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 Top Picks for 2010

Looking back over 2010 the first thing I noticed is that this year didn't have the same quantity of amazing songs and albums that previous years offered. That's not to say the albums that did make the list weren't deserving. There were some great tracks and it made narrowing the list down much easier. So with that here are my tops songs and albums of 2010.

Top 10 Songs

Kanye West - Power: The first minute of this song gets the adrenaline flowing. Try as I might to dislike Kanye's ego and bravado this song is just really good. Plus his Saturday Night Live performance was pure spectacle.

Broken Bells - The High Road: I expected a lot more from this album which I found, on the whole pretty underwhelming. That said, this song is solid.

Foster The Kids - Pumped up Kicks: Not knowing much about the band, this song crept out of nowhere to leave an impression.

Tegan and Sara - On Directing: This one song encapsulates all the things that make this duo great.

Beach House - Zebra: Emotionally this track means a lot to me. I've played it a lot over the year and expect to hear it a lot in 2011.

Arcade Fire - Rococo: There's something oddly affecting about the repetitive chorus and swelling stomp of this one. I can't help but love the depiction of how naive we are as teenagers thinking we know what life is all about.

The Black Keys - Tighten Up: Such an amazing groove and the whistling at the start gets me every time.

Broken Social Scene - Meet Me in the Basement: I thought this song was good after hearing it on the album. I thought it was amazing after seeing the video, post-G20 Toronto riots.

Ok Go - WTF: Just watch the video and try not to be amazed.

Sleigh Bells - Infinity Guitars: My favourite song for 2010 and with blazing guitars and screeching vocals, it should be evident why.

Top 5 6 albums

Beach House: Teen Dream: It's a simple well written album that evokes so much emotion (as mentioned above). I'm so eager to hear what they come up with next.

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record: I couldn't stop listening to this album all summer. There's virtually no missteps; so solid from start to finish.

Sleigh Bells - Treats: After hearing Infinity Guitars I had to see what the rest of the album was like. No two songs are alike and everything is short, sweet and to the point. I fully expect the track Rill Rill to catch a lot of people's attention very soon.

The Black Keys - Brothers: Dirty, dirty old school rhythm and blues. Indie music's hardest working duo.

Karkwa - Les Chemin De Verre: There were some people scratching their head when Karkwa won the Polaris Prize this year. But one listen to this haunting and beautiful album should explain why the were so deserving.

Arcade Fire - Suburbs: I hated Arcade Fire's last album Neon Bible. I thought it was the height of pretension and all that was wrong with indie music. So I went into this album expecting more of the same. I was so wrong. Arcade Fire have produced a personal yet epic sounding album that flows perfectly and hits all the right notes. You can consider me a fan once again.

Honourable Mentions - Ok Go - Of The Blue Colour of the Sky, Wintersleep - New Inheritors

Biggest Flop

Kings of Leon - Radioactive: I won't get to deep into how big a fan I was and how the first two albums exist in a very sacred place for me. I don't want to sound like one of those snobbish people who constantly go on about how great a band was when no one else was listening. But, this song (and the album) is terrible. The video is awkward and forced, the band has shed all the urgency and desperation that made them great and traded it in for the polished, top 40, gosh-I-wish-we-could-be-on-Glee commercialism that ruined bands like U2 and Coldplay.

Ryan's Karkwa Review

If you listen to enough albums, you'll realize that a lot of them come with certain barriers. Sometimes those barriers come from the musicians themselves, if they've made a really dense or inaccessible album, but usually those barriers come from the listener: you don't like previous work by the artist, or you're not fond of the genre in question, or any of a hundred other reasons. To an extent those barriers are necessary, because there isn't enough time in the day to listen to every song by every artist that comes out, and you have to make decisions on what to listen to and what to skip. If you're not careful, though, those barriers can make you miss something excellent.

Karkwa's Les Chemins de Verre arrived in the review queue this week, with a fairly big barrier in front of it: the album's in French, and I don't speak the language much beyond what I learned in Grade 9 French class. This is a bit compounded by the fact that I'm at heart a lover of lyrics, and so the part of the album I most want to dissect is the one that's inaccessible to me.

Thankfully, though, it doesn't matter. Les Chemins de Verre is a good enough album that it doesn't merely climb over any language barrier you might have, it leaps over it in a single bound. From the opening track, Le pyromane, it's got you, giving you enough to keep listening while leaving enough unsaid that you're hanging on every chord change and transition in the album. From there, we go on a bit of a musical odyssey – through tracks like Marie te pleures, Les Enfants de Beyrouth, and Au-dessus de la tete de Lilijune, Karkwa explores several different genres and styles in a way that shows that they're familiar with all of them, and yet each one still has a distinctive stamp on them – you still know you're listening to a Karkwa song with each one.

It's an album with a lot of layers to it – I've been listening to it all week, and I still feel like I've only scratched the surface with it. And, while it's layered, it's still very accessible – you could jump into it with a single quick listen and still get a lot out of it. But trust me, with that single quick listen, you're going to want to come back for more.