Saskatchewan Plates

It’s the very last day of 2009 making it the last possible moment for me to publish my music picks from both the last year and the last decade. I had planned fancy descriptions for all of these, but time constraints as a result of excessive holiday celebration have tied my hands. Thus I present four categories of musical picks: Top New Albums of 2009, Top New (to me) Albums of 2009, Top Singles of 2009, and the Top 40 albums of the decade. There’s probably a couple of questionable picks on the decade list as a result of me including a few albums that, while I don’t particularly love now, were fairly instrumental in my musical upbringing through the highschool years. You’ll know them when you see them.

Without further ehdo:

Top New Albums of 2009

1. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
2. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
3. Vitalic – Flashmob
4. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
5. Burial/Four Tet – “Moth / “Wolf Cub”

Top New (to me) Albums of 2009

1. Fujiya & Myagi – Transparent Things/Lightbulbs
2. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colors
3. Yogoman Burning Band – Yogoman Burning Band
4. Paramore – Riot
5. Lovage – Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady to

Top New (to me) Singles of 2009

1. Das Racist – Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wall Paper Remix)
2. Friendly Fires – Skeleton Boy
3. Ohbijou – Black Ice
4. Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind
5. Miley Cyrus & Nortorious BIG – Party and Bullshit in the USA

Top 40 Albums of the Decade

1. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
2. Justice – Cross
3. Stars – Set Yourself On Fire
4. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot it in People
5. !!! – Louden Up Now
6. Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism
7. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
8. Mark Ronson – Version
9. Deltron – Deltron 3030
10. The Streets – Original Pirate Material
11. The Postal Service – Give Up
12. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
13. Cadeaux – Physical City
14. Radiohead – In Rainbows
15. Daft Punk – Discovery
16. Jamiroquai – A Funk Odyssey
17. Zero 7 – Simple Things/When It Falls
18. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Yanqui U.X.O.
19. The Rapture – Pieces Of The People We Love
20. Corb Lund – Hair In My Eyes Like A Highland Steer
21. Manitoba/Caribou – Up In Flames/The Milk of Human Kindness
22. Shout Out Out Out Out – Not Saying Just Saying
23. DJ Shadow – In Tune and On Time
24. Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
25. Reverie Sound Revue – Reverie Sound Review
26. Andrew W.K. – I Get Wet
27. Wolf Parade – Apologies To The Queen Mary
28. Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
29. Arcade Fire – Funeral
30. Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
31. Blink 182 – Enema of the State
32. Four Tet – Pause
33. Raising The Fawn – The North Sea
34. Thunderbirds Are Now! – Justamustache
35. Dashboard Confessional – Swiss Army Romance
36. Death From Above 1979 – You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine
37. Chad VanGaalen – Infiniheart
38. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
39. Matthew Good – Avalanche
40. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

Collarbone by Fujiya & Miyagi

This music is a placeholder for a more meaningful post. The song is great. This post is not. Going to New York next week. I’m hoping I can stir up some tom follery.

Guilty Cubicles by Broken Social Scene dropped into my rotation this morning. It instantly reminded me of sitting around with Kenshi during winter snowfalls at our various rented abodes. Amazing how the first few notes of a song can stop you in your tracks and take your mind somewhere completely different.

I also published this with the Waterloo tag, but I feel like it’s been retired.

I’ve been spreading the gospel on Felix Cartal after my serendipitous discovery of the Vancouver-based compatriot at SXSW. Unfortunately, he’s got no released albums so I’ve been building up my library by using less reputable means. It also seems that a number of his tracks no longer have a public reference on the net which is supremely frustrating to a collector such as myself. Here’s a taste:

Dragonette – Take it Like a Man (Felix Cartal Remix)

Huh what a coincidental day. First CBC shows up at the Google and now I’m using the CBC category for the first time in years.

Anywho – I’m really posting so you can all take a look at CBC Radio 3’s poll on the Best Live Music Club in Canada.

The reason I’m pointing it out is because chances are, you’re favorite stomping ground is listed (Unless you’re from Alberta evidently). Check this out:

• The Starlight Social Club – Waterloo, Ontario
• Amigo’s Cantina – Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
• George’s Fabulous Roadhouse – Sackville, New Brunswick

I’m a little sad that neither Richards nor the Lamplighter put Vancouver on the list, but I’m definitely going to have check out shows at the rest of the locations. I’m looking at you Penticton, Duncan, and Kelowna.

I have a rather interesting theory in the oven which, I need more to give more time to bake. In its place, I wanted to expand on last week’s post about the big movie soundtracks by mentioning two video game soundtracks that had similar effects.

Up until the CD-based Playstation, video game soundtracks had relatively limited influence on expanding my listening habit. Everyone who was born knows the Mario Brothers theme song and there’s an endless list of similar classics, but it wasn’t until the Playstation (or that generation for purists) that CDs opened up the door to actual musical soundtracks. There were a couple remarkable games that took advantage of this new ability.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater (1 & 2)
Both of these albums helped me explore beyond Blink 182’s shadow deeper into Punk. Bands like Bad Religion, Millencolin, and Lagwagon spent a lot of time in my CD player. And Superman by Goldfinger single-handedly opened up Ska, a massively influential genre in my formative highschool years. Rage Against the Machine made another appearance and Styles of Beyond showed up to support the growing presence of hip hop I was getting from the great Dustin Baillie parties.

Gran Turismo
There is a song by Ash called Lose Control on the soundtrack for Gran Turismo. The title is appropriate because it remains, to this day, the most dangerous song to listen to driving. Garbage, Fluke, The Dandy Warhols, and a spectacular Chemical Brothers remix of Everything Must Go by The Manic Street Preachers rounded out the list. The game has maintained a healthy audio accompaniment for every iteration. The most recent release – Gran Turismo 5 Prologue – picked up home town favourites Justice, as well as The Mars Volta and DJ Shadow.

Command & Conquer (and Red Alert)
C&C was actually PC based so it belongs in a slightly different category than the two Playstation epics before it. Nonetheless, I would be remissed If I did not mention these soundtracks. Both (+ their expansions) were written by Frank Klepacki and both were good enough to listen to outside the game. This game, besides wasting a significant fraction of my childhood, opened up the entire genre of instrumentals for me.

Bonus! There was one movie soundtrack that I scolded myself for forgetting to add to last week’s list:

Beavis and Butthead Do America
I had this album on cassette. I listened to it while working my paper route. With LL Cool J and Madd Head on the album, this was easily the first album I owned that had Hip Hop. It also had the Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC, and No Doubt (which was just about to blow up with Tragic Kingdom). It also had I Wanna Riot by Rancid and the Stubborn All-stars which did not receive the Ska love-inspiring credit it deserved until much later. All in all, an extremely eclectic soundtrack and a very young age.

Am The Only One? by The Barenaked Ladies (Rediscovered this on the Hype Machine front page today – Yay more CanCon!)

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Steve turned 25 today and while I can’t speak for him, I certainly feel old. After an evening on the town in my old Haight street stomping ground, my entire Sunday was a write-off. Maybe it was all those mixed drinks; I should just stick to beer.

With no cable and no money on the outcome, I spent my day not watching the super bowl. In its place, I bathed in vitamin d along the coast highway back from SF and dug up some old music. Date Rape by Sublime came over the jukebox at least twice last night so I put a few of my old favorites on the ipod (Doin’ Time, Santeria). This triggered a full on Ska regression, though the fact that the warm weather didn’t trigger it earlier is surprising. I expanded the genres and ended up poking through several other dusty memories (including the aforementioned BNL track). One such rough gem was The Spawn soundtrack.

I bought this album back in 1997 when it came out. I don’t think I actually saw the movie, but it was cool to mess with your parents by owning albums that featured Marilyn Manson and this fit the bill. The album’s twist ( which was completely lost on me at the time) was that all songs were remixes or originals created by an electronic and metal band pairing. What’s surprising now is to look back and see just how many individual names I ended up digging into much more. From the electronic side there was The Crystal Method, Orbital, Moby, and The Prodigy among others — Metal had Filter, Tom Morello, Incubus, and Soul Coughing. The songs themselves were of dubious quality (I remember some older kid who saw me listening to the album refer to Metallica’s ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ remix as the single worst thing created by humanity), but the album opened a lot of musical doors, particularly ones that weren’t what all the cool kids were listening too. Being the techno kid never made me any friends.

This rat hole led deeper into other movie soundtracks that introduced me to other favourites: Hackers (Underworld, more of The Prodigy), Godzilla (Jamiroquai, Green Day), The Matrix (Rage, The Propellerheads), and The Lost Highway (Nine Inch Nails).

I’m sure there are others I should include (and I’m hoping you shout some out in the comments). But the single most monumental soundtrack album in terms of great bands I had yet to dig my teeth into would have to be Garden State. Although I knew a little Nick Drake and Iron & Wine, I did not know Zero 7, Thievery Corporation, or Frou Frou. The movie was mediocre at best, but Zach Braff built a masterpiece mixtape with the soundtrack.

What soundtracks did I miss?

This track caught my ear on the ol’ satellite radio as we were making the rounds last night:

Digitalism – Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix)

Also, this is the first attempt at hacking the youtube embed into a music player. I’m hoping that Facebook notes auto-import will pick it up properly.

Another relatively uneventful holiday season has come and gone. I’m halfway back to San Francisco on the coldest of all the days in Saskatoon (-40 C, -58 with the windchill). Calgary is already significantly warmer (-6). Google reports the bay area at 13 with a sun icon. The cute girl on the plan coming in was right: My longing for snow lasted nowhere near the length of the trip.

2009 comes with no real revelations. I’m still not 100% with my current situation, but I’m resolved to make the best of it. I’m starting to look at this less like a career and more as another leg in the education. That makes this much more of an experiment – a learning experience. I expect to be much more confident about my direction one year from now. I also expect to eat these words. In the meantime, I have a two hour flight and a forty minute, top-down welcome back.

Work tomorrow.

After an epic session of Guitar Hero World Tour and with half a day of shopping left before the big day, I am finally motivated enough to write the obligatory best albums of 2008 post. Before I start, let me say that this has been a comparably weak year for music discovery on my part. As a result, this list has been relatively fixed since early in the year and that the majority of the albums weren’t even released in 2008. That said, all of these albums are easily worth the price of admission, regardless of the method you use to acquire them.

5. Rodrigo y Gabriela
   By Rodrigo y Gabriela (2006)
   A mexican classical guitar duo inspired by Megadeth and Slayer living in Ireland (where this album went platinum) is about as good a recipe for awesome as any I’ve seen. The album features a smattering of spectacular and original guitar works and a couple covers (including everyone’s favourite: Stairway to Heaven).
4. In Rainbows
   By Radiohead (2007)
   Of all the albums on this list, In Rainbows is the most obviously out of place in the 2008 list as this album’s release last year was by far the most talked about. That said, despite not having to pay anything to Radiohead for a digital copy, I didn’t download mine until the New Year. Almost every track on this album is notable, and since I’m now 14 months behind, they have all been sufficiently noted. But for the sake of viral promotion, I recommend you check out this awesome lo-fi cover of Nude called Big Ideas (Don’t get any) by James Houston
3. Version
   By Mark Ronson (2007 – 2008 in Brazil!)
   This album haunted me in clips on college radio and in bar bathrooms several times before I was able to identify the person responsible. Shining stars on this album are the Toxic (Britney Spears) and Just (Radiohead) covers, but the instrumental of God Put A Smile Upon Your Face is also enjoyable. Kudos to Mark Ronson for not only promoting British artists in the covers but also producing the only Amy Winehouse song that’s listenable.
2. In The Future
   By Black Mountain (2008)
   Despite being the only album released in 2008, this album more than others belongs on last year’s list as I was already gifting the advance to cousin Tyler this time last year. On the other hand, this is by far my favourite album of 2008 that was actually released in 2008. It’s a perfect collection of the sharper and softer sides of Psych-rock. And while there are a lot of excellent tracks, my personal favourite goes to the 17 minute marathon “Bright Lights”
1. Cross
   By Justice (2007)
   If you consider yourself a fan of music at all, you’ve already bought yourself a copy of this.

I’ve been using my Mac as an alarm clock for a couple of years now (See Robbie Hanson’s Alarm Clock – far and away the single most valuable and reliable piece of software on my computer).

The alarm clock software uses songs from your iTunes library as your wake up call, which often produces interesting results. After two years, I have found the best wake up song (as well as the most appropriately titled): Sleep Deprivation by Simian Mobile Disco.