Best of 2004

Montreal's Arcade Fire released Funeral in 2004; for many critics, it was the album of the year. Photo by Hilary Leftik.

2004 proved that it’s damn near impossible to escape Canada’s pop divas. That shouldn’t be construed as a criticism – not entirely, anyway. Best-selling new albums from Shania and Avril offered further evidence of Canada’s clout in the global music market. That’s a good thing. Meanwhile, Celine Dion found new and inventive ways to shame her countrymen: first, by collaborating with baby photographer Anne Geddes on a schmoopie record/photo album paying tribute to motherhood (Miracle: A Celebration of New Life); then, by donning a stewardess get-up to literally sing the praises of Air Canada, which spent 18 months in bankruptcy protection and was looking for a brash way to endear itself to the flying public. Will somebody please stop Celine before she melts our hearts permanently?

The most pleasantly surprising big-name release this year was Diana Krall’s The Girl in the Other Room. Although the album includes covers of Tom Waits and Mose Allison tunes, Krall co-wrote most of it with new hubs (and honourary Canadian) Elvis Costello. Connubial collaborations of this stature have a spotty record at best, but this one surpasses expectation. Even if you’re not partial to Krall’s voice – which is still as soporific as warm milk – the balladry is tender and refined.

Major-label artists supplied dependable sales figures, but it was the indies that brought originality and excitement to Canadian music. Before 2004, the biggest buzz to emanate from Hamilton was the ominous thrum of Big Steel. That changed last year with the emergence of synth-pop duo Junior Boys, who through a vociferous weblog campaign captured worldwide acclaim. Granted, it’s not like frenzied teens in Miami, Sao Paolo and Seoul were thronging by the thousands to the local Wal-Mart to lay down their cash for Junior Boys’ Last Exit. But Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus certainly put critics in a froth. With its sublime synthesis of romantic-pop melodicism and micro-house precision, Last Exit was one of the best-reviewed albums of the year, and confirmed that Richie Hawtin is not the final word on Canadian electronica – particularly since he now resides in Berlin.

The success of Junior Boys only underscored the global appetite for the sound of the Canadian underground. 2003 was the year Toronto’s Broken Social Scene broke through; in 2004, artists like Death From Above 1979, Feist and the Arcade Fire got foreign tongues wagging, from Britain’s notoriously critical NME to U.S. tastemakers like Rolling Stone and Pitchforkmedia.com.

Death From Above 1979 is made up of Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger, a pair of shaggy, denim-fond Sabbath freaks from Toronto’s east end. Their contribution to the year in music: the pulverizing You're a Woman, I’m a Machine, an album where drums and bass are set on “destroy.” The fact that the band only contains two members has been no impediment to their live spectacle, a vortex of stage gymnastics and swirling tresses. (Death From Above appended the “1979” in August after receiving a cease-and-desist order from New York producers DFA, whose acronym spells out you-guessed-it.)

Leslie Feist works a more lissome angle. A satellite member of the Broken Social Scene family who has spent time in both Calgary and Toronto, Feist released her second album, Let it Die. Recorded in Paris and produced by Canadian expat Chilly Gonzales, Let It Die is a blithe gambol through jazz, folk and disco that’s as serenely intoxicating as a Sunday spent sipping Bordeaux.

The year’s most enigmatic release – and the one constant in critical best-of-2004 lists – was Funeral, the sophomore album from avant-pop concern the Arcade Fire, a.k.a. David Bowie’s new favourite band. Like fellow Montrealers godspeed you! black emperor, this sextet manages to capture the grandeur of an orchestra and the emotional fervour of a punk band. Funeral is sui generis and really quite fortifying.

The most dramatic gesture in Canadian music this year had little to do with song craft. In November, Tom Cochrane, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy and soul diva Jully Black decamped for Parliament Hill in Ottawa to publicize their grievances about music piracy – and to affect some sort of legislative panacea. According to Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, retail sales of CDs in Canada were down $465 million since 1999, a figure he ascribes to the pandemic of illegal downloads.

Diana Krall. Courtesy Verve Music Group. Photo by Marc Seliger

Speaking of copyright, pity Dan Snaith. When the critically vaunted electro-popper from Dundas, Ont., chose the moniker Manitoba, he thought he’d found a name that was just dull and unfashionable enough to escape trademark infringement. This year, Handsome Dick Manitoba of ’70s New York proto-punks the Dictators threatened Snaith with litigation. Although Handsome Dick has never released an album under the name Manitoba, Snaith was sufficiently intimidated to agree to drop his musical sobriquet. Seeking an equally anachronistic Canadian handle, he has opted for Caribou.

First, he swore he’d only release one album. Then, he deigns to record a follow-up – and it’s dazzling. Toronto rapper K-Os is one complex dude, and he continues to harbour resentment towards modern rap. His gripe: MCs have lost the plot, becoming adrift in a morass of materialism and rote rhymes. Joyful Rebellion is K-Os’s recovery operation, abounding in astute verses and productions that evoke prelapsarian hip-hop. Even so, it’s the forays into jangly pop, folk and burnished soul that make his rebellion so joyful. Some moan that the music world doesn’t need another Wyclef Jean, but I challenge Wyclef to top the rhythmic savvy of Crabbuckit or B-Boy Stance.

Melissa Auf der Maur's solo record release last year would have been a total non-event were it not for the lovesick Canadian music press, which has been doggedly proclaiming the Montrealer’s greatness since she was drafted to pluck bass for Hole back in ’94. Surely one of Canada’s most baffling music “stars,” Auf der Maur’s notoriety seems predicated on her chumminess with people like Courtney Love, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Billy Corgan. (Auf der Maur played on the final Smashing Pumpkins disc – draw whatever conclusions you like.) Music journos fully anticipated that when the rangy redhead got down to penning her own disc it would be a world-beater. The release of Auf der Maur gave us a long-awaited taste of what she’s capable of, and the findings are: not a hell of a lot. Despite a support system of semi-important musicians (including Homme and ex-Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha), Auf der Maur is uninspired, enervated rawk.

The fact that the big record companies put stock in unproven, over-hyped “talents” like Auf der Maur goes a long way to explaining why few people expect the majors to deliver anything remotely resembling innovation (K-Os excepted). One can hope – naively, perhaps – that they’ll change their ways in 2005.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.