Jennys recent CD, Firecracker, is number 1 on the Top 10 list of Folk Alley, a national NPR radio program. On the show's website, they rave: "Wailin' Jennys' award-winning Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta and Annabelle Chvostek combine their individual songwriting talents, spine-tingling harmonies and rootsy folk-pop arrangements for a stunning follow-up to their 2004 debut."

Three Canadian bands have received a slightly different kind of honour: The Bicyles, The Golden Dogs and Les Breastfeeders have made it onto Allmusic.com's 25 Most Crushworthy Bands of 2006 list.

Of Toronto's The Golden Dogs, Allmusic's Margaret Reges writes: "The Golden Dogs are Canadian, they sound a little like Arcade Fire, they wear cute outfits, and gosh darn it, I want to put them in my back pocket! I wanted to buy a t-shirt, but they aren't selling any! Damn you, Golden Dogs! Damn you for making me love you!"

Hear Les Breastfeeder's Pas Sans Saveur from Les Matins de Grands Soirs

York University Exceeds the Western Standard

More of a momento than a rant or opinion piece. Below is some excerpts from Western Standard's "Nuttiest Professors" article which seeks to denounce the general state of academia in Canada and then name some names behind its downfall! I was proud to see York sporting two profs on the short-list! One being my very own Technopolitics professor Shannon Bell! I hope she reads this as an honour, as I did, and not as Grandpa and Grandma Conservative will be!

Universities today are hothouses of intellectual repression, encumbered by censorious codes stifling free speech and weakened by employment-equity programs that force faculties to favour diversity over accomplishment. Just ask Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary who was hounded from the presidency of Harvard this year after suggesting publicly that males and females may have innately different capacities for science and math. Or Margaret Somerville, the distinguished McGill ethicist, nearly denied an honourary doctorate from Ryerson University this summer after faculty protested her skepticism toward same-sex marriage (she got the degree but several professors turned their backs on the ceremony).

Today, there are probably just as many, or more, left-wing professors than a generation ago. If our situation is similar to American universities (where there's been extensive research on the issue), most faculties are tilting so far left they're lucky they haven't slid into the Pacific. One study last year found that three quarters of all faculty members at U.S. colleges considered themselves left-wing (as much as 87 per cent at Ivy League schools and even higher in the humanities).

SHANNON BELL, ASSOC. PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, YORK UNIVERSITY

Political science has never been this risqué. But Bell doesn't exactly cover filibusters and Senate reform; try post-contemporary theory, fast feminism, sexual politics, cyberpolitics, identity politics and violent philosophy. The self-described "performance artist" holds workshops teaching the art of "female ejaculation" (also available on video for those off-campus). In 1998, she made news testifying in defence of a sadomasochist prostitute, saying such deviant sexual behaviour was "therapeutic" and that she was an experienced dominatrix herself. In 2000, she was found by police in an illegal lesbian bathhouse. In class, Bell says she dresses provocatively to get a rise out of her students. Early in the term, for example, she usually dons over-the-top feminine outfits. "Then, around the end of October, things are getting intense in terms of their assignments," she's said. "And I move into solid leather for about a month."

So kudos to Shannon and thanks for offering the best class this semester!

The full text of the Western Standard article can be read (after registration) here.

NSX: the Nova Scotian Xperience

I hate to butt in on Immaculate Machine and Novillero who haven't even had one week on the chart (as I'll call it), but I've got late-breaking news from the world of Canadian indie music! News that I must share with the devoted one or two people that read my blog! Remember, you heard it first here!

What happens when you cross two of the best Canadian acts out of Nova Scotia, Matt Mays and Buck 65 (for some strange reason I'm talking about the best acts out of N.S. without mentioning Joel Plaskett?)? Well, as the song title says you get: When The Angels Make Contact, a solidly rocking number from Matt May's new album by the same name. Known for his solo work as well as his CDs with backing band El Torpedo, Mays is the definitive Canadian indie hard rock act in a scene that has long abandoned hard rock to the cheesy odes of Nickelback or the to the dinosaurs of The Tragically Hip and Rush (not to mention whatever whale song Randy Bachman is turning out on some pacific island). In fact, the indie scene, as varied as it gets here with everything from "death country" (Elliot BROOD) to electronically-manipulated violin and piano (Final Fantasy) doesn't have much room for traditional crunchy guitar riffs and Chris Cornell-esque screams. Which in fact, is usually fine with me. As much as hard rock was my genre of choice as a teen its been so-constantly-and-consistently bastardized throughout the late 90s and 2000s that leaving it to die a cold and anonymous death seemed best, lest it pollute the glorious pride of Canada's budding scene.

Thus for me, Matt Mays has only been a passing interest. I saw him live (but not purposely) in Vancouver opening for Plaskett and again at V-Fest Toronto where he was relegated to the B-list stage (and put on the best performance I witnessed on that stage). His tunes were good but not great, they provided the kind of hard rock background noise that might as well come from Nickelback. The songs just did not stand out, against one another or on their own.

Buck 65, on the other hand, is a Canadian legend, as far as that goes. The Eminem of the Canadian East, sans lyrics of strangling wife and child naturally. In fact, Buck 65 easily transcends the category of rap, with a brisk spoken-word pace that sounds like its tinged with slam poetry as much as conventional rap. His music itself is never satisified with being a simple beat to his vocals, and he takes on a number of genres from the electronically synthezied Devil's Eyes to his cowboy-rockin' Road House Blues. The bilingual Buck also slips between French and English on his latest CD Secret House Against the World...

So what happens when you mix this overly-potent talent with up-and-coming Matt Mays: an extremely solid effort that ends up overshadowing (if possible) Buck 65 and illuminating the potential of hard-rock greatness in Mays. Starting with the grittly churning guitar riffs Mays' voice and lyrics immediately stand to be recognized. Buck 65's brief interlude provides a great dimension to a song that, even without his touch, would stand well on its own. Mays' final howl and the minute-long guitar solo that follows make me wish I owned a lighter.

Find out some more information about the artists from and then give the MP3 a whirl.

Matt Mays:

Matt Mays & El Torpedo is Matt Mays (guitar, vocals), Jarrett Murphy (guitar, vocals), Andy Patil (bass, vocals), Rob Crowell (keyboards) and Tim Baker (drums). MM&ET have spent the last four year touring the country endlessly. In that time the band has moved from opening shows for acts such as Blue Rodeo and Sam Roberts to headlining their own sold-out shows. The group recently took home four awards at the 2006 East Coast Music Awards. They are touring Canada with The Black Crowes in May 2006.

With Patil and Baker's driving rhythms supporting Crowell's organ swells and the squalls Murphy & Mays' dual guitar attack, MM&ET's sound is a soulful eruption of roots rock. From the first listen, it's obvious that they have that indefinable element that carries a group's music beyond the sum of its parts. "It's one of those things that you couldn't really construct with anyone," claims Mays of the band's chemistry. "It's a really natural solidification in music of five friends who like, listen to and laugh at all the same things."

MattMays.com

Buck 65:

Buck 65 is old. He started out as a b-boy back in '82 while living in Small Town, Nova Scotia, but today this no-nonsense white boy is the Jimmy Castor of hip hop. Handling production, lyrics, and Djing duties by himself, Buck may be the man to single-handedly rescue hip hop. Many regarded Buck as somewhat of a weirdo because his subject matter includes fashion design, freestyle BMX, baseball, and ichthyology. Maybe he's a throwback, maybe he's the future, but you can't hear any death threats or hollow boasting coming from this honky. Forget about it. This is music that picks up where the rap performance in Revenge of the Nerds left off.

NewMusicCanada.com

So without furhter ado, please enjoy When The Angels Make Contact.mp3