Tag: Amos the Transparent

Playlist: O Canada – 45 indie and alternative Canadian anthems

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date July 1, 2025
No Comments on Playlist: O Canada – 45 indie and alternative Canadian anthems

Happy Canada Day everyone!

This is one of those holidays that I love and have always appreciated but have even more so in recent years. I am blessed to live in a beautiful country and one that is relatively safe and free. And though I haven’t gotten downtown to take in the festivities that our nation’s capital puts on for quite some time, I do try to observe the birthdate of my country in my own way, usually by spending time outside, hiking or biking, tending the bbq, enjoying a brew or two or three, and taking in a closer (to me) fireworks display. The weather forecast is looking a bit rough to start today so I’m not sure yet what we’ll get up to but I plan to enjoy the holiday nonetheless.

I often try to do a post on these pages to observe the return of Canada Day in some way, so I’m actually surprised I haven’t done a playlist yet, something I am remedying this year. And honestly, I slapped this one together pretty quickly and it was really easy to do so because there’s lots of great material to pull from. These 45 songs represent some of my favourite tunes by some of my favourite Canadian artists from the last four or five decades. I start the almost three hours of great tunes with the “alternate” Canadian anthem by North Vancouver’s Spirit of the West and end it with my favourite song by Kingston’s The Tragically Hip, the band that for nearly twenty years was indisputably Canada’s band and its frontman Gord Downey, our poet laureate. In between those two tunes, you’ll find alt rock classics from the 80s and 90s (Grapes of Wrath, 54.40, Sloan, Northern Pikes), as well as a slew of tunes from the Canadian indie rock renaissance from the mid-2000s (Stars, Metric, Dears, Arcade Fire) when the ears from around the world seemed to be turned in our direction, and of course, more recent stuff as well (Alvvays, Elliott Brood, Nap Eyes, Tallies). There are bands and artists here representing almost all of the ten provinces but unfortunately, none from the three territories.

So this is mostly for all of my fellow Canadians out there but like my home country, I would welcome anyone from around the world to come and enjoy our riches. I invite you all to put this playlist on, along with your red and white clothes and maple leaf temporary tattoos, and enjoy the music, whether you’re out barbecuing, enjoying a cold one, out for a swim in your pool, sitting on your porch, out for a hike, camping out, or looking for a parking spot close to a Canada Day celebration somewheres.

Cheers!

For those who don’t use Apple Music, here is the entire playlist, with links to YouTube videos:

“Home for a rest” Spirit Of The West (North Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Archie, marry me” Alvvays (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)
“Stay out” Elliott Brood (Toronto, Ontario)
“Ageless beauty” Stars (Montreal, Quebec)
“Rosy and grey” The Lowest Of The Low (Toronto, Ontario)
“When the night feels my song” Bedouin Soundclash (Kingston, Ontario)
“Don’t haunt this place” The Rural Alberta Advantage (Toronto, Ontario)
“Everything you’ve done wrong” Sloan (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
“The safety dance” Men Without Hats (Montreal, Quebec)
“Follow me down” Nap Eyes (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
“I go blind” 54-40 (Tsawwassen, British Columbia)
“Mari-Mac” Great Big Sea (St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador)
“Hare tarot lies” No Joy (Montreal, Quebec)
“Red” Treble Charger (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario)
“Weighty ghost” Wintersleep (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
“I’m an adult now” The Pursuit of Happiness (Toronto, Ontario)
“I wanna be in the cavalry” Corb Lund (Taber, Alberta)
“Teenland” The Northern Pikes (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
“Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)” Arcade Fire (Montreal, Quebec)
“Claire” Rheostatics (Etobicoke, Ontario)
“Still” Great Lake Swimmers (Wainfleet, Ontario)
“Don’t walk away, Eileen” Sam Roberts (Westmount, Quebec)
“Temptation” The Tea Party (Windsor, Ontario)
“Tournament of hearts” The Weakerthans (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
“Lost in the plot” The Dears (Montreal, Quebec)
“All the things I wasn’t” The Grapes of Wrath (Kelowna, British Columbia)
“Infamous” Basia Bulat (Toronto, Ontario)
“Spiritual pollution” Pure (Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Greater than consequence” Amos the Transparent (Ottawa, Ontario)
“Ordinary people” The Box (Montreal, Quebec)
“Memorize the city” The Organ (Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Walking with a ghost” Tegan and Sara (Calgary, Alberta)
“Breathing underwater” Metric (Toronto, Ontario)
“Made for TV” King Apparatus (London, Ontario)
“Use it” The New Pornographers (Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Rossland Square” Cuff The Duke (Oshawa, Ontario)
“Eat my brain” Odds (Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Goodnight goodnight” Hot Hot Heat (Victoria, British Columbia)
“The ghosts that haunt me” Crash Test Dummies (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
“Paper girl” July Talk (Toronto, Ontario)
“Don’t you know” Elephant Stone (Montreal, Quebec)
“Brian Wilson” Barenaked Ladies (Scarborough, Ontario)
“Mother” Tallies (Toronto, Ontario)
“Swing your heartache” Young Galaxy (Montreal, Quebec)
“Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)” The Tragically Hip (Kingston, Ontario)

And here is the promised link to the Apple Music playlist.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

Tags 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 54.40, Alternative, Alvvays, Amos the Transparent, Apple Music, Arcade Fire, Barenaked Ladies, Basia Bulat, Bedouin Soundclash, Can Con, Canadian, Canadian Rock, Corb Lund, Crash Test Dummies, Cuff The Duke, Elephant Stone, Elliott Brood, Great Big Sea, Great Lake Swimmers, Hot Hot Heat, Indie, July Talk, King Apparatus, Men Without Hats, Metric, Nap Eyes, No Joy, Odds, Playlists, Retro, Rheostatics, Sam Roberts, Sloan, Spirit of the West, Stars, Tallies, Tegan and Sara, The Box, The Dears, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Lowest Of The Low, The New Pornographers, The Northern Pikes, The Organ, The Pursuit of Happiness, The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Tea Party, The Weakerthans, Tragically Hip, Treble Charger, Wintersleep, Young Galaxy

Vinyl

Vinyl love: Amos the Transparent “Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart”

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date July 9, 2023
No Comments on Vinyl love: Amos the Transparent “Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Amos the Transparent
Album Title: Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart
Year released: 2012
Details: Gatefold sleeve, white vinyl

The skinny: I’m already a couple days and a handful of great live performances into this year’s edition of Ottawa Bluesfest – the local music festival that blasts through pretty much every genre of music over the course of a week and half. I’ve been attending this thing on the regular for just over a decade now and one of the great things about it that hasn’t changed much is the organizers’ promotion of local talent. One such band that I discovered at one of the first few times I attended is Amos the Transparent, an indie rock collective led by Jonathan Chandler. I’ve since seen the group a number of times* and bought all of their albums, my favourite of which was their sophomore LP, 2012’s “Goodnight my dear… I’m falling apart.” For those of you too far afield to have heard this album, it is an excellent, big, Canadian indie rock record in the vein of “Funeral” or “Set yourself on fire”, but in addition to the orchestral elements those two albums sport, Amos throws in some traditional folk instrumentation for fun. I picked this original pressing in white vinyl up from the band’s merch table the last time I saw them perform live, back in 2018 at the Ottawa Dragonboat festival, and it’s one I slip on to the turntable with regularity.

Standout track: “Sure as the weather”

*And I will see them one more time this coming Thursday at Bluesfest.

Tags 12", 2010s, 2012, Alternative, Amos the Transparent, Canadian indie, Chamber pop, Coloured vinyl, Indie, Indie rock, Local, White vinyl

Live music galleries

Live music galleries: Amos The Transparent [2018]

Post author By jprobichaud
Post date January 19, 2023
No Comments on Live music galleries: Amos The Transparent [2018]

(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)

Amos The Transparent at Ottawa Dragonboat festival 2018

Artist: Amos The Transparent
When: June 21st, 2018
Where: Ottawa Dragonboat Festival, Mooney Bay Park
Context: In just over a month, local Ottawa indie rockers Amos The Transparent are playing a show at the legendary Neat Cafe out in Burnstown to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their sophomore record, 2012’s “Goodnight My Dear…I’m Falling Apart”. It’s a show I really would have loved to have seen but it just so happens that the show sold out yesterday. Of course, thinking wistfully about missing this show got me reminiscing on the four other times that I did get to experience the six-piece orchestral indie rock outfit, the final of which was just over four years ago (for free) at Ottawa’s Dragonboat festival. They were slotted in at the opening spot for the evening but they played like headliners and had a great time doing so. Ever the crowdpleasers, they made sure to play a representative selection of fan favourites from all four of their records, not at all leaning heavily on the album they had just released. To show my appreciation, I made sure to take the opportunity to stop by the merch tent to pick up this latest album, as well as the aforementioned sophomore record, for my vinyl collection. It’s more than likely that you’ve never heard of this band so I recommend you remedy this wrong posthaste.
Point of reference song: “I’m going to make you cry”