Photograph by Syd Kato

In the late ’90s, Blinker the Star frontman Jordon Zadorozny was writing songs with Courtney Love and released his band’s third album, August Everywhere, back when Dreamworks Records still existed. Growing up, August Everywhere was one of my favourite albums. Filled with twelve tracks of melancholy pop and a guest appearance by Failure’s Ken Andrews, I’ve listened to songs like ‘Below the Sliding Doors’ and ‘All Dreamed Out’ more times than I can count. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for the album didn’t extend to widespread worldwide love, and Blinker the Star remained fairly obscure. 2003 saw the release of the lacklustre Still in Rome and Zadorozny retreated back into the production side of the music business. Every now and then I would see his name in connection to people like Sam Roberts, but new material was scarce.

Mere days ago, We Draw Lines, the first Blinker the Star album in ten years, was released on Bandcamp. Somehow this was lost in the shuffle of other ’90s CanCon reunions like I Mother Earth. I owed it to my fifteen year-old self to give it a listen. The verdict? Pretty good!

Shifting closer to the pop of August Everywhere rather than the rock of Still in Rome, the title track of We Draw Lines serves as a great re-introduction to the band, which is more of a Zadorozny solo act at this point, as he’s credited with most of the instruments and vocals. I’m curious how long this album has been in the works, as ‘Subtle Days’ has been floating around for a few years, though it was recorded under the Abbey side-project with vocalist Sofia Silva. Also on the album is a cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’. It’s still early, but after a few listens this feels like it recaptures the summery, atmospheric feeling of August Everywhere, and a welcome return for Blinker the Star. If any other band from my teens wants to reform and release another album unexpectedly, please feel free. Is Longwave still together?

Blinker the Star – We Draw Lines
Blinker the Star – Below the Sliding Doors

I have to confess I was a little relieved the first time I heard ‘Hey Jane’, the initial single from Jason Pierce’s latest offering Sweet Heart Sweet Light. Clocking in at just less than 9 minutes, the song stays true to earlier Spiritualized form, building, swelling and driving forward until the inevitable gospel choir begins. And it only gets better from here.

A lot has been written about this album and the mental state of J. Spaceman during the recording process. A few years after recovering from an almost deadly pneumonia, and recently undergoing chemotherapy for a degenerative liver condition, Pierce is said to be in a good place and to have created his most “happy” album to date. I’m not entirely certain I agree with this initial assessment. Although tracks like ‘Freedom’ and ‘Too Late’ are a little more immediately assessable, with lyrics on ‘Life is a Problem’ like “I won’t get to heaven, I won’t be coming home, I will not see my mother again, cause I’m lost and I’m gone,” I wouldn’t say that this is an album made for a sunny day. Like much of Pierce’s work, sadness and pain is often cloaked in beauty.

This album does bear a very similar structural resemblance to Spiritualized’s masterpiece Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space, and some songs seem very much related. ‘Get What You Deserve’ has a very comparable undertone and flow as the earlier album’s ‘I Think I’m in Love’. And there are even hints of very early influences, with ‘Headin’ for the Top Now’ sounding like it could have been on Pure Phase.

Album closer ‘So Long You Pretty Things’ is arguably one of the more overtly beautiful songs of the entire Spiritualized catalogue. Just when you think it can’t get any better, the banjo strums in, followed by the choir, the tambourine and the horns. Maybe the happiness and difference people are talking about is actually Pierce sounding like he’s enjoying himself this time around. That much I can agree with. This is still a true to form Spiritualized album, however, and a very successful one at that. Sweet.

Spiritualized – Too Late
Spiritualized – So Long You Pretty Thing

Photograph by Gemma Harris

Canadian Music Week isn’t quite as big as NXNE, but this year’s edition boasted a few must-see shows each night, even with notable cancellations like Childish Gambino. Though my initial intent was to just see Wintersleep for the first time in a couple years, winning a wristband made me decide to get to Toronto a day early to get some use out of it.

The prime event for Friday night was, of course, the Arts&Crafts showcase at the Horseshoe Tavern, featuring the new ex-Stills/Broken Social Scene project Eight and a Half, The Darcys, Zeus, and others. As good as that line-up looked, it also meant the wristband line-up stretched out to Spadina, so unless you were there early or had a ticket, you were out of luck.

So instead, it was off to Lee’s Palace to catch Cloud Nothings. Attack on Memory is one of the more hyped releases this year, and the band performed it in its entirety. Opening with ‘Stay Useless’, ‘Fall In’, and ‘Cut You’, they quickly got my three favourite songs out of the way, and I was left to absorb the rest of the set. Little to no banter occurred between songs, and the riffs started to blend together towards the end. I was hoping for something more, but the crowd seemed to approve.

Cloud Nothings – Cut You

Saturday began with catching a bit of Little Foot Long Foot’s in-store set at Sonic Boom’s new location in Honest Ed’s. Not having been in the city since the Dollarama announcement, I was impressed with the new space, as well as the vinyl specialty store in Kensington Market. Sadly, I realized too late that Zeus was doing an in-store performance later in the day, and will have to settle for seeing them in London in a few weeks.

With some other members of the crew heading to see the Inbreds at Lee’s Palace, I headed back to the Horseshoe. Gentleman Husbands was finishing up when I got in, closing with a cover of ‘Born to Run’ which had the packed venue jumping. They were followed by Charlottetown’s Two Hours Traffic, who had both a new bassist and some new songs in tow.

Though Wintersleep’s forthcoming album, Hello Hum, was recorded as a three-piece, it was nice to see that the live line-up remains the same, as Jon Samuel and Mike Bigelow took up their respective roles. As expected, their setlist focused heavily on new material, and on first listen, it’s incredibly solid. I wasn’t terribly enamoured with New Inheritors, but the new stuff we heard has me excited. Few song titles were introduced, aside from ‘Nothing Is Anything’. Interestingly, the band drew all their old material from Welcome to the Night Sky, including ‘Archaeologists’, ‘Oblivion’, ‘Laser Beams’, and of course, ‘Weighty Ghost’. The big surprise of the night was a cover of the Constantines’ ‘Young Lions’, followed by perennial closer ‘Miasmal Smoke and the Yellow Bellied Freaks’. The crowd demanded an encore, but tight festival times prevented it, so we were left to await the album’s release before we heard any more from Wintersleep. My shout of “When’s the album coming out?” led to a smile from lead singer Paul Murphy, but no answer, so we’re left hoping that it’s soon.

Wintersleep – Laser Beams

Photograph by Erin Algiere

When first we heard from Tennis they had an incredible amount of positive buzz attached to their name. With only one single and a story that chronicled a long term romance filled with university life, sailing trips, and marriage, Tennis reached for the top of the blogosphere and generated the kind of hype that a major label’s marketing team can only dream of. But having a hit debut album can be both a blessing and a curse. Although Tennis received a considerable amount of praise for Cape Dory, they needed another well-received record to keep the momentum going.

With Young & Old, Tennis take a step in the right direction for their career. Young & Old is an album sitting on the fence between comfort and foreign territory. The best maturation processes take time and Tennis seem to understand this. Although we still hear their classic sound (‘Robin’ is a great example), compared to its predecessor, Young & Old has a sound that is more developed, and more meticulous in its production.

I chatted with guitarist Patrick Riley in September of last year about the future of Tennis, and it was then that he first commented about a new record in the works. Then December came along, and Tennis performed at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver; this marked the first time Tennis had performed their new material in Vancouver. The addition of an extra touring musician, and a more confident front woman, signified that something was happening to the band as a whole. It was not so much a period of radical change, but rather a period of growth and development; they really couldn’t have named this album any better. Young & Old, nostalgic and new, the album will win the hearts of fans already attached to the surf-rock sounds, and it will also grab the attention of a considerable amount of first-time listeners. Vocalist Alaina Moore exemplifies a front woman who has discovered a new sense of confidence in her voice, ‘Petition’ and ‘Origins’ are the clearest examples of this.

Thanks to the tutelage of producer Patrick Carney (drummer for the Black Keys) and engineer Roger Moutenot (who has been around since Lou Reed’s heyday, and is also a close friend of Yo La Tengo) Tennis has taken the most salient elements of Cape Dory and lit a fire underneath it. Whether it’s the full bodied crash symbols on ‘High Road’ or the soul-revivalist guitar melodies on ‘Origins’, the production that Moutenot and Carney provided the band is undeniable, and the end product is a fuller sound, worthy of sophomore success.

Musically, Tennis has strengthened their backbone. There is an undeniable rock ‘n’ roll edge to the new album; with harder hitting drums and grittier guitar hooks, Moore’s voice is allowed to kick ass – and kick ass she does. Apart from the accolades for Young & Old, Tennis still has a lot of work cut out for them, and their next endeavors will tell if the young indie rockers are able to endure another maturation process. Time will tell, but until then, Tennis is a band worthy of our time, and respect.

Tennis – Origins
Tennis – Petition

Photograph by Jon Bergman

Welsh septet Los Campesinos! are currently on the North American leg of their tour in support of their fourth album, Hello Sadness. Intrepid Ca Va Cool correspondent Kevin Kania caught up with guitarist Neil Campesinos! before their show at London Music Hall in London, Ontario to discuss growing up with fans, destination recording, and the pains of making a music video.

Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand
Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness

Kevin: You played Letterman last week, was that your network TV debut?

Neil Campesinos!: We played a show in Los Angeles a few years ago and they filmed it for Carson Daly, but that’s not as big a deal, is it? [With Letterman] we were absolutely petrified, it was without a doubt kind of like a highlight, felt like a big deal, we were just so nervous, you load in, rehearse in the morning, go away, and then you come back ten minutes before you’re on, and then all of a sudden, “and here’s Los Campesinos!” you play, and it’s all over in a flash. I was just shaking for the whole thing with no recollection. It was surreal. It just flew by, it was crazy.

Kevin: Gareth made some comment to Dave, I didn’t quite catch it.

Neil: He had a scarf on the stage for a sports team called the Welton Rovers, and David Letterman was like, “Oh, Football!” and Gareth’s like, “Well, soccer.” David said that was a little condescending. It was all in good spirits.

Kevin: Football does seem to be of huge importance in your songs.

Neil: We actually really wanted to get a foam ball for venues like this. They’re amazing to play in.

Kevin: Yeah, I’ve never seen it empty; I never realized how big it was. It’s normally much more intimate than it seems right now.

Neil: We’ll see how many people turn up. [Laughs] What was the last show you saw here?
Kevin: Sloan, I think.

Neil: Oh, really?

Kevin: If you know them.

Neil: Well, they’re kind of Canadian mega-pop stars.

Kevin: You have some ties to Canada: you recorded Hold on Now, Youngster here and you’re on Arts&Crafts. How did you end up on Arts&Crafts? Prior to you guys, they really didn’t go beyond their Canadian roster.

Neil: It was because of Wichita, really, our UK label. They had connections through City Slang, friends in the industry I guess. We got a slot supporting Broken Social Scene and we kind of met those guys. It just really worked out through labels being connected to each other. We’re still there and happy with them.

Kevin: Any particular rituals you have to go through when you’re in Canada?

Neil: Fran’s, a chain of diners in Toronto. We often go there for breakfast. It stems from the first time we stayed in Toronto, there was one down the street from the hotel. There’s one near every hotel we stay in really.

Kevin: You recorded your new album, Hello Sadness, in Spain.

Neil: Yes, about two hours north of Barcelona.

Kevin: You were going to record it at home in Cardiff, but Spain came up, do you think that influenced how the album came together?

Neil: Probably not, because we had it really well-written beforehand, which is really the first time we’ve been able to do that. In the past we’ve been, not rushed, but not as well prepared and then working a lot of things out in the studio; we had it pretty much down. I think in terms of enjoyment, compared to recording at home, it was just a different world. We would have been, obviously, in the studio, a fifteen minute walk away from the house. You wouldn’t have been completely committed to it or immersed in the record. Gareth, as well, lyrically, he generally writes at the last minute. So I think being in Spain provided a different…it puts everyone in a different place. The house we stayed in was a ten minute walk from the studio, and every morning we were just walking on this dirt path next to a field in the Catalonian countryside, hillsides and snow-topped mountains, it was just absolutely amazing. Just beautiful. I guess that had an effect. Unlike, say in Cardiff, you’d be walking along the rainy footpaths under the bridge by the train station.

Kevin: I’m curious about your songwriting process, regarding the story going around Gareth dropping all his lyrics two weeks before recording, did you have the music before, or do you adapt it to the lyrics?

Neil: The music always comes first, I don’t want to say every single time, but yeah, that’s how it worked. In the past when we’ve recorded he kind of leaves it to the last minute, which is kind of exciting. Especially this time, when we’ve worked on a song so much in our rehearsal space in Cardiff beforehand, and you get this really weird idea of what the song is and what it’s like, and you don’t hear his lyrics and melodies right until he’s there in the booth doing a take. It’s really exciting when we lay down the first vocal track on the album. He’s there and then everyone comes in, there’s often a big sofa in the back of the room behind a desk, we all sit with a beer or a glass of wine and he starts singing and we’re like “Whoa…okay.” We don’t see where he’s going with it, it’s really exciting.

Kevin: You’ve gone through a few line-up changes in the past couple of years, has that affected the band dynamic?

Neil: Yeah, I think it has, probably on a musical level, and on a personal level, not in a bad way. The seven of us now, we’re really really happy. I think a lot of people, perhaps fans, would be concerned by the line-up changing by almost fifty percent, but we’re all really good friends. Rob was a couple of years above me at school, so I’ve known him for years and then he met the rest of the band through other friends, because we played with him when he was Sparky Deathcap, we’ve been friends with him for ages. Kim is Gareth’s sister, Jason was selling our merch, driving us around for two or three years before joining us. So it wasn’t like these people were strangers. To fans, you can understand, they don’t necessarily know who they are, but to us, we wouldn’t just get any old person.

Kevin: Going from Hold on Now, Youngster to Hello Sadness, there’s been a very distinct change in sound, very much growing up, I think that’s part of… I imagine I’m around the same age as you guys…

Neil: Between 25 and about 27. I’m not naming names.

Kevin: Do you think that’s a big thing about your fanbase, that you’ve kind of grown up together?

Neil: It seems that way. People who have been fans for a long time share the view that we’ve been progressing in a positive way rather than “Oh, I prefer the first album…” So yeah, I guess there is that kind of link where they’re probably going through similar experiences, growing up. Getting older. A bit fat.

Kevin: Sorry if you get this too much, but I’ve got to ask: the Budweiser ad. I watch a hockey game, all of a sudden I hear you guys, and it’s like “What’s going on here?”

Neil: Budweiser asked if they could use the song, they paid us money for it, we took it. People may say you’re selling out but that’s fucking stupid. Where do you think money actually comes from for a band on our level? It’s not like they paid us a load of money and we all have big cars and flashy houses, that money goes straight back against debts that we’ve gotten into from developing a band since 2007. You’ve got publishing contracts and people who work to get your music out there, you owe them money.

Kevin: It’s not a bad thing, I’m sure it gives you a lot more recognition, beyond the people like me who are “Oh! Los Campesinos!”

Neil: It’s funny, when you tell people you listen to us and they’re like… Say, oh, they did the music on the Budweiser advert, and they’re like “OH!” It’s really funny, they use a minute of the song, it’s the instrumental build-up, and the first bar, which is not really any of the song at all. You kind of think how bands gain more success through being used on commercials and television, but there’s hardly any of the song, and no one’s ever really going to recognize it, but it works! They’ve shot so many of them, for all different sporting events. They keep wanting to use it for other things, different offshoots. It really feels like we’ve built up a good rapport with the people at Budweiser.

Kevin: Are you getting a beer kick-back?

Neil: No beer. Well, we played St. Louis, where Budweiser is based. A couple of guys from marketing showed up with a six-pack of Bud.

Kevin: We’ve got the Labatt brewery just down the street, they’re owned by Budweiser. Should give them a try.

Neil: Shit! We should give them a call! “Hey, can we get some free beer?” I did tell someone once in an interview that we each got a red card we could present in any bar in the world and get some free beer. A logistical nightmare, but… that would probably be better than any money.

Kevin: How much do your videos come into play with what you want to get out there? I know Ellen’s directed a few.

Neil: It’s a weird thing with videos. It’s not often our idea, we ask other people to come up with a concept, and they film it. You can make changes; It’s always a bit of a rush. As much as we enjoy the videos and the process of making them, they’re not really from our creative minds. Ellen’s video for ‘The Sea’ was really fun to make. It’s something we’d like to get into more; we’ve definitely got the talent. Ellen’s great at that kind of thing, Rob’s an amazing artist and creative mind. It’s just we don’t have all that much free  time, even when not on tour.

Kevin: ‘Hello Sadness’ and ‘By Your Hand’ were particularly striking visually.

Neil: My mum thought ‘Hello Sadness’  was just so gory and weird.

Kevin: All I remember is spaghetti.

Neil: I think that was Rob. He ended up getting really drunk. They had that bottle of red wine, they put that funnel in his mouth, then they poured it in, and he just drank it. As you would do when someone put a funnel in your mouth. We’re all scarred from that day. I got my legs waxed in three different places and it took months for it to grow back.

Kevin: The pains of art, I guess.

Neil: We do work for it. We suffer.

Photograph by Jason Halstead

Provincial is John K. Samson’s first full-length solo album. Collecting re-recorded versions of songs from his previously released EPs City Route 85 and Provincial Road 222, along with a few extras, the Weakerthans’ frontman finds himself able to explore a bit musically and indulge in a bit of weirdness.

Not that anything here would be particularly out of place on a Weakerthans album, but the subject matter is certainly more varied, and as a whole the album is more subdued. Most noticeable is ‘http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/rivertonrifle/’ formerly known as ‘Petition’, which is less a song and more a plea to get hockey player (and fellow Manitoba native) Reggie Leach into the Hall of Fame. ‘Stop Error’ is much improved on this record, as Samson’s solo vocals evoke more pathos than the awkward choir found on the EP. Though the Call of Duty 4 shout-out is still a little jarring. ‘The Last And’ is as good as ever, and the knowledge that it was inspired by the relationship of Edna Krabappel and Seymour Skinner only improves that. As for the new songs, the clear stand-out is ‘When I Write My Master’s Thesis’. More upbeat than the rest of the album, still name-dropping video games (take that Lana del Rey), anyone who’s been in grad school can relate to the light at the end of the tunnel Samson presents here.

With Samson’s body of work, it’s strange to call Provincial a debut, but in any case, it’s a successful one. Now get to work on that all-Virtute concept album, Samson.

John K. Samson – Cruise Night
John K. Samson – When I Write My Master’s Thesis
John K. Samson – Stop Error

Photograph by Jon Bergman

With no obvious favourite as in past years, we here at Ca Va Cool were left to our own devices when choosing the ten best albums of 2011. Much like the first half of our list, the top ten features a stylistic array from the year’s offerings. Plenty to enjoy, from sincere and contrived chill vibes to literary-rock, dubstep to soft-rock verging on quiet storm, and our first top album to be a debut. As always, thanks for reading. See you in 2012.

10. Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital

Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry seem forever changed by their travels throughout Eastern Europe and Asia. They’ve created a sparse, yet pulsating album in Sound Kapital, inspired by the kids in regions of the world who love music so much that they risk imprisonment by making it. The album is dark, loud, and penetrating with a focus more on beats and vocals than the duo’s earlier, more guitar-based offerings. Boeckner’s voice remains simply one of the most authentic and powerful around, and one only has to see the Handsome Furs live to witness their commitment to the music and those that inspired it. Songs like ‘Serve the People’, ‘Cheap Music’ and ‘No Feelings’ seem to embody not only the headspace they were in when creating the album, but make me believe that the demise of Wolf Parade was worth the tears. — Christian Kraeker

Handsome Furs – Cheap Music

09. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

Describing the artist’s eternal dilemma in 2008, beefcake and introvert getaway driver, Ryan Gosling, said: “You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and it’s just a bunch of messy lines, but to you it makes sense, and then they put it on the fridge? From that point on, you’re always trying to get back on the fridge, you start drawing things that look like something, like, the more it looks like a horse, the more chance you have of getting it on the fridge.” This quote came to mind when thinking of where Trevor Powers’ solo project Youth Lagoon fits in the realm of 2011’s music scene: that place before the fridge. With words like “epic,” “lush,” and “dense” being used to describe his contemporaries, the simplicity and sincerity of Youth Lagoon’s genre-less debut is what set it apart this year. “I just want to make honest songs,” Powers said to earlier this year. Goal achieved, Trevor. — Sal Patel

Youth Lagoon – Montana

08. James Blake

I’ve had some good times with James Blake this past year. While I was fortunate enough to see Blake play in sunny Barcelona during Primavera Sound Festival in May, it was through a pair of old speakers in a Montreal apartment in November that I realized how much the record really meant to me. The moment itself was far-flung from the vast crowds, overpowering bass, and elaborate stages of Parc del Forum – just a few friends gathered around a record player quietly listening to Blake’s shaky croon. The simple appeal in that instant was reliving the feelings of memories been and gone – a gentle reminder that in the span of ‘Lindisfarne’ four seasons have fluttered passed. Trudging through snow with ‘The Wilhelm Scream’; the bloom of tulips with ‘Unluck’; muggy nights with ‘Measurements’; and the glow of Jack-o-Lantern’s with ‘I Mind’. If nothing else, James Blake is a record of the distance we cover in a year – might as well fall in. — Jan Kucic-Riker

James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream

07. Wye Oak – Civilian

2011 was the year Wye Oak broke. Riding the wave of hype and goodwill from 2009’s The Knot and becoming the A.V. Club’s most valuable cover-band, Civilian, their third album, dropped earlier this year to critical acclaim. Darker and more introspective than their previous work, Civilian contains heavy hitters like the title track, and more subdued tracks like ‘We Were Wealth’. The common thread here is the sheer amount of sound coming at you at any given moment. Jenn Wasner is a hell of a singer and guitarist, and Andy Stack’s unique billing as a drummer/keyboardist adds a great percussion section. Already having earned spots opening for the likes of the National and the Decemberists, 2012 is looking very bright. There’s no better duo in the business. — Kevin Kania

Wye Oak – Civilian

06. Library Voices – Summer of Lust

If you didn’t see Library Voices perform live this past year, there’s a very important New Year’s resolution for you. I spent a fair amount of time this year growing to know and love this seven-member lit-pop ensemble, both on stage and on record, and am looking forward to more of the same in 2012. Summer of Lust is a great album for supporting a great live act, filled with high-impact, high-minded songs on subjects that are sure to have made someone’s old high school English teacher very proud. Songs to sit and think about, or to get up and dance about, are rare enough; having both in one package is enough to make you want to burst out in handclaps. — Josh Penslar

05. Washed Out – Within and Without

At a time when the death knells were tolling for chillwave, Ernest Greene breathed new life into the minimalist ambient pop genre with his debut LP, Within and Without. Considerably cleaner, sparser, and calmer than his preceding EPs High Times and Life of Leisure, Greene maintained his wistful poetry, DIY aesthetic and beach-tune-inspired warmth. Sparkling bright moments (‘Amor Fati’, ‘Soft’, ‘Before’) are intermingled with darker, more somber songs (‘Echoes’, ‘Within and Without’, ‘ A Dedication’), allowing listeners to cascade into a beautifully haunting dreamscape. And while the mellow, sun-drenched melodies of the album led to its status as a summer soundtrack, nothing warms up the winter like a little glo-fi. — Sabrina Diemert

Washed Out – Amor Fati

04. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Helplessness Blues finds Fleet Foxes pushing forward new musical ideas while staying true to traditional folk roots. ‘The Shrine/An Argument’ showcases this at its peak. While starting with only lead singer Robin Pecknold’s voice and his acoustic guitar, the 8-minute, 3-part song finishes with a sprawl of woodwinds and strings that take the song on a journey on par with Radiohead’s Kid A epic ‘The National Anthem’. ’The Plains/Bitter Dancer’ is another example of the band pushing forward with traditional ideas, creating atmospheric and haunting soundscapes with vocal harmonies layered upon each other. It gives an almost machine like quality to the natural sound of their voices. However, it’s the songwriting itself that is the biggest leap forward for the band. Though the songs on their debut are timeless and well crafted, the songs on Helplessness Blues bring very personal and thoughtful views on the world and finding ones place and purpose in it. — Kyle Sikorski

Fleet Foxes – The Shrine / An Argument

03. Bon Iver

If For Emma, Forever Ago was winter, Bon Iver is spring. Bon Iver’s sophomore album presents an entirely different Justin Vernon than we are all accustomed to. The snow has thawed and on opener ‘Perth’ we can already hear flowing water, wind chimes, and the blooming of an electric guitar. Gone is the DIY approach, the Wisconsin cabin in the woods, and the cold loneliness that filled it. His sound has transformed from an acoustic isolation into an electrified celebration. With an array of strings, organs, electric guitars, thundering drums, and some awesome synthesizers, Vernon and company have created an album that is rich with peaks and valleys, moments of joy and despair, with lyrics that become more subjectively introspective after every listen. It is personal, yet made for everyone. From ‘Perth’, to ‘Calgary’, to the incredible ‘Beth/Rest’ (don’t disagree on this because you’re wrong), all songs tap into Bon Iver’s new sound. Vernon has matured from a lonely cabin boy to an explosive composer, traveling through real and fictional locations, bringing along his sound and shouting it from the thawing mountaintops to the babbling brooks. — Alec Ross

Bon Iver – Beth/Rest

02. Destroyer – Kaputt

Dan Bejar has always been something of a polarizing figure, but with Kaputt the only divide I’m willing to recognize is between those who love the album and those who haven’t yet heard it. Bejar set about applying his distinctive lyrics and vocals to a familiar, albeit distant, pop sound – borrowing from the influences of smooth jazz, new age, and soft rock – and the result was a brilliantly unassailable success. Nearly every track on the album, which is remarkably consistent for a Destroyer release, feels expertly crafted and resonates long after the horns and guitars dissipate into Destroyer’s signature creeping fog. Though it’s nearly a full year old now, this is the album I’ll remember best from 2011. It put down a marker and set the tone for a terrific year of music to come. — Will Morrison

Destroyer – Savage Night at the Opera

01. Yuck

Just one listen to the amped-up classics ‘Georgia’ or ‘Operation’ and you know these London twenty-somethings bleed Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and the rest of the canon. Further listens to ‘Suicide Policeman’ and ‘Suck’ reveal that Yuck are off-kilter romantics with a penchant for melodies akin to Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, and most difficult of all, Teenage Fanclub. But better than accurately recreating some of the noisiest/best music of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Yuck’s real accomplishment on their self-titled debut is their ability to capture the feeling of discovery that music fans are all too familiar with and have longed for ever since they listened to that mix CD of Smiths singles from their older brother, or whatever. Appropriately, Yuck aren’t a band maturing; better than that, they’re a band going through puberty. Earlier this year, guitarist Daniel Blumberg admitted with refreshing frankness that he listened to Pavement for the first time a couple of years ago and that his favourite band growing up was blink-182. This is a period that musicians and fans rarely discuss and are only reminded of when confronted with the awkward question of the first album they owned, but I remember it fondly when I listen to Yuck, if only for the sheer amount of  music I had yet to hear. Yuck is the sound of a band simultaneously discovering and creating music they love, and we love too. — Daniel Hernandez

Yuck – Operation

Ca Va Cool’s Best Albums of 2011

20. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Departing
19. Austra – Feel It Break
18. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
17. I Break Horses – Hearts
16. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo
15. Feist – Metals
14. Wild Flag
13. The Weeknd – House of Balloons
12. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
11. The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient
10. Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital
09. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation
08. James Blake
07. Wye Oak – Civilian
06. Library Voices – Summer of Lust
05. Washed Out – Within and Without
04. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
03. Bon Iver
02. Destroyer – Kaputt
01. Yuck

Photograph by Anna M. Campbell

As Ca Va Cool concludes its fifth year and the arbitrary music-ranking period of 2011 comes to a close, the gang assembled (virtually) once again to bring you our twenty favourite albums of the year. The bottom half of our list features riot grrrls old and new, an R&B resurrection, and, interestingly, most of the Philadelphia rock scene. Stay tuned for the conclusion of our list with the ten best albums of 2011, when we get around to it.

20. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

Arriving in the dead of winter early this year, Departing lived up to high expectations by not really departing at all from the rock ‘n’ nostalgia formula that powered the Rural Alberta Advantage’s 2009 debut Hometowns. A new batch of crafty songs from Nils Edenloff continues to blur the line between homesickness and heartbreak; Paul Banwatt’s manic beats continue to provide the gasoline. Feeling more and more comfortable in their shoes as a dedicated three-piece ensemble, Edenloff, Banwatt, and keyboardist Amy Cole focus on what they’re best at: compelling, unpretentious indie-folk drawn through the emotional mesh of all that we must leave behind. Plus some kickass drums. — Josh Penslar

The Rural Alberta Advantage – Coldest Days

19. Austra – Feel It Break

After several years of building hype in Canada and honing her unique sound, Katie Stelmanis has finally arrived in a big way, in the form of Austra. The band’s debut album, Feel It Break, is an icy hot blast of synth-pop, capable of shattering and melting at equal intervals. Throughout this dark and dramatic album, Stelmanis manages to seamlessly blend a modern, danceable pulse into the band’s operatic orchestrations. Like a pint-sized Pompidou, she’s even turned showing off her pipes into a part of the dance itself. Her ethereal, soaring vocals are the standout feature of this album, and should leave you looking forward to what else Stelmanis has in store. — Will Morrison

Austra – Lose It

18. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

M83′s music is regularly described as “epic”, which is unfortunate, but accurate. So when Anthony Gonzalez announced that his first double album would be “very, very, very epic”, I had to wonder how much further he could really take it. As Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming revealed, not only had M83 not completed their electronic fairytale – futurist in style, wistful in sentiment – they had only just begun. Guest Zola Jesus sets the tone for the proceedings on ‘Intro’ as she remembers “We didn’t need a story, we didn’t need a real world…and we became the stories, we became the places.” What follows is M83’s crowning achievement and probably track of the year, ‘Midnight City’, which successfully bottles every facet of M83’s youthful exuberance into four minutes. Those are just the first two tracks, but there are four sides to this classic, and none of it was rushed. — Daniel Hernandez

M83 – Midnight-City

17. I Break Horses – Hearts

I Break Horses are yet another talented band from Sweden. The duo of Maria Linden and Fredrik Balck perfectly meld together 1990s shoegaze with the now fashionable 1980s electronic revivalist sound to create a stunningly current effect. The album is incredibly deep with sound, layering texture upon texture with Linden’s soft and beautiful vocals providing structure and balance, as much of an instrument as anything else. Songs build, swell and fade as true to the genres form. Although this formula has been around for decades, I find myself drawn to their ability to make it emotional and raw, yet distant at the same time. This is an extremely mature debut and if the two are able to continue on in this path, I Break Horses will definitely be a band to watch. — Christian Kraeker

I Break Horses – Hearts

16. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo

Kurt Vile is able to express everything from the thoughts and worries of the common working man, much like Bruce Springsteen, to the frustrations of the creative minds that are often hard to understand, reminiscent of Bob Dylan. Though it’s not the easiest record to slip into, it’s its weirdness that keeps you coming back, trying to discover the heart of each song. Opening track ‘Baby’s Arms’ could have been a standard acoustic opener, but the thick texture gives it that extra something always constant in Kurt Vile’s quiet songs — quiet songs that are never too quiet. Smoke Ring also finds Vile rocking out as on ‘Puppet to the Man’, which hints at the the psychedelic nature of his live shows with his backing band the Violators. There are bigger and better things to come from Kurt Vile, but Smoke Ring for My Halo has solidified his name among the best of them writing music today. — Kyle Sikorski

Kurt Vile – Baby’s Arms

15. Feist – Metals

Perhaps the most enigmatic album on this list, Metals doesn’t reveal itself easily. Borne on a cliff side studio in Big Sur, the record is lush with Thoreau-inspired allusions to nature. While Metals is an introspective evocation of sounds that find themselves at home amongst mountains and birds, it has the capacity to explode in a human way, too. Metals eschews the pop-dynamics of The Reminder opting to invest in simplicity and subtlety. The record has no distinct beginning, middle, and end, just a patchwork of stories simultaneously undulating between start and finish. Feist’s languid vocals fall in and out of focus as they string together themes of nature, love, and life. The wistful melodies of ‘Anti-Pioneer’ creep along the heavy bass line and uncover themselves to those patient. Given room to grow, the beauty and diversity of Metals envelops you in much the same way. — Jan Kucic-Riker

Feist – Anti-Pioneer

14. Wild Flag

It’s been a good year for Carrie Brownstein. Following the creation of the brilliant Portlandia with Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen, Brownstein returned to the music scene with Wild Flag, her first band since Sleater-Kinney’s break-up. Also featuring ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, as well as former members of Helium and The Minders, Wild Flag’s self-titled debut is ten tracks of catchy, punky, rock ‘n’ roll. The whole album is a treat, but the highlight here is the opening track, ‘Romance’. More than simply Sleater-Kinney with keyboards, Wild Flag is one of the best debuts of the year, even if most of the faces are familiar. Riot grrrl lives! — Kevin Kania

Wild Flag – Romance

13. The Weeknd – House of Balloons

“Getting everyone nervous, ‘cus them hipsters gon have to get along with them hood niggas,” Drake prophesized on an early and forgotten mixtape-cut ‘Ignant Shit’ in 2009. Fast-forward two and half years and the line rings truer than ever when thinking about his spawn, The Weeknd’s, place in music. It’s hard to think of a more successful crossover act in 2011, fusing a minimal ’90s R&B aesthetic with Beach House and Cocteau Twins samples. Alongside seedy and bleak sex and drug-laden lyrics, this musical fusion accounts for how House of Balloons single-handedly resurrected the comatose genre of R&B this year, sparked an interest in contemporaries like Frank Ocean, and birthed a sure to be future star in lead, Abel Tesfaye. Drake was right – seems them hipsters are gettin along with them hood niggas on this one. — Sal Patel

The Weeknd – House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls

12. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l

In naming tUnE-yArD’s sophomore album, Merrill Garbus gave a nod to Ann Jones’ influential book on women and violence, Women Who Kill. By dropping ‘women’ from the title, Garbus didn’t diminish the prominent role of feminist themes in the album, but extended her artistic endeavour beyond the gender arena. Through the narration of various characters, Garbus delves into an exploration of power struggles in different spheres: eating disorders, abusive relationships, city violence and poverty. Despite the dense themes, irregular typography and designation as an experimental pop album, w h o k i l l is neither inaccessible nor does it take itself too seriously. Some of the lyrically heavier tracks are cloaked in a deceptive ’60s girl group vibe, others are frenetically danceable, and yearnings of gang affiliation are rendered earnestly goofy. With her powerfully idiosyncratic voice and an intricacy of loop pedal work that never ceases to amaze in live performances, Merrill is definitely a new kind of woman. — Sabrina Diemert

tUnE-yArDs – Gangsta

11. The War on Drugs – Slave Ambient

My original opening line for this blurb went like this, “Combine equal parts Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen with a dash of Kurt Vile for edginess and you have the War on Drugs.” Bad cooking metaphors aside, I later understood why this line sucked. First, it read like a poorly plagiarized version of the band’s Wikipedia entry. Second, I realized that Kurt Vile was a former member of the band, so the reference made both perfect sense and no sense at all. I learned a couple things from this experience. First, I can play spot-the-references just as well as any Wikipedia contributor. Second, I don’t know why I like this band so much or why Slave Ambient made it onto this list. It may be both so simple and obvious, the specifics elude me. The War on Drugs are a talented, straight-forward rock band and Slave Ambient is a well-produced, straight-forward rock record. — Justin Everett

The War on Drugs – Come to the City

Continue Reading ‘Best Albums of 2011′ Feature List »

Photograph by Vanessa Heins

It’s been a busy few years for Hey Rosetta!, Newfoundland’s premier indie music export. They’ve become a fixture on the Polaris Prize shortlist and toured their ambitious Can-rock virtually non-stop, though judging by their multiple sellout crowds at the cavernous Phoenix in Toronto this week, the country is still in the mood to hear more. In that spirit, I joined frontman Tim Baker and cellist/guitarist/utility outfielder Romesh Thavanathan on one of the band’s rare days off for a traditional Toronto burrito lunch. Read on if you’ve ever wondered about the hidden gems of the St. John’s music scene, or how to start a rock band without owning an electric guitar, or what kind of burrito a true Newfoundlander enjoys.

Hey Rosetta! – Yer Fall
Hey Rosetta! – Welcome

Josh: First things first. What kind of burritos did you get, and why?

Romesh Thavanathan: I got the large halibut, because I’m a baller.

Tim Baker:  I got the small halibut, because I’m not a baller, or at least less of a baller.

Josh: With a couple days off in Toronto before your next show, what are you getting up to?

Both: Recovery. [Laughs]

Tim: It’s been a long run and a long time since we’ve had any days off. I think the last time we had a few was a month and a half ago, when we got to Australia.

Josh: How was Australia?

Tim: It was great just being there. The vibe is so amazing. Really laid back, really sunny. We got to drive through the countryside, got to play a lot of smaller towns that we never knew existed, towns with names like Toowoomba and Coolangatta and Ballarat.

Josh: I’ll have to Google those to see about how to spell them.

Romesh: They’re a lot of fun to say.

Josh: Your third album Seeds just came out earlier this year. What’s different about it, compared to your older stuff – what’s changed, and what direction are you headed?

Tim: I think the biggest difference between this record and the last is the two years we’ve spent on the road—two years of listening to music and fully living in the role of being in a band. It’s really focused us more on the craft of writing and recording.

When we recorded the last album, Into Your Lungs, our attitude was very much about the songs, rather than about crafting a sound. And [Into Your Lungs producer] Hawksley Workman recognized that. We didn’t have a lot of time in the studio for that album, so everything was recorded using the same setup for every song: same drum miking, same kit, same guitars. Hawk is just amazing at creating a really good feeling and a really good vibe, and capturing that in sound.

But this time, we wanted to get deeper into the sound of things—making the songs more distinct, making a soundscape. We looked at tone more closely. And that was made possible by those couple years of listening to music, playing shows, realizing how much work there is left to do and how much room there is in our small aspect of music. Tony [Doogan, producer for Belle & Sebastian and Mogwai] was amazing in that regard because he’s an absolute mad scientist with sound. He has this strategy where we’ll do an entire song from beginning to end before moving on to the next one, taking a full day or two totally devoted to one song, which helps a lot with creating distinctiveness on each track. I think it gives the record a lot more depth and a lot more scope.

[The halibut burritos arrive.]

Josh: Speaking of fish, tell us a little about St. John’s—

Romesh: Did you say “speaking of fish”?

Tim: That’s fair, actually.

Romesh: Now that’s a segue.

Josh: I think that’s the highlight of my journalistic career right there.

Romesh: St. John’s is a great place. It’s got a wonderful arts and music scene, one that doesn’t get exported as much as it should. And that’s just a fact of life being on an island that’s not very close to the rest of the country. It costs so much to get off of it that a lot of talented people just can’t afford to start touring. On the bright side, when we’re home we get to listen to a lot of fantastic music.

Josh: I’ve heard you guys describe the scene and culture there as being very collaborative, more so than in the rest of Canada.

Tim: It is, by the nature of the setting there, the isolation and the small numbers. You know, I never feel really qualified to say much about the scene in St. John’s, because I feel like I was never really a part of it. Never went to see any shows, really, until the band started. It’s only since then that I’ve realized that there is a showgoing culture in St. John’s. Well, it’s actually only since the band started that I realized showgoing culture was a real thing anywhere in the world, you know? And realized that going to see music live is, like, really awesome?

Romesh: [Laughs]

Tim: And a fun thing to do on the weekend? Who knew? But yeah, St. John’s, it’s always been an amazing place for us to be. Supportive, loyal, really amazing people.

Josh: Are there bands you’ve made a connection with back home who deserve to be world famous and aren’t yet? Want to give them a shout out?

Romesh: Pathological Lovers definitely deserve the nod in that category.

Tim: Yes. They’re just such an amazing band. Jody Richardson is the lead singer, songwriter, he’s an amazing performer and just not really interested in touring. They’re a little older in that band. Whenever we’re home they play almost every week, and it’s so sweet that they do. I never get tired of seeing them. One of my favourite bands in the world to see live.

Romish: Chad VanGaalen too. That’s another one for the list.

Josh: You’ve gotten comparisons to the Tragically Hip and Gord Downie for being a rock band that put a lot of emphasis on the lyrics. Who are your influences where lyrics are concerned?

Tim: It’s really nice to even be mentioned in the same sentence as Gord Downie. He’s got this incredible talent. He’s much freer than I am, I think, in how he writes his songs—he’s got a much freer connection between words and music that is ultimately way cooler than what I do. My songs are written almost like essays. You’re writing and a line may come to you—or something may come to you on the street and you’ll write it down—and I always want the whole song to be about that little nugget of meaning, where everything sort of reflects back onto it. It ends up being cohesive, so you can say with confidence that song X is about Y. On the other hand, Gord has this great ability where the lines don’t have to go together. Somehow, combining those disconnected lyrical images or ideas with the music just pushes them both higher, and makes it really powerful. I’ve seen him live a lot, and he’s definitely affected me. Although so does everything you listen to.

[‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’ by Nancy Sinatra plays on the radio.]

Tim: Even that.

Josh: What’s on the CD player in the van right now?

Tim: Spoon, Transference. The new Wilco record is also getting a lot of love.

Romesh: A whole lot of love, you might say.

Josh: I wasn’t going to go there. So you guys do sometimes have a fair number of swears in your songs, maybe a bit more than the average rock band. What’s the process for dealing with those?

Tim: Well, maybe if we were a band that radio really loved from day one it would be different, but I don’t think about that too much. Much to our management and label’s chagrin and disappointment. [Laughs] But we do think about it. On ‘Yer Spring’ we did a radio edit with the line “looking around in the dark” instead of “fucking around”, which I think could just as easily have been the line anyway. I don’t really consciously put them in. It’s just the way you naturally speak.

Romesh: Our moms would be ashamed.

Tim: Well, I think they hopefully understand that it’s just real, you know. That it’s emphatic, and often it’s part of a character.

Josh: You’ve created an name for yourselves as “that rock band with a string section”—the strings are a huge part of your identity. Have they been part of your music from the beginning?

Tim: In the beginning I had all these songs written, like you mentioned—stuff I’d done on my own. I’d been listening to the soundtrack to Waking Life by the Tosca Tango Orchestra, and I just fell in love with those strings on it. I really love the way that the strings deepen the poetics of music. Strings are such passionate instruments. So, originally, the plan was going to be cello and piano and a minimal bit of percussion, and then eventually…

Romesh: The boys found electric guitars.

Tim: [Laughs] Yeah, basically! I didn’t even own an electric guitar when we started.

Romesh: You didn’t? That’s awesome.

Tim: No, but I found one. And then we started remembering what it was like being in bands in high school and just rocking out. And yeah, that sort of took over. It has a way of doing that in rock music, I guess.

Josh: Romesh, has your role as a string player changed over the lifespan of the band?

Romesh: Definitely. At first Tim and our bassist Josh [Ward] were writing all the arrangements. Now we’re starting to get more involved, taking more active roles.

Josh: Do you find you face challenges other bands don’t have to deal with because of the strings?

Romesh: Live. Live can be kind of a nightmare, trying to figure out how to make it work. A cello has such a big resonant body—it soaks up frequencies, particularly bass frequencies, and that’ll feed back on you. And you’re playing a fretless instrument, so if you can’t hear yourself you’re going to sound really bad. It can be a tough environment.

Tim: But I think now that we’re five years in, we’re finally figuring it out. Or at least we’re starting to get close.

Photograph by Chris Graham

Who are Library Voices? They are a seven-piece pop group from Saskatchewan whose new album Summer of Lust should be popping up on a number of Best of 2011 lists. They are fun-loving literary types who will probably kick your ass at shot chess. They write with one foot in the 1960s and the other in the not-too-distant future. In short, they’re a bit like Vampire Weekend, except that they’re Canadian and don’t give you a mild urge to punch them in the face.

As they endeavour to spread their name (memorably misremembered by a friend-of-a-friend as “The Shushing Librarians”), the live act should help. Library Voices bring serious weapons-grade energy to every show. Eoin Hickey-Cameron (above: top centre), for example, isn’t a bassist out of Central Casting lurking in the corner in a hoodie. He’ll jump up on a monitor or kick drum, get soaked with sweat by the end of the third song, trade stupid faces with the sax player, flop his hair back and forth like a really gross shampoo commercial—and there are seven of these guys. The notoriously dance-averse Horseshoe crowd at their recent Toronto show even showed moments of bopping and swaying, if not, you know, actual dancing.

I sat down with 28.6% of the band, namely songwriter/synth player Mike Dawson and guitarist Brennan Ross (above: far right and far left, respectively), to talk about audiobooks and how to get kicked out of one’s apartment.

Library Voices – Generation Handclap
Library Voices – If Raymond Carver Were Born in the 90′s

Josh: How’s the tour been so far?

Brennan Ross: It’s great. It’s hard to really tell when it started—it’s been sort of perpetually going on. We went out to Victoria and Halifax and back, we’re starting to go into the States.

Josh: How do you find it touring in the States as a Canadian band?

Mike Dawson: It’s sort of like starting over. We’ve been feeling really well accepted when we meet people down there, when they discover our band, but people aren’t aware. In Canada people are a little spoiled because having access to bands from the States is second nature. They might as well be from down the road. It’s not the case the other way round—because there are so many incredible bands in the States, they’re not always so aware of what’s going on in Canada. So in that capacity it sort of feels like a first tour sometimes, building crowds and meeting people, sleeping on the floor at the sound guy’s house. With his six roommates. But it’s awesome. It helps you keep yourself in check.

Brennan: Mike’s right. You get spoiled up here, and then you play for, what, 25 people in some places?

Josh: The people in the front row don’t know the lyrics anymore.

Brennan: Right. We might get a little bummed if there aren’t a whole bunch of people there, but we also might get to do something we wouldn’t regularly get to do, because there’s no expectations. We’ll drag out the middle of one song for five minutes just to try it out. You get to sort of experiment and, you know, be back in that place again. It’s nice.

Mike: We’ve been really enjoying it. Some of our funnest shows have been on this tour and we’ve met some amazing people. That’s just the first little bit of it. We’re headed back down again next week and we’ll do some more stuff in the new year. So it’s not something to complain about. Keeps yourself in line.

Josh: Your new album, Summer of Lust. Where does that name come from?

Mike: I have… no idea. Well, I kind of do, in the back of my head. When we first started the band, we looked toward a lot of ’60s pop as an influence, how they were so loose with instrumentation. We grew up with this rigid and naïve and kind of embarrassing mindset where you’ve got two guitars, bass, and drums, and adding anything else is totally left field. But you get a little older and revisit those records and you realize there’s any instrument you could imagine in there, and your ears just kind of washed over it when you were a kid. I’ve always had this ’60s pop thing in the back of my head, and in the new record we pursued more Motown things as well in terms of what we were listening to.

So that’s one part of it. I also was hoping to make a record that felt on the cusp of being… embarrassingly modern, I guess? Something that will feel dated eventually, but in a way that down the road we’ll look at it half in jest and half with nostalgia. So there you go. It’s a modern play on the summer of love.

Brennan: And it sounds good.

Mike: Yes. It sounds good. It’s catchy.

Josh: Your lead singer Carl mentioned on stage that the video for ‘Generation Handclap’ had gotten him kicked out of his apartment.

Mike: Yeah. Well, I think it was a handful of things.

Brennan: It was a lot of things.

Mike: Never got a clear-cut explanation. [Laughs] The video was probably the final straw. We shot it ourselves at his house, the landlord saw it eventually down the road, and… that was that.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Josh: That video does make Regina seem like a lot of fun.

Brennan: It can be, yeah.

Josh: What can you say about it as a town to grow up in, to develop in as a band?

Mike: Well, about five of us grew up in Estevan, which is two hours south and quite a bit smaller—just over ten thousand people. Growing up there was the same as anywhere, you know? You discover a culture of people who are drawn to the same things and you learn to share music. We all sort of traveled around and ended up in Regina.

Brennan: We also happened to grow up in Estevan at a time when there were a whole bunch of kids into music, and they all sort of migrated to bigger centres.

Josh: And ended up in your band.

Brennan: Yeah, a lot of them did! I’m not sure if that exists in Estavan still. Maybe?

Mike: We’re so far removed at this point that I’m not even sure what genre they’re pursuing there now. Maybe there’s a big hip-hop scene. No idea.

Brennan: But being from Estevan is…

Mike: …it’s not really a liberal culture.

Brennan: Right. You should get a job out on the rigs, mostly. That’s success there.

Mike: There is a great music community in Regina, though, and I think it’s starting to get more recognition now. I’m not sure what took so long.

Josh: You have songs like ‘The Prime Minister’s Daughter’ that are political and very specific. Do you set out to write a political song, or a literary one, or does it come up out of the songwriting?

Mike: Yeah, no, there was no schema of what I wanted to get across with that one. When we finished—well, not even finished—when we set out to write this record, Carl [Johnson] was like, “Hey, what’s the new record going to be about?” I hadn’t really thought about it. When you write enough stuff in a lump, it’s inevitable that one song is going to carry through to fill out the next one. It’s hard to not care about the arts or even care about social policy in any capacity and not feel affected by those decisions. There are all sorts of things that are pertinent to our lives, but I don’t set out to write a political song per se.

Josh: What was your last album Denim on Denim about, then?

Mike: Well, there’s a lot of reference to the concept of the end of the world and just how preposterous that is, and the acts of recognizing and celebrating life. Sometimes it feels like a really negative record listening back to it, but that was sort of the theme with it. Partly it was that and partly the pursuit of love and running away from it when you find it. This cat and mouse game that runs through our lives. That kind of thing.

Josh: So ‘Generation Handclap’. It’s a party song that kind of makes fun of party people, calling them “generation drunk-text.” Do you mean it to be particularly contradictory like that, or maybe just cynical?

Mike: I didn’t mean it to be. The first reviews that came out did comment on this juxtaposition of cheerful music with really negative lyrics. I have a fairly dry sense of humour and I sometimes forget that out of context it can sound so negative. They’re just observations. I think anyone who’s engaged in that lifestyle—you know, late 20s-early 30s, digging music—sort of gets where it’s coming from. The generation of immediacy. Right now, I mean, my phone keeps resetting and it’s driving me crazy.

Josh: Like, rebooting on its own?

Mike: Yeah. In the scheme of life, it’s pretty much one degree away from teleporting me, and I’m wound up because it shuts off sometimes?

Josh: First world problems.

Brennan: That’s right. With a hashtag. #firstworldproblems.

Josh: One more thing. What’s up with the intro and outro?

Brennan: In the van we have Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything on audiobook, read by Simon Vance. We’d be doing late drives, and we’d be listening to it, and it was just the most soothing yet dry and witty British sort of voice. I think it was Paul who had the idea, “Hey, we should get that guy to talk on our record.” And then Mike, being the guy that makes things happen, made it happen.

Mike: And going back to Generation Handclap—the way that he reads that book, and how it’s this combination of stone-cold fact with hints of humour? I think his dry, satirical voice sets a great tone for the record.

Brennan: [British accent] “Imagine, if you can… but of course you can’t.”

Library Voices – Outro