Ah, the 2011 list. For a hack of a blogger like myself it’s my once-a-year bread and butter. This year instead of separating music, movies, and television I’ve decided to produce a comprehensive list and lump it all together. Hold onto your hats, and enjoy.

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.

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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.

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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.

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If Sufjan Steven’s performance of Too Much on Jimmy Fallon Live doesn’t cut it as one of the most memorable live performances you’ve seen in a long time, then I don’t know what funky stuff you’ve been watching lately. After taking a few years off to regroup after the critical success of Illinois, it’s clear that Sufjan is back, in a big way, and he’s about to kick your butt/take over the world.

Too Much

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.

After a hiatus that felt like forever fans and critics (of which I am both, zing!) wondered aloud if the Scottish pop rock group Belle & Sebastian had broken up for good. Answer: They hadn’t.

Belle & Sebastian are back this October with Write About Love, the band’s first album in four years. From what we’ve heard, it sounds even poppier and uptempo than 2006′s The Life Pursuit but taking the band in this direction seems like a really good fit. If their live performance of their first single off the album is any indication, the rest of the record is going to sound great.

While I’m going to save my full review for when the album is released, I thought it might be fun to share my initial impressions of the new Sufjan Stevens record The Age of Adz.

If you’re a Sufjan fan and haven’t had a chance to take a listen to the new album the entire thing is streaming (until the release date on Oct. 12) over at NPR. That said, I’ve had a listen.

What I guess The Age of Adz amounts to is what happens when a certain personality-type reaches unexpected heights of fame in a very short period of time. With the release of Illinois, back in 2005 Sufjan Stevens, who has always been a bit of a recluse, a big experimenter, and an artist to the core, exploded into popular culture in a way that he certainly did not foresee. I think it’s pretty safe to say that Sufjan was uncomfortable, from the start, with this level of fame. It’s clear he went through a long period of self-doubt, of questioning the integrity and the purpose of his music, of questioning fame, but it’s clear now that he’s come safely out the other side.

The Age of Adz, I think, is that journey.

Departing from acoustic instruments and real live orchestras, Sufjan has instead turned to synthesizers and sounds that Maria has aptly-described as “robots”. Still, The Age of Adz doesn’t stray all that far from Sufjan’s other popular records. There are still those soaring heights, the quiet lows. There’s still plenty of introspection. Sure, it sounds futuristic but forget about what’s making the music and it really isn’t all that different from something you’d expect from an inventive, experimental artist like Sufjan.

On initial impression, I love The Age of Adz. Instead of compromising his integrity as an artist, it seems to me like Sufjan has produced a record that he wanted to produce instead of settling for releasing what all of us wanted to hear. And besides, if you’ve followed Sufjan’s career for anything length of time this really isn’t that much of a departure. Sufjan innovates, he keeps you guessing, and he keeps you coming back for more. He is a well-spring of talent and creative energy, truly, and thank goodness that supply is flowing again.