Analogue Shantytown
Glissandro 70
from Glissandro 70 (Constellation Records).
The mostly instrumental Toronto duo of Sandro Perri (aka Polmo Polpo) and Craig Dunsmuir (aka Guitarkestra) swipe promiscuously from minimalism, techno, Fela Kuti's Afro-beat, early hip hop, art-disco genius Arthur Russell and the Talking Heads. The album is dedicated to "all plagiarists, pilferers, pirates and pillagers," but these parvenus also glory in obsessive musical precision, which turns out to be enough to grant them their own uniquely smart, sidewinding soundprint.
Heave Away, Johnny
John Millard
from A People's Fame (Happy Day
Records).
With loping rhythm and a chamber arrangement that recalls New Orleans by way of Tom Waits, this melancholy Nova Scotia ballad is one of a coast-to-coast trove of neglected Canadian folk songs. Folk songs given full-blood transfusions by an offbeat singing songwriter who himself is too often overlooked in this here near-nation.
Horsetail Feathers
Alex Lukashevsky
from Connexions (North East Indie).
Known in Toronto as leader of the wobbily whimsical Deep Dark United, on his own Lukashevsky turns out to bridge Syd Barrett and Rufus Wainwright. A lush and swooping stylist, his lyrical conceits descend from some Freudian surrealist Euro-cabaret, yet deliver their stinging emotional slap very much in the present, tense.
I'll Call You
Mecca Normal
from The Observer (Kill Rock Stars).
After decades of staging rock 'n' roll battles against patriarchy and the state, the veteran Vancouver punk duo's Jean Smith snares her barbed tongue on the unexpected subject of on-line dating. But admissions of middle-aged loneliness don't stifle such zingers as this tune's opening lines, "I want cold, impersonal sex/ During which I'll be pretending/ I'm with someone else." And they won't soothe the raw, red flesh of David Lester's electric guitar.
-- Carl Wilson