music musings

2009 marks the fifth edition of the Hottest Bands in Canada poll, and like each of the four that came before it, the results were incredibly close. The first eight bands on the list were all only separated by a couple of votes, and I really had no sense of who was going to win up until I counted the very last ballot.

That probably says all you need to know about this past year in Canadian music. Lots of bands had some really exceptional years, with no one band completely dominating.

Anyway, before I reveal the results, a few quick notes on the methodology. About a month ago, I e-mailed several dozen of the country's top music writers, journalists and bloggers, inviting them to take part in the poll. All that I asked was a ranked top 10 list of the acts (be they bands or solo artists) that the writer felt had an exceptionally good 2009. As ballots came in, they were scored as follows: five points for making a list, coupled with points for their positioning on the ballot (that is, ten points for first, nine points for second, eight for third and so on). Then I just added it all up by total number of points, and took the top 33 bands from the list. (And it's top 33 because of a quirk in the first year's voting, when I decided, for some reason, that everyone's first choice should be on the list. Needless to say, the panel was a lot smaller then.)

The voters were, in no particular order:

Chart Editor-in-Chief Aaron Brophy, Jim from Quick Before It Melts, Brock and Matthew Wells from Trendwhore, Singing Lamb's Melody Lau, Ottawa music photographer Ming Wu, Ryan Bresee from CKCU's Whatever's Cool With Me, Dance Music for Old People's Prianka, Ottawa Xpress photo editor Ben Welland, François Levesque and Zaid Khan of Apartment 613, Justin Beach of NXEW, Exclaim! contributors Del Cowie, Chris Whibbs and Scott Gray, Bob Battams from It's Not The Band I Hate It's Their Fans, Coke Machine Glow's Calum Marsh, Ren Tomovcik from CKCU's RENegade, Mechanical Forest Sound, Garry Tsaconas of Manowar Photos, Colin Medley, Midnight Poutine's Jeremy Morris, occasional ihm contributor Kelly Bergeron, Mykael from Painting Over Silence, Rod from Bootlog, Marc from Bridging The Atlantic, Rob Schmidt of London, ON, Burgeoning Metropolis, For The Records' Michael Ligon, The Indie Files' Amanda Ash, Frank from Chromewaves, Radio Free Canuckistan's Michael Barclay, Alex of The Mad Ones, Allen of AWMusic, Zoilus (aka the Globe and Mail's Carl Wilson), Montreal freelancer Brendan Murphy and Spinner.ca music editor Joshua Ostroff.

That's thirty-four voters in total, which makes it the biggest panel ever!

All bands who received voters by didn't make the cut will be posted on Monday.

And with that, here are the Hottest Bands in Canada...

(Ed. note: I'm off on my honeymoon this week, so I've asked a couple of blog-friends to fill in while I'm away. Today's post is brought to you by Jim of Quick Before It Melts. Many thanks to him!

When Matthew first asked me about writing a guest post for him, my inclination was to write a very lovely piece about why Ottawa is my favourite city in all of Canada. I thought what better chance to show the capital some love then through its best music blog? In the last few years I’ve spent many a day walking down the shops of Bank Street, avoiding falling into the gaping holes in the middle of the road while trying to pick my way over to Compact Music, and many a night walking through the Byward Market, soaking up the atmosphere and refreshing liquids of varying alcoholic percentages. I’m a huge supporter of The Acorn, Amos The Transparent, and my latest crushes The Balconies...what better topic for me than Ottawa?

Then I thought about it a bit more, and came to the conclusion that the last thing I would want to read in a guest post is someone telling me how great the place I live is (even though the place I live isn’t that great -- at least not as great as Ottawa). At worst, I would come across as if I was trying to blow smoke up your ass (which is no small feat, let me tell you), and at best...I can’t actually think of an "at best” in this situation, so I guess we’ll just let the worst-case
scenario stand. So, for the record, I am not going to spend this post telling the good good people of Ottawa just how much I love your freakin' city, and if given the choice to move anywhere in the country, I would end up in a quaint and quirky townhouse somewhere in the Glebe. No, instead I thought I would turn your attention my way, and introduce you to some of the Niagara region's finest musical exports.

Overshadowed by the behemoth that is Toronto, overpowered by the stench that is Hamilton, and overlooked as a serious potential location for terrorist attacks (all true) the Niagara Peninsula is truly becoming a hotbed for Canadian music. Think St. Catharines’ Alexisonfire, and by extension City And Colour, or everybody’s favourite sons of Welland, Attack In Black, and you get an idea of what years of economic depression and a lack of cultural stimulus will do to impressionable, angry young men. While post-punk may not be my particular genre of choice when it comes to kicking back and relaxing, I give credit where credit is due: these artists have fostered a growing scene in Niagara that is seeing many talented young bands emerge, some heavier and harder than others, but all looking to make a name for themselves and their tiny corner of the country.

Running more to my personal tastes are some of the great artists on St. Catharines label Yummy Recordings. The man behind Yummy is local hero Joe Lapinski (download Lapinski's "Gold In Them Hills"). As a solo artist Joe has released a pair of excellent folk-pop albums, the most recent being 2007’s Sundries. Lapinski also plays with many of the bands on Yummy’s roster, including Palooka, The Regards (download "Horse Turns Blue"), Dave Clark’s Woodshed Orchestra (with former Rheostatics drummer Dave Clark), and Bronx Cheerleader (download "Hollywood Ending"). Lapinksi regularly gigs in and around St. Catharines, and has been instrumental in many of the region’s cultural festivals, including In the Soil: Niagara's Homegrown Arts Festival held this past Spring.

We may not have any big bronze statues of Lester B. Pearson sitting around, but we do have a pretty important river and canal system in our midst, too; and yeah, you may have the Parliament Buildings, but we’ve got Niagara freakin’ Falls, man. Though Ottawa’s music scene may be gaining recognition and attention nationwide and beyond, I know that someday soon, the Niagara region is going to be getting some of that love and attention, too. You heard it here first, friends, from one Ontario blogger to another Ontario blogger’s readers: Niagara. It’s yours to discover, you know?

Unlike last year, when I had my Polaris Prize ballot settled a few days in advance, this year's ballot has been considerably more difficult to pick. Even setting aside albums that didn't meet the seven songs/thirty minutes requirement (confidential to KHW: would it have killed you to add a measly extra minute to your EP?), I still listened to a few hundred eligible albums over the last year. While it was easy to dismiss some albums (sometimes surprisingly so), the shorter my list got the harder it became to take bands off. Some albums stuck with me a lot more than I would've anticipated, while others may have made the list had I had more time with them.

Nonetheless, I eventually whittled it down to ten, from which I was allowed to vote for five. First, the five that didn't quite make it (but will probably get votes should any or all of my top five not make it through to the Long List):

Bruce Peninsula, A Mountain is a Mouth: Even though their publicist's recent jury lobbying led off with a quote from me, I have to say that this album didn't wear quite as well as I thought it would. It's still an incredibly moving thing to experience when it gets you in the right mood, though.

Human Highway, Moody Motorcycle: Definitely one of the biggest growers of last year. I liked it when it first came out, but the longer I had it the more I found that it had wormed its way into my brain. (And as a sidenote, it'd be great to see Moody Motorcycle keep Secret City's Polaris streak alive!)

Rah Rah, Going Steady: This may have been the hardest album to cut. After all, as much as I'd like to think the internet has made Canada a tiny bit smaller, the odds of a band from Regina getting much in the way of support from the more populated regions of the country seem fairly low, particularly when you consider that their own label hasn't even bothered to announce the album is out yet, six to eight months after the fact. Nonetheless, it really is a wonderful album, and if the band were from, say, Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, I've no doubt that they'd be one of the hottest things going right now.

Handsome Furs, Face Control: If this one doesn't make the Long List, not only will I be stunned, I'll also be kicking myself for not voting for it. It's a great album (far better than the one released by Dan Boeckner's other band), and it really establishes Handsome Furs as a collaborative effort, rather than just an excuse for Boeckner and his wife, Lexi Perry, to get to tour together. Perry asserts herself a lot more than she did last time out, which in turn makes her bandmate husband do likewise. It's a phenomenal achievement, and it would make an extremely deserving Polaris winner...so I just hope that I'm not killing their chances by voting for someone else on this ballot.

Jill Barber, Chances: Much like the Handsome Furs record, I'm really hoping Chances makes it through to the Long List, because it's an outstanding album that deserves every bit of positive attention it gets. Barber may have undergone a sonic makeover between this album and the one before it (going from twangy, plaintive folk to more upbeat, '40s-influenced jazz-pop), but it was most definitely a change for the better.

And now, my ballot...


5. Coeur de Pirate, Coeur de Pirate: To a very large extent, this vote is as much my girlfriend's as it is mine. After all, for the last eight months or so, every few days I've been hearing this album blasting from her stereo, each time followed by an exclamation of "She's so good!", to the point that I'd swear it was a Pavlovian response -- so much so that I really can't imagine making a list of the best Canadian albums of the past twelve months that doesn't include Coeur de Pirate. Some (that is, my girlfriend) insist she's like a francophone version of Basia Bulat, but that doesn't do Beatrice Martin justice. The songs here are substantially less reliant on vocal talent (though Martin has plenty of that), and more reliant on amazing, unforgettably melodies that transcend the language barrier without any difficulty.

Download "Corbeau"


4. Giant Hand, Coming Home: I hadn't planned on including this album on my Polaris ballot at all, since up until a few weeks ago I'd been under the impression that Giant Hand wasn't releasing his full-length debut until later this month (thereby making it a shoo-in for my 2010 vote). Then he went and quietly released Coming Home on iTunes just before the May 31st deadline, and I had to frantically re-order my ballot. Without going into too much detail on why the album is so excellent -- there'll be plenty of time for that when I feature it next week -- I'll just say that all the promise Kirk Ramsay showed on his debut EP has been fulfilled here, and then some.

Download "The Villagers Hate This Villager"


3. Charles Spearin, The Happiness Project: Had I been told a few months ago that one of my favourite albums of 2009 would be an experimental concept album that demonstrated the musicality of people's speech, I never would've believed it. But here we are, a couple of months after Broken Social Scene/Do Make Say Think sideman Charles Spearin released an album devoted entirely to that purpose, and it's one of my most listened to albums of the year. Even if the subject matter isn't always as happy as the album's title would have you believe, it's still an uplifting and inspiring experience.

Download "Marisa"


2. The Unsettlers, The Unsettlers: I probably would've forgotten to include The Unsettlers' self-titled debut had it not been for a rather timely CBC Radio 2 concert, coupled, a few weeks later, with the album coming up as I was shuffling through songs. Once those two things reminded me of this album's existence, I instantly remembered how much I enjoyed it the first time I heard it, which in turn led me to fall in love with it all over again. B.W. Brandes has a wonderfully whiskey-soaked voice, and the way the band sounds like a bunch of crazed gypsy -punks who've run away to the circus only adds to the appeal. The album may not have gotten the attention it deserved, but that doesn't make it any less of an accomplishment.

Download "Jerome"


1. Black Hat Brigade, Fathers: Do I really need to explain? I was extremely disappointed when I couldn't include last year's self-titled debut EP on my ballot, so I was extremely happy when I found out that Black Hat Brigade's latest was eligible. I was even more happy, of course, to find out that Fathers saw the band taking a giant step forward, making an album that eclipsed that other band to which everyone is always comparing them. I've no doubt that this will be one of my favourite albums of the year, so making it my top pick for the Polaris Prize was a no-brainer.

Download "Vera"

As you can see if you move your eyes just a little to the right, there's now a "Donate" button right at the top of the page. It's not something I want to be putting up there, and I'm not even sure it'll be much help, but unfortunately, due to recent events, I have little choice.

Here's the problem: yesterday I was contacted by SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. It turns out that anytime a concert happens in which at least one member of any of the bands is also a member of SOCAN, the person promoting the show is legally required to pay fees to the Society to cover copyright royalties associated with the live performance of SOCAN-member songs. It doesn't matter if the band in question has already been paid directly for their performance, under Canadian copyright law SOCAN is legally entitled to either 3% of the door or $35, whichever is greater.

This isn't something I'd ever done, since I was once told, years ago, that if a show doesn't make any profit, then it doesn't matter. (Evidently the person who told me that didn't know the difference between "gross" and "net".) And, operating under that principle -- coupled with a firm belief that since no one's at a show to see me, I don't really deserve a cut of the door -- I've always made an effort to pay out any money received at the door to the bands who actually performed and got people out. In cases where there wasn't enough from the door to cover those costs, I've dipped into my own pocket to pay -- after all, as I said, concert-goers are there to see the band, not whoever organized it, so there's really not much reason for me to benefit financially from the hard work of the musicians on stage.Because of this, of the approximately 70 shows I've promoted over the last three years, there's only a handful from which I can say I actually made any kind of money.

Obviously, that's no defence. Being ignorant of a law doesn't make that law any less valid, and, as such, whatever the total comes to I'll pay, whether I can afford it or not.

Unfortunately, given that the royalty fees are going to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2,000, this is something that falls a whole lot closer to "not afford". It's a lot amount of money, particularly when you factor in finances that are already stretched thin by a wedding that's less than three months away.

As such, if anyone out there is willing to help cover the fees, you'll earn my eternal gratitude, plus some kind of public i(heart)music recognition. It doesn't matter if it's $1 or $5 or $50 or $1,000 (though if it's the latter, I'll probably come to wherever you live and clean your house out of gratitude), every little bit will help. I'm hoping to have some sort of show to help raise a bit of the money (with non-SOCAN artists, of course), but in the meantime, if anyone reading this can spare anything, I'll be incredibly grateful. I've generally avoided having ads on here, since I figure that a bit of hosting costs are a fair trade-off for getting so much great free music and having the opportunity to give exposure to so many wonderful artists, but this is a much larger expense than my bank account can withstand. I know that people generally aren't too fond of paying for music, and they certainly aren't inclined to give money to random strangers on the internet, but if you've at all liked what i(heart)music has done over the last few years, all I can ask for is your help.

(And if you want to get in touch about this, feel free to e-mail me.)

Culture Reject, Culture Reject (White Whale)

WHO

Idiosyncratic one-man pop-freak-folk band Michael O'Connell.

DISCOGRAPHY
Culture Reject (White Whale, 2008)

IN A NUTSHELL

Culture Reject's self-titled debut is indescribably wonderful.

THE STORY

I'm not sure what Michael O'Connell's intent was when he sat down in his room to make a record with a music store's worth of instruments (and a few friends to help him out), but whatever it was, as Culture Reject he's somehow managed the unthinkable: he made an album that could accurately be described as whimsical, without making an album that makes you feel like it's bludgeoning you over the head with its "whimsy".

I realize that even with this qualifier, a lot of people are going to be a little wary of approaching anything that could be described in this way. And I'm probably not going to help matters much when I say that there are at least a few tracks on Culture Reject's self-titled debut that could also be described as sounding like jazzy improvisation.

So that's two strikes right off the bat for a lot of people. But I completely understand that: after all, if I were to go into this album expecting "whimsical improv jazz"...well, to be honest, I probably wouldn't be going into it at all.

But if I hadn't, then I wouldn't have discovered one of the most surprisingly great albums of the year-to-date. O'Connell knows not only how to make it sound like he's having fun playing music, but also how to make everyone listening to him share in that fun. Whether it's the freak-folkie feel of "Inside The Cinema", or the lightly strummed "Overflow", or the breezy pop of "Oh Remain", it's impossible to listen to this album and not come away with a smile on your face. And anyone who listens to "Fireflies Are Fading" and doesn't start feeling like strutting a little bit isn't someone that I'd ever want to meet.

I'm not quite sure who or what the best comparison for Culture Reject might be. The best thing I've come up with so far is that O'Connell and co. sound sort of like the opening track on Torngat's most recent album, when the instruments all kick in and it sounds like you've entered some magical new world. Just saying this sounds like that, only with vocals, doesn't quite capture how completely and utterly lovely it all is. So I'll just say this: if you want an album that could soundtrack every aspect of your summer, from the lounging to the lazing and all points in between, then this is the album for you. Then again, if you want something that's the antithesis of that, then I'm sure this could fit that mood, too. Heck, I'm just going to say that if you're in the mood for something fresh and new and innovative, that doesn't sound like anyone else, then Culture Reject is definitely the band for you.

Want to win Culture Reject's self-titled debut? Thanks to White Whale, i(heart)music has a copy to give away. To enter to win, just e-mail me your name and address, and I'll pick a winner randomly!

Today seems like the right time to talk about The United Steel Workers of Montreal. After all, apart from their name, there's the fact that their latest album, Kerosene and Coal, features a song called "Union Man" -- and really, when (apart from maybe May Day) are unions ever more relevant than on Labour Day?

On top of that, as their NXNE set from this past June shows, they play a brand of alt-country that's so gritty, they make it sound authentic. Both on record and in concert, co-lead singers Gern F. and Felicity Harmer sing as if they not only gargle whiskey, they eat the bottles, too, while the music is lively enough that it sounds like it should've been recorded straight from some rundown honkytonk. It's pretty good stuff, and it's well worth a few listens.

1. Can't Stop Now
2. Sad Lovers Lament
3. Meaner Than You
4. Union Man
5. Out In The Cold
6. Dirty Tattoo
7. Emile Bertrand
8. Small Town Banks
9. Tracie Dean
10. Place St. Henri

Enjoy!

Handsome Furs, Plague Park (Sub Pop)

WHO

The electronic-tinged side project of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner (along with his fiancée, Alexei Perry).

DISCOGRAPHY

Plague Park (Sub Pop, 2007)

IN A NUTSHELL

Plague Park is one of the year's best albums, and it sets an incredibly high standard for the rest of the Wolf Parade-related releases to come this year.

THE STORY

I have no doubt that Handsome Furs came about because Dan Boeckner wanted a creative outlet other than Wolf Parade (and the fact he was able to collaborate with his fiancée, Alexei Perry, was probably a factor as well), but listening to Plague Park, you almost get the feeling there's a bit of one-upsmanship involved in its creation. After all, much like Spencer Krug showed with Sunset Rubdown that, free of a band, his solo work was vastly different to what he contributed Apologies To The Queen Mary, Boeckner shows here that his songwriting isn't constrained by one particular sound, either.

Where the one-upsmanship comes into play is that Handsome Furs are a lot better than Sunset Rubdown.

Admittedly, you could argue that the two were simply going for different things, so you can't really compare the end products. While that is arguably true, there's still no denying that Plague Park shows off an artist whose ideas have been much more fully developed than anything that was on Shut Up I Am Dreaming. Handsome Furs may just be Boeckner and his guitar with Perry and her drum machine, but the two of them have no difficulty turning such basic instrumentation into expansive soundscapes. Both "Handsome Furs Hate This City" (which is available on the duo's Myspace) and "What We Had" build from simple beats to soaring, crashing finales, while "Hearts Of Iron" is positively anthemic, albeit in a strangely ominous kind of way.

In fact, the album is really defined by this contrast between Boeckner's guitar and vocals, and what's rumbling around beneath them. While most of the focus on Handsome Furs has been on the Wolf Parade connection, Perry shows repeatedly that she's an integral part of the duo. Without her beats, it's not hard to imagine that Boeckner -- with his punk background and his Cobain-esque vocals -- may have come up with a completely different album on his own. In this respect, in any Handsome Furs vs. Sunset Rubdown battle, the former has a secret weapon/unfair advantage.

Of course, they have an even bigger advantage in the form of Plague Park. It's an outstanding, must-have album, and it's further proof that Wolf Parade (and all the various spin-offs from that group) may be, without hyperbole, one of the most talented bands ever.

It's not easy finding your way into Radio 3's archives (I'm still not sure how I did it), but once you're in there, if you take the time to look around you can find some really amazing stuff. Case in point: the session below from Royal City.

Though the band's break-up means that they're pretty much forgotten now, a few years ago they they seemed to be on the verge of really big things. They had a pair of albums to their credit, and they'd just signed to Rough Trade. Their next album, Little Heart's Ease, was good, but unfortunate it didn't receive much attention on its release, frontman/principal songwriter Aaron Riches got married, went back to school, and seemed to lose all interest in making music, and that, anticlimactically, was that. All they left behind were three outstanding albums, the unfulfilled guarantee of a rarities compilation...and the fact they helped launch the careers of The Constantines (whose albums to date were all released on Three Gut), Feist (who played guitar in one of the band's incarnations) and Sufjan Stevens (who played several shows with the whole Three Gut collective early on in his career).

On a personal note, they're also half-responsible for one of my favourite shows ever -- a Royal City/Constantines double-bill in Ottawa in the fall of 2002, which saw the bands playing beer-drenched sets to about a dozen people at 2 in the morning over Thanksgiving weekend. I also want to note that I saw them a few months later in Montreal, co-headlining a show with Broken Social Scene. I mention the latter because, while trying to figure out exactly what the show was, I found out that there was a third band on the bill, who my friend and I skipped just because we didn't want to get there early. Let's just say that four years after the fact, having just learned who it was about ten minutes before writing this sentence, I'm bitter I skipped that opener.

1. Bad Luck
2. Don't You
3. Burning Touch
4. Can't You Hear Me Calling
5. You Are Not My Enemy
6. Daughters of Jerusalem

Enjoy!

Anyone in Ottawa should head over to The Rainbow tomorrow night to check out a pair of White Whale bands, Octoberman and Poorfolk (along with locals Design of Cities). I wrote up Poorfolk back in August, so there's not any need to say any more about them now, but Octoberman's new EP Laguardia definitely merits a mention.

While it's not the kind of album that will launch the band (or the man, since Octoberman basically equals Marc Morrissette) into superstardom beyond the folk community, but it is one that should make him one of Canada's top folkies. Morrissette's voice is nice and crackly, and it perfectly suits the laidback, guy-and-his-guitar vibe of the whole EP (which is best embodied in "Island Time"). Even when he brings in outside talent, when Leah Abramson provides backing vocals on "Laguardia", it works within the context of the album. It's hardly challenging, but it is very nice, and hopefully it will be heard by everyone who likes this kind of music.

It was exactly one year ago today that I started i(heart)music. While this doesn't come anywhere near Chromewaves' recent fourth anniversary, I'm still proud of the fact I've been able to provide updates five days a week for each of the last fifty-two weeks. I've discovered all sorts of new music, and, hopefully, I've been able to expose one or two people to a couple of bands they may not have heard otherwise.

For me, the best part of discovering new bands has been discovering how many exceptional bands there are in Ottawa. While this city has an often-deserved reputation of being a less-than-great place for shows, it's also teeming with a large number of talented musicians, whose work could stand alongside the output of artists from anywhere else in Canada. With that in mind (and buoyed on by From Blown Speakers' survey of the best bands in Vancouver), I decided to ask a few of the people tuned into the city's music scene for their lists of the best bands in Ottawa.

The methodology: As with last year's poll of the hottest bands in Canada, each band received points not only for their positions on each person's list, but also for the number of lists on which they appeared. Thus, someone appearing on two lists stood a much better chance of placing within the top 20 than someone who placed high on just one list.

The panel: Unfortunately, there are only so many options when it comes to soliciting opinions in Ottawa. Given how small and interconnected the scene is, there are a limited number of people to ask, and even fewer when you rule out anyone in a band. Nonetheless, the panel was comprised of the following people: Dial 613, Calum and Jon from Mocking Music, Conrad from Coke Machine Glow (whose recent all-Ottawa podcast has songs from many of the bands contained on this list), Andrew from NatCapRock, Coqi Records head Dean Watson and local poster artist Dave Maat. Also, I should add a note in the name of full disclosure: I'm currently working on booking tours for three of the bands who received votes, but in no way did that affect the results of the voting.

Anyway, on to the list...

There are only a few more days to enter the Amy Millan contest! To enter to win her new album, Honey From The Tombs, all you have to do is e-mail me by Monday! And in case you haven't yet made up your mind whether you're a fan or not, here's another song from the album: "He Brings Out The Whiskey In Me"! Enjoy!

And as a bonus...



It's not quite an Amy Millan solo session. But listening to her work on these two KEXP sessions, you can hear how valuable she is to Stars, even if you can't hear any twang that would predict her solo debut.

First, from 2005:

1. Calendar Girl
2. On Peak Hill
3. Reunion
4. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

And from 2004:

1. Sleep Tonight
2. The Big Fight
3. The Soft Revolution

Enjoy!

This piece, accusing CocoRosie of racism for attending a "Kill Whitey" party in Brooklyn, is ridiculous. It takes a quote from one of the Casady sisters about the party ("it's a safe environment to be freaky"), ignores the context in which she said it ("(Casady) tried the conventional hip-hop clubs but found the men 'really hard-core.'"), and decides that it means the duo must be racist.

There argument is absurd on a few levels. The first is that CocoRosie are racist. I'll admit, the first time I heard La Maison de Mon Rêve's "Jesus Loves Me", I was shocked when they sang the "N" word. The only people who can get away with using that word are black rappers, and the Casady sisters are a pair of white girls who recorded their album in their Parisian apartment. It did trouble me a little...which is why it was one of the first questions I asked them when I interviewed them back in January for Splendid. As Sierra Casady said at the time, ""We've had very few -- but some -- occasions, where people have gotten confused by the message, and wonder if we were being offensive, and maybe if we were ourselves racist, which was really shocking."

Admittedly, she doesn't come right out and say that neither her nor her sister are racist. But it didn't seem like she felt it was a point that had to be made. In fact, Bianca Casady went on to say that the song was a commentary on modern religion: "There's such a large population of African-Americans for whom Christianity is a huge thing, but Christianity still remains to be exclusive, and is very segregated, and it's very intricately connected to an old-fashioned mentality that's still very racist. To me, it's a huge contradiction with Christ's message."

It's probably also worth mentioning that they proceeded the interview by going on stage with French rapper Spleen (yes, he's black), who also appears on their most recent album, Noah's Ark. If they have a problem with hip-hop or a person's skin colour, they've gone about an odd way of showing it.

Equally absurd is the assertion that hip-hop clubs aren't misogynistic environments. It's not ridiculous to suggest that hip-hop clubs are an extension of hip-hop itself. And, while there are certainly some acts who project female-friendly vibes, the vast majority of mainstream hip-hop artists don't. While "Kill Whitey" parties are certainly an example of tasteless kitsch/stupid irony amongst the idle rich Williamsburg hipsters, it's certainly not racist for a woman -- regardless of skin colour -- to suggest that she wants to dance to hip-hop in a less aggresive, less misogynistic environment.

Surefire, Chuck Klosterman, The Killers and the closing of Montreal's best music store after the jump...

Even though I've known it was coming for months, the news that Splendid has officially announced they'll be ceasing publication at the end of this year is still kind of sad. After all, it was Splendid that got me interested in non-mainstream music in the first place, and Splendid where I learned that even the crummiest-looking CDRs can sometimes contain truly great, worthwhile music.

Even more importantly, however, was the fact that it literally looked at every genre of music imaginable, and always provide readers with the most fair, honest, and balanced reviews possible. While others may have been obsessed with hipster cred and coolness, Splendid was always designed to be a site for people who truly loved music and didn't believe in limiting themselves to one particular style or genre. The reviewing policy may have been a headache for anyone who wrote for them (a fact to which I could attest, having written for the site for over four years), to say nothing of the logistical nightmares it posed to the site's founder and Editor-in-Chief, George Zahora -- but, ultimately, I think anyone who wrote for or read the site for any length of time would agree that it was always an amazing resource for people who wanted to find out about bands that weren't getting mentioned everywhere else. Obviously, the increasing presence of MP3 blogs has made such sites a relative anachronism (see Delusions of Adequacy, Tang Monkey, or Fake Jazz for further proof), but there's no denying the fact that it was sites like Splendid that really served as the basis for the so-called indie music revolution.



With that in mind, my five favourite memories from writing for Splendid:

5) Covering the inaugural Pop Montreal
To date, it's the only city-wide music festival I've been to, and I enjoyed every moment of it, from seeing Julie Doiron in her first performance after giving birth (she even had baby pictures to share!), to being blown away by Washington Social Club's performance on the closing night.

4) The free CDs
A box of CDs once a month, every month for 4 years. My floor may be lined with some awful CDs, but they're free, and there's nothing better than free CDs.

3) Seeing The Strokes pre-Is This It
Quite simply, the best show I've ever seen. Their performance was just 35 minutes long, but it was mind-blowingly good (and the hand-written setlist I got from manager Ryan Gentles is something I still treasure).

2) The hatemail
I've been called "a fuckin' hater" by a semi-literate fan of Insane Clown Posse side project ABK. I was the target of a letter-writing campaign by overzealous Garbage fans. I was e-berated by a rapper named Kamal, who said I should love his album because "I have knocked the lining out of a lot of Pussy's (sic)". But nothing will ever be as gratifying as having an angry artist (sadly, I can't remember who) tell me to kill myself or join al-Qaeda. It may be perverse, but I laughed for fifteen minutes about it.


1) Discovering new bands I may not have otherwise heard
In no order: the aforementioned Washington Social Club. The Streets. Jenn Lindsay. Rogue Wave. Keepers of the Carpet. Hot Snakes. Fuck Buddies. The iOs. Tim Fite. Chad VanGaalen. And so on...

A few days ago, Coolfer lamented the fact that no North Americans consumers support variable pricing at iTunes and other online music stores, and pointed to a story in The Australian as proof that such a scheme would benefit consumers.

The Australian's argument comes down to this: Given that

(a) Initial demand for popular new music is high; and
(b) The greater proportion of an artist's sales come from his/her/their back catalogue;

Labels should therefore (c) charge more for the new songs, then offset those higher prices by increasing the availability and reducing the prices of both the back catalogue and other music that appeals primarily to niche markets. The story cites Amazon -- which makes more than half its money from book titles outside the bestseller list -- as proof the idea would work.

The whole thing sounds great...until you consider all the glaring flaws. Set aside the fact that books and music are two completely different consumer items, and look at the way Amazon sells music: new and popular albums are cheaper, while anything that falls under the category of "niche" or "back catalogue" is generally a lot more expensive.

In fact, this pretty much describes the way the North American music industry operates in their brick-and-mortar stores, too (or at least the way it has for the last fifteen years or so, going back to when I started buying music). New CDs are cheapest, older CDs (excluding the most popular ones, like Nevermind or Blonde On Blonde) are more expensive, and anything that falls into a niche category is usually ridiculously overpriced. It's hard to imagine such business practices would change if Apple and Microsoft open the door to variable pricing -- when you're talking about an industry that sues a 14-year-old, trusting them to stick to their stated intentions doesn't seem like a viable option.

Further, there's the fact that the music industry isn't yet in a position where they can be certain people will stick with them if they raise the prices at online music stores. Despite RIAA's best efforts, there are still plenty of options for anyone who wants to download music illegally, and it seems likely that the extra profits gained increasing prices would be completely negated by the money they'd lose from people who refused to pay the higher prices and simply returned to using illegal filesharing programs.

The music industry is currently in a position similar to where they were a few years ago, when everyone was using Napster -- people are nearly all in one place (in this case, iTunes), and they're comfortable using the service. The major difference, however, is that they're now making money off downloads. If they're successful in pushing through variable pricing, they'll find themselves in the same position as they were immediately after the demise of Napster: potential consumers scattered all over the place, making nowhere near the money they could be.

Coldplay, Beulah, and Islands after the jump...