Tag: Post-Punk Revival

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Albums

Best albums of 2007: The honourable mentions (aka #10 through #6)

Back at the end of 2017, I counted down my favourite albums of the year in a weekly series that culminated with me posting words about my #1 favourite album on the final Friday of the year. In the initial post for that series, I hinted that I might continue to intersperse my favourite tune posts with a few more of these ‘best album’ series over the course of this year. I figured that the first day of February was as good a day as any to start off the first of what I hope will become many such series.

For starters, I’ve travelled back a decade to 2007, a pretty incredible year for indie rock, particular for those bands hailing from Canada. I’d been pretty proud of the music coming out of my home country for the previous couple of years already. My favourite magazine in those days, Under the Radar, had done a special issue focusing on Canadian indie rock in 2005. The Polaris Prize, the Canadian equivalent to Britain’s Mercury Prize, was established in 2006, the inaugural prize won by Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy). And pretty much every Canadian indie band, whether from Montreal, Toronto, or the Vancouver area, was exploding on the scene. So you shouldn’t be too surprised to see that this list will feature a sampling of these talented Canadians.

To sum up, starting from today and continuing over the next five weeks, I will honour the Throwback Thursday theme/meme (#tbt) with a series on my favourite albums from 2007. Enjoy.

#10 The Besnard Lakes “The Besnard Lakes are the dark horse”

I feel like it was the resurrected MuchMusic alternative show, “The Wedge”, that introduced me to The Besnard Lakes in 2007 with the video for “Agent 13” off this, their second record. “The Besnard Lakes are the dark horse” is eight beautiful and dreamily atmospheric arrangements that meander at their own pace and might dissipate into the ether altogether it weren’t all held together with those Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies. This was the album that really put the Montreal-based sextet, led by husband and wife Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, on the map.

Gateway tune: “Devastation”

#9 Okkervil River “The stage names”

Like many other people (in my head, anyways), “The stage names” was my introduction to the Austin, Texas-based indie rock band led by Will Sheff. What initially drew me to the album and keeps me coming back is that it has all the traditional Americana elements and instruments but plays with song structure and lyrics in a very different way. Will Sheff sings with a voice that belongs more in the post-punk era (think Gordon Gano or David Byrne), telling intricate stories in a very literate way, overtop a cacophony of Hammond organs, xylophones, pedal steels, woodblocks, and mandolins.

Gateway tune: “Our life is not a movie or maybe”

#8 Handsome Furs “Plague park”

Handsome Furs was Dan Boeckner’s (also of Wolf Parade, Divine Fits, and Operators) side project that he formed in 2005 with his then wife, Canadian poet Alexei Perry. Named after a park built overtop a mass grave for plague victims in Finland in the 1700s, “Plague Park” was the first of three albums the Montreal-based duo would release before dissolving (and separating) in 2012. Of the three, it is the most guitar heavy but it is characteristic for the heavy bass, raucous synths, and of course, Boeckner’s raw Springsteen-like vocals.

Gateway tune: “Dumb animals”

#7 Cuff The Duke “Sidelines of the city”

For their third record, Oshawa, Ontario’s Cuff The Duke rotated their lineup some and expanded their sound from their alternative country roots to include a bit of blues and psych rock. Wayne Petti, the band’s driving force doesn’t eschew everything that worked for the band in the past, however, staying with Paul Aucoin for the album’s production and writing some quality, quality lyrics. I’m especially fond of Oshawa love letter, “Rossland square”, because the city is incidentally the town where I was also born. But that’s not the only reason I’m fond of the album. Listen to the track below for more firepower.

Gateway tune: “If I live or if I die”

#6 Arcade Fire “Neon bible”

To be perfectly honest, I was disappointed with this album when I first heard it. But how could I not with the insane expectations I found myself heaping upon it after the brilliance of the Montreal-based indie rock collective’s debut album, “Funeral”. Nonetheless, “Neon bible” grew on me over the years. For the sophomore album, the group added Ottawa’s Jeremy Gara on drums and included violinist Sara Neufeld as a full time member. Frontman Win Butler has stated that he had wanted a stripped down sound for the album but the big themes of televangelism and religion begged for equally big instrumentation so the layers and the final sound ended up being immense.

Gateway tune: “No cars go”

For the rest of the albums in this list, check out my Best Albums page here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #12 Arcade Fire “The suburbs”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

Ah yes, Arcade Fire. I’m sure you figured that they might be on this list somewheres, given that 2010 saw them release what is arguably their biggest and most accomplished album to date.

Arcade Fire was originally formed in 2001 when Win Butler was attending school in Montreal with his friend Josh Deu and they met Régine Chassagne. Their debut album, 2004’s “Funeral”, turned the indie rock realm on its head and spearheaded a group of Canadian talent that tuned the world’s ears to this bleak piece of land north of the U.S. It was so great and so promising that nothing the band produced could have realistically followed it up and so their 2007 sophomore effort, “Neon Bible”, disappointed at first but in hindsight, was quite excellent.

Then came “The suburbs”.

Much like all of their long players, it is a sort of concept album. It is lyrically inspired by Win and his brother, Will’s early years growing up in the ‘burbs, but rather than looking at the subject nostalgically, they throw a futuristic, dystopian curveball at it. Musically, Win Butler has reportedly described it as “a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young”, which kind of reminds me as a joke band my friends and I made up back in high school that called themselves a mix of Eric Clapton and Jesus Jones (more on that another time perhaps). What I am guessing Butler is saying and what I am trying to get across with my comparison is that Arcade Fire is boldly mixing sounds that shouldn’t work together and in so doing, managed to carve out a piece of music that is uniquely theirs.

The title track was one of the few songs I heard as a teaser prior to the full album’s release and also one that they performed the second time I saw them live. It was headlining the main stage during the second week of Ottawa Bluesfest in 2010, almost a month before the album’s release. They were a much bigger deal in terms of popularity than the previous time I had seen them as an opening act a few years prior. There was a massive crowd queued up to see them, rather than those curious few who showed up early for U2 and were treated to a raucous performance. But success hadn’t changed their manic live set any and still hasn’t. I’d say they are probably one of the best live shows you will ever see.

Performed live, “The suburbs” is a boisterous, rollicking affair but on the album, track number one is like a stroll through the singer’s childhood neighbourhood. The drums present a lackadaisical gait and pacing that suggests we need to take everything in. The jaunty, ragtime piano is more upbeat than it should be and the strings and other otherworldly synth effects suggest a sinister, malevolent undertone. But Win Butler’s vocals are matter of fact, telling it like it is, pointing out points of interest, recounting childhood stories, and espousing dreams in a world that appears to be without hope. Doesn’t it just leave you breathless?

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2010: #14 Diamond Rings “Wait and see”

<< #15    |    #13 >>

Number 14 on this list marks the third artist, following P.S. I Love You at #30 and Library Voices at #25, that I discovered at the 2011 edition of Ottawa Bluesfest. Like the two others, Diamond Rings, one of the many performing names for John O’Regan, hails from Canada. His set that year was part of his tour supporting his debut album, “Special affections”, and took place early on a Sunday afternoon on the festival’s smallest stage. I had heard the album in advance, which was the only reason I had made such a special effort to be there so early in the day, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the Diamond Rings experience.

I’m also reasonably sure the early, sun-baked crowd weren’t sure what to make of the skinny white dude with bleached blonde hair and a swath of rainbow coloured makeup swiped across his eyes. And the confusion likely increased when he started, using loops, drum machines, programming, and other trickery while strutting and dancing across the stage with his guitar, brimming with all the confidence of a glam rock hero performing in front of a stadium of adoring fans rather than a handful of people scattered around on the hill facing him. His performance was infectious, though, and he had the crowd, which grew substantially, by the end and it turned out to be one of my favourite sets of the year. Two years later, when he returned to the festival in support of his sophomore album, it was also on a Sunday but this time, it was the headlining set on the medium sized stage. And now, he fittingly had a full band backing him, smoke machines, cool lighting, and a bigger, more adoring crowd.

“Wait and see” is the second track from that debut album, which I went out and bought for my vinyl collection early on. It’s a phenomenal track that you really have to listen closely to in order to guess that it’s a one man show. The sensibility is post-punk revival with a touch of darkness and a whole load of glam. The guitars are like chain saws messing with the industrial beat but it’s O’Regan’s silky baritone vocals that raise this track up to the rock heavens. You can hear and almost taste his persona in the song. He’s like a time traveller from the eighties, a forgotten rebel that had fallen asleep behind a stage, waking up almost thirty years later, and decided to wreak havoc on his new reality.

I loved this song and album and even the next one but lost track of O’Regan, and his Diamond Rings persona, after hearing he was touring with OMD in 2013. It seems like I wasn’t the only one because putting his name into google resulted in a handful of articles titled “Whatever happened to…” and one by Exclaim from last year that talked about a newish, yet still mysterious, project that had nothing to do with Diamond Rings called JG Ballad.

It is a bit of an unfortunate and unfinished story, but I feel like Diamond Rings was never really meant to be anything more than an experiment for O’Regan. Whatever he had to prove, though, I’m sure he did… and then some.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2010 list, click here.