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Music
Two weeks ago, a caller to the Rant Line™ gave props to local act Far From Shore, and took the opportunity to slag our three top charters in this category as pretentious, prosaic and pointless, respectively. A delightfully alliterative triple diss, but that caller’s probably apoplectic right now. Sorry, dude—Arcade Fire, Sam Roberts and Wolf Parade must be doing something right if they top the list and, moreover, have made the biggest waves out of town lately. The Dears and the Stills both have new albums due out shortly (next week for the Stills, in fact), so here’s a prediction for next year’s BOM: Same “best musical acts,” different configuration.
Les Georges—who have a new album, Sangue Puro, due out in the fall, and a show of their visual artwork at Casa del Popolo until the end of this month—continue to amuse, confuse, agitate and generally weird Montrealers out, as they again take top honours among the freaky clique. Starbuck and his metalcore mutants slip slightly, surrendering last year’s silver medal to AIDS Wolf, up from #6 last year (keep in mind, AIDS Wolf is risen from the ashes of Da Bloody Gashes, no strangers to this category in their day). Newcomers to this list include Dandi Wind, who can be counted on for arty, spasmodic electro-pop wig-outs, and Speakervoice, whose post-grunge powerhouse sound is currently being committed to plastic, in the form of a seven-song EP produced by Kevin Jardine of Slaves on Dope. You can hear the Voice at Barfly this Friday, by the way. Most Pretentious Local Act There was a time when godspeed dominated this category. How the mighty have fallen. What’s notable is how similar this list is to that of “Best Musical Act,” above, which suggests that many readers understand “pretentious” as meaning, “Exponentially more popular than my band/my boyfriend’s band/my roommate’s band.” A new name on the list—and a particularly pretentious one, given that it’s an obscure Salman Rushdie reference—is Was It the Walrus?, the soft-touch, brain-bending art rock efforts of Jason Norris and his rotating collaborators. Heaviest Local Act While the fans of bands like Cryptopsy, hungering for ever greater extremes in tempo, tension and volume, might find the unabashed, true-school hard rock a little on the light side, most of you seem to feel they’re more than heavy enough. It must be admitted, as a band name, Priestess is right up there with Black Sabbath, Kreator and Goatsnake as a truly heavy tag. It’s a bit odd to see the Dears on this list, but then, they do dish out the romantic sturm und drang like nobody’s business. Best Hip Hop Act Up from last year’s #8 spot, and bumping 2005 winners the Farm Team down to #2, Island City Monsters take home the gold this year, with extended members Meta4ce and Eye 2 Eye staying in the top 10. The grand spectacle of Team Canada bridges categories and snags an important #4 spot on a list that even they didn’t think they’d be on. Also ICM family, Euphrates hangs tight two years in a row, sliding from the #7 spot to #9. Best Club DJ Team Canada (D.R. One and Grandtheft), in all their extreme-mash-up splendour, have nailed the #1 spot this year, on a list where only D.R. appeared at #2 in 2005. Amazingly, DJ Quest is sitting at #3, perhaps a blow to someone who has taken the #1 spot as many times as he has. Nice to see DJ Mana and DJ Twitch on the list, two guys out there doing their thing, and Kwite Sane hanging on at #5, up one spot from last year.
A new category this year, reflecting the explosion of local artists working in an old-time, rootsy vernacular. The winners, from big man Li’l Andy on down, range from bluegrass purists to insurgent country types, from folk-punk troubadour Paul Cargnello to nasty, lo-fi trash-abilly menace Bloodshot Bill. What that suggests is a scene of sorts, albeit one that’s healthy in its diversity—if not its drinking habits.
Best Jazz Musician As always, the grand old men of jazz in the 514 rule the roost. What’s nice to see is younger, genre-bending talents—like Kobayashi’s Proietti and Tauchner, and Microtone Kitchen, with turntablists DJ Mana and Killa Jewel—getting nods here, alongside more traditionally “jazz” types like Nelson, Officer and Herskowitz.
He may be in the poorhouse now, but Leonard Cohen’s locked down the penthouse in the hearts of Montrealers, toppling Rufus from last year’s #1 spot. The newcomer here, Pierre Lapointe, proved himself BOM-worthy with his excellent debut album, La forêt des mal-aimés.
Best Busker Spoonman takes it again! No wonder he fought so hard for his established spot on Ste-Catherine, near Ogilvy’s—he’s got the highest visibility (and one of the most memorable street-corner personas) in this category. Stilt man climbs back up to #2, knocking his fellow Lionel-Groulx fixture, the amazing Michael Jackson dancer, all the way down to #8. Another busker to slide down the list is the stout, blond nasal recorder virtuoso (let’s call him Nostril-damus). Does he need stilts to regain your love, Montreal? Or is it, as Spoonman so clearly grasps, a matter of location, location, location? Best Local Music Label No big changes at the top of this list, except for hip hop outlet FAMN, home of M.O. (see “Best Hip Hop Act,” above), climbing up the ranks. New on the list are indie/punk purveyors Dare to Care, and also Mile End Records, who’ve scored big this year with their debut mix CD Chez Nous: Montreal House Music vol. 1 (selected by Patrick Dream and Mike Meunier) and their flagship soul man, Shane Phillips.
Best Local Promoter Once again, the skies are Blue for Blue Skies. They top the list, no doubt due to the gangland strong-arm tactics of intimidation, disinformation, blackmail and violent coercion that are the hallmarks of BSTB enforcers Meyer and Brian. The Peer Pressure guys, operating from thier base at Vinyl, make a dramatic third-place splashwith their first annual charting, as do their immediate follow-ups, roots-music wranglers Hello Darlin’. |
Best Musical Act
Freakiest Local Act
Best Country/ Folk Act
“It’s an honour to be chosen as country & western valedictorian by my rock ’n’ roll classmates this year,” says Li’l Andy. “Go Tigers!”
Best Singer/Songwriter
“I really don’t know how these things happen, because I haven’t been performing in the street for a while. I’d like to know where these people voting for me are.” You might think it a bit strange that the man voted #3 best busker in the city has actually been holed up in the studio, working on his brand new LP, but it’s the truth. Due out in the fall of 2006, Bad News Brown’s long-awaited new album has been keeping him occupied, so count yourself lucky if you catch him in the street.
Though Ninja Tune is in fact based in the U.K., the North American headquarters of the record label has been a part of the Montreal music scene since 1996—such an essential part that Montrealers haven’t hesitated to vote them into the second-place slot in the Best Record Label category. This month, they join the main London office in celebrating 10 years of global recognition and the continued crusade for avant-garde electronic music and future hip hop. |
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