Made in Canada

So I made up my year end best of. I didn't circulate it very much this year, so if you didn't get one and want one, let me know.

To me it was really noticable that there was no Canadian music on there. In the previous 2 years there was always at least 25% Canadian music (Cancon if you will). Had Canadian music really had a drop in quality in 2006?

Well it turns out the anwser is no. I just wasn't looking hard enough. Amazing considering all the great stuff coming out of TO. Anyway thanks to the Toronto public library's drive to increase their Canadian Indie music, I have been listening to a ton of Canadian music in the first few weeks of 2007. So what is there out there?

Well this week I discovered Ox and their great album Dust Bowl Revival. Ox are Americana but in a very laid back Canadian sort of way. Their lyrics remind me a lot of Springsteen, lots of references to cars and highways, but musically they are full of lovely acoustic melodies only occasionally reving the motor a little bit. It's beautiful stuff and I have their 2006 album American Lo Fi on order from Mike's music. (I'm always pleased when I can order stuff Mike has never heard off).

Another band I am loving is Fembots (I'm not crazy about either of these bands names it has to be said). Fembots write fragile story songs, with lots of different instruments and some great broken glass vocals. They also reference parts of TO alot, even making the 401 strangely romantic and endearing.

Broken Social Scene are a Toronto band that is really a band made up from lots of other bands. One of the off shoots is a band called Raising the Fawn and I've always really liked this tune called Gwendolyn. Finally the library picked up their catalogue and the band are alot heavier than I thought but in a really good way. Heavy with a purpose (It has to be said that what I call heavy probably isn't all that heavy!)

Final Fantasy is one guy with a violin (quite alot like Andrew Bird who was on my 2005 disc). The songs are great and the titles are even better, The Chronicles of Sarnia being my personal favourite.

I have a ton more music I haven't even listened to but I'm just glad to be getting into local artists again. It's great becuase not only can I listen to the CD's but they all play here all the time, and tickets are always very cheap. If I was aked to say my favourtie thing about Toronto, I think it would definitely be the music scene.