Best of 2000, 20 years later

My friend Aaron Brophy likes to revisit his year-end lists from at least a decade back, and alternately either boast about his amazing, timeless taste, or wonder what the heck he was thinking.

20 years ago I was hired by Philip Bast at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record to write a weekly CD review column. I did that until 2019, reviewing three to six albums a week.

In 2000, I was living in Guelph, working at Exclaim, writing for Eye Weekly, and working on a book called Have Not Been the Same. 

In 2020, I'm writing a book about events 20 years ago, so I've been living in a bit of a time warp.

Here’s the 10 albums I submitted to Eye Weekly’s year-end poll in 2000. Commentary is new.


1. Sarah Harmer – You Were Here (Cold Snap)
A classic record, to this day. I knew that the day I heard it, after buying a copy from her after a show at Ted’s Wrecking Yard on College Street, a copy that was a CD-R with a hand-drawn cover. I was a huge Weeping Tile fan and was thrilled that Harmer finally got her due. Is it the best album of 2000? It’s one of my favourite albums of all time, so there’s that. Will have a lot more to say about this in the book.


2. The Weakerthans – Left and Leaving (G7). O hell yes. I first saw this band a couple of months before this album came out, at Exclaim’s anniversary party, and these songs blew me away. So did songs from 1997’s Fallow, which everyone in the room but me seemed to know by heart. I bought a copy from Soundscapes before my own band played a show at… Ted’s Wrecking Yard. The year 2000 was very much about Ted’s Wrecking Yard for me. I wrote an essay about this album’s anniversary here.


3. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Matador). I listened to this album more in 2020 than I had since the year it came out. That had nothing to do with its anniversary, and everything to do with therapeutic listening during enforced isolation. 

4. Bettie Serveert – Private Suit (Parasol). I have a lot to say about this, one of the most underrated rock records of the last 30 years, and one I revisit annually. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who feels that way. Wrote about this here.


5. Sleater-Kinney – All Hands on the Bad One (Kill Rock Stars). This isn’t even among my top three favourite S-K records now, but it sure sounded great in 2000—in part because so much other rock music was terrible. “You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun” still gives me chills. I have never seen this video!

6. PJ Harvey – Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea (Island). I had some kind of hipster hang-up at the time about whether this was the best PJ Harvey record to date or whether it was just the PJ Harvey record you were most likely to put on when other people come over for dinner. Does it matter? Still sounds amazing, top to bottom.


7. Neko Case – Furnace Room Lullaby; Carolyn Mark – Party Girl; The Corn Sisters – The Other Women (Mint). It’s amazing to me that these three albums came out the same year as New Pornographers’ Mass Romantic. I still know every lyric to each of these songs. In the political climate of 2020, I re-latched on to Neko’s “Mood to Burn Bridges.” Feeling disconnected, I found solace in “someone singing my life back to me” in “Guided by Wire.” For 20 years leading up to my midlife crisis, I’ve had a Corn Sisters lyric by Mark in my head: “Is it a groove? Or is it a rut?” In April, I watched an online hootenanny hosted in isolation by the incredibly social Carolyn Mark, during which she played Party Girl’s “Don’t Come Over, Baby.” It was perfect.


8. Crooked Fingers – s/t (Sonic Unyon). Much like Sleater-Kinney, this is nowhere near my favourite album by one of my favourite artists of all time. But again, like Yo La Tengo, this one sounded particularly good in 2020: “Crowned in Chrome,” “New Drink for the Old Drunk,” “Broken Man,” “Black Black Ocean,” “Under Sad Stars”—because it was just that kind of year.

9. Jess Klein – Draw Them Near (Slow River/Ryko). This is the one album on this list where I thought: really? I remember liking it, but I don’t remember loving it and I definitely haven’t listened to it in 20 years. But guess what? It’s pretty great. Really solid songs, great voice, great band. In the same vein as Harmer, but American. 2000 might have been the last year I listened to a lot of roots rock, which is why Klein would have fallen off my radar. She’s still active, and new stuff sounds pretty good.


10. The Gruesomes – Cave In (Tyrant). This might have been the first of my favourite bands from my high school years to reunite and not suck, and so the surprise element no doubt vaulted this onto my top 10. Listening to it now for likely the first time in 20 years, it is a great record, and probably even the Gruesomes’ best. The songs and performances are all killer (and there’s finally a studio version of “You Were Not Using Your Head”). I just don’t listen to garage rock anymore; I barely did in 2000, either. But if you do, and/or if you were ever a Gruesomes fan and have somehow never heard this, I highly recommend it.



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Other favourites I wrote about in my year-end column for the K-W Record:


Asian Dub Foundation – Community Music (London/Polygram). I’d totally forgot this band until two years ago when I wrote a book about the Tragically Hip—which is a weird connection, but I read an article where drummer Johnny Fay talks about rocking this record on the tour bus. It also came to mind when I dug the Melt Yourself Down record this year. In many ways this record sounds either of the moment or incredibly dated, depending on your POV. I still think it sounds great. I had no idea they were still active; they put out a new record this year, and haven’t changed a bit. If Rage Against the Machine can have a revival, this band sure as hell can—and should. It’s not like what they were singing about has improved one iota. 

 

 

Bjork – Selmasongs (Warner). I was in a deep Bjork period of my life. Does this oft-forgotten soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark hold up? Probably much better than the movie, I’m guessing. After hearing about the antagonistic working relationship she had with notorious sadist Lars Von Trier, I reconsidered all portrayals of extreme suffering on film (not the first or last time in my life Bjork changed my worldview). The production is a delightful blend of the digital clicks and cuts she’d soon dive into and the orchestration heard on much of Post. I often forget that in the same year Kid A came out, Thom Yorke duetted with both PJ Harvey and Bjork on their albums, both of which are better than Kid A.

Blue Rodeo – The Days in Between (Warner). I loved this band for about 10 years of my life (1987-97), but have followed only from a respectful distance since. This album was probably the last one I enjoyed—or listened to more than thrice—and revisiting now I can see why. Was this the last time Keelor and Cuddy brought their best work to the band instead of their solo records? Trina Shoemaker’s production brings just the right amount of atmospherics. It sounds great today. Still: best of 2020? This was a nostalgia vote for me.


Deltron 3030 – s/t (75 Ark). The sound of the future? Nope, but definitely the sound of 2000, when Dan the Automator seemed to be everywhere (Gorillaz, Primal Scream, Handsome Boy Modeling School). Del the Funky Homosapien has great flow as always, though I don’t know about this as a concept album: the main appeal for me, then and now, is the music. (And yet: I’ve never listened to the accompanying instrumental album.) Kid Koala features prominently. His own Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is not on this list; it baffled me at the time. Now it’s clear he was charting his own path. I don’t think I’ve listened to a new Dan the Automator record since 2001, though I had a soft spot for his 2006 Mike Patton collab Peeping Tom (which I haven’t listened to since).


DJ Serious – Dim Sum (Sound King). This was a Toronto DJ whose debut featured MCs Brass Munk, D-Sisive, Arcee, Asicks and Lil Jaz. This being Canada, with a woeful hip-hop infrastructure, it came out on the same label that put out rock bands Danko Jones and Bionic and promptly got lost. Musically, it’s on the same wavelength as California’s Quannum crew, a mix of ’80s electro funk and early ’90s jazz-influenced tracks. It was definitely out of step with the Choclair and Kardinal crowd, and is now out of print and unavailable to stream except on this YouTube rip. I’m sure I haven’t listened to this in 20 years; it totally holds up. DJ Serious released a follow-up, Cold Tea, in 2005; I’ve never heard it. His studio output has been silent since.


Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues (Artemis). I don’t think Steve Earle gets enough credit for his five-album run between 1995-2000: Train a Comin’, I Feel Alright, El Corazon, The Mountain and finally this one. It’s flawless. Dozens of killer songs in that run. Where’s the box set? It should be mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, Prince, you name it. He’s released at least nine albums of original material since, but I’ve only paid sporadic attention—maybe because it’s hard to measure up to this, which still sounds fabulous, especially loud. “All of My Life”—what a goddam anthem. “Another Town” is the greatest song the Pogues never wrote (see also: “The Galway Girl”). There’s too many more here to list. I’m not sure Earle’s production skills have ever sounded better. No idea why this wasn’t in my top 10.


International Noise Conspiracy – Survival Sickness (Epitaph). I put “Smash It Up” on so many mix CDs for years, but did I ever like this whole record? None of these other songs sound remotely familiar—although the title track certainly hits home these days. Garage rock was not my thing; I was posing, craving a political rock band so much that I imagined this was this one for me. It wasn’t. Little did I know at the time that this band’s predecessor, Refused, would prove to be so influential on a lot of the aughts’ aggressive music. 

Jurassic 5 – Quality Control (Interscope). I saw this band open for Femi Kuti’s North American debut at the Roxy in New York City in 1999: one of the most unforgettable nights of music in my life. This band was maligned at the time, considered some kind of retro hip-hop Sha Na Na or some bullshit, at the time of Timbaland and Jay-Z, but I loved it. Still do: I’m a sucker for genuine interplay between MCs, which is all but unheard of in this day of one-off collabs. (Quick: try to name one modern rap act with more than two MCs and not named Migos.) Related: Cut Chemist put out a good record a couple of years ago that I only just discovered.


King Cobb Steelie – Mayday (Ryko). One of my favourite bands of the ’90s, for both musical and personal reasons. This was a final bid for glory on Rykodisc, with pop songs and guest vocalists (Michelle McAdorey, Tamara Williamson), before they resurfaced four years later with an indie instrumental album before fading away. Produced by Laika’s Guy Fixsen, Mayday sounds amazing—though definitely dated. There’s something textbook turn-of-the-millenium in the drum machine sounds here, as heard on the title track; it’s a post-triphop groove that was ubiquitous for a while with the KCRW crowd and then vanished. There’s an entirely unnecessary scratch solo (by DJ Serious! see above) on “Below the Stars”—remember when rock bands felt they needed turntable solos to be somehow relevant? “Home” is still a great single, with a synth bass squiggle that now reminds me of Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat. Weirder moments like “Fast Money Blessing” have aged very well. This is an album ripe for rediscovery—or at least half of it. This band’s discography would be served well by a collection of greatest non-hits. And there have been rumours of a reunion.


Paul Macleod – Close and Play (independent). This one hurts. Paul Macleod was one of the most brilliant performers and songwriters I’ve ever known; he was a staple in the Kitchener-Waterloo and Guelph area, where he was never short a weekly gig. He performed often with Danny Michel, collaborated with the Rheostatics, and joined the Skydiggers as a sideman (at a time when he was writing better songs than they were). He always seemed poised for great things, which never materialized—a common story for hometown heroes everywhere, but I truly believe Macleod was exceptional. This was his first of only three proper studio records that I’m aware of (2007’s Bright Eyes Fade came out on Busted Flat; I’ve never heard 2014’s Gauge). He made it with Hawksley Workman, and it’s full of the same energy Workman brought to his own material as well as early records by John Southworth, Serena Ryder and Tegan and Sara. The songs are perfect Beatle-y pop. Macleod was an amazing singer. But no one heard this record unless you bought it from Macleod at a show. That’s not as big a tragedy as the fact that the Macleod I knew is no longer with us. I only knew him as an acquaintance and have very fond memories; I didn’t know his demons, which eventually took hold of him, hurt someone else, and landed him in court shortly before he died by suicide in 2016. It’s an awful story. I wish I could listen to his music now without thinking about it. I can’t. Hopefully someone can.

Listen to “Cruelty.” I mean, holy shit, what a song. 

 

Or “Giants.” 




New Pornographers – Mass Romantic (Mint). Kind of shocked this didn’t make my top 10, though it was released in November so maybe hadn’t fully sunk in. I was definitely in love with “Letter From an Occupant,” because who wasn’t? I wrote about this anniversary here.

Outkast – Stankonia (BMG). 2000 might have been the last year I felt remotely connected to mainstream hip-hop. I do love Outkast because they’re genre-busters, game-changers and genuinely odd. I also can’t love Outkast because I’m too much of a white Toronto prude. But this album is bloated: way too long, populated by skits, and dragged down by tracks like “We Luv Deez Hoez.” And as much as “B.O.B.” still slams (musically), the chorus is downright gross: “bombs over Baghdad” is not a great metaphor in any context, least of all as a pre-9/11 sentiment for not finishing a fight or not following through on a challenge.

Radiohead – Kid A (EMI). I don’t know that I ever loved this album—but not for the reasons people hated it. I like it just fine. If anything, it wasn’t weird enough. The fact that it was remotely divisive speaks to the intense conservatism of the time. (I’m debating whether I even care enough to read Steven Hyden’s new book about it.) I probably put it on my list so that I wouldn’t seem out of touch. Total posturing on my part.

The Salteens – Short Term Memories (Endearing). This was when I still had great affection for peppy indie pop populated by handclaps, trumpets and bop-ba-da’s. Come to think of it, I was in a band not unlike this one at the time. This Vancouver band had really catchy songs, heavily influenced by Sloan, and a really strong rhythm section. This is a really good record, better than most of its peers other than the New Pornographers. Not one I’d listen to today, though given the chance I’d probably join a band like this in a heartbeat.


Amon Tobin – Supermodified (Ninja Tune). Pretty sure I was a complete poser when I put this on my year-end list. Some of it is great and totally holds up—sexy, even; some of it sounds like a dial-up connection.


Travis – The Man Who (Sony). Woof. Really? I’m glad working for Brave New Waves saved me from becoming a guy who likes Travis.



Records that should be on this list that I got into shortly afterwards:

Belle and Sebastian – Fold Your Hands…

Destroyer – Thief

Be Good Tanyas – Blue Horse

Gonzales – Uber Alles

White Stripes – De Stijl


And Royal City’s At Rush Hour the Cars, made by some good friends of mine, and which I might have left off the list for nepotistic reasons.

Albums I should have appreciated more at the time, relevant to current research:

Dears – End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story

Godspeed You Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists...

Peaches – The Teaches Of 

 
Album all my friends loved and I still don’t get: 

Blonde Redhead – Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons.

January 2017 reviews

Highly recommended this month: Japandroids, The Xx

As always, these reviews originally ran in the Waterloo Record.

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please find a way to directly support your favourite artists financially.

Austra – Future Politics (Paper Bag)

Austra’s Katie Stelmanis must be an optimist to title both a song and an album Future Politics in 2017. If she is, she keeps her sunniness to herself in the actual music. Unlike the buoyant disco that illuminated the second Austra album, 2013’s Olympia, Future Politics doesn’t sound like a fun night out in the least—not that it has to be, of course, but it’s even more dour than the goth electro of the 2011 debut. Stelmanis wrote this material living in Montreal and Mexico, away from her Toronto home, and that isolation informs the more sombre mood this time out. The twin sisters from Tasseomancy are no longer in the band; their harmonies are missed; likewise, her talented band sounds underutilized here. (Jan. 19)

Stream: “Future Politics,” “Utopia,” “I Love You More Than You Love Yourself”

Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life (Arts and Crafts)

“If they try to slow you down, tell them all to go to hell.” So went the chorus to “The House That Heaven Built,” one of many anthems on 2012’s Celebration Rock that vaulted Japandroids from poorly kept secret of the Vancouver underground into beloved rock’n’roll saviours. And yet they did slow down: guitarist Brian King moved to Toronto; drummer Dave Prowse stayed in Vancouver; they took two years writing and recording this, their third album and first in 4½ years.

Japandroids are a guitar-drums duo, but there’s nothing simple about them. Wild Heart is a huge leap forward in terms of songwriting, performance and production. Whereas before they could be accused of simply extending a lineage that runs from Bruce Springsteen to the Constantines, here they really come into their own. These are much more than just drunken Saturday night odes to youth, romance, rock’n’roll and the open road (not necessarily in that order) that used to be Japandroids’ stock and trade. That still exists here: “North South East West” is exactly the kind of fist-pumping catharsis one expects from this band; expect this one to be a key part of the soundtrack of 2017. But they’re both in their mid-thirties now, and so their signature intensity is being applied to varying tempos and textures, including instrumentation that will be difficult to duplicate onstage as a duo. Wild Heart is very much an album as opposed to a live document.

Slowing down, in more ways than one, has made Japandroids an even better band. Great rock bands are getting fewer and fewer. This one is fighting the good fight. (Jan. 26)

I interviewed the band for this Maclean’s article.

Stream: “North South East West,” “Near to the Wild Heart of Life,” “In a Body Like a Grave”

Abigail Lapell – Hide Nor Hair (Coax)

Abigail Lapell is the latest signee to Rae Spoon’s Coax label, which has emerged as a vital documenter of communities often marginalized in the Canadian music scene, whether it’s trans advocate Spoon themselves, klezmer firebrand Geoff Berner, or the cross-cultural electronic grooves of LAL. Where Lapell fits in there isn’t exactly clear: there’s nothing revolutionary, sonically or lyrically, on her second full-length album of haunting, gorgeous modern folk music. Co-produced by Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre), he and Lapell enhance her solo guitar skills with the most subtle yet effective textures. (Jan. 26)

Stream: “Fur and Feathers,” “Night Bird and Morning Bird,” “Murder City”

Sleater-Kinney – Live in Paris (Sub Pop)

A friend mused recently: does anyone make live albums anymore, and if so, why? YouTube clips abound; it’s certainly no mystery what a band sounds like live, on any given tour, on any given night. They don’t even function as documents of greatest hits anymore; anyone can assemble one of those with a streaming playlist (or have an algorithm do it for them). (I expand on this idea in this Maclean’s article.)

The only real reason to release a live album is if you’re at a stage in your career where you’ve reinvented and/or improved on studio versions of these songs. By that token, there’s no reason for this live album from Sleater-Kinney’s 2015 tour. The Oregon trio are hands-down one of the most ferocious rock bands you’ll ever see, and their comeback album No Cities to Love—after an eight-year hiatus—showed that they sounded even better than ever. A third of this live album are songs from that record, sounding note-perfect; another third is from 2005’s The Woods—again, sounding almost identical to the studio versions. Which is to say, they kick serious ass: every slashing power chord of Carrie Brownstein’s, every cathartic caterwaul of Corin Tucker’s, every monstrous drum fill from Janet Weiss (I could listen to her play the opening to “Entertain” on loop all day). If for some bizarre reason you ever thought Sleater-Kinney was a studio band, this album lays that notion to waste.

The songs from earlier records are, naturally, more alive and fiery than when Sleater-Kinney was a younger band, than when they had yet to play those songs hundreds of times. The geekiest of fans will delight in hearing them—in one of their earliest songs, “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone”—change a reference to Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, to honour his creative partner and now-ex-wife Kim Gordon. But this is not a greatest hits record; it’s a set list, and a good one at that. In that sense, it’s a fair introduction to the band for newbies—and a decisive rebuttal to anyone who ever doubted the depths of this trio’s powers. (Jan. 26)

Stream: “A New Wave,” “Entertain,” “Dig Me Out”

The Xx – I See You (XL)

It’s almost like The Xx never went away. In the 4½ years since their second album was released, their sound has been ubiquitous in commercials, in Drake songs (he sampled them on the title track to 2013’s Take Care), and in straight-up rip-offs (the Chainsmokers’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” admittedly inspired by The Xx’s guitar sound, was one of the biggest radio hits of 2016). The name of that 2012 second Xx album? Coexist. How prophetic.

And now: I See You. On it, the British trio accept the fact that they’re now playing for a much bigger audience, as opposed to being shy 20-year-old goth kids making incredibly sparse music that married the mood of dour new wave classics with pop songs and modern electronics. The success of beatsmith Jamie Xx’s 2015 solo album informs many of the textures heard here underneath (and, often, above) Romy Madley Croft’s signature guitar sound and Oliver Sim’s R&B-inspired bass lines. Whereas earlier Xx songs stuck out on radio playlists, the subtle EDM textures heard here puts them even more squarely in the mainstream.

Yet the most beautiful thing about The Xx is that they haven’t in the least changed what it is about them that set them apart from everyone else in the first place. Though tempos are occasionally upbeat, there are no sunny pop songs. Sim and Croft, childhood friends who are perhaps the only two gay people (of different genders) to duet in the same band, will always sound like outsiders, like childhood friends since kindergarten still singing for each other in the shelter of their bedroom (though Sim, in particular, has improved greatly as a vocalist; Croft didn’t have to). “I will be brave for you / do the things I’m afraid to do,” sings Croft, in one of the album’s most affecting moments. Another is when Sim, a recently reformed alcoholic, sing, “I go out, but every beat is a violent noise.”

In almost every way, The Xx have proven how to maintain one’s artistic integrity in the face of massive success. No wonder everyone wants to rip them off. (Jan. 12)

I wrote about The Xx for Maclean’s here.

Stream: “Dangerous,” “Brave For You,” “On Hold”

2105: Year of the transgressor

1. Buffy Sainte-Marie – Power in the Blood (True North). There are plenty of zeitgeist reasons why this tops my list. A successful comeback from a 74-year-old woman who we all once watched breastfeed on Sesame Street! With an album that opens with a re-recording of the first track on her first album, which was released 51 fucking years ago! With songs that directly reference Idle No More! With guitars that sound as loud as Sleater-Kinney! Finally, she won the Polaris Music Prize, beating out Drake—and a bunch of others we didn’t expected to win anyway!

But let’s not confuse the news with the music itself. There are plenty of reasons why Buffy is boss. It’s her first record in seven years, and only her third since 1992, so she’s obviously had a lot of time to let these songs ripen, as she would say, to what we hear here. She also rewrote and borrowed from songs dating back to the mid-’70s, from a series of (excellent) albums released during her commercial low. She hired Michael Phillip Wojewoda (Rheostatics) as one of three producers and to mix the entire project; as a result, Blood has serious muscle that her recordings have lacked for decades. Yes, there are guitars louder than any of her contemporaries, but there is also a wistful country song and a campfire song reimagined as electronic trance and a song that sounds like a Broadway musical’s closing number and a Vocoder reminiscent of both Neil Young’s Trans and T-Pain and … wait, is that a UB40 cover?

The songs are great, many of them earworms. The production and performances are fantastic. But what puts this on top is the fact that I still get chills listening to certain tracks; some get me teary on a regular basis. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one. Power in the Blood lifts her up where she belongs—at the top.

Original review here.

My interview here.

2. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love (Sub Pop). If you’re going to reunite, you’d better go big or go home. Which is why the ladies in Sleater-Kinney came howling back from a hiatus with a roar of a record that made me wonder whether I’d actually enjoyed any rock music at all in recent years. Pretty sure I didn’t—at least not compared to this.

Original review here.

My interview with Corin Tucker here.

My article on “The return of the riot grrrl” for Maclean’s is here.

3. Mbongwana Star – From Kinshasa (Nonesuch). When a young Congolese guitarist steeped in psychedelia gets together with an Irish electronic producer and two older Kinshasa men who toured the world with a band comprised of formerly homeless polio victims who made their own instruments (Staff Benda Bilili), you get a thoroughly trippy and modern mashup that transcends all boundaries. Original review here.

4. Whitehorse – Leave No Bridge Unburned (Six Shooter). Two veteran performers join forces and put out a better album than either one ever did as a solo artist—that would be Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland’s debut as Whitehorse, one of the best records of 2012. This time out their producer (Gus Van Go) told them to go home and write better songs—and they did. Spaghetti Western guitar, Pixies riffs, Bo Diddley beats, country swing and rockabilly rave-ups all served with the best male-female harmonies this side of Low. Original review here.

5. Vince Staples – Summertime ’06 (Def Jam). Vince Staples—no hyperbolic handle here, just his birth name—is a 21-year-old MC from Long Beach rapping about thug life. That he does so better than most is not that unusual. But it’s the music behind him, produced largely by Kanye West acolyte No I.D., that puts Staples’s debut album miles ahead of every other hip-hop album this year—yes, even Kendrick’s, which for all its ambition, doesn’t exactly leave room to breathe. Some beats recall the best work No I.D. has done for Kanye, Pusha T and Common; some are to-be-expected sonic signposts of 2015. But others draw heavily on Latin rhythms, post-punk dub reggae, goth new wave, late-night Isaac Hayes soul, New Orleans funk, Aphex Twin—literally anything goes here. But Staples and his crew keep it sparse, never suffocating his flow, never feeling the need to do everything all the time. Original review here.

6. Terra Lightfoot – Every Time My Mind Runs Wild (Sonic Unyon). Well, that was quite the year, wasn’t it? In December 2014, practically no one knew the name of this Hamilton singer-songwriter. Released in April, this album got her into all the right summer festivals, where she slayed audiences and peers at every turn. She was invited to play Massey Hall and with the Hamilton Orchestra and she sang with the reunited Rheostatics. It’s all because of her powerhouse performance on this record, where her unique, androgynous voice shines and soars, where she made a point of letting everyone know that she plays all the guitars, where she asserts herself as one of the only people in 60 years of rock’n’roll who know how to kick ass in waltz time, where every barnburner rocker is matched by a devastatingly beautiful ballad like “NFB.” It was a very good year. Original review here.

7. Alabama Shakes – Sound and Color (ATO). Sound and Color opens with the sound of—wait a minute, what? Vibraphone and upright bass. Then, over a slow, syncopated beat and a string section, Howard slips into a sonic rapture, emulating Prince and Al Green, singing about synaesthesia and sounding splendorous while doing so. It’s slow-burn, psychedelic soul, and it’s your first clue that this is not a garage rock record. Brittany Howard’s voice explores masculine depths and what sounds like soaring falsetto—many of the slow jams here owe some debts to fellow Southern soul space cadets D’Angelo and Erykah Badu. She snarls like the Strokes on “The Greatest”; she slinks like Norah Jones on “This Feeling.” The music keeps you guessing: just when you think it’s going to be an R&B record, some Southern rock takes over. Just when you think it’s going to be ballad-heavy, a rave-up comes next. On the penultimate track “Gemini,” things get downright spacey and trippy for more than six minutes, like a Funkadelic deep cut, culminating in a fuzzed-out, droning guitar solo. Full review here.

8. Michelle McAdorey – Into Her Future (DWR). One of the most underrated, nearly forgotten bands of the late ’80s and early ’90s is Crash Vegas, who put out three equally excellent and drastically different records during their time together. While guitarist Colin Cripps went on to play with Kathleen Edwards and Blue Rodeo (and now fronts the ace instrumental group C+C), singer Michelle McAdorey put out two understated, experimental folk records about 15 years ago and then retreated to raise a family. This comeback reunites her with Crash Vegas co-founder Greg Keelor; not surprisingly, it sounds similar to the 1989 debut, Red Earth, steeped in British folk rock and psychedelic country. “This life goes by like a fast wind,” she sings. Which is why it’s such a joy to have such a talent as hers blow back into our lives.

My interview with McAdorey is here.

9. Geoff Berner – We Are Going to Bremen to Be Musicians (Coax). In which the veteran Vancouver accordionist and purveyor of radical Jewish culture pulls out all the stops, with his most acerbic satire to date (and that’s saying something) matched with a killer band and Socalled’s production, all of which dares us to laugh in spite at the horrors and hypocrisies of the world. While most musicians are content to couch their politics in vagaries, Berner goes directly for the jugular—and invites us all to drink the wine. Full review here.

10.  Miguel – Wildheart (Sony). In a year when the cocaine-fuelled revenge porn of The Weeknd was considered sexy and suitable for prime time, thank God we have Miguel. Wildheart is sensual and sumptuous, collapsing the last 50 years of R&B, from the psychedelic period to Prince to Frank Ocean, into California dreams and sunbaked sonic textures. Original review is here.

11. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly (Universal). “Loving you is complicated.” Sure is, when you make an album this ambitious, this eclectic, an album filled with urgency and political bile and insight and—oh my God, it sounds like the guy is in such a hurry to stuff everything in there that he’s going to have a breakdown. Oh wait! He actually is having a breakdown! To Pimp a Butterfly is an incredible work of art and a zeitgeist record of 2015, but it can also be suffocating and unnecessarily dense; even the most buoyant tracks here are often joyless (exception: “King Kunta”). I’m only saying all of this because every other year-end list where this appears at the top will tell you How Important It Is—which is absolutely true, for reasons both lyrical and musical. But it’s not a record I’m ever likely to throw on for pleasure. My original review here. Highly recommended further reading (not by me, by Justin Charity) about the “must-read” album of 2015 is here.

12. Nozinja – Nozinja Lodge (Warp). This is the most exuberant beat music I’ve ever heard in my life, but I wouldn’t begin to know how to dance to it; these BPMs will break your legs, guaranteed. Instead, I’ll just stand here and shiver and quake and vibrate and let those tumbling drums and percussive synth sounds wash over me, the strange shangaan synthesis of South African township jive and ’90s jungle and modern EDM adding up to a glorious cacophony. Original review here.

13. Scott Merritt – Of (independent). If this was merely a perfectly arranged and produced album performed primarily on the much-maligned ukulele, it would be one thing to hear Merritt’s magical hands extract delicacy and intricacy out of those four strings. But when a songwriter of Merritt’s calibre saves up more than a decade of sketches and brings them to fruition, we’re obviously witness to the best the man has to offer. For a record with no percussion and comprised largely of languid tempos, the rhythms are pulsing and surprisingly strong on a such a quiet record, with the Cowboy Junkies’ secret weapon, Jeff Bird, playing judicious upright bass. There’s a song on here, “Meteor,” that I first heard Merritt play live more than 10 years ago—and I instantly remembered the melody and lyric vividly. Surely, I thought, I know this song from a previous album? Nope. That song stuck with me, with only one impression, for more than a decade. Always a good sign.

14. Tunde Olaniran – Transgressor (Quite Scientific). Didn’t see this one coming: is the best debut album of 2015 from a genre-hopping Nigerian-American from Flint, Michigan, who grew up in Germany and the U.K., and works at Planned Parenthood by day while making music that’s an amalgam of Missy Elliott, Santigold, Danny Brown and Rick James? Oh, and he also designs the costumes for his live dancers, for whom he does the choreography. He’s an outstanding singer—as good or better than The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye or Gnarls Barkley’s Cee-Lo Green, the two singers he resembles the most—and a decent rapper. But it’s his production that sets him far apart, infusing what is ostensibly modern R&B with New Orleans bounce and Peter Gabriel-ish art rock and Kanye-level avant-garde soundscapes and gospel backing vocals and huge pop hooks with the odd banjo or kalimba thrown in for good measure. Full review here.

 

15. Torres – Sprinter (Arts and Crafts). ’90s grunge revivalism sucks. Who is going to redeem the real legacy of Nirvana, of the Breeders, of PJ Harvey, of the weirdoes who whispered and howled and had eerie pop melodies under crushing electric guitars? 24-year-old Mackenzie Scott performs and records as Torres, and her latest record is produced by Rob Ellis of PJ Harvey’s band. The music is monstrous, and the lyrics detail turmoil to match. “There’s freedom to and freedom from,” she sings, “freedom to run from everyone,” and much of Sprinter is about running away from sour situations and grappling with unresolved emotional baggage. Full review here.

16. Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit (Sony). “Put me on a pedestal, I’ll only disappoint you!” The best chorus lyric of 2015 put a self-deprecating sentiment on top of a crushing grunge anthem, and could easily set this Australian singer up to be a novelty one-hit wonder. Her deadpan vocals and seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics suggest a slacker who’d be happy never to stray far from her Melbourne home—but there’s far too much craft here for that to be true, from her clever couplets to the fact that her songs owe as much to Lucinda Williams and Lou Reed as they do to Kurt Cobain or Pavement. Often after a pedestal-ascending debut album like this, disappointment is all that’s left—but that seems highly unlikely in this case. Original review here.

17. Majical Cloudz – Are You Alone? (Arts and Crafts). “What’s the point of a sad, sad song?” asks Devon Welsh, the man with the odd inclination to call his musical project Majical Cloudz. The point, young man, is as old as the blues itself—and though Welsh’s music owes more to Brian Eno and Blade Runner than it does Robert Johnson or Howlin’ Wolf. Yet Welsh’s incantations are as ghostly and haunting as any blues, though his lyrics are very 21^st-century confessional, a mix of maudlin moroseness and emo earnestness, populated by “red wine and sleeping pills … cheap sex and sad films.” Welsh has a natural magnetism, a voice strong enough to sell the material—which consistently conjures feelings of a 3 a.m. soul-baring session with some stranger with whom you just bonded at a bar. The vocals are uncomfortably bare against a sparse sonic backdrop of droning organs, swooshing synths and arrhythmic electronic beats. In his videos, Welsh likes to stare directly into the camera for three straight minutes; his record achieves the same effect aurally. Full review here.

18. Afiara Quartet and Skratch Bastid – Spin Cycle (Centrediscs). String quartets have an inherently nimble nature that all small ensembles do, which makes their work easier to isolate and pull apart—especially if you’re doing so with their complete participation. DJ Skratch Bastid will take an eight-bar riff and loop it, then take the violin line and make it sing in new ways with pitch shifting, while bringing in sampled drums and keyboards and anything else he likes. Obviously the remixes are the real draw here, but the original works—by Dinuk Wijeratne, Laura Silberberg, Rob Teehan and Kevin Lau—stand entirely on their own merit, and not just as remix fodder. It’s there that Afiara shows off their subtle and dynamic side, where they prove that they’re not just brash players who secretly want to be in a rock band. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Full review here.

19. Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge). Poison Season sounds like Dan Bejar’s greatest hits, reinterpreted by his fiery band of the last five years: trumpeter JP Carter (Dan Mangan), saxophonist Joseph Shabason (Diana), Black Mountain drummer Josh Wells and long-time collaborators Nick Bragg (guitar), David Carswell (guitar), Ted Bois (keys) and John Collins (bass). But it is hardly just a journey to the past: it’s about Bejar—an artist who muses openly, on and off his records, about the frivolity of the music business and insecurity about his own muse—being completely comfortable in his own skin, finessing the finest points from his discography and pushing toward the future without changing the core of what has made him so compelling for the last 20 years. Full review here.

20. Lianne La Havas – Blood (Warner). It’s hard to top Miguel in the sexy record category, but this woman comes close. A class act, from start to finish, who shares space with Shirley Bassey, Mary J. Blige and Janelle Monae. Original review here.

Runners-up, in alphabetical order:

Couer de Pirate – Roses (Dare to Care). Beatrice Martin’s peppy, glossy pop is not entirely my cup of meat, but I feel like there’s an objective excellence here, in songcraft, production and performance. Much has been made about the fact that more than half these songs are in English, not her native French, but I’d be surprised if these weren’t hits in any language. Full review here.

Deradoorian – The Expanding Flower Planet (Anticon). Balkan harmonies, Eastern melodies and psychedelic folk arrangements all shape this remarkable debut  by this ex-Dirty Projector. Original review here.

Keita Juma – Chaos Theory (independent). Chaos Theory is a hip-hop haunted house, Timbaland on acid, the MC spitting verse in a fun-house mirror. Keita Juma’s beats generally bounce all over the place; he’s a wildly inventive producer who often changes direction entirely in the middle of a track—check the avant-garde “YReWeOnThisBeach,” where the relaxed, charismatic MC finds himself adrift in the Canadian wilderness, searching for inspiration. Wherever he finds it, Keita Juma manages to create truly haunting, hallucinogenic hip-hop, the likes of which is all too rare in this country or anywhere else. Full review here.

Jean Leloup – À Paradis City (Grosse Boîte). A Paradis City is such a refreshing, welcoming record: Leloup, a huge rock star in his native Quebec, writes anthemic songs that never succumb to bombast or weighty instrumentation—even when he calls in the choirs or string sections. There are quiet folk songs here, midtempo rockers, and a triumphant title track that shows, among other things, how much Sam Roberts learned from Leloup. Full review here.

Mac McCaughan – Non-Believers (Merge). Words you will never hear in the Durham, N.C., offices of Merge Records: “Oh crap, the boss wants us to put out another one of his own records.” The Superchunk frontman made his name playing incredibly loud, overdriven punk guitar and singing slightly higher than his range would allow: here, he lets his lower range luxuriate, takes guitar inspiration from ’80s Brits like Johnny Marr and Robert Smith, and his overall aesthetic from New Zealand like The Clean, the Tall Dwarfs and the 3Ds. This is the best record he’s made in years. Full review here.

Tami Nielsen – Dynamite! (Outside). Nielsen, a Canadian expat who’s built a career in New Zealand, is a throwback; everything on this, her first Canadian release, is steeped in ’50s rockabilly and Nashville, and she’s got it down pat: the bare-bones production, the ace band, and a showstopper of a voice that could fill any room without a microphone. Her lyrics might be well-worn tropes—songs about a heart the size of Texas and lipstick on your collar—but the melodies, arrangements, and especially her Patsy Cline-esque vocals are all fantastic. Full review here.

Siskiyou – Nervous (Constellation). Sure sounds nervous. Anxious, even. Worried. And yet determined to plough through whatever weird situation we all find ourselves in, surrounded by spooky soundscapes on this, the third album by Vancouver’s Siskiyou. Fronted by former Great Lake Swimmers drummer Colin Huebert (and featuring that band’s string player, Erik Arnesen), Siskiyou maintains a tension throughout Nervous, regardless of tempo or arrangement, major key or minor. Opening track “Deserter” begins with a haunting children’s choir, leading into a bass line borrowed from The Cure’s “Fascination Street” before Huebert’s hushed vocals begin the verses. The tune gets more animated as it proceeds, with the choir singing off-beat shots, Colin Stetson’s baritone sax taking the solo, and ending with a ghostly coda with just Huebert and electric guitar. Full review here.

Kamasi Washington – The Epic (Brainfeeder). The bandleader for Kendrick Lamar’s jazz excursions blows everyone away with this triple album featuring his eight-piece band, a 32-piece orchestra, a 20-person choir and a variety of styles that showcase not only his skills but his songwriting. The Epic, indeed. Full review here.

Tony Wilson 6tet – A Day’s Life (Drip Audio). Some of Canada’s finest improve players assemble for this suite of songs by this Vancouver guitarist: 2015 MVP JP Carter (Destroyer, Siskiyou, Dan Mangan), Tanya Tagaq sideman Jesse Zubot, cellist Peggy Lee, Skye Brooks on drums and Russell Sholberg on bass. The album is meant as a portrait of their hometown’s troubled Downtown Eastside, and the delicate dance of life that plays out there. So we get plaintive, melodic moments, bursts of noise and chaos, and dips into traditional jazz and country, with each of these masters complementing each other perfectly. Original review here.

Young Guv – Ripe 4 Luv (Slumberland). Not what you might expect from a guitarist in Fucked Up: these eight summery pop songs, most sung in a falsetto and with Teenage Fanclub harmonies, sound like they belong on some 1982 AM-radio mix tape with Prince, Rick Springfield, Adam Ant and Lindsey Buckingham. Things take a slightly weirder turn on closing track Wrong Crowd, with its meandering saxophone and someone mumbling in French over a pseudo-Sade groove. Full review here.

Album that would likely top this list if I was 25 years old: Titus Andronicus – The Most Lamentable Tragedy (Merge). Reviewed here.

Album that would likely be on this list but that I’ve purposely avoided until I have some down time to actually absorb it, as well as see her in concert next week: Joanna Newsom – Divers (Drag City).

5 albums of 2014 that I didn’t discover and/or fully appreciate until 2015, and subsequently played to death:

Lydia Ainsworth – Right From Real (Arbutus). Reviewed here.

Salomé Leclerc – 27 fois l’aurore (Audiogram). Reviewed here.

Tre Mission – Stigmata (Ninja Tune). Reviewed here.

Jennifer Castle – Pink City (Idée Fixe). Reviewed here and here.

Pierre Kwenders - Le Dernier empereur bantou (Bonsound). Reviewed here.

2015 alphabetical playlist of tracks not featured above:

Belle and Sebastian – “Nobody’s Empire”

Boogat feat. Pierre Kwenders – “Londres”

Bully – “I Remember”

Alessia Cara – “Here”

Car Seat Headrest – “Times to Die”

Drake and/or Erykah Badu – “Hotline Bling”

The Elwins – “So Down Low”

Evening Hymns – “If I Were a Portal”

FFS – “Johnny Delusional”

John Grant – “Disappointing”

Grimes – “Flesh Without Blood”

Ibeyi – “River”

Andy Kim – “Why Can’t I”

Low – “The Innocents”

Katie Moore – “Talked All Night” (not available, but here's "Leaving" instead)

Peaches – “Close Up”

Petite Noir – “Chess”

Shamir – “Demon”


The Weather Station - "Way It Is, Way It Could Be"

The Weeknd – “Can’t Feel My Face”