toques not included, eh

2010-03-20T23:01:00.000-04:00

taking a break of unknown duration from the online world. if you need to get me, i’ll still be on email or phone. i fully expect that you’ll all break the internet good and proper in my absence.

2009-12-21T18:53:00.004-05:00

since i started doing these end-of-year music wraps, i've noticed that it's becoming increasingly difficult to whittle my singles list to anything remotely reasonable. this year, i started with a list that was close to 40. 40 singles! compare that to last year when my top album list didn't even break double digits. commentary on the industry? on the way we consume music? both? sure, why not. between work and non-work, my head's always filled up with something and albums just seem too difficult. singles, though? singles are easy to love.

so, here are the songs that i loved the most this year, presented as usual in alphabetical order:

the dirty canuck's top singles of 2009

1. Animal Collective, “My Girls”
i’ll be honest – i still haven’t listened to all of Merriweather Post Pavilion. with so much written about it, most of it praiseworthy, i was afraid that i’d lose the actual album in the cacophony of what i was being told to hear. so i left MPP behind and didn’t really think much about Animal Collective. but sometime in June, i realized that i’d downloaded this song from a music blog and it’d only been played once. and i thought “you know, it’s been six months; maybe you can try again.” so i did. i’m not going to write about this song. about the music or the lyrics or the way they come together. about the emotional punch it lands. i don’t want to fill your head with ideas about what you should be hearing. give it a listen for yourself.

2. Bat For Lashes, "Daniel"
right before i was to leave London for New York, i heard this song in a coffee shop and all i could think was “holy christ, is that ever good”. the girl at the counter didn’t know the name of the song, but parts of it stuck in my head. fast forward to the end of the summer when i was moving to Toronto. while backing up my computer, i came across this song, another that i’d downloaded but never bothered to play. i played it and lo, it was that song that i’d heard in that coffee shop in London. months later, my reaction was exactly the same: "holy christ, is that ever good". orchestral, cinematic, mystical stuff in the vein of Stevie Nicks or Kate Bush. i still haven't had time to get to the full length, but i do cue up this song at least once every few days. stuck in your head for months kind of music. a rare thing these days, but in this case, very, very well done.

3. The Cliks, “Dirty King”
from the opening riff to Lucas’ half-growl, half-snarl, to that snappy drum and baseline rhythm, there’s nothing about this song that says “hey, maybe you’ll consider maybe going out with me, you know, once ... in a group”. this is a song that kicks down the door, puts its boots on your coffee table, undoes its belt, and puts out its hand waiting for the beer you’re about to fetch (if you know what’s good for you). a little bit Cramps psychobilly, a little bit surf rock, and a to-die-for bridge, there’s nothing about this song that i don’t love. if you’ve been looking for some balls-to-the-wall rawk to fill out that mixtape of yours, stop your search. this is the song you’ve been trying to find.

4. Cobra Starship (feat. Leighton Meester), “Good Girls Go Bad”
when i read that Blair Waldorf was going to guest on a single by a band i'd never heard of before, i shrugged. there's a long line of tv actors who leverage their popularity into a disposable top 40 single, including one of her costars. true to form, this song is all formulaic fun: synths, vocodors, beat structure, inane/sexually irresponsible lyrics. for a few weeks this summer, it was everywhere: in the cafeteria, in the drug store … on my iPod? dammit, how did that happen? and why am i humming out loud about "my five best friends" before i have the good sense to stop myself? i realize that in the past, i've had throwaway top 40 songs on this list, but there's always been something sort of musically interesting or redeeming about them. i have no idea why "Good Girls Go Bad" is on this list other than the fact that i just couldn't get it out of my head.

5. Cut Off Your Hands, "Turn Cold"
this year, the gf and i finally got around to going to SXSW and on the Friday, as we wandered amongst the unwashed hipsters seeking out free Texas BBQ, we heard the faint strains of the loveliest jangle pop i'd heard in a good long while. the source? none other than New Zealand's Cut Off Your Hands. while their sound treads on familiar territory, mining the dance-punk, new wave stuff that i listened to as a teenager, they certainly do it well enough to be worth a listen. on this track, i'm not sure if it's the hooks or the vocals or the drive-ahead drumming, but i often find myself listening to this song two or three times in a row (at least). do they have enough in the tank to turn out albums of this stuff? not sure. but if you love UK influenced guitar pop, then don't skip this song.

6. Dirty Projectors, “Stillness is the Move”
the biggest obstacle to including Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca on my end-of-year album list is, without a doubt, the vocal acrobatics. yeah, it’s a modern R&B record for white kids in Brooklyn, but i don’t like the oversinging that happens on most modern R&B to begin with. that said, the vocals on this track do not bother me one bit. they fit with the sparse and careful instrumentation instead of distracting from it. Solange’s dynamite cover probably deserves its own entry, but suffice to say that it had me reaching for the original so that i could do back-to-backs in a loop. i think, though, that part of the trick’s in the lyrics: i can totally imagine a girl singing this to herself in her apartment or in the shower in the morning, contemplating where she’s been, where she’s going, whether she’ll actually get that job as a waitress in a diner. then, the acrobatics that normally would convey artifice just seem to resonate as an honest variation on themes of longing and joy-from-sorrow and movement, which, i suppose are pillars of good R&B, modern or not.

7. Dirty Projectors and David Byrne, "Knotty Pine"
i liked it in the first two seconds. no, seriously. the guitar and drum were all i needed to reel me in. i have absolutely no idea what these people are singing about, by the way. photographs making sounds. nailed together or tied together. or pasted or glued. whatever. the point is this: man, is this ever a beauty of a tune. it just kind of bounces and floats along on a steady drumbeat and minimal pianowork, a pleasant and somehow familiar little ditty, punched through with a solo that doesn't seem at all out of place. it's not really about anything, i don't think. but it's catchy as fuck. and i never skip it when it comes up in the shuffle. and, you know, sometimes i find myself singing along (shut up). that's gotta count for something.

8. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, "Home"
hearing this song was a bit confusing. it sounded like a lot of those country & western records my parents used to play on Sunday afternoons that are now collecting dust in their basement. so how did this C&W folk gem end up on my iPod? no clue. i also don't know anything about this band or whether i'd ever like another song by them. but i do like this song. a whole lot. from the opening whistle to the casual sing-story back-and-forth between the two leads to that lovely chorus to about a dozen other places where i find myself humming along, this song never fails to put a smile on my face. nothing about this song sounds like 2009 but you know what? i'm perfectly okay with that.

9. Girls, “Hellhole Ratrace”
by now, gentle reader, you’ve probably consumed enough pop culture to become well acquainted with the Rule of Three. that is, whether setting up a joke or obstacles for a character or a catch-phrase, if you can fit whatever you’re trying to convey into three items, it’s much more powerful to the audience. “Hellhole Ratracer” takes the Rule of Three to its logical extension: Girls essentially sing the song three times. same chords, same words, same measured and honest delivery. i say “essentially” because each time through isn’t actually the same. that third time, all the feedback and fullness and fuzz that’d hovered in the background somehow falls into place with words you now know by heart in such a wonderful way you can’t help but wonder how it took all three times around the block for you to fall so completely in love with this song.

10. Handsome Furs, “Radio Kaliningrad”
i don’t know much about Handsome Furs other than it’s the solo project of one of the two leads in Wolf Parade. i do know that the first time i heard this song, i was surprised by how much i liked it. like, instantaneously could not get enough of it. why did it seem so familiar? was it that electro intro? the vocal delivery? the big guitar riff? those perfectly placed handclaps? sometime on the sixth or seventh listen, the whole thing started to sound like it was one part “Dancing in the Dark” and one part an Owen Pallett song. never in my wildest dreams did i think that someone would successfully merge the spirits behind Springsteen and chamber-pop violin music, but i think that’s what they’ve done here and boy, does it ever work well.

11. Japandroids, “Young Hearts Spark Fire”
as has been the case many times over the last decade, it was actually the gf who first turned me on to this band. back in July, when we went to the Siren Fest at Coney Island, i was more excited at the prospect of seeing Frightened Rabbit for free, but i have to say that these two Canadian boys were something of a revelation. guitar and drumset rock that shambles furiously from hook to hook, and the double-vocal scream-sing chorus of the year (“we used to dream, now we worry about dying”), made all the more vivid as we took in a summertime tradition at a summer institution, surrounded by young people who smelled of suntan lotion and the boardwalk. i haven’t yet gotten around to listening to their full-length (a task for 2010, to be sure), but if it’s as instantly likeable as this track was, seems i'm in for a treat.

12. Julian Casablancas, “11th Dimension”
this song bleeds the ‘80s: synths, guitarwork, drum machines. if it wasn’t for Casablanca’s characteristically bored delivery and lines about having “a mind full of blanks” and “never been so good at shaking hands” tying it all together, you’d be hard pressed to see how this is from the same throughline that gave us Is This It?. i mean, maybe if i looked harder, i’d see how this grew from that in less than 10 years. but this song is just too much fun for me to care much about the evolution of the sound. Strokes-camp stuff hasn’t sounded this effortless in a good long while, so please, direct me away from the analytic booth and towards the dancefloor, stat.

13. The National, "So Far Around The Bend"
trust me, i didn't expect The National to be on here this year either, but their contribution to the Dark Is The Night compilation is just too good to ignore. at first blush, you have to wonder if this is actually The National. the music is warm and upbeat. all those pianos and flutes and strings and clarinets and that sing-along-chorus about never leaving New York. it's almost ... happy? but no, it's not. listen again and you'll hear Berninger’s usual melancholic lyrics about getting "high through an apple" and wanting "to cry but you can't when you're laughing". a wonderfully, beautifully moving 3 minutes and 45 seconds from a band that continues to impress. bonus points for the Pavement shout-out.

14. Neon Indian, "Deadbeat Summer"
another song downloaded at some point in the year and ignored for far too long. months later, i'm still not entirely clear on the lyrics but that hardly matters since the music tells the whole story. it’s about that summer when the thought of playing outside all day first seemed more like a chore than a joy. or the summer you and your brother spent at your grandparents’ place with the weird furniture and no kids in the neighbourhood because your house was being sold. or the one when your friends all got office jobs and you somehow got stuck at home working retail. it's tanned forearms and the constant whirrrr of lawnmowers in the background and the stickysweet smell of orange popsicles clinging to your upper lip. a deadbeat summer.

15. Phoenix, "1901"
the gf has long been a fan of this band, for very good reason. i’m still not sure how these guys manage to cram so many musical influences into a little over 3 minutes. lesser bands would end up with a messy, bloated track, somehow these guys get it all in there and still manage to keep things sharp and light. that guitarline! those keyboards! the drums! the cymbal crashes! the stop-start delivery by the lead singer! by the time we get to the "falling! falling! falling!" it’s pretty much a guarantee that i’ll be flailing around like an idiot.

16. Pictureplane, "Goth Star"
the first time you listen to this song, you might be tempted to make a blanket comparison to, say, Girl Talk, since this track relies heavily on a sample of a popular and familiar song from the ‘80s (Fleetwood Mac's "Seven Wonders"). but where the typical Girl Talk track could have upwards of 25 samples, "Goth Star" just has the one, chopped up, fuzzed out, pulled apart, then put back together to craft a consistent, steady groove, verses, chorus, and a bridge. for anyone looking to learn how to really work a sample effectively, this is a really good lesson.

17. Spinnerette, “Ghetto Love”
my initial reaction to Brody Dalle putting out new music in a post-Distillers band was fear. new marriage? new baby? surely, the new stuff would be weak. and when i first listened to this song, i was thrown. instead of frenetic guitar-and-drum punk, the song chugs along on a fat, rolling, bass-heavy groove that dominates from the start. and Dalle’s throaty screaming is replaced by … singing? where’s the fury? where’s the roar? and then, around 40 seconds, there it is: Dalle’s characteristic growl-yelp “HEY!”. and then, sneaking out of that groove, comes more fuzzed out guitar riffs than you can count. and as Dalle sings as sweetly as she can about being “just a girl looking for love”, you get the distinct sense that love’s the last thing she’s looking for. nothing about this says “Distillers-redux”. and everything about it says “play again, and again, and again”.

18. tUnE-yArDs, "Sunlight"
you have no idea how long it took me to listen to this song. i don't even know how i ended up with it, but every time i opened iTunes, it sat there, taunting me with its ridiculous capitalization. eventually, i got past that and listened. yes, it's low-fi and self-produced and folk and all of that. it's also really, really good. from the drum loop opening and Merrill Garbus' crooning to the introduction of the hook to the increasing insistence with which she reminds / demands / pleads that she "could be the sunlight in your eyes" to the music/voice implosion around 3:15 in. the best thing about this song is the rawness and honesty of Garbus' voice. this is the voice of a woman who sings like nobody's watching. it's not very often that i find myself mesmerized by something so very DIY, but i am. i definitely am.

19. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix)”
i’ve only listened to the YYYs album all the way through once, but "Heads Will Roll" immediately grabbed me as having the kind of raw power i associated with their early EPs. when i heard that Montreal DJ A-Trak had dropped an absolutely sick rendition of this song in the middle of a set at Lollapalooza, i was a bit wary, even though i like his stuff. Animal Collective had remixed "Zero" in the spring and had somehow managed to make Karen O seem boring. i finally heard the A-Trak remix in the fall, and to my relief, he did an incredible job by matching the frenetic energy of the YYYs music and using Karen O's vocals to guide the build and release of the song. for anyone who's a fan of epic 1990s dance music, get your hands on this song, grab your glowsticks, and get read to dance because this? this is a serious banger of a track.

20. Yeasayer, "Tightrope"
you know, there are days when the opening to "2080" will just eat at my brain until i listen to the song 25 times in a row. "Tightrope" is my new "2080". maybe it’s the steady but insistent drumming throughout or the ample use of handclaps or the lovely backing chorus. maybe it's all of that. maybe it's those lyrics, about the tightrope between confronting your shortcomings and taking action to remedy them; about how "wishing never solved a problem". i can't think of a better score to that end of the year mental romp backwards through the year as you go over all the mistakes you made, think about all the things you wanted to go differently, and steadfastly resolve to start doing better just as soon as you turn over that last page in the calendar.

2009-11-01T18:55:00.005-05:00

weekend update

• been back in Toronto for about a month now. it's been weird living here for more than few days at a time, not feeling entirely a stranger but not feeling entirely at home either. i keep butting up against pieces of my life that i thought i'd left behind. it's re-reading a chapter of a well-loved book a decade after you first read it: it's still good, but not nearly as good as it was when you first took in those words years ago.

• i've moved downtown to a condo near to work, and while i enjoy being in the middle of the city again, i have been spending weekends up at my parents' house, not entirely out of a sense of duty. there is something to be said for spending an afternoon raking and bagging leaves, or buying produce from a nearby farm, or priming and painting a room, or cleaning and maintaining a vehicle. i'm not ready for these kind of home-ownership-type duties full-time as yet, but i like that i haven't lost my ability to do them. when the gf and i eventually settle into a house, i am looking forward to doing this sort of hands-on work again.

• actual cube-work continues to alternately frustrate and infuriate me, this past week being a prime example of just how madness-inducing it can be. since i've been up here, it's been tough to get sorted or get going on a plan to make the work situation any better. hopefully this week, i'll be able to get some traction to finish the year on a stronger note and with plans to start 2010 and the next phase of my career (even if it's with the same company) with gusto.

• the gf was here for an all-too-brief week-long stay in Toronto. we hung out, drank a lot of Canadian beer, watched a few Yankee games on tv, and were generally gross and couple-like. the gf met my brothers in person for the first time, and it went much better than i think either of us could have ever hoped for. later in the week, we managed to swing a trip to Montreal. though we were pretty much rained out on Saturday, we did get to most of the things on our list. we saw large swaths of the city; took in a musee or two; ate poutine, Montreal bagels, and smoked meat; and mingled with les gays. a good, reasonably-priced trip and a nice break from the Toronto quotidien.

• November promises more work, more wedding planning, a work trip to NYC, and renewed plans to eat well, exercise more, and get as much sleep as possible. it's hibernation times around these here parts. i have a feeling it's going to be a long, cold winter. bring your own discontent.

2009-10-31T20:34:00.000-04:00

new post coming, i swear!

2009-09-08T20:25:00.001-04:00

well, shit.

just when we thought we had it all figured out, life went and threw us for a loop.

gentle reader, if you've been watching this space, it's likely that you have a passing familiarity with the plans (best laid) that the gf and i had for this autumn. we planned to move into a new 2-bedroom apartment here in Brooklyn. we intended to continue on apace with wedding plans. she was to continue on her path to world domination; i was to finally land a permanent placement at my company, after 2 years of being on the trainee merry-go-round.

not to be. or, rather, not to be according to said plans.

thanks to the Venn diagram overlap of (1) incompetent human resources staff; (2) being employed at a shaky financial institution; (3) government regulation regarding the aforementioned institution; (4) immigration law (and the lack thereof for same-sex partners), about two weeks ago i was informed that my visa in the U.S. was up, and i'd have to relocate to another country (again) for 6 months.

and so, instead of shipping off to some far-flung corner of the world, next week i'll be headed up to Toronto to live until March before coming back to New York, back to the gf, back to the life we've been writing full-time in this country since 2005.

there are a few upsides to going back to Toronto. there are family and friends who need me right now and i'll actually be able to be there for them, instead of shooting off an email every 2 weeks. planning a Canadian wedding from, you know, Canada is easier than planning it from here. i'll get to travel to New York for business fairly regularly. plus, the gf and i were wary about plunking down a massive wad of cash on a new apartment while the economy is still sorting itself out (less than a year before we plunk down a massive wad of cash for our wedding).

but the downsides? as a result of this move, i'm taking a job that i don't really want because the team is understanding enough to let me work remotely in Canada for 6 months. having to live in two cities is still going to cost way more than living in just one. nevermind the fact that 10 years later, the gf and i still have to deal with long-distance.

after the angst and clothes rending, we've come to the realization that we Just Have To Deal™ with this latest monkey wrench (in a long line of monkey wrenches), and that things will be just fine in the end. we have our health. we have our jobs. we have great support networks in our friends and family. and we have each other.

things will be just fine in the long-run. i'll be back in New York before i blink. we'll get our 2-bedroom apartment. the wedding will go off without a hitch. at some point, i'll get a job i'm more invested in. there will be sunshine and ponies and maybe unicorns (though i'm not promising anything).

until then, there are plane tickets and phone calls. and rediscovering an old city together. and learning to miss the city i've adopted as my home. and being a shoulder for people who've been my shoulder in the past.

and, of course, a shit ton of making do and waiting it out. let's see how it goes.

2009-08-31T08:41:00.001-04:00

more to come. in the meantime, i'm over here.

2009-07-31T23:17:00.004-04:00

it's officially summer vacation 'round these here parts. while posting on the toque has slowed dramatically over the last year, it's been a full-on stop these past few weeks. the day-to-day is captured over on twitter. my occasional rants on all things financial and/or pop cultural are over on the tumblr.

the work front has been quiet. still plugging along in the consumer bank. still waiting to see whether i'll stay in the consumer bank or move back to the investment bank. either way, i'm still in risk management, so i'll be cleaning up someone's mess. but, as i've said to people before, they keep paying me, so i'll keep showing up.

the gf and i have kept ourselves busy in the usual fashion. there have been many Yankee games. a few concerts. a Broadway show. dinners. drinks. day-trips. cultural consumption. we've also still on our week-long sojourn in the Southeastern U.S., first to Atlanta to see her folks, then over to Kiawah Island for a few days of nothing but sleeping, eating, pooling, lather-rinse-repeat. it was good to be away, unplugged, and unaware of the outside world. it was also good to see friends we hadn't seen in awhile.

all in all, it's been a very quiet summer. nothing earth-shattering or mind-blowing. just a comfortable and easy stretch of weeks where work hasn't been that awful and amusement hasn't been that hard to find. maybe it's not such a bad thing - our autumn looks to be quite busy between our move to a new apartment (still to be determined), our continued wedding planning, my move to a new job, and other assorted life tasks.

just a few more weeks of real summer to go. here's hoping they're as comfortable and easy as the last few have been.

2009-06-20T09:21:00.000-04:00

where have i been? honestly, i have no idea. i mean, i know where i've been physically. but otherwise? no clue.

work is work. my rotation in the consumer bank is proving to be pretty much what i expected. it's less frustrating than past rotations. my hours are much better. i have less investment banking posturing to deal with. there can be a lot more bureaucracy and i think things would be more rewarding if i was close enough to the business to effect change. sometime over the next few months, i'll get an idea of where in the bank i'll land permanently. after the last two years, the relative calm of the last few months is a more than welcome change.

a few weekends ago, the gf and i went up to do some research for the wedding. we have the venue for the wedding, reception, and rehearsal dinner; we've tasted the food and wines and settled on a menu; we've picked officiant, photographer, DJ, and florist; and we've blocked off a good portion of our rooms. i guess ths is what happens when a risk manager and lawyer get married. due diligence and planning? yes, please. kudos to the gf for spearheading a lot of this. it appears that her love for maps is only a subset of her love for logistics.

otherwise, life at the toque has been fairly quiet, which is why i've been posting so little. there have been Yankee games and concerts. beer and grilling. saturday outings and nights in with takeaway and Netflix. but otherwise, there isn't much going on, either in my calendar or in my head. if i ever get around to posting about the 300+ items i've marked "to read" or thinking relatively thinky thoughts again, this'll be the place to find them. until then, try me over at tumblr or twitter. it seems that 140 characters or a link to a video is about all i can handle these days.

2009-05-28T20:20:00.000-04:00

check, check. this thing is, apparently, still on.

2009-04-05T09:25:00.000-04:00

weekend update

• on work: not much to say here. i started a new rotation when i got back to NYC. it's in the consumer bank (i.e. credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, etc), not the investment bank, which is where my three previous rotations had been. the hours are much better. the work is moderately interesting. the people are not offensive. after this rotation's up in August, i'll have to pick which area of the bank i want to settle into for at least two years. i haven't yet made up my mind where that will be, but if it ends up being consumer banking, it'll be poetic in a "full circle to find the truth" way. my first job at a bank was in the fall of 1998. it was retail, consumer, "let me open a chequing account for you" style banking. who knew i'd still be here, over ten years later.

• on vacation: the gf and i took our annual Spring Break for Grown-Ups™ trip in March. this year's destination: the great state of Texas. we spent two days in Houston before heading out to Austin for the South by Southwest Music Conference. at some point, i'll recap the trip, but the highlights were (obviously) the barbecue, the beer, and the bands. it was a good week away, a good experience to cross off the list. but you know you're borderline too-old-for-this-shit when you bust out the earplugs at an afternoon concert and think about how you might like to attend the nerdy, learning type Interactive Conference the next time around.

• on entertainment: since coming home to NYC, i've been awash in forms of entertainment and have been working hard at catching up on everything i put on pause six months ago. i finally finished the backlog of The Economist that had been piling up. i watched most of the Supernatural and Life episodes that were on the DVR. and i finally, finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica's last season.

• on freedom: this is the first spring since forever where i haven't had to study for an exam, academic or professional. it's a wonderful feeling to actually have a life in April and May and early June instead of reading about how to value cross-currency swaps, or working through stochastic calculus, or memorizing the assumptions of the CAPM. instead, i can pick up new tv shows (Southland is in the rotation, Kings is probably not), or a new/old comic i've been meaning to read all the way through for years (Queen & Country) because i know i'll have time to stick with it. i can actually hang out with the Bizarre Love Rhombus™ when they're in town instead of making excuses for why i have to stay at home. i can wake up at 8a on a Sunday and read the paper, and have coffee, and write. the gf and i have a busy social calendar over the next eight weeks - plenty of brunches, and concerts, and Yankee games, and after-work drinks, and possibly even a bbq or two at our place. all in all, this whole not studying thing? totally made of win.

2009-03-06T14:18:00.000-05:00

i really have to get around to posting sometime soon.

2009-02-15T18:12:00.004-05:00

reading roundup

it's been a really, really long time since i did one of these, and even now that i'm finally getting around to one, it's kind of a cheat. the following were already posted on my tumblr, in one form or another. figured i'd aggregate them here as well in one post. at some point i'll do a proper roundup and clear the 300+ items on the delicious tagged "toread".

• this might actually qualify as a 're-blog'. i first blogged about this fantastic Business Week article way back in 2006. i bookmarked it too. i knew i’d want to re-read it when the proverbial shit eventually hit the fan. since it’s hit, many in the industry have fallen back on excuses of “no one saw this coming” and “this was unprecedented”; nice ways of saying “don’t blame us”. and yeah, maybe no one could have forecasted the exact number to represent how bad things would get. but there were tons of people out there who saw that things didn’t smell right. that things just didn’t make sense.

sure, one of the things we'll have to learn from this crisis is how to more accurately forecast the number to represent the badness. but one of the more important lessons is not going to come from better models or refusing to sell CDOs again. it has to come from the people with decision-making power in this industry learning to ask for contrarian opinions and oftentimes, listening to them. ignoring information because no one wants to be the first one to pull out is not a strategy. i get that this is a very basic, very naive maxim, but in order to change the culture, those of us who work in finance can’t afford to be adolescents that go along with the crowd until we get caught and then hide behind excuses and hope everyone forgets. we have to take ownership of our actions, be accountable, and be independent. otherwise, we’ll just end up here in 5 years wondering, yet again, “what went wrong?”.

• from the New York Times, a run-down of what finance executives will have to do in order to live on the $500,000 salary cap that's been handed down from Washington. last year, before the shit truly hit the fan, a fellow risk manager asked me why i was always so cynical about people’s motivations. my reasoning was exactly what they lay out in this article. that for many of these executives, they are expected to keep a certain lifestyle in order to maintain their social and professional status. and keeping this lifestyle means that every time they face a marginal deal, they have to calculate the odds that the deal will blow up against the fact that they’re putting out $16,000 next month for a one-week family vacation. in fact, the question in their minds is no longer: “will this deal blow up?”, but “will this deal blow up before i get paid?”.

a large part of the solution to the crisis will have to be a fundamental shift in the culture. the agency problem is not going away anytime soon, but i’ve worked at firms where extravagance was frowned down upon and the difference in behaviour is remarkable. when the collective focus was not on ‘how much do i need to make in order to cover my bills this month?’, people thought more about ‘is this actually a good deal for our clients? for our firm?’, and accepted/rejected ideas on that basis instead.

• the Wall Street Journal this time, on the proposed pay packages often paid out to retain top brokers. i’ve never quite understood this rush to pay brokers to keep them. i hear the arguments from the banks (“we have to keep our top producers”). but producers of what? how do they segment brokers and decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss? it seems that there’s only really one criteria that they use: who brought in the most revenue.

as far as i'm concerned, this is sheer lunacy. revenue from short-term account churning or from blowup-prone derivatives is only revenue until it's a write-off. real, ongoing, fee-based revenue should be the main consideration. if there’s no better way to determine which brokers to retain and which to toss than revenue, fine. but at the very least, these banks need to get an understanding of the economics of what they’re paying for and get their brokers to accept that not all revenue is created equally, and so, not every dollar necessarily merits payment.

• finally, some neuro-cognitive-behavioural stuff for you from Neuron, via Scientific American. apparently for gamblers, “near misses" (getting two cherries out of three at a slot machine) significantly increases the desire to keep gambling. there's an attraction both to keep going because nothing has happened, and a sense that the system must be under control since nothing has happened. i couldn't help but see the current financial crisis in this research.

over the last few years, a lot of risk managers mistook the fact that “nothing has happened” to mean “we made sure nothing happened”. i run across risk managers all the time who are excited because “our VaR is the same as last month!”, or (even worse) risk managers who say “well, VaR is lower than last month, so we can go ahead and put on more trades”.

this is completely the opposite of risk management - it's risk-seeking behaviour. if there’s been no negative consequence to what they’ve been doing (i.e. increase in VaR, blowup on the desk, etc), managers interpret that to mean that they’re necessarily doing a good job at managing the risk, even if the lack of incident has nothing to do with them whatsoever. this is a completely false and dangerous attribution. measurement does not equal management; the lack of a disaster does not equal disaster-prevention.

risk culture across the Street needs to have this point drilled into their (our) heads and it has to come from the very top: just because the world didn’t end today doesn’t mean that you saved it.

2009-02-01T05:56:00.004-05:00

weekend update

• it's hard to believe that i only have five weeks left in England, but the calendar doesn't lie. at times, it's seemed like my days here have dragged, like time was stretched out. i miss the gf. i miss New York. i miss my home. and it seems like i'll never get back there fast enough. but then sometimes i have to remind myself that i actually have been here for five (of six scheduled) months and i have scant time left to explore. before i leave, i'm going to have to try to see more of London and travel some more. hopefully i'm able to knock out trips to Barcelona and Dublin before i leave.

• last weekend, i went to visit my Other Brother up in Manchester where he's doing his last year at university. i saw a bit of the city and ensured that he had food in his fridge and clean laundry. the train ride was a great way to finally finish a book i'd been dawdling on for months and catch up on some podcasts. it was also comforting to see the English countryside, even if it was whipping by faster than i could capture it on the camera. being in any City for too long always makes me itchy. even though i was born and raised in Toronto proper for the first 12 years of my life, part of me always yearns for the fields and farms and wide-open spaces of the place where i spent my adolescence, where my parents still live.

• lately, i've been having a really hard time focusing on any one task for more than 20 minutes. i've never had this problem before and it's not in my makeup to be ADD. i don't know what it is, but it's frustrating as hell. i'm usually that person who can sit and read for hours. now? i feel compelled to get up after only 15 pages and then i end up getting distracted by something else. i have the same problem when i try to write, or when i'm at work. it's like being in a dream where you leave what is, ostensibly, the Greatest Thing Ever because you have this niggling feeling that there's something else you have to do. i don't know what it is that i'm supposed to get done, but i'd better get this head-trip sorted soon.

2009-01-16T15:25:00.006-05:00

here's a completely out-of-character fact for you, gentle reader: i haven't turned on my television since i got back from New York.

weird, right? i mean, i watch a lot of tv. i always have. when i was a kid, we had one of those old console wooden-box televisions that sat on the floor. an RCA. and it was one of my favourite things in the house. after school, i used to stretch out on the carpet in front of the tv, on my stomach, head propped up on elbows. and the box - this magic box! - would bring all of these words and pictures and ideas into my world. i remember the way the carpet used to leave these criss-cross patterns on my elbows and how my mother would have to yell at me to get to the table to eat my dinner.

but since being in the UK i've barely watched the television. this is partially because the set they've put in my apartment is, maybe, a 20 inch piece of shit. it's also because i'm on satellite that is shared with the entire building. the signal is so weak that any time it rains or threatens rain, i stop getting any channel but the BBC (and even then, it's dicey). given that it's London, where it rains every other day, this means that my tv never works.

and so, i haven't turned on the tv since i got back from New York almost four weeks ago. this isn't to say i haven't watched tv. i've watched a shit-ton of tv. but it's all been online. the good part about this is that i've managed to stay caught up on some of the series that i was following at home (Gossip Girl, Californication, 30 Rock, The L Word, South of Nowhere) and rewatch episodes of older series that i missed dearly (Mad About You, Kitchen Confidential).

the bad part? i've watched a lot of questionable tv. stuff that i probably wouldn't have otherwise given a second look. for example:

• a sitcom about World of Warcraft style gamers
• an online series about a woman who makes up imaginary friends
• clips from a soap opera i didn't even watch as a teenager
• an NYC teenage love-story by a writer from thirtysomething
• endless video-logs (vlogs) about god knows what

some of the most entertaining things i've seen this year haven't been from the studio-produced, network-aired menu. and that's at a time when the studio-produced, network (or cable)-aired menu is full of top notch programming.

once i get back to New York, this web-tv habit will be broken. aside from being excited to watch tv on our actual television (which is glorious and shiny!), i'll have much better things to do with my nights than surf the internet before bed. those days of me sitting rapt in front of the box aren't going to disappear anytime soon. but it's been an interesting experiment to see just how much good stuff is being put out every day by people with just their ideas, talent, meagre budgets, and the support of viewers like (me and) you.

2009-01-11T11:40:00.003-05:00

weekend update

• on work: there isn't much to say about my current rotation that i haven't said already. the work isn't particularly challenging. the time commitment is not bad, compared to the hours i was pulling in New York. most of my frustration comes in managing other people, in particular, from managing my managers. i'm not sure if it's just a generally British attitude to be so lax about deadlines, to reply to direct questions with indirect answers, or to consider all meetings as optional, but i find myself spending a lot of time chasing my managers down on all of these fronts. i think the mental break from the New York mindset has been good for me. it has freed up mental space to think about other topics. but at this point, i'm almost looking forward to a conference call where someone other than me decides to dial in.

• on vacation: for the first time in my working career, i was away from the office for more than a week and not laid off or studying for an Exam™. it was lovely.

the vacation agenda started with the the Epic Love Union™ of the other two members of the Bizarre Love Rhombus™ at an amazing ceremony and party in New Orleans. there was much in the way of good food, drinks, and company. though i have been to many, many weddings in my lifetime, this one definitely ranks up there for originality, class, and for having the bride and groom's personalities shine through in the proceedings.

after the party in NOLA, i spent a week in Toronto with my parents and family. nothing notable here, other than the copious amount of shoveling i did. i'd forgotten just how much it could snow in only one week.

from TO, i headed to NYC for time with the gf. we pretty much hibernated all week, watching movies and sports and tv, wearing pjs, eating NY foods, cooking, playing video games, and being gross and cuddly, peppered with a few excursions to see friends and a low-key New Year's Eve celebration. i miss NYC and the gf very much and am very excited to be going home in about 2 months.

• on sickness: if you read my twitter, it might seem as though i'm always sick, but i really have been blessed with good health. my tweets on headaches, stomachaches, insomnia, sore throats, and sinus issues aren't really sickness. they're the manifestations of an overworked, sleep-deprived, 30 year-old finance professional in an urban environment. the truth is that i don't get really sick very often. this week, though? i got thumped over the head by a fever/headache/stomachache triple punch that knocked me flat on my ass. i spent two days in bed, fevered, a little delirious, with absolutely no appetite. i think the last time i got this whatever-it-is was back in 2003. anyway, happy to report that i'm back to my baseline level of health and counting my blessings that my immune system is as sturdy as it is.

• on 2009: i don't often make resolutions. for the last 6 or 7 years, my life has been too busy to resolve to do something just because of the turning of a page on a calendar. the Life Plan™ had already been set anyway. resolving on January 1st didn't change what i already knew on December 31st - that in a few weeks i'd be hauling out the CFA textbooks or starting a new quarter of my MBA or that i'd be knee-deep in quarterly reporting.

this year, though, might be different. with the MBA and CFA out of the way and a job situation that is only partially under my control, it might be the time to resolve to re-solve things in my life that i've been putting on the backburner for years. the gf told me about her resolutions earlier in the week and i think they covered many of the themes in my own resolutions: improving personal health, staying connected with friends and family, and seeking out new experiences. to that i would add maintaining or growing financial wealth, networking and getting involved professionally, and being more focused on creating instead of consuming.

writing more on the toque might help in that last regard. and so, gentle reader, you may find yourself plagued by more of my ramblings this year than you might otherwise have liked. don't say i didn't warn you.

2008-12-29T17:02:00.002-05:00

dear 2008,

are you tired?

because after everything we've been through this year and after everything we've done, i'm exhausted. last year, you were beating down the door before 2007 was even out the window, and it seemed like you wanted everything from me, right away, with no pauses to catch my breath.

and that's kind of the way things went, didn't they? one thing after another, always hard and fast, with me always giving everything i had. which isn't to say the results weren't worth the work. look how much we got done: finally passing the Really, Really Big Exam, surviving two clusterfuck projects, and managing to keep my job amidst the bloodshed on the Street. and while most of these were hard-fought victories, the best thing you gave me this year wasn't hard-fought or a victory, at least in the traditional sense: the heft and history of the ring on my finger tether my weightless joy in anticipation of its promise.

2008, you surprised me. when i heard you thumping on my door last year, i was deadly afraid of how demanding you might've been. and while you were, indeed, demanding and while there wasn't a lot of time to get through the work, the relationship could've been worse. we could've parted on bad terms, like a lot of people around us. instead, i can't help but thank you for your formidable companionship. if it wasn't for you, i don't know if i would've made it.

i can see 2009, distant, hands in the back pockets of her jeans, shy and waiting for me to make the first move. she knows that she might not be a welcome partner, given how much she's going to ask of me and how little she can promise in return. but she's honest about it. she reminds me a bit of 2004 with her 501s, white t-shirt, and strong coffee. i'm kind of excited to see what she and i build together. she's willing to get her hands dirty. that's a start.

get some rest, 2008. after this year, you definitely earned it.

sweet dreams,

the dirty canuck

2008-12-24T12:27:00.003-05:00

come on, skinny love, last the year
pour a little salt, we were never here
- Bon Iver, "Skinny Love"

i don't know what happened to me and music in 2008. i mean, i know what happened - i was too busy and my head was too full of other things and music just seemed too hard. but i kept expecting to be surprised. i kept expecting to be shocked out of the disconnect by an amazing album or the single that wouldn't let go of me for weeks. and while there were good albums and singles that didn't let go for a few days, nothing this year really moved me that much.

i did listen to a lot of songs, though, and my singles list definitely had to be trimmed. the ones that just missed were:

• Beck, “Modern Guilt”
• Death Cab For Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart”
• The Juan Maclean, "Happy House"
• Hot Chip, "Ready for the Floor"
• The Last of the Shadow Puppets, “Standing Next To Me”
• Santogold, “L.E.S. Artistes”
• She & Him, "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"
• The Ting Tings, "That's Not My Name"
• White Denim, “Shake Shake Shake”

albums, on the other hand, were a complete failure. some of this year's singles were from albums that i never got around to hearing in their entirety that are supposed to be really good. i suspect that if i'd given them a fair shake, they'd have been on the list. these are the ones that i'll be getting to know better next year:

• Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
• Frightened Rabbit, Midnight Organ Fight
• Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
• Hot Chip, Made in the Dark
• The Kills, Midnight Boom
• M83, Saturdays = Youth
• Portishead, Third
• She & Him, Volume One
• Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer

earlier this year, i did a spur of the moment "Top Albums of the Last Decade List" and there was nothing from 2008 on it. all year, i kept hoping that something i came across would knock one of the albums on that list off. i waited. and waited. it never happened.

is that my fault? sure. i didn't try with music very much this year. i haven't been trying with it for awhile. last year, it made me sad that i was so disconnected from the music scene. this year, it doesn't bother me that much. it's not like i'm short on good music. if anything, maybe that's part of the problem. maybe if i'd never heard Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, or classic rock, The Hold Steady would seem like the second coming of Christ. but i have, and so they don't. on the other hand, i have heard a shit-ton of 80's post-punk, new wave, and pop, and that didn't make M83 any less engaging, so i'm not sure if the theory holds water in all cases.

in 2009, i may reconnect with music as i work towards reconnecting with a lot of other things. the gf and i are going to SXSW in March, and now that i don't have to study, we can go to more live shows. and who knows? my lists next year might be full of new artists, and singles, and albums that have shaken my musical foundations. next year, i might actually have a story to tell.

this is our decision, to live fast and die young.
we've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
- MGMT, "Time To Pretend"

2008-12-16T14:23:00.007-05:00

here we go. commentary, criticism, shout-outs here. in alphabetical order, we present, the extremely, unbelievably short:

the dirty canuck's top albums of 2008

1. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
i didn't like In Ghost Colours the first few times around. my initial attempts to listen to the whole album were in late June when i'd put it on while stuck in my cube late at night, working on version 36 of a PowerPoint for the clusterfuck project. this was probably not the wisest decision, since i ended up associating the album with negative feelings for the rest of the summer. when i moved to the UK in September, i started listening to a lot of dance music again and Cut Copy's album was often in the mix. and man, was i surprised by how good it was. this was the music of the dancefloor, a wonderfully precise mix of pop, rock, house, and electronic music that made you want to move. the production on the album is superb. Tim Goldsworthy of DFA did a great job of being considered and deliberate without letting the work feel cold or calculated or detached. in fact, that's one thing that surprised me - how warm this record sounds. Cut Copy was a pretty decent band before In Ghost Colours, but they never really blew my mind. pairing them with a top-notch producer seems to have done the job, though. every time i put this album on, the cK on my jeans totally gets rocked the eff off.

2. The Organ, Thieves EP
though The Organ broke up in 2006, this year, they released this posthumous EP to tie up the loose ends of songs that they'd written but never recorded. Grab That Gun was an atmospheric, haunting, melancholic romp through broken hearts, in the style of the 1980s post-punk/new-wave Holy Trinity. Thieves continues in this tradition from that first Hammond organ chord to the last note strummed by the guitar. i lose it every time i hear the bridge to "Even in the Night" or the point at which the jangle pop of "Oh What a Feeling" turns into a wholly danceable, hymnal vocal, church chords track a la The Arcade Fire or when Sketch's gasped vocals on "Fire in the Ocean" are matched in their insistence by the drumming. the EP isn't perfect; there are weaker moments to be found. mostly, it's a bittersweet release. there's enough talent in these six songs to make you sad that they weren't able to hold it together to put out another full length album. i guess the Organ are just one of those bands. they make you love them after just one record and then break your heart. alas. at least i've got a good soundtrack to mope to.

3. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
when i first heard that the indie rock kids were wetting themselves over a band with the name "Vampire Weekend", i thought they were kidding. a few weeks went by. i kept seeing praise for the band pop up in my RSS reader, but i never bothered to click on a story. i figured "eh, i'll figure them out eventually". at the time, i was listening quite a bit to what i though was a clever, if not slightly pretentious, musically talented band playing well instrumented, complex, Paul Simon/Beatles/Beach Boys inspired pop music that was light and airy and perfect for a spring and summer in New York City. turns out that the band was actually Vampire Weekend. turns out that i need to label things on my iPod. even now, months after the hype, the backlash, the re-hype, and the move-on to other, newer, shinier things, i still get all spazzy when i hear "A-Punk" or "Oxford Comma" (about which i do give a fuck, thanks). i still get confused at the first part of "M-79" thinking "when did i put classical music on my iPod?". i still find myself singing "Walcott, don't you know that it's insane?" to myself. there are certainly weak spots on the album, but they are rare and only weak when compared to the much stronger singles. other than The Organ's EP, this was the only album i didn't have to try to like at all. i just liked it. in a year where i made it through maybe 7 albums all the way, the fact that i liked this one straight away is a testament to the talent. good job, kids. those Ivy league degrees done you good.

2008-12-14T16:44:00.004-05:00

music in 2008. yikes. if i liked anything this year, it was usually because i'd mistaken it for being from some other year or some other era. half of the stuff i was into sounded like it was from the 70s or 80s, and the other half was indie-folk or alt-country, which tend to be a bit timeless. maybe that's a sign that i'm getting older, though i'd prefer to think that it's more reflective of what's happening in the industry.

2008 was definitely a year of singles for me. albums were too time-consuming in a year when i dealt with two clusterfuck projects, an industry that is barely keeping its head above water, a company that is on the front page at least once every two weeks, a trans-Atlantic relocation, and a head that was crammed full of Really, Really Big Exam III™ crap for six months.

having said all of that, here are the songs that got a lot of play this year. gentle reader, in alphabetical order, i present:

the dirty canuck's top singles of 2008

1. Bon Iver, “Skinny Love”
i can’t remember the last time a song made me feel this much like i was intruding into someone’s private life. the lo-fi production, the quiet intensity of the first verse, the naked and pleading anguish in the vocals, the way his voice cracks as he gets louder, the wrong note about 3 minutes in, the near triumphant “woo-hoo-hooos” near the end. all of it makes me feel like i’ve accidentally walked into the room of a man who is working through something intensely personal; like i’ve become intimate with his story without his permission. even months later, i find that by the end of the song, i’ve unconsciously bowed my head, almost as an apology for barging in. no other song i heard this year was better able to convey such a sense of heft through such weightless production.

2. Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”
imagine yourself on a dancefloor, bodies moving all around you, lights flashing overhead. imagine the song you’re listening to: heavy on synths and keyboards, chunky basslines, a saxophone hook, a guitar-solo bridge, and a robotically detached yet human voice delivering lyrics about “searching for a love alive; drowning in the silence as we walk the night”. is it New Order? no. Depeche Mode? wrong again. it’s Cut Copy delivering a song that could easily pass for an 80s club classic. i remember being impressed by this band a few years ago when i was listening to a lot of dance-punk, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how good they would get at perfecting that 80s dancefloor sound.

3. Death Cab For Cutie, "Cath..."
DCFC and i parted ways many years and many albums ago. at some point their sound moved too far away from the stuff i fell in love with in the autumns of 2000-2002: the multi-layered walls of sound, clean Gibbard vocals, and driving drums. when i first heard this song, i thought it was from an old EP that i'd forgotten about. except the production was way better than it was on We Have the Facts.... and Gibbard sounded much too confident. sure enough, it was from this year’s Narrow Stairs (which also spawned the excellent if not slightly-indulgent “I Will Possess Your Heart”). i’m always happy when bands i love find the kernel of their sound and manage to expand on it in a way that feels new but not foreign. on “Cath…”, the boys in DCFC have managed to do just that.

4. Duffy, "Mercy"
this song confused the hell out of me the first time it came up on my iPod. i didn't think i had any Northern soul around in a format other than cassette tape. but i brushed off the confusion and didn't think about the song again for awhile. it came up on shuffle a few weeks later and again, i was confused. this time i listened to it a bit more carefully. wait - this wasn't Northern soul. it was too modern. but it sounded just like it, with its dancefloor bassline and drums and torch song vocals. i eventually checked out Duffy's album, Rockferry. it's a strong debut, with several other great songs, but this is the one that i keep coming back to, half-expecting my life to turn into a British movie from the 60s, complete with Twiggy, Ben Sherman shirts, and soul club badges.

5. Fleet Foxes, "White Winter Hymnal"
so the first time i heard this song, it annoyed me. it sounded like one of those stupid exercises we were forced to do in grade 3 music class where each section of the class starts singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" in rounds. but i gave it another chance. i kept giving it chances. i listened to it when i woke up, when i walked to work, in the rain, in the car home as we sped over the Brooklyn Bridge. i kept trying to place it to a moment in time, to a moment in my life. after a few months i gave up. because it doesn't really inhabit any particular moment or space. it really is that stupid exercise from grade 3 music class - a melody and rhythm that you've always known, that rattles around in the back of your brain, two minutes of harmonized voices and instrumentation with a steady drum like a heartbeat that renders location and age and time and place completely irrelevant.

6. Frightened Rabbit, "Keep Yourself Warm"
i don’t remember when or where i found this song. it sat in a folder on my iTunes for months, untouched. i kept giving up on it because the first minute or so is a bit slow. it doesn’t really grab you. one day, i sat down with the intention of pushing through. so i did. and for the first minute or so, it was slow. and then, about 30 seconds later came that lyric that stuck in my head for days: “it takes more than fucking someone you don’t know to keep warm”. consider me grabbed. from there, the song picks up steam, with a wonderful musical breakdown for the last minute or so. i liked several other songs by this band this year, but none surprised me as much as this one.

7. Jason Collett, "Out of Time"
i've been spoiled by the talent that comes out the Broken Social Scene collective for far too long and have enjoyed Collett's solo work for awhile now. his albums are the ones you throw on when you're having a beer on the dock up at the lake, watching the sun set over the water, or when you're driving through the Ontario countryside in late summer, cornfields moving past in amber and green waves. this song all solid hooks, well-placed handclaps, straightforward delivery, elastic guitars, and the assured mediations of someone who's seen enough of life to know himself and know his place in the world.

8. Jenny Lewis, “Acid Tongue”
disclaimer: i would listen to Jenny Lewis sing the phone book. having said that, i love this song. it’s quiet. it’s simple. it’s Lewis and a few other singers for harmony and a guitar. that’s all. it’s not quite country and not quite gospel, but lyrically, it might as well be. she sings of being a bad girl, getting into trouble, quitting her bad ways, falling in love, and starting all over again (“to be lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs, and I’ve quit them both, but man, was it rough.”). if you’re looking for an example of beauty through simplicity, this song’s it.

9. The Kills, “Cheap and Cheerful”
you want kick in the throat? here it is. from the phlegmy, throat-clearing cough to the hip-shaking, low-fi drum loop, on this song, The Kills are all trashy chic. they mash blues-punk and electro, throwing in the crack of a whip every few bars, handclaps, and a bridge that features a marching band’s snare drum. the beats groove, the guitars slice, and the lyrics are 100% wrong-side-of-the-tracks sleaze (“I’m sick of social graces; show your sharp-tipped teeth … I want you to be crazy ‘cause you’re boring, baby, when you’re sane”). if Pulp ever needed a grungy, blues-punk, minimalist b-side for This Is Hardcore, this is the song they would’ve picked.

10. Kings of Leon, “Sex on Fire”
i hate the title of this song. for awhile, i purposely avoided the song just because of the title. eventually, i caved and gave it a spin. i was not surprised to find what is arguably the most straightforward stadium rock anthem of the year, with its ripping guitar riffs, big drum solo during the bridge, throaty lead singer, and catchy singalong chorus. the production is clearly geared towards placing this song in regular rotation on the top 40 stations, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. i was surprised that though this song was by no means the best one on my list of top singles, it was the one i found myself singing along to the most. still hate the title though.

11. M83, "Kim & Jessie"
if John Hughes ever makes another movie about teenagers in the 80s, there’s no question that this song could headline the soundtrack. it gets everything about the era completely right - sweeping synths, steady drum machines, whispery vocals. and while the song has so many elements of this style of new wave, it’s not cold or detached. the song conveys real emotion. MGMT often irked me because their swiping seemed a bit too forced. M83’s nod to the 80s also appears to be deliberate, but in a sincere, respectful way. he genuinely, unironically loves 80s music. that this love is embedded into his music is nothing short of a treat for those of us who remember when this sound was all that ever came out of our radios.

12. MGMT, "Time To Pretend"
as i said, i had a lot of problems with the MGMT album. it felt like a collection of decent singles stitched together without any real sense of narrative and after awhile, it just seemed a bit much - too produced, too many synths, too put-on of a performance, too cranked to 11. that said, it did result in a couple of really good songs, and "Time To Pretend" is the best of the lot. it condenses the MGMT sound into a little over 4 minutes. musically, it's that blend of electro-pop, glam rock, disco, new wave, and funk; lyrically, it's the obsession with youth, awkwardness, and mourning lost innocence that has yet to be lost (“I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars … I’ll miss the playgrounds, and the animals, and digging up worms.”). it's just tongue-in-cheek enough that you can enjoy it ironically, and just earnest enough that you might actually think they mean it. try to hate it. really, try to hate it. you'll still be bobbing your head within the first 30 seconds.

13. The Muslims (now known as The Soft Pack), “Bright Side”
unless you live in a cave, you’re probably aware that the economy is in the shitter. if you live in NYC, you’ve probably heard predictions that the city’s economic situation could get as bad as it was in 1977. one of the only good things to come out of that dark period in NYC’s history was the music – hip-hop, disco, and best of all, NYC punk. bands like The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Blondie, the Talking Heads, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids played sharp, fast, furiously, rough, and raw. why am i taking you on a walk down NYC music history? because the first time i heard this track, i thought it was a punk song from 1977. the band’s not even from NYC (San Diego, actually). but the sound? it’s raw and rough. the drums and bass and guitar and lead singer all shamble through it. it’s garage rock. it’s punk. and man, is it ever delicious.

14. The Rapture, "No Sex For Ben"
earlier this year, i gave The Rapture's debut album a spin and was surprised at how well it stood up, even years later. it made me wonder what happened to this band, early adopters of the dance-punk sound. in early June, this song, a trash-talking diss at UK DJ Ben Rymer, surfaced on the music blogs, a b-side produced by Timbaland of all people. somehow this unlikely hip-hop/dance-punk pairing has produced a track that skillfully strikes the balance between beat-boxing bass and cowbell grooves. if the band is able to get to this level of quality for subsequent albums, i might be able to forgive them for their sophomore album transgression.

15. Vampire Weekend, “A-Punk”
at first, it seemed like choosing just one song from Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut to be a top single would be no easy task. after all, the album has at least 5, possibly 6 good contenders for this list. but when i thought about it, “A-Punk” was the song that originally hooked me. this is a band that isn’t just unafraid of complexity – they actively embrace it. but for the first 40 seconds of the song you wouldn’t think so. it’s all straightforward drums, splendidly clean guitarline, and indie rock boy yelping. but then, 41 seconds in and there it is: flutes, pipes, bass, strings, instrumentation. and by the minute mark, they’ve changed gears yet again to pogo-punk “oi oi oi!” before going back to the arrangement of the first 40 seconds. several of the other contenders for top Vampire Weekend single are better songs and better representatives of the band’s distinctive sound. but this is the one that got me hooked.

2008-12-11T17:54:00.000-05:00

things have been quiet at the toque lately. quiet over on tumblr too. i was mistaken to think that creativity could be sparked solely by a change in platform. apparently, not the case.

maybe this quiet isn't necessarily a bad thing. maybe it's just what i needed after what seems like years of never being able to shut off the monologue in my head. but lately i've been missing it - that monologue. the synapse firing. the "a-ha!" moments. they are fewer and far between these days.

the quiet may actually just be the result of my life, which has fallen into a bit of a rhythm. some of it is good (no conference calls, no crazy managing directors), and some of it is not so good (on and off insomnia since i've been in London), but given everything happening in the world, my industry, and my company, the sailing is remarkably smooth.

we may break the radio silence a few times in December to post top singles and top albums, but that's about all i'll have the energy to crank out, despite a list on my desktop of 'stuff to write about' that keeps getting longer and longer. here's hoping that the toque gets more attention in 2009 than she did this year.

2008-11-22T23:16:00.002-05:00

got a devil's haircut, in my mind

historically, haircuts and i do not get along.

if you were to look solely at childhood photographs, you would not think that this is the case. from birth to age 8, i had a wonderful, curly, girly head of hair.

after age 8, however, things do not look so wonderful. in fact, it’s not until age 18 that things even halfway begin to approach wonderful. even then, every picture belies the truth of my hair purgatory. i was always just one haircut away from getting lost forever.

when i graduated from university, i started working downtown. the office buildings in Toronto’s financial district are connected by an underground mall that is also connected to the subway and commuter rail systems. the major advantage of this layout was that you rarely had to step outside during the long, harsh Canadian winter. everything you could possibly want or need was in that underground mall, including hair salons.

and so, at 23, i started going to the hair salon in my building. it was reasonably priced and extremely convenient.

the stylist assigned to me for that first appointment was a young woman named Heather. she was junior stylist who cut the hair of finance professionals by day, studied pharmacology at the University of Toronto part-time, and was a hardcore punk at night. her father was a forensic scientist for the RCMP and her boyfriend was a drummer in a band and she liked to talk about both of them while she shampooed, conditioned, trimmed, and blow dried. needless to say we hit it off immediately.

Heather took a long time cutting my hair that first time, but for the $30 she charged, she did a bang-up job. i tipped her well since it was the first really good haircut i’d had for nearly 15 years and she took me on as a regular client. for almost five years, she would call me when it was haircut time. i’d pop downstairs, get caught up on her studies, her boyfriend’s new band, and her father’s latest cases, and walk out in 45 minutes with a much better looking head of hair.

for these five years, haircuts and i were good friends.

Heather even cut the gf’s hair once, which led to a bit of funny business that she and i still joke about. the gf can correct me on this, but at the time, she was pleasantly surprised by how well Heather had done at styling her usually hard-to-style hair.

when i left Toronto, i was sad about a lot of things. oddly enough, it didn’t occur to me to be sad about leaving Heather’s haircuts behind. haircuts in Chicago weren’t any more expensive than they were in Toronto, and i was lucky enough to find a decent salon that could fairly consistently deliver an approximation of The Heather, which rides that skinny edge between “modern finance professional’ and “myspace punk rawk”.

haircuts in New York have not been so kind. since living there, i’ve had bad haircut after bad haircut, made worse by the fact that i’ve paid through the nose for each one. somewhere between Chicago and New York, any remnants of The Heather faded entirely, and each stylist just replicated the bad cut that i’d been given the last time. it’s as though they were all incapable of seeing the true sculpture in the marble and settled for rendering a replica instead.

the past week has not been easy one for finance professionals. when i looked at myself in the mirror this morning, i looked tired. my hair looked tired. limp. beaten down.

“i need a haircut”, i thought.

so i headed out to a japanese hair salon that the gf recommended. she got her hair cut there when she was here in October and they did a pretty good job.

for a reasonable price, they gave me a decent cut. it’s more finance professional than myspace punk. but i felt a bit better stepping out of the salon. lighter. brighter. like i’d left some of this week’s tiredness behind on the salon floor.

this doesn’t mean that haircuts and i get along all of a sudden. but at least we’ve called off the fighting. it’s not The Heather. but it’ll do.

cross-posted from tumblr

2008-11-19T08:38:00.001-05:00

perchance to dream

for the last month or so, i’ve been having a hard time sleeping. this is nothing new to me. i tend to fall prey to bouts of troubled sleep at least 2 or 3 times a year.

i refer to these bouts of sleeplessness as insomnia, though i’m not sure if they would be technically diagnosed as such. while i do have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, my problems aren’t chronic. what i suffer from is probably some mix of sleep deprivation and transient insomnia, but that’s too lengthy a description most of the time.

by week 3 or 4 of one of these bouts, it’s usually apparent to coworkers, friends, and the gf that i’m having trouble sleeping. i am often asked why i don’t seek treatment for the insomia. “there are pills that can fix that, you know”. and yes, i know. i’m sure they work for other people. i have a painfully low tolerance for most over-the-counter medication (i usually don’t need more than one Advil, even for a killer migraine). my tolerance for prescriptions is even worse.

besides, as awful as it is (and by week 3 or 4, it is truly awful), the problem tends to disappear as suddenly as it appeared. after nights of taking showers before bed, drinking warm milk, drinking herbal tea, exercising early in the day, eating a light dinner, abstaining from alcohol and caffeine, not watching TV or using the computer for an hour before bed, changing the sheets, fluffing the pillows, engaging the gf in extra-curricular activities (or the exact opposite of everything i’ve just listed) - after nights and weeks of this, i’ll just have a nice, normal night where i fall asleep at 11:30pm and wake up the next day at 7:15am, fully refreshed. and i’ll be reasonably able to follow that pattern for 3 or 4 months without serious interruption.

aside from the fact that the ailment appears to cure itself once my body just flat out quits on me, these bouts of sleeplessness are just a symptom of an underlying problem. knocking me out is unlikely to do much good if the problem is still there. i’m fairly sure that the issue is psychological, rather than physical. other than what i refer to as my June Mania (4 whole weeks! 4 hours a night! hijinks ensue!), the problem tends to creep up when i am mentally occupied by something that i can’t seem to resolve or work through during my waking hours.

these days, i’m not sure what’s on my mind that’s causing the blockage. it’s likely some combination of the usual suspects (work; money; family; love or, more precisely, missing the gf).

one thing’s for sure. we are now entering week 4 of this nonsense. it had better resolve itself soon. i’m starting to feel like Ed Norton in Fight Club. and, despite the kicking choice of song for the last scene, we all know how well that ended up.

cross-posted from tumblr

2008-11-15T22:03:00.001-05:00

"hold ourselves together with our arms around the stereo for hours"

i am very bad at “off the top of my head” lists. this is something that, i think, the gf has learned to accept about me. for every list, there is an order, a context, a contingency. list-making off the top of my head is not something i do.

that said, i am going to give it a try.

totally and completely off the top of my head, what i think are my top ten albums of the last ten years. these are, by no means, the best, or the most influential, or the most representative albums. they are my top albums. they might not be the albums that i listened to the most, or the ones i raved about the most, but they’re the ones i keep coming back to. they’re the albums that scored that weird decade of my life where i threw off (most of) my adolescent sneer, got punched in the gut by Real Life, picked myself up, and settled into the comfortable skin of being an adult. these are the albums that will not get purged from the collection.

1) The Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)
2) Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People (2002)
3) The National, Boxer (2007)
4) The Organ, Grab That Gun (2004)
5) The Postal Service, Give Up (2003)
6) The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
7) Spoon, Kill the Moonlight (2002)
8) The Strokes, Is This It? (2001)
9) Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
10) Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005)

it pains me not to list the ones that barely missed making it. but i’ll be good. needless to say they won’t be getting purged anytime soon either.

cross-posted from tumblr

2008-11-09T18:06:00.004-05:00

weekend update

• work: these days, i feel like i'm on auto-pilot when it comes to my job. now that we're past those stupid-hectic first few weeks when banks and countries were failing daily, my relationship to my job is much less complex. i go into the office. i do some stuff. i come home. sometimes (like this weekend), i go into work on Saturday or Sunday or both, but i wear jeans and listen to my iPod the entire time. the best part is that i don't think about work when i'm not there. this might be because a lot of my recent assignments are of the 'keep the lights on' variety. credit memos, stress testing, and relationship reviews are all things i've done in former lives, so the challenge is in getting through the volume, rather than grasping the intellectual nuances. either way, i'm not complaining. being on auto-pilot at my job is exactly what i needed after the six month mess i was in before. quiet time? totally of the good.

• London: most of the initial discomfort with the city has waned, and i'm finding it hard to remember a time when i didn't flip light switches down to turn them on. i still don't understand the cab situation here (why so hard to hail one? why so damn expensive?) or why bars and restaurants are spread all over the city, necessitating the kind of Saturday pre-game strategizing on transport and timing one would usually reserve for the final rounds of The Amazing Race, but in most regards, i'm getting used to things. i have yet to really step out and see the museums and shows and culture. i think i'll try and change that over the coming weeks. but otherwise, life in London is alright. i even started wearing a scarf like a fruity European, so maybe the city is changing me in more ways then i realize.

• the gf: i miss her. it is getting closer to December, when i'll see her again. we went to Paris. i may eventually put up some details on our trip, which was good times. in my absence, she is working out at the gym and watching BluRay movies where shit blows up. in her absence, i am fighting insomnia and watching too much Rachel Maddow. clearly, this situation is not tenable in the long term. December cannot come fast enough.

2008-11-03T20:05:00.001-05:00

shipwrecked

during my stay in London, i am living in short-term housing. policy dictates that we should be kept as close to the office as possible, so my apartment is actually on the Wharf. though i sometimes wish i was closer to the centre of activity in London, there are definite upsides to living near to work, namely that my daily commute is only a 15 minute walk.

every day, twice a day, i cross a footbridge that spans a small strip of water. the Docklands are composed of these small strips of water, created by the landfill and built-up areas around them. they are not nearly large enough or with a strong enough current to be called streams or rivers, but are similar in appearance (long, sometimes winding).

on the second or third morning after i started here, while crossing the bridge, i noticed a small boat in the water, partially sunk. it looked like a small pleasure boat, pitched forward on its nose so that the back third of the boat that was not submerged came out of the water’s surface at a 30-degree angle.

on the walk home, the boat was still there.

maybe this is an indication that i’d been in New York for too long, but when it hadn’t been removed after a day or two, i concluded that it must be a performance art piece. i imagined some arty-hipster carefully guiding the boat through the Docklands, edging it closer and closer to a high foot-traffic junction, under a foggy London night. i could see them positioning it just-so, and then weighting the front end of the boat somehow before jumping overboard and swimming to safety nearby. they must’ve laughed themselves silly at the thought of finance professionals walking by in hordes the next morning, having to confront a physical manifestation of the crisis they were busy fighting. despite its blatent nature, the metaphor to sinking ships is no less painful.

after another week of seeing the boat twice daily, i resigned myself to the fact that it was just a sunken boat and not some art student’s idea of a laugh. the weeks flipped by and i stopped thinking about the boat altogether. it had blended into the background; it was now part of the quotidien.

this morning on my walk into work, there was activity on the water and on the walk home, it was confirmed. the sunken boat had been raised. someone had finally taken notice or the approvals had finally passed up the chain and lo, a rescue operation!

at this stage of the game, it’s more likely that the task was less of a rescue and more of a cleanup. there is a low probability that life can be breathed back into a boat that’s been sunk for about a month. it’s more likely that its removal was to prevent water flow disruption or because it had been a blight on the normally well-manicured environment for far too long.

i’m nearly two months into this rotation, though it feels much longer given what’s happened during that time. it’s strange to think about names like Lehman Brothers as the equivalent of sunken vessels that cannot have life breathed back into them. and yet, all around boats have sunk or are still sinking. those of us left are tasked with distinguishing between the ones that can still be raised, have the water pumped out, and be put back out to eventually sail again, and those that should go the way of my non-performance art piece. it’s not going to be an easy task, but it’s a necessary one. if we’re going to give the boats still on the water a better chance of navigating the storm we have to do the messy work of removing the flotsam first.

cross-posted from tumblr