Ryan's Ron Sexsmith Review

It's the end of summer as I write this. Not officially,; the solstice is still a few weeks away, but we did just make through the unofficial end of summer that is Labour Day. The temperature even collaborated with that, coming down to the single digits for a couple of days this week.

This is kind of ironic, as Ron Sexsmith's new album, Long Player Late Bloomer, feels like a spring album more than it does anything else. It's a light, fun album, an album full of seventh chords and syncopation, of breathless lyrics and hope. Hope's a tricky thing to accomplish in today's indie rock world, as is earnestness. Both have gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years, victims of the forced, fake sort of earnestness one can associate with Celine Dion or the pop tarts that dominated the last decade of popular music. Still, the fact that saccharine gives you cancer doesn't stop sugar from being sweet, and the hopefulness that Sexsmith displays throughout this album is very welcome. All this makes it a little bit like Sexsmith's other albums, to be honest, which the listener might see as being either a credit or a drawback, depending on how they feel about the type of music he makes.

If you've been paying close attention to the past few weeks' worth of reviews around here, you may have noticed that I've been a little down on the albums we've been reviewing, and that I had to actively search to try to find something nice to say about them. That isn't the case here at all, and while I'll admit that there's a possibility the context of those other albums may have influenced how much I appreciated this one, it still is an objectively good album for the reasons I've outlined.

There's a song in the middle of the album called I'm In The Middle of Love that's a perfect example of this. It's just as goofy and fun as the title suggests, without becoming cloying or sappy. If I had to pick a stand-out track, that'd be it, but honestly all 13 songs on this album are well worth your time.

Gary's Ron Sexsmith Review

There are certain constants in this world - unmistakable truths that exist. The sun will always rise and set, Coldplay will never put out an album that isn’t complete cheese and no one will ever take Nicolas Cage seriously as an actor.

Ron Sexsmith is one of those constants. Regardless of your musical tastes or preferences, we can all agree that Sexsmith puts out solid, easy to digest music with a Canadiana flare. His voice is instantly recognizable - like Kermit the frog crooning over an acoustic guitar.

So it should come as no surprise that Long Player, Late Bloomer is that in spades. It’s upbeat, catchy and sure to have you whistling the hooks for a week. It’s a great album to have on in the background during a dinner party, or while you cook dinner or flip through a magazine on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It’s also why I’ll probably never listen to this album again.

Yes - it’s all the things I just mentioned, but for whatever reason it does nothing for me - and that kills me. I’m so worried I’m not getting it. I have to be missing something. I keep waiting for someone to tell me what that is so I can love this album unconditionally. But nothing.

I even feel guilty writing this because Sexsmith seems like just about the most genuine, all-around nice guy in the music biz. I think I would die inside if ever read this (but let’s be realistic).

This is the first album we’ve reviewed that I can’t point my finger at any one problem or fault or misstep to justify why I can’t get behind it.

The musician in me recognizes the effort and songmanship that went into this album. Sure, songs like Miracle border on 70s  yacht-rock like Steely Dan or Christopher Cross - but deep down everyone likes a little "Ride Like the Wind?"

Hardly a slight.

And songs like Eye Candy, Believe It When I See It and The Reason Why are so uplifting and hooky I feel like - with a little work - I could become a fan. Maybe.

Long Player, Late Bloomer is Ron Sexsmith doing what he does best - and that’s being Ron Sexsmith. He clearly writes the music he knows and could care less what some hack of a blogger thinks about that.

I’m sorry Ron...I didn’t want to let you down.

Key Tracks: Eye Candy, Believe It When I See It, The Reason Why

Ryan's Braids Review

I had an awkward feeling while listening to this album. It felt like I'd heard it before. Which seemed unlikely, because I know I only got a copy of it a few days ago, when I started listening to it to review it for this blog, and as far as I could remember I hadn't heard it on the radio or any of the music podcasts I listen to. The feeling was definitely there, though, nagging at me every time I hit play, like a piece of unpopped popcorn that gets stuck in your teeth and you spend days trying to find a way to work it out from in there. Then, finally, it hit me: I hadn't heard the album before, but I have been listening to Polaris shortlisted albums for the past three years and this sounded an awful lot like a lot of them.

I think that if someone were to sit down and try to compose an album specifically to appeal to Polaris judges, they would end up with something not unlike Native Speaker by Braids. I'm not saying that Braids went into the studio consciously thinking that, but the result is uncanny. You've got the haunting, feminine lyrics that one could associate with Tegan and Sara or Kathleen Edwards, the atmospheric, detached feel of a Besnard Lakes or Timbre Timbre album, and the electronic influence of a Caribou or Weeknd. For all of those combinations, though, it didn't feel like there was really anything new here - the sum of those disparate parts was no greater than any of the pieces that it felt influenced by.

I'm sure this album has its supporters, but when stacking it up against the rest of the shortlisted albums (and even some that were overlooked by the Polaris community), I can't help but feel it falls far short of the rest of them.

Dave's Braids Review

Braids – “Native Speaker”

Okay I’ve listened to it and I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I don’t get what all the hype is about with Braids and their debut album Native Speaker. It’s good to point, but it’s trying to hard to be something it’s not, and that’s where it loses me.


I love it when a band gets lost in the process of creation, but listening to this, it feels like Braids calculated every move, and didn’t account for the most important one in the creative process – emotional reaction. It all feels too structured and over contrived for me to enjoy fully – it’s as if they were saying “next we have to do this and that, it’ll be so much cooler”, instead they should have let it happen a little more. Now that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy parts of it.


The subtleties of the album are great, the way they transition in a out of songs, the start of the album as a whole, brings you in with a curious wonderment, and the overall unique sounds used play together well, but as Gary says – go on WAY to long, like a bad SNL skit. We get it. Give us something different.


Braids is trying so hard on this album. What they are trying to do is where they lose me though. They’re a young band and will grow into something special; I still feel their best album is yet to come out of them.

Gary's Braids Review

Oh Braids, you poor things. A solid little album that suffers from being reviewed late in the process. I won’t deny that I’m suffering from a little reviewer exhaustion, but let’s be fair - this album did nothing to change that.

Native Speaker is a meandering, atmospheric album that talks a lot but never really gets to the point. With only 7 songs you might have assumed they would be adept at narrowing their focus. But when you see most songs run in the area of 7-8 minutes long, you start to understand why this album ends up being...well...boring.

Sure it’s beautiful and soaring and Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s voice is gorgeous. Hell, the music itself is inventive and ear catching - for 2 or 3 minutes. But if you haven’t said what you need to after 5 or 6 minutes, you’d better bring something pretty epic to the table.

I know what you’re thinking - who am I to dictate how long or short a song should be, and generally I don’t have a problem with long-form songs. But if you go back and check out the best musical tomes, they have a way of keeping things fresh and vibrant for the duration - something Braids just doesn't do.

Tracks like Same Mum and Plath Heart start out with the greatest of intentions and sound great, but then end up falling flat. Like a J.K. Rowling book this album would have benefited greatly from an editor (or more ruthless producer).

So yes I feel bad that Braids fell in the order where it did, but I doubt the review would have been all that different had it been slotted as the first or second album. And against meatier pieces from Arcade Fire and Hey! Rosetta, it frankly never stood a chance.

Bon Chance.

Ryan's Galaxie review

I've started noticing this pattern when it comes to the Polaris shortlist, now that we've been posting to this blog for a few years. First is that there's always one French band that makes the shortlist. If Iwere a far more cynical person, I would chalk that up to an unspoken quota system on behalf of the organizers, but I know that's not actually the case. From a technical standpoint it would be difficult to game the system in that way; more importantly, I think that it would work completely against what the organizers of the prize are trying to accomplish, so they'd have no reason to do so. It's an interesting coincidence, is all I'm saying.

Another part of this pattern is that the one French band always puts out an album that's absolutely fascinating. The shortlist on a whole is always an eclectic group, of course, but that French band always seems to stand apart from the others (and not just due to the language barrier).

We're not here to talk about patterns, though, were here to talk about Montreal's own Galaxie, and their incredible album Tigre et Diesel. It's a short album (if memory serves, the shortest one this year), but it's also an intense one – Galaxie seems to know going in that their time is limited, so they don't want to waste a single second and bring the rock as quickly as they can. That intensity really works to the album's advantage – it grabs you and drags you out onto the metaphorical dancefloor, letting you lose yourself in the screaming guitars and electronic beats. In a longer album I think this intensity would become either overwhelming or tiring, but it works excellently here.

I won't go so far as to say that this is my favourite album of the year, but it's up there for sure.

Dave's Galaxie Review

GALAXIE – Tigre et diesel

I have no idea what Galaxie are singing about on this album - but I like the way it sounds. There's an intense Brit-pop element but also a techno influence and for most of the album it works really well. It ebbs and flows between disco stompers and reflective ballads seamlessly.

Galaxie appears to be the red headed step-child of the Polaris Shortlist this year – accessible, poppy, and danceable – it’s hard to find that on the list, but here they are, and they fit. As Gary mentioned – they are Primal Scream almost more than Primal Scream.

For me, there is a huge language barrier, I can catch phrases and words but I’m not a fluent speaker of French so context is lost on me but I get the jist - which sucks for me when I want the whole picture.

There is nothing outstanding for me about this album, but it’s really good. I think it’s solid and fits in nicely amongst the shortlist, but at the end of the day it feels middle of the road. It stands out but for me it's not as much of a frontrunner as other noms are. The album is still fun, but I don't know if I'll look back and still like this album as much this time next year.

KEY TRACKS: Piste 1, Encore, Camouflar

Gary's Galaxie Review

Holy shit - the French band did it again.

How do they keep doing it? How do they keep producing the most innovative, interesting and listenable music of the past four or five years?

Malajube blew my mind a few years back and then Karkwa was more than good enough to win the Polaris Prize last year. And now this bouncing explosion of ‘fuck-yeah’ energy from Galaxie - Tigre et Diesel.

And what a ride it is. Dance floor stompers, to dirty disco-chic to folk-rock love songs. It sounds frenetic and disconnected - and it is, but it works and frankly, I’m still trying to figure out how.

I mean, who would dream of incorporating the rock’n’roll swagger of say a Primal Scream with the thumping electronica of a Daft Punk? I guess these Montrealers would....and did.

I only wish I had a better grasp of the language so I could catch what frontman Fred Fortin was saying because with music this winking and clever, surely the lyrics are equally sly. That said, you definitely don’t need French lessons to dance along.

I think my favourite part about this competition is that something so big and raunchy is nestled amongst some pretty weighty projects. Like inviting Russell Brand to your country club - it’s sure to elicit some raised eyebrows. But this is what music should sound like more often - full of swagger, hedonism and straight-up fun.

I wouldn’t be shocked if this year’s Polaris Prize got handed out to yet another talented band francias. But even if it doesn't, this album stands out from the rest.

Stand Out Tracks - Piste 1, Encore

Gary's Timber Timbre Review

Creep On Creepin’ On starts as it means to go on. From the Dr Dre-esque piano and drums of Bad Ritual through to the closer Souvenirs, Timber Timbre’s album exudes an eerie, horror-movie sense of uneasiness that you just can’t shake.

The vocals drip with reverb, the drums shuffle along like a villain trailing the heroin, and the atmospheric instrumentals are bound to disturb your sleep. And yet, it’s not like this album is hard to listen to.

In fact, in an ironic twist, this is the mood and setting I feel like Colin Stetson was aiming for on his album and ultimately didn’t achieve.

Not to say this album is groundbreaking. A lot of these elements were well explored on albums like Dark Night of the Soul (the product of DJ Danger Mouse and David Lynch) or even Ryan Gosling’s Dead Man’s Bones. All share the creepy church revival sway and cinematic intensity - Timber Timbre’s however, does approach it an a uniquely Canadian way.

However the lumbering beats and piano do start to run together after a while and you start to wonder if you’ve heard this song before. It’s a great album, but maybe too much of a good thing.

So while Creep On Creepin’ On does feel a little one note, I still really dig the idea behind Timber Timbre’s log cabin recording. Like some kind of evil Justin Vernon - Mal Iver perhaps?

Ryan's Timber Timbre Review

There was this guy I knew in university who was a good guy, but was not the most intellectual of fellows. We had a couple of classes together, including, to my surprise, a philosophy class. The class was a struggle for him, and I ended up helping him study for his tests to help him pass the class. During one of those study sessions, I ended up asking him why he was taking a philosophy class in the first place, and he told me "Well, it's not that I care about philosophy; it's just that I thought I'd learn a bunch of impressive quotes to use in essays and stuff."

Listening to Timber Timbre's Creep On Creepin' On, I was strongly reminded of that sentiment expressed in that story - that it's okay to want just the high points, rather than wanting to understand the structure that lies beneath them. From the first time I listened to it, I had a feeling that I liked the album, and when I tried to articulate why I was left quoting individual lines from songs, like "I found depravity convinced me I may no longer care" and "The ectoplasm coiled like a hovering halo of smoke, and our beloved invention is conjured each night in your throat". And don't get me wrong - those individual lines are beautiful works of poetry. What I found limiting about the album, though, was that those individual lines seemed to exist in isolation; there was nothing that seemed to link them to a grander tableau or narrative, and the music of the album, while enjoyable in a chill, low-key sense, did nothing to provide a meaningful context for them to exist in either.

Overall, I'd say this was a fairly enjoyable album. If I were listening to my stereo and it came on, I wouldn't turn it off. But it lacks that special something I've come to expect from shortlisted albums, and that lack of cohesiveness of the lyrical highpoints with the rest of the album ends up as a distraction that takes away from the songs.

Dave's Timbre Timbre Review

Timbre Timbre – Creep on Creepin’ On


As the summer whips by and the days shorten, and sunsets across our nations become more spectacular Timbre Timbre’s album fits the mellowness in the air perfectly.

Cinematic and haunting the album draws you in with stark musical landscape but Taylor Kirk’s voice is the centre piece of everything. It’s deep, emotive and pushes the listener inside the album. And once you’re in, you’re in.

Just the sentiment on this album is enough to scare the pants off of a hardened criminal. Murderous and mad, Taylor embodies the mystique of what a front man should be. Images of Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave come to mind when you imagine this album being written, Taylor hunched over a desk, scotch on the desk, paper littered across the room, notes and doodles – truly a creative situation if there has ever been one.

Then he creeps through the album, stalking his listener, and truly trapping us like the prey he so desires – but you can’t trap the willing can you.

KEY TRACKS: Bad Ritual, Too Old to Die Young, Do I Have Power

CLINCHER: Creep On, Creepin’ On

Ryan's Colin Stetson Review

I'm absolutely fascinated by Rorschach tests. You're probably familiar with the concept, if not with the name: the Rorschach is a psychological test that involves showing someone a series of inkblots and having them identify images within them. The idea behind the test is that the images that people see reveal things about their personality or mental health; what's crucial about them, though, is that the blots don't have any intrinsic meaning. What's important is how people react to them.

It took a full week of listening to the album to realize it, but that's what Colin Stetson's New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is: an auditory Rorschach test. There's an argument that that's what all art is, to an extent, but I think this album more fully encapsulates that idea than most, if not all. As one listens to it, they take the scattered horns, haunting spoken-word poetry, and barely audible strings, and desperately try to attach meaning to it. They'll reach different conclusions while doing so, of course. Some might see Stetson as a decadent charlatan, while others might admire him for being brash and audacious in his musical creation. Some might even think, as I briefly did, that he's using the album to audition to be the house band of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The brilliance of this album - and let's be clear, I do think it's brilliant - is that you can't even argue that any of those perspectives are wrong. the album is so sparse, so minimalist, that it is entirely what the listener wants it to b. It's democracy in art. The end result is not one of those albums that I'm going to listen to regularly - in fact, I don't know if I'll ever give it another spin now that I'm finished reviewing it. Listening to it was a great, challenging experience, though, and I'm very glad that I did.

Standout track: A Dream of Water

Dave's Colin Stetson Review

I listened to this record once and thought – this is, um, not for me. Then I said to my self: “Self, open you’re mind, relax and listen, just don’t hear it.” Once I did that the world that Colin Stetson has created with his saxophone opened up to me and I began to appreciate the performance, the intention, and the execution of both those elements into one.

New History of Warfare – Judges Vol. 2 is not an album that can be listened to just anywhere; for me it is a record that has to be listened to in the right environment. Listening to it while racing around on the 400 series highways of Ontario in a downpour – wasn’t the best idea. However, plugging it in while sipping a cold ale on the porch of the cottage – that’s where it becomes a record that makes a little more sense. The harsh sounds of the sax, jolting up and down the register, the tapping and pounding of the percussion elements fill the air. There is no room for other sounds, or other thoughts to enter.

What is remarkable about Colin Stetson’s performance on this record is he did most of them in one take, live, in a studio by himself. Think about that for a second…got it? Now think back to when you had to do anything by yourself that required you to focus, evaluate, and then trust yourself and you’re ability so much that you can move onwards without so much as looking back. But that is the exact energy on this album – it races forward, with an avant-garde sound, skillfully telling a story, using music as the voice, and dictating listeners emotion.

All that being said, this is not the record for everyone – certainly it’s not my favourite record of the year, but I respect the process and the art, but I don’t always get it.

KEY TRACKS: Home, All the Colours Bleached to White, Judges

CLINCHER: A DREAM OF WATER

Gary's Colin Stetson Review

Halfway through my first listen I couldn’t decide whether to applaud Colin Stetson for his frenetic, insane and unique sounds or pass it off as art rock garbage. If David Lynch had some kind of deep obsession with brass instruments I have to imagine that this would be the album he’d create.

Stetson’s New History Warfare - Judges Vol. 2 is literally a cacophony of sax and trumpet samples looped endlessly in an anxious swirl. There’s virtually no discernable structure or form to the songs other than the repetitive (and ultimately grating) unmelodic loops.

The usual art project staples pepper the whole album.

Nonsensical spoken word pieces? Check.

Complete absence of drums or rhythm? Check.

Eventual onset of boredom? Check.

I clearly didn’t get what Stetson set out to do with this album as my patience waned with each listen. With the exception of the cover And I Just Can’t Keep From Crying, with an actual, honest to goodness vocal melody (delivered hauntingly by Shara Worden) I took almost nothing away from this album.

I’m positive there are people who will listen to this album track by track and appreciate its uniqueness, but I’m not one of them.

Good for Stetson for trying something completely new. Bad for listeners who are looking for songs.

Ryan's Weeknd Review

I was hoping to like this album. Liking it would have been a victory for me.

Allow me to backtrack a bit to explain what I mean there. There was, a decade ago, a pop-punk band from London called The Weekend. I was a fan: saw them live a few times, owned all their albums, even had a bit of a crush on their lead singer. So, when I heard The Weekend were shortlisted for Polaris this year, I was confused and excited, because that band broke up years ago and I hadn't heard anything about a reunion.

The Weeknd is definitely not The Weekend, however. This is, of course, not his fault, and that's why I wanted to like the album. If I disliked it there would always be this question hanging over me of whether I disliked it on its own merits, or if I was just subconsciously bitter about it sounding nothing like a pop-punk band from London. You can see my dilemma here.

So, to prove I'm not just a bitter old man fueled by nostalgia, let me start with some positives: this is a very technically proficient album. There's no denying that Abel Tesfaye, the man behind this album, is a talented singer who's capable of constructing some solid beats.

There's a wide gulf between technical proficiency and creating something great, though, and while The Weeknd might excel at the former, for me he completely failed at the latter. There's this sense of detachment between Weeknd and the lyrics he's singing, and likewise between the lyrics and the music, that stays unresolved and unexplained throughout the course of the album. At no point throughout the album did it seem to me that he cared about the music he was making – and if he can't be passionate about it, how am I as a listener supposed to be passionate about it? That's a question that House of Balloons seems unable to answer.

Dave's The Weeknd Review

A House of Balloons is so many things – fragile for one, they can easily to burst I would imagine. But the other side of the coin is they are full of fun, bounce, bright colours, youthfulness and joy. Eventually though it has to go away – the balloons will either deflate of burst – either way it will never last.

The Weeknd’s album House of Balloons captures this essence perfectly – it’s a moment in time in one’s life, where everything is great – life is the party the movies promised you – but there are consequences and kudos to The Weeknd for not avoiding these, or letting them become the dominate dark themes of his album.

What hit me about this album from the get go, was this: it’s panty dropper record (don’t get me wrong there are some great panty dropping tracks on here) But it’s really more than that. The Weeknd not only looks at the party and the after party but he explores the emotions after the party, when the sins have been committed and the scars are left to be nursed. I know this has been done before, but for me this seems so poignant now – with the world of Jersey Shore and Real World: Vegas. Culture isn’t seeing the consequences, just the party a lot of the time. Just like the title, House of Balloons, it can all go pop at some point.


KEY TRACKS: The Party & The After Party, The Morning, Loft Music, Glass Table Girls

THE CLINCHER: Wicked Games

Gary's The Weeknd Review

Here’s basically everything you need to know about The Weeknd. After downloading his album (for free from his website), I passed it to a friend at work. Within about four or five hours 10 other people in the office were listening to House of Balloons. By the end of the day it had been shared to another 5 or so people. It’s not that The Weeknd - aka: Abel Tesfaye - is that good. It’s that he’s so good you feel compelled to tell someone about it.

What happened at work was a microcosm of what’s happening everywhere right now - The Weeknd is blowing up!

He’s the guy everyone’s talking about, he’s featured in the promos for HBO’s Entourage and not to mention garnering a lot of record label attention (is it the 90s again?) So when he drops the line “They don’t want my love, they just want my potential” (The Party and The After Party) he could easily be referring to the many interested parties circling this 20 year old prodigy.

So what’s got everybody worked up into a lather? Some pretty sick fuckin’ music that's what.

The kind of music you listen to bleary-eyed at 4am long after the party has dried up and most people have gone home. Coincidentally this is also the subject matter of about 8 of the 9 tracks on this album.

The Weeknd deliver some dark and expansive beats - beats so big they sound like they’re echoing through an empty club (a sight I’m sure he’ll never witness). One minute your reference points are Kanye circa 808s and Heartbreaks, R Kelly and even Slick Rick. But as soon as you think you have him pegged he turns around and samples Beach House and new wave punk?

Maybe The Weeknd is a series of contradictions or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit about the musical conventions most of us live by and expect. Maybe at 20 years old he just doesn’t know better.

And while you might a expect a young man to get caught in a rut, it’s not all darkness, drugs and dirty sex. There’s some bouncier beats and tracks, like The Morning and Loft Music, the latter in which Tesfaye really puts on a verbal show somehow managing to wrap his silky smooth voice around some rough and nasty lyrics.

But that’s sort of his trick, On first listen you marvel at the vocal gymnastics, the sinister beats and uniqueness of the sound. But by the second and third listen, you really take in his lyrics and can’t decide whether your a little shocked or oddly titillated.

Either way the safest thing I can say is that you’ll definitely be hearing a lot more from The Weeknd whether he’s your Polaris Winner or not.

Standout Tracks - House of Ballons - Glass Table Girls, Loft Music, High For This

Ryan's Hey Rosetta Review

Tim Baker, lead singer for Hey Rosetta!, has explained the name of their current album, Seeds, by saying that "the songs are seeds ... they’re these little things –- four and five minute things — but they have the ability to grow in your brain and be far more meaningful than just what they are", and I think that's a perfect assessment of the album. When I first started listening to it I wanted to say that the songs were haunting, but that's not really accurate – they don't have the mournful, melancholy edge that one would associate with a haunting. The 'seed' metaphor works as well because it's organic, and the music on Seeds is as well, each song fitting into a larger whole than just existing on its own.

I felt that Hey Rosetta!'s last album, the also-Polaris-shortlisted Into Your Arms, was about an immature band in the process of self-discovery; Seeds, in contrast, finds Hey Rosetta! having become much more mature and sure of themselves – sure enough that they've developed a more playful edge to their music. This is something displayed in the reggaesque beat of several songs, such as in the punningly named "New Sum (Nous Sommes)", or the outtake of laughter crossed with what sounded like a handsaw impression (?) at the end of "Parson Brown". It's an interesting contrast to the fairly structured, somewhat traditional instrumentation on display throughout the album. That play within structure helps strengthen the album, I found – you know it's neither going to become stilted or fall apart from self-indulgence.

Of course, instrumentation and self-discovery will only take you so far; if a band wants to win me over they need a strong lyrical presence, and it's here that Hey Rosetta! shines, with Baker crafting his lines in a thoughtful, measured way. In the hands of a lesser writer, subject material like new fatherhood and the intricate balance between fear and trust could come across as cliched or trite, but Baker manages to make them seem familiar and relatable, and brings them to the table without any judgment or trying to provide any unique insight. Doing it in this way allows the listener to develop their own conclusions about those subjects, which creates deeper roots for those subjects than a more didactic approach would. I mentioned that Hey Rosetta! comes across as very mature throughout the album, and this approach of guiding the listener and trusting them to make their own connections and conclusions is a reflection of that maturity.

Standout tracks: Young Glass, Welcome, New Sum (Nous Sommes)

Dave's Hey Rosetta Review

Hey Rosetta have quickly become one of this country’s best bands – well I guess they were always that good, but now they are being recognized for it. And rightfully so. They are really really talented in everyway a band should be – songwriting, production, and performance is all top shelf. I would argue, not in this space, but somewhere else, that with the Tragically Hip being the quintessential Canadian band, Hey Rosetta is ready to grasp that mantle for the next generation – with the Hip’s permission of course.

Their sophomore album (and second Polaris nomination) SEEDS provides something that not a lot of albums provide today – familiarity. I don’t mean that in a sense of comfort or sounding like other artists out there, but the themes of SEEDS are familiar. Family, traveling, movement and evolution – these are what we (well at least me) as listeners are dealing with in spades in our own worlds, and SEEDS provides a perspective that proves we aren’t alone in our own thoughts – which is what we all want anyway right? Right?

From the moment the album starts with the title track you are drawn in to movement and progress of the album – it’s contagious. Similarly to the band’s debut INTO YOUR LUNGS the first song paints a picture that sets a tone for the rest of the album. “and we don't look back, cause we don't need that
and we're going too fast, and we don't want to, don't want to
crash” Exactly – and that is what the band does on this album – never looks back. The way it should be, all left behind as they move forward and evolve.

KEY TRACKS: Seeds, Young Glass, Seventeen, Bandages, Bricks

CLINCHER: Welcome (maybe single of the year)

Gary's Hey Rosetta Review

It seems like the more I enjoy an album the harder it is to dissect its meaning. The better the music the less inclined I am to want to find deeper meaning, pull back the layers and guess at what the band "really" meant.

Luckily, with Hey Rosetta's Seeds, the meaning just sort of presents itself - blossoms if you will (first and last flower/seed reference). It might sound like the quintessential "band on the road" album (a very typical subject for sophomore albums). But it also seems to explore the idea of family and heritage too. So which is it?

The album's first lines - "the road bends long, like mother's arms" - don't clear anything up, but more on that later.

What those opening lines do is set up an emotional and hard hitting song that evolves from a subtle, strumming mandolin into a full fledged sonic assault. Lead singer Tim Baker's melodic wale explodes into the chorus, demanding you take notice.

And that's just the first song.

The albums that follows is equally impressive, whether the band is executing a seamless shuffle like 'Yer Spring' or bouncing nimbly through 'New Sum (Nous Sommes)'. But if you had only been casually listening to this point, 'Welcome' is when you’ll stop and take notice.

Erupting from a subdued instrumental piece (that sounds like a muted dinner party) comes the tale of a first-time father apologising to his newborn child for the trying times that lie ahead. The story is touching (and relate-able as a newish father) but the enormous song wrapped around it makes 'Welcome' 10 times more emotional.

Two years ago we reviewed Hey Rosetta's first album and unanimously agreed this was a band on the verge of something bigger. They were all potential and raw talent waiting to be realized.

Seeds is that in spades. The band has hyper-focused their talent and potential to create an album that showcases a cohesive, confident group of musicians. And yes, it's a more mature band, and a band coming into their own, but they retain all of the immediacy and intensity that got them added to the 2009 Polaris Shortlist two years ago.

The fact that two albums in and they've already been recognized with two Polaris shortlist nominations should tell you everything you need to know (no pressure for album number three guys).

So is this an album about a touring band or families, new and old? Frankly it could be about both, but fundamentally it feels more about travelling forward into something completely unknown. Whether barreling down the road or coming into the world brand new, Seeds sounds like a soundtrack to the journeys we’re all forced to take.

Ryan's Arcade Fire Review

Growing up in the suburbs puts you in an interesting place socially, especially if you're the sort of person who has interests that lie outside the mainstream. You spend a lot of time around people who don't understand the things you like, be they music, independent cinema, underground comics, or whatever. So you find your nearest downtown and start spending time there, visiting places were people gel with what you're into. A lot of those people, though, have nothing but disdain for the suburbs and the type of lives they think suburbanites have, so there's a new barrier erected between yourself and the culture you want to be part of. At least, that was always my experience with suburban life.

I don't know how much of that experience applies to The Arcade Fire, but I do think that it's an important context to have when listening to this album; that feeling - of being in a scene, but not fully of it, of eternally being an outsider - permeates every aspect and every track of The Suburbs. That feeling of rootlessness, of wanting so badly to belong to something cool - it's a bit cliche to say it, but when Win Butler sings thinks like "There's nothing to do/But I don't mind when I'm with you", I feel like I didn't so much listen to this album as I lived it, and even on my first listen it felt as familiar as the corner stores and the mazes of residential courts, lanes, and drives that I wandered as a kid. I wouldn't quite call it a celebration of suburban life, but it is an understanding of it that you don't often find in much of modern music.

These themes - of being rootless, or being an outsider - are especially resonant for The Arcade Fire in 2011, because they've had a lot of success, but it seems to me that that success has only served to entrench their status as outsiders. They did win a Grammy, after all, and a Juno to go with it, and in doing so were immediately thrust into the spotlight of the mainstream; at the same time, though, they're still on an independent label, and that 'indie spirit', for lack of a better term, so they don't seem to fit with most of what's in the mainstream. At the same time, that success has come with a cost - I've seen the term 'sell-out' thrown out about this band in a completely unjustifiable manner, and a few blogs and tweets that have wondered if The Arcade Fire is too big for the Polaris Prize (which is a nonsensical comment, but I digress). Music made by outsiders, about being an outsider, that just drives them further outside - there's a poetry to that that parallels the music of The Suburbs nicely.

Standout tracks: Ready To Start, Modern Man, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Dave's Arcade Fire Review

The Arcade Fire we’re able to put lightening in a bottle with The Suburbs.

The Suburbs is more than a successful album that has sky rocketed a band from ‘popular’ to other worldly music stars - at the end of the day The Suburbs is a masterpiece - pure and simple, it will be remembered as such, but will it win the Polaris Prize this year?

That’s a tough question to answer. If this was any other competition we would just announce it as the winner and be done with it. But this is music, subjective and emotional as being technical and structured – so there is no clear right or wrong, winner or loser. There is only a consensus. We’ll see where out judges take us this year.

When I first listened to The Suburbs I was stopped in my tracks at how well crafted it was, how much care had gone into production, artwork, songwriting and the mix. It all seemed so deliberate – but not in a ‘too cool’ for school’ way, in a completely accessible way. The themes that play out within the songs drip with angst and love for a youth we all once lived, and sometimes miss.

It’s hard for me to talk about individual songs, because the whole album resonates so well from top to bottom with me and my experiences in suburbia. As a product of the suburbs myself, when this album is on, I’m taken back to memories of my youth (both fond and hurtful) – driving around in my mother’s car, tunes cranked, dreams of somewhere else, a better time (if one could exist).

Little did I know that 14 years after leaving the comfort of my parent’s Mississauga home I’d find the soundtrack to motivate me to actually leave. I’m sure for lots of us now in adulthood we wished The Suburbs was around to push us out and into the future. At least we have it now, to provide an emotional landscape to look back.

KEY TRACKS: The Suburbs, Rocco, City With No Children, Month of May,

CLINCHER: We Used To Wait.

Gary's Arcade Fire Review

It’s amazing what a little time and perspective can do to change your attitude and help you remember things in a slightly different way. Maybe even romanticize it a little.

The way you can hold on to a memory for so long that you wonder whether you’ve invented more of it than you experienced, or if it even happened at all. Does it really even matter?

At it's core that’s what The Suburbs is all about. Remembering something the way you choose to - warts and all - with a fondness and sincerity. And coincidentally it also parallels my heartfelt reunion with Arcade Fire after a lengthy disagreement (granted Arcade Fire may have no notion we were fighting).

Let me back track.

After such a strong debut (Funeral), I thought 2007’s Neon Bible was the sort of pretentious art project that so many big bands seem to indulge in. It was bloated, and angry and devoid of fun. Had all the members been dancing around in French Revolution garb the douchery would have been too epic too even consider!

Moving along....

Fast forward some 4 years later and Arcade Fire has not only proven they can return from that dark place but with the kind of gusto and class that has forced people to take notice.

From its ragtime-piano intro, The Suburbs unfurls the story of a summer spent wasting time as a teenager in the burbs. Learning to drive, going to the mall, listening to music, but at the same time dealing with notion that maybe you’re outgrowing all of it. As a kid raised in the 'burbs a lot of this feels and sounds as familiar as my own memories.

There’s an amazing story that may or may not be based in fact (Butler cited his days growing up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas), and according to Spike Jonze may or may not include some kind of pseudo-apocalyptic suburban war (Suburban War, City With No Children). But all of it aside, the album stands on its own - narrative or not.

There’s an embarrassment of riches to go through. Song after song of that uniquely crafted Arcade Fire sound, that ebbs and flows at just the right times - like the best mixtapes (when we made mixtapes).

There's a little punk (Month of May), a little folk (Wasted Hours), a little menace (Rococo). Something for everyone.

But more than just great writing, the band creates symphonies out of every song. Layering the usual collection of guitars, drums and keyboards and elevating them into a tower of immense sound, destroying the simple notion of quiet/loud dynamics.

They were ambitious sure, but hit the mark with integrity and without pandering, something a few other bands should take note of. Arcade Fire almost never come across as pretentious or overreaching (anymore), and rarely miss a beat. The few missteps are too minuscule to really mention.

Listening to this album for the first time it was evident that I would have to eat massive amounts of crow for all the pot-shots and smarmy remarks I’d made at their expense.

Luckily with time I’ve come around and can appreciate Arcade Fire for the very impressive musical talents they are and fondly remember all the great times we’ve had.

Standout Tracks: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), Suburban War, Ready To Start.

Artist #1 - Arcade Fire

Artist: Arcade Fire

Album: The Suburbs

Home Town: Montreal, QC.

Ready to Start!

It's that time of year again. The Shortlist has been announced, the 10 albums are in place and we three amateur critics are here to help guide you through the Polaris Prize.

It's an exciting mix of instantly recognizable and more esoteric artists, but as always it will be an interesting and educative process. So sit back, put on your headphones and get ready for 10 weeks of provocative (sometimes) - but always entertaining (hopefully) musical judgments.

Enjoy.

1. Arcade Fire - Suburbs
2. Hey Rosetta - Seeds
3. The Weeknd- House of Balloons
4. Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol.2 Judges
5. Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On
6. Galaxie - Tigre et diesel
7. Braids - Native Speaker
8. Ron Sexsmith - Long Player Late Bloomer
9. Austra - Feel it Break
10. Destroyer - Kaputt