Favourite Films of 2011

I had a quick look around because I was curious and it seems like Tree of Life is topping everyone’s lists this year. We have it in the queue but haven’t got around to watching it yet. I’m curious now though and I wonder if it would change things if I were to watch it first.

The curious bit, however, about the two films that did make my list is that both feature the unmatched Paul Giamatti as the leading actor. This wasn’t intentional but when I looked at everything I’d watched this year and boiled it down to just a couple of my favourites… Do I have a particular bias towards anything that Paul Giamatti does? Perhaps. Is he undoubtedly the best actor working in Hollywood right now? Yes, sir.

Barney’s Version

Barney’s Version is a brilliant take on the novel by Canadian literary heavyweight Mordecai Richler. I remembering having to read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in my O.A.C. (Grade 13) English class. I probably only understood about a third of what I read at the time but I can certainly appreciate a heavily nuanced and deeply moving plot a lot more now that I’m older. Barney’s Version is a movie about love, marriage, family, and memory. It’s wonderfully-acted (duh), well-written (duh), and unfolds itself in a fantastically pleasing fashion distilling all the very best parts of a well-developed Woody Allen movie. Complicated, comedic, and charming sums it up pretty well too.

Win Win

Win Win follows in the same genre of comedy as another of my all-time favourite movies Lars and the Real Girl. I’ll sum it up like this: Small town, quirky characters, social conundrums, and the kind of plot that sometimes seems like something you couldn’t make up if you tried. Like Lars, we’re treated to ninety minutes of some truly great and wholly surreal story-telling about people, a place, and a number of situations we’d never even thought about before. In this film, Giamatti plays and small-time lawyer and high-school wrestling coach as if he were born for the role.

Favourite Music of 2011

I have to be honest here, I’m losing my touch a little bit. It used to be that I’d troll around the Internet for hours every week seeking out new musical entrees to dig my teeth into. This past year, between teaching, walking the dog, union work, and taking a couple of extra courses online I haven’t had the opportunity to avail myself of a whole lot of new music. I worry I might’ve missed something great—it keeps me up at night.

Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What

If you ever get a late night phone call from a heavily-disguised voice saying they’ve got me hostage and won’t release me unless you pay $1,000,000 the first thing you should do is ask some kind of question that only I can answer, just to prove they really have me and that I’m alive. If you asked who my favourite artist of all time is the answer, bar none, is Paul Simon. If the hostage-takers say differently then I’m probably already dead.

I didn’t love Paul Simon’s 2006 Surprise. Musically it had a lot going out and I loved that but Simon felt vocally weak, tired even. I don’t like tired Paul Simon. I used to put on Surprise and long for the Graceland days when Paul was younger and more energetic and I worried that maybe, finally, the great Paul Simon was on the out and out. Of course, I was absolutely wrong.

So Beautiful or So What is Simon’s greatest album since Graceland. It’s a guitar album—which is a pretty awesome direction for Simon—and features a lot of songs driven by virtuosic guitar melodies. It’s clear that Paul Simon has some serious guitar chops and he didn’t want us to forget. Both lyrically and musically this album is an absolute powerhouse. It runs the gamut from slow, lyrically rich near-ballads to lyrically rich up-beat, foot-stomping tracks and even some songs that are both.

tUnE-yArDs, w h o k i l l

Be honest, the first thing you think when you see a band name stylized like that is, “Avoid!”

Fortunately for me, when I first year about tUnE-yArDs it was on the CBC Radio’s Q—if I had actually seen their name first I probably wouldn’t even have given them a chance. Prejudice avoided!

tUnE-yArDs is mostly New England-based Merrill Garbus and a whole lot of loops. Her first album, I gather, was recorded entirely on cassette tape and was a one-woman show. 2011′s w h o k i l l is studio-produced and features help from some of her friends as well.

How to describe how great w h o k i l l is? I’ll say a few things. First, Garbus evidently spent some time in Kenya, a place that I’ve been to as well, and adapts a lot of African percussion rhythms into her music. Second, there are saxophones. Third, well OK, tUnE-yArDs is like a jazz, afro-funk, nouveau politique explosion that packs so much power I feel like you could take this record, play it for the people of North Korea, and instantly the entire country would rise up, overthrow their government, and democratically elect a new leader. Oh, and it’d be a she.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

I missed the Bon Iver craze the first time around. Despite the best efforts of my good friend Andrew, I never really bothered with Justin Vernon’s 2008 For Emma, Forever Ago. I heard all about the mystique of being locked in a cabin in the woods, writing and recording using an old reel-to-reel recorder or something like that. I liked the idea but, for whatever reason, not enough to actually do any investigating. Finally—through what must’ve been an act of compassionate grace from the God—I decided to check out Bon Iver’s self-titled second album.

What how.

Bon Iver (2011) is like a sonic dream that Brian Eno would be envious of. What sets this album a part from everything else released in 2011 is the kind of depth packed into every track. The songs are stories about people and places set to music that can only be described as something out of someone’s wildest imagination. It’s soft and subtle and you kind of just float a long but there’s so much going on at the same time that you’re swept away just trying to take it all in. Not to mention Vernon’s now-trademarked vocal delivery which is, also, like something out of a dream I had once.

R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage (1982 – 2011)

It turns out that half of my picks this year were thanks to one particular friend with very good musical tastes.

I’ve always liked R.E.M., kind of in the background. Growing up when I did I missed my chance to like them when they were at their very best so whenever I thought about accessing their catalog of music it always seemed a little bit daunting. Where to begin? I knew, from loving Taking Heads, that I would like their early stuff but I was dying for some kind of career retrospective, something to serve as an overview.

Thankfully, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage came out and it was a steal on iTunes—40 tracks for $16. As far as retrospectives go, you really can’t go wrong here.

Favourite Television of 2011

It’s been a decidedly good year for television and if I’ve been remiss when it comes to seeking out good new music I think I’ve compensated in terms of what we’re watching these days. There’s a lot out there so it’s been a bit of a challenge picking out just a couple but here they are.

The Good Wife

The Good Wife is a legal drama with a lot of layers. Underneath the normal case per episode format is a pretty hefty plot line about politics, adultery, and corruption—a depth that sets it a part from all the other legal dramas that came before it. It’s as much a character study as it is a series of cases to be solved and that’s what I like about it. It’s timely and relevant and tackles big issues with a great cast of characters.

Once Upon a Time

From some of the people behind the epically successful LOST, Once Upon a Time takes a bunch of fairytale characters and plunks them down in the real world with absolutely no idea who they are. Like LOST, Once Upon a Time plays with the idea of alternate universes, alternate identities, memory, and mystery. I’ll say this: Finally, a show that we can really sink our teeth into.

Honourable mention goes to shows that have become reliable stalwarts like Modern Family (which never ceases to be funny) and Being Erica (which ended its run in dignity after jumping the shark mid-season).

Credit where credit is due, my friend Brent linked to these guys and it’s only through him that I found them. Nonetheless, this husband and wife YouTube sensation do incredible covers of songs you wouldn’t expect to sound so good. And they just seem so gosh darn happy!

Karmin — Price Tag

Karmin — Lighters

The Civil Wars are just about a stripped down as you can guy. Joy Williams (yes, that Joy Williams) and John Paul White, a guitar, and the occasional percussion and piano. The focus though, in my opinion, isn’t so much on the instruments. What sets this band a bar above others is how well they use their voices, together. It just works, so well. White’s trembling tenor and Williams’s crisp vocal range play so well together, you have to hear it to understand.

When we saw them live in a tiny club in Toronto back in the Spring. Well, let me just say that this is one of those groups you need to see live. I’ll say that their recorded stuff, even the live recorded stuff, captures only about 40% of the power and perfection of a live performance. 40% folks.

Here are a couple of my favourite live tracks, and their single:

“Between the Bars” (Elliott Smith Cover)

“Disarm” (Smashing Pumpkins Cover)

“Barton Hollow”

Earlier this week her music video, “Friday,” went viral. Big time.

The YouTube video quickly garnered 12 million views in the course of just a few days and now she’s doing the talk show circuit. But what differentiates Black from other YouTube sensations like Canada’s own heart throb Justin Bieber (I prefer Dwight from The Office’s “Justice Beaver”) is the reason why she’s become so popular.

Unlike The Bieb, Black’s video isn’t growing in popularity because she’s a great singer—an undiscovered musical gem from a tiny little town in Ontario—it’s her completely over-the-top cheeseball of a music video, and lack of any semblance of musical talent. When I first saw the video which features, at several points, Black trying to decide which car seat to sit in—the front seat or the back seat?!—I wondered if this wasn’t an SNL Digital Short. It was ridiculous, playing up all kinds of stereotypes, complete with Rebecca’s constantly auto-tuned voice and some of the worst lyrics imaginable.

But apparently it’s for reals.

Doing some digging I found out that Rebecca Black was recruited by Ark Music Factory, a record label that puts out casting calls looking for the next Justin Bieber. Ark Music Factory finds young people, gives them the songs to sing, and then produces high quality videos to stick up on YouTube hoping to make it viral. Whether the song Black was given to sing was an honest effort by some pretty minimally-talented songwriters or whether the joke was on her all along, it’s hard to say but the result is priceless.

The fallout, however, has been anything but kind. The success of the video is based on its terribleness. Black has been criticized and made fun of and given the kind of treatment that only the Internet is capable of. Her fame hasn’t come from her talent but out of what’s now become an embarrassment for her—her fame is at her expense.

And for me, this whole episode begs a pretty interesting question for me: Are we bullying Rebecca Black?

Here’s what I mean.

The same people—and you know them—who put those anti-bullying slogans as their status messages on Facebook are the same people who are spreading Black’s Friday video all around the Internet. The same people who stand up against bullying by wearing pink to school or work are the same people who’ve shared Friday with all their friends, and marveled at the badness of the whole thing. The same people who’ve sworn to never support a bully, to always defend their friends, their children, and their children’s friends from the harsh attacks of bullies are the same people who are showing this video to their friends, their children, and their children’s friends.

So what’s going on here?

On the one hand, our society says that bullying is wrong. We’re taught, and we teach our children, to respect others and their differences and their efforts. At the same time, we tell our kids to always try their best, to work towards their dreams and to never give up.

On the other hand, our society makes a mockery of those that we don’t agree with, that we find failure with. We speak out against bullying, but laugh at the Star Wars Kid. We hear in the news about assisted online suicide, people who have made a sport out of talking others into killing themselves, and we spread around a music video by a teenager poking all kinds of fun at it.

There is such disparity between our cultural values that it boggles the mind. We’re told not to bully, that bullies are bad, but we lambast anyone that we find funny, for all kinds of awful reasons, at the drop of a hat.

As a teacher, I find it troubling because I’m just as guilty. I laugh at Rebecca Black because it’s such terribly funny music and a wonderfully wacky video. I laugh because I’ve been taught that when people do things out in public they open themselves up to ridicule, to judgment. But am I being a bully? And how can I, on the other hand, tell my students not to make fun of one another when they’re trying something new? How can I expect my students to practice a level of maturity that I can’t even seem to muster myself? What’s going on here?

I don’t have a lot of answers. There’s some kind of collision of cultural values happening, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Rebecca Black is a real person, with real feelings, and we’re responsible for our actions towards her. At the same time, her music video is funny. I want to laugh, but I want to set an example at the same time. Bullying is very serious, after all, and this whole situation strikes me as just that: bullying. Can we laugh, though, out of one side of our mouths and condemn bullies out of the other? I don’t know.

Eliza Doolittle is a newcomer and a brief foray into her other music videos suggests that perhaps Pack Up is a one-off hit. Regardless, it’s a hit.

Pack Up, which grafts its chorus from an old WWI British marching song has such an eclectic and fun sound that you cannot not love it immediately upon hearing. You’ll love it, and if you say otherwise you’re a liar. Featuring UK-based gospel singer Lloyd Wade, this song packs one of the most infectious hooks I’ve heard in a long time. You will dance, if you possess the ability to stand and move around. Comparisons can be drawn, easily, to Gnarls Barkley’s jaw-dropping summer hit Crazy. Remember that song? It’s baaaaaaaaaaack. And this time it’s sung by someone who seems to have taken all the good bits of Amy Winehouse and left all the baggage behind. I like.

So I’m a huge fan of The Tragically Hip but somehow missed the release of frontman Gord Downie’s latest solo record, his third, this past summer. The first time I heard the album’s single on the radio was about a month ago, I immediately went home to do some further investigation.

The Grand Bounce sees Downie recording with some other pretty impressive Canadian musicians under the guise of Gord Downie & The County of Miracles. Joining Downie is, among other names, Canadian singer/songwriter Julie Doiron and Josh Finlayson of Toronto’s Skydiggers. Together, this Canadian ensemble manages to scrape together a rather impressive record and at least some songs that definitely deserves some time on your playlist, in my opinion.

My theory with Gord Downie’s solo work, as opposed to his work with The Tragically Hip, is that this is a space for one of the most recognizable faces in Canadian rock to do some experimenting. On his own, Downie is accountable to no one but himself. He can try new things, move his music into new directions, and pretty much do whatever he’d like. He has a full-time job with The Hip and by himself, without worrying about bills to pay or shedding too many listeners along the way, he can be truly creative. And on this record, it shows.

The Grand Bounce ends up being an incredibly eclectic mix of, I guess, whatever Downie felt like writing and singing about at the time. It’s hit and miss. There are some seriously good songs on this record. “Moon Over Glenora,” is a punchy upbeat track, complete with keyboards and funky guitars, which finds Downie singing beautiful exchanges with Julie Doiron. This is the kind of song that I can hear once at the beginning of a long day and have it stick with me, repeating over and over again in my head. It’s creative, and a kind of music that The Hip don’t normally touch. I like it. A similar track, “The Drowning Machine,” has the same staying power and is equally catchy.

Other tracks like “As a Mover,” “The Hard Canadian,” and “Retrace” are slow, downbeat, more mournful tunes that showcase another side of Downie’s songwriting catalogue. These song are good, don’t get me wrong, but they’re different too and this is where the album begins to feel a bit mixed up. Among fast and slow songs are other songs that are really out there. Songs like “Broadcast” and “Pinned” are truly off the beaten track. These songs I imagine may have just been fit for forgetting about if Downie hadn’t had an opportunity to record on his own. Call them creative, perhaps, but certainly experimental. It makes sense why tracks like these would wind up on a solo record, but as far as their likableness, I’m not convinced.

On balance though, I like this record. There are a number of very solid tracks and truly interesting material. I like the versatility of Downie’s song writing. I like the upbeat songs and the slower ones, too. But, there are a number of tracks on The Grand Bounce that just feel a bit tired or bored and perhaps showcase spots where Gord Downie was digging just a little bit too deep into his catalogue of songs to find something worth recording. As a collection of songs? Sure. As an album? I don’t know. And in an age where you can pick and choose tracks you want to buy off iTunes, in lieu of purchasing the whole record, perhaps this is a good time to do just that.

I’m a pretty big fan of The Decemberists ever since I stumbled upon a band that sounded, to my description, like “the American Belle & Sebastian.” That was around the time of the release of their first full-length, Castaways and Cutouts.

Since then, The Decemberists have produced a series of solid records roughly maintaining the party line as a band that sings about rifles, tall ships, and cobblestone. The 2009 release The Hazards of Love, a dark and foreboding concept disc, saw a pretty serious departure from this format though. The Hazards of Love was a complete story, told in dark, enchanted forests, and broken up into a series of acts with characters, plot, action, and the whole nine yards. Musically, it was vastly different from what we’d heard from The Decemberists up to that point. The Hazards of Love was dark, electric, and chaotic. When I initially reviewed it I found it very difficult to enjoy—very tough to get into—and even when I was recommended to give it a second try I had a very hard time getting comfortable with the band’s sound. Listened to in one sitting, as I think it was intended to be, proved to be an onerous task for me and so I gave up.

But early buzz surrounding 2011′s The King is Dead made it clear that The Decemberists were taking a very different tact from their previous release. Indeed, the rumours were true.

These days the term Americana is being thrown around like nobody’s business. Pinned down and truly asked to define the term, I think most of us come up with only vague descriptions of what we mean. It feels like old time America. The instruments are natural, the sound is unaltered. It’s simple. It’s back to basics. Scrambling in the dark we come up with a loose definition of something that sounds like good old fashion music—good old fashion American sweat and blood. Music from work; a labour of love, and I guess that describes The King is Dead.

A far cry from The Hazards of Love, The Decemberist’s newest release is, by far, their most upbeat album to date. Gone are the long dirges, replaced by the liberal use of the harmonica, strings galore, and soaring vocals. My friend Andrew, who is a huge string-band enthusiast remarked that The King is Dead sounds like “The Decemberists meet string music.” There’s a lot of good old fashion toe-tapping music here, so dust off your jug.

Still, if there were a trade to make for the more upbeat, optimistic feeling on this disc it would be the band’s trademark storytelling style. Although I enjoy the tone of the record, I do miss the long drawling tales of heroism and happenstance that were the hallmark of the band’s previous releases. This time around, the tracks are more one-offs and not the kind of narratives that I’d expected from the band. The disc is short too, at only ten tracks I was left, as the listener, wanting much more.

All in all, The King is Dead is a great direction for a band like The Decemberists. On the heels of album that was all about story though, I wonder if the band’s now gone a bit too far the other way. I would’ve loved to hear more of the narrative style that I love from The Decemberists, but it’s still great songwriting, and a great sound, either way.

Too Much

In 1967, a Winnipeg prospector was looking for quartz near Falcon Lake, Manitoba when he encountered a UFO. Two UFOs, in fact. When one landed near him, he cautiously approached. Later, he would describe the craft as something like a metal soup bowl with a dome on top. As he approached what he described as the door, he heard two voices inside and although he couldn’t make out what they were saying, he could make out two distinct speakers. Peering in the craft he saw only what he described as a maze of lights. Suddenly, the door slid closed and, stumbling backwards, he grasped out for something to grip onto. Touching the ship’s exterior his heavy work gloves were burnt. As the ship began to rise, an overwhelming stench of sulphur caused the man to be sick; heat from the craft caused his shirt to catch on fire and his toque to burst into flames as well.

When the prospector emerged to tell his story doctors and law officials could find no faults, however extraordinary. His clothes were burnt in unusual patterns and, what’s more, burns on his body were indicative of the same strange patterns and could only be explained by doctors as resulting from aircraft exhaust. To his deathbed, the prospector swore his story was true and to this day, the RCMP list the case as unsolved.

When Winnipeg-based The Weakerthans released a song about Bigfoot on their last album, I was thrilled. Now that they’ve collaborated with Ottawa-based Jim Bryson on an album named for Canada’s most famous UFO encounter, I’m simply gushing.

Before this collaboration, I hadn’t heard of Jim Byrson, but apparently he’s been getting around. Since 2000, he’s released a handful of records, toured with artists like Kathleen Edwards and The Tragically Hip, and, I guess, done pretty well for himself. If The Falcon Lake Incident is any indication, I’ve clearly been missing out on something great all these years.

Falcon Lake is a solid disc. Bryson does the singer-songwriter thing very well. His songs are little stories, they’re poetic and thoughtful, and in a world filled to the brim with pretty mediocre songwriters, Bryson definitely stands out as someone with talent. Take that great songwriting and raw talent and pair another incredibly talented act, The Weakerthans, and you’ve got gold. Cleverly and carefully constructed songs move this disc along from upbeat to introspective and back again, with high production values all the way through.

Gold, indeed. You can tell, and not just from John K. Sampson’s backing vocals, that this is a Weakerthans-styled album. Their musical touches and trademarks are obvious but it’s so interesting hearing them explored and expanded in collaboration with another artist. Bryson, whose vocal style is much different than Sampson’s, songs great in front of the band’s instrumentation and when the two sing together, it’s perfect.

Jim Bryson and The Weakerthans have hit on something wonderful with The Falcon Lake Incident. If The Weakerthans haven’t yet become the kind of quintessential Canadian band that The Tragically Hip are, then this album should surely solidify their standing. If you’re a fan of the Winnipeg group, of Bryson, or of really good singer-songwriter music, then you need to check out this album. Now.

Last week I was able to write some initial impressions of the new Sufjan Stevens album thanks to NPR, who have the entire thing streaming on their website. Well, they’ve done it again. Belle & Sebastian’s new album, Write About Love, is available to stream online, in its entirety, until it’s released next week. So thanks again to NPR I’m able to give some initial impressions and thoughts on an album I’ve been waiting an eternity to get my hands on.

For a Belle & Sebastian record, Write About Love opens with a punch. For a band that’s never put much musical emphasis on their percussion section—as talented as it may be—this album opens up with a rolling drum line that sounds more like a Sparta track than a tune from the Scottish indie pop superheroes we’ve come to know a love. Of course, once the piano keys in and that familiar guitar twang begins it starts to feel a bit more familiar it’s still immediately clear that this is a Belle & Sebastian record that’ll keep you guessing. And it does.

Over the course of their last couple of records Belle & Sebastian have steadily grown from a pretty sleepy albeit incredibly talented song-writing force-to-be-reckoned-with into an equally talented although far more perky indie pop ensemble. The shift was pretty pronounced with the release of Dear Catastrophe Waitress in 2003 with a sound that was pretty different from their previous records. The group built upon this new-found sound with 2006′s The Life Pursuit. The release of Write About Love, however, is a curveball to anyone who thought that they had the group pegged down.

Through the course of the forty-minute record we’re treated to an enormous spectrum of songs and sounds. Many tracks on this album are heavily and very professionally-produced pop tracks in a vein similar, yet different, to those found on the group’s last two records. Thanks to what must’ve been incredibly high production values, these songs come out sounding absolutely stunning. On many of these tracks it’s clear that the band is trying new things, like the emphasis on the drum line in the opening track. Still, we’re left guessing, because many of these tunes are also throwbacks to older Belle & Sebastian material. Many songs are slower, more toned-down, the likes of which we haven’t heard the band write since their very early albums. And again, there are many aspects of this record that just leave me wondering like the guest appearance of Norah Jones singing alongside Stuart Murdoch and the incredibly different track contributed by guitarist Stevie Jackson.

At any rate, from my initial impressions Write About Love is the album I’ve been waiting so long for, and then some. If a four-year wait between records felt like a long time I think we can all agree that after hearing what can out of it, it was worth the wait.