Tag: Metric

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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:

  1. “Home for a rest” Spirit Of The West (North Vancouver, British Columbia)
  2. “Archie, marry me” Alvvays (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)
  3. “Stay out” Elliott Brood (Toronto, Ontario)
  4. “Ageless beauty” Stars (Montreal, Quebec)
  5. “Rosy and grey” The Lowest Of The Low (Toronto, Ontario)
  6. “When the night feels my song” Bedouin Soundclash (Kingston, Ontario)
  7. “Don’t haunt this place” The Rural Alberta Advantage (Toronto, Ontario)
  8. “Everything you’ve done wrong” Sloan (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  9. “The safety dance” Men Without Hats (Montreal, Quebec)
  10. “Follow me down” Nap Eyes (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  11. “I go blind” 54-40 (Tsawwassen, British Columbia)
  12. “Mari-Mac” Great Big Sea (St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador)
  13. “Hare tarot lies” No Joy (Montreal, Quebec)
  14. “Red” Treble Charger (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario)
  15. “Weighty ghost” Wintersleep (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
  16. “I’m an adult now” The Pursuit of Happiness (Toronto, Ontario)
  17. “I wanna be in the cavalry” Corb Lund (Taber, Alberta)
  18. “Teenland” The Northern Pikes (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan)
  19. “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)” Arcade Fire (Montreal, Quebec)
  20. “Claire” Rheostatics (Etobicoke, Ontario)
  21. “Still” Great Lake Swimmers (Wainfleet, Ontario)
  22. “Don’t walk away, Eileen” Sam Roberts (Westmount, Quebec)
  23. “Temptation” The Tea Party (Windsor, Ontario)
  24. “Tournament of hearts” The Weakerthans (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
  25. “Lost in the plot” The Dears (Montreal, Quebec)
  26. “All the things I wasn’t” The Grapes of Wrath (Kelowna, British Columbia)
  27. “Infamous” Basia Bulat (Toronto, Ontario)
  28. “Spiritual pollution” Pure (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  29. “Greater than consequence” Amos the Transparent (Ottawa, Ontario)
  30. “Ordinary people” The Box (Montreal, Quebec)
  31. “Memorize the city” The Organ (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  32. “Walking with a ghost” Tegan and Sara (Calgary, Alberta)
  33. “Breathing underwater” Metric (Toronto, Ontario)
  34. “Made for TV” King Apparatus (London, Ontario)
  35. “Use it” The New Pornographers (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  36. “Rossland Square” Cuff The Duke (Oshawa, Ontario)
  37. “Eat my brain” Odds (Vancouver, British Columbia)
  38. “Goodnight goodnight” Hot Hot Heat (Victoria, British Columbia)
  39. “The ghosts that haunt me” Crash Test Dummies (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
  40. “Paper girl” July Talk (Toronto, Ontario)
  41. “Don’t you know” Elephant Stone (Montreal, Quebec)
  42. “Brian Wilson” Barenaked Ladies (Scarborough, Ontario)
  43. “Mother” Tallies (Toronto, Ontario)
  44. “Swing your heartache” Young Galaxy (Montreal, Quebec)
  45. “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.

Categories
Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2023, part four

Getting down to the wire now, heh? Just two more days left of 2023 after today. I think we might just manage it.

I usually do this thing sharing the final part of my ongoing annual playlist on the morning of New Years Eve but I’ve decided to switch it up for 2023. My last post of the year, the last word as it were, will be dedicated instead to my favourite album that the year offered us. It feels fitting now but we’ll see how it feels when it’s all said and done.

And I know I just inferred that the finish line is a welcome sight but honestly, 2023’s been a pretty good year. A marked improvement on the last, which was a huge leap forward on the previous two combined. I can’t really say things are back to normal* but they feel more familiar, if not weirdly surreal. The COVID is still around and the numbers still seem higher than they should be for a pandemic that is ‘over’ but we seem weirdly dismissive of it. Nonetheless, I’ve experienced a lot of post-pandemic firsts this year, like the first time back in the office, first time meeting some of my colleagues in person, first indoor concert, first train ride, first road trip across the border, whew. All of it has been exciting but also saddening for all the experiences that we collectively missed out on.

I don’t really want to talk about everything else that’s been going on in the world because it’s more than just a little crazy, so many deaths and so much damage and so much loss. So I’m just going to get back to the music. These last twenty five songs is a blend of new ones released over the last three months and a few b-sides, songs that had been released earlier on but for some reason, I missed them the first time around or just couldn’t fit them.

If you haven’t already perused them, I invite you to go have a look-see at parts one, two, and three. If you’re already in the know, have a gander at the highlights:

      • Kicking things off right with “Real life” a new song from the raw and frenetic Canadian indie rock trio, The Rural Alberta Advantage
      • Emma Anderson‘s (ex of Lush and Sing-Sing) debut solo album “Pearlies” has lots of great moments that show she hasn’t lost her dream pop sensibilities and “The presence” might be the closest sounding to epic Lush of the bunch
      • As Trans-Canada Highwaymen, Canadian 90s alt-rock royalty, Steven Page, Chris Murphy, Moe Berg, and Craig Northey unleashed an album of 70s Can-rock covers, like this faithful take on The Guess Who’s “”Undun”
      • “Panopticom” is the first track on the first new album of new material by Peter Gabriel in 21 years and shows he’s still incredible at what he does
      • Toronto-based Breeze gifted us 90s alt rock aficionados with an early Christmas present with a new album that includes the wonderful “Ready for love”
      • The dreamy “Amnesia” by M83 is definitely unforgettable
      • “Cicciolina”, from Cumgirl8‘s debut release on 4AD show that raw inventiveness that brought the legendary indie label to sign them

Here is the entire playlist as I’ve created it:

1. “Real life” The Rural Alberta Advantage (from the album The rise & the fall)

2. “Will anybody ever love me?” Sufjan Stevens (from the album Javelin)

3. “Nothing is perfect” Metric (from the album Formentera II)

4. “I want it all” The Drums (from the album Jonny)

5. “Full time job” Squirrel Flower (from the album Tomorrow’s fire)

6. “Is this love” Pip Blom feat. Alex Kapranos (from the album Bobbie)

7. “The presence” Emma Anderson (from the album Pearlies)

8. “Laff it off” Pony Girl (from the album Laff it off)

9. “Undun” Trans-Canada Highwaymen (from the album Explosive hits, vol. 1)

10. “Baby blue” Sundara Karma (from the album Better luck next time)

11. “So many plans” Beirut (from the album Hadsel)

12. “Give me everything” The Polyphonic Spree (from the album Salvage enterprise)

13. “Another life” Spector (from the album Here come the early nights)

14. “Panopticom (Dark-side mix)” Peter Gabriel (from the album I/O)

15. “Ready for love” Breeze (from the album Sour grapes)

16. “Don’t say it’s over” Gaz Coombes (from the album Turn the car around)

17. “Amnesia” M83 (from the album Fantasy)

18. “XIII” Dark Horses (from the album While we were sleeping)

19. “Pontius Pilate’s home movies” The New Pornographers (from the album Continue as a guest)

20. “Pick” Fenne Lily (from the album Big picture)

21. “Everything is sweet” Sophie Ellis-Bextor (from the album Hana)

22. “Now that’s what I call obscene” The Boo Radleys (from the album Eight)

23. “I inside the old year dying” PJ Harvey (from the album I inside the old year dying)

24. “Cicciolina” Cumgirl8 (from the EP Phantasea Pharm)

25. “Coming home” Echo Ladies (from the album Lilies)

Apple initiates can click here to sample the above tracks as a whole playlist.

And as always, wherever you are in the world, I hope you continue to be well. Above all, enjoy the tunes.

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.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #17 Metric “Combat baby”

<< #18    |    #16 >>

As I’ve mentioned previously in these pages*, it was my friend Jez that introduced me to Canadian-based indie rock group, Metric. He loaned me a copy of their debut album, “Old world underground, where are you?”, a CD he had purchased at one their shows, which I promptly ripped to mp3 and listened to quite a bit during my morning walks to work.

Metric must have come to Ottawa a number of times in the early 2000s because it seems to me that Jez saw them multiple times at very tiny clubs. After the first time, he tried to get me to come out for the next one, raving about Metric’s live energy, especially that of frontwoman Emily Haines. He would go on to describe in great detail her peculiar dance, which I’ve since witnessed personally a few times. However, I’ve often wished that I had had the funds to join him for at least one of those early gigs because I think that her almost awkward dance and nervous energy would have translated even better on those intimate stages.

“Old world underground, where are you?” was like a breath of fresh air when it was released, especially for me. The first couple of years of the 2000s were a bit of a rough go musically. I had felt in a bit of a rut after the high of Britpop and was having a hard time getting motivated about new music. Metric’s debut was probably the first album I had heard from the new breed of Canadian indie rock bands that would go on to catch the music world on fire for the next five years or so. I had previously focused most of my attentions on music from the UK, through much of the 90s anyway, so having some favourites from my home country was almost a new thing to me.

“Combat baby” was actually released as a single from the album a whole year after the album’s release and it started to catch a lot of radio play. Before that though, it was just one of many tracks on an album I knew intimately from so many repeats on my MPIO mp3 player. Like many of the tunes, it is a quick hit, short and high energy and though when I think of “Old world underground, where are you?” I remember it as mostly a synth pop album, “Combat baby” is one of the more heavy hitting tracks. It plays almost to the angular post-punk scales, or to the borderline new wavers, definitely some Blondie vibes throughout.

“Said you would never give up easy
Combat baby, come back”

It kicks in with a chugging drum machine beat before the bass line picks up the barbells and starts flexing. The guitars just drive like the wind and you can almost picture Emily Haines strutting her stuff and wagging her head back and forth to get her blond hair flailing. And all the while, she is snarling wistfully about a lost lover, an antagonist, a bustle of excitement that didn’t settle for the status quo, but that might’ve since perhaps gone soft and settled, and she is missing that edge. By the end, though, you get the feels that she is kissing off, that she will be “fighting off the lethargy” and “painting the town black” going forward. Yes indeed.

*Back when one of Metric’s later tracks, “Breathing underwater”, came in at number 15 on my Best tunes of 2012 list.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.