The city’s artists released a bunch of great records in 2011. Here are our favourites.
Austra
FEEL IT BREAK
Paper Bag
From her beginnings on DIY co-op label Blocks Recording Club to her contributions to Fucked Up’s The Chemistry of Common Life, Katie Stelmanis nurtured her prodigious talents in the local music scene. Twenty-eleven was the year we released the classically trained fledgling from the nest and watched her conquer the world as Austra. Stelmanis’ giant leap was Feel It Break, a masterful work of electro-goth alchemy so refined it could have been dreamed up in some synth-equipped phantasmagorical laboratory. The album’s steely industrial beats provide a perfect frame for Stelmanis’ voice, which sounds both emotional and uncomfortably disembodied. Feel It Break is what love songs might sound like in some far-off, stylishly monochromatic dimension.
Azari & III
AZARI & III
Loose Lips
From the Chemical Brothers to Justice, the easiest way for dance-music producers to cross over is to think and act more like rock bands by cranking up the synths and beats to Richter-scale levels and turning dance floors into mosh pits. Toronto house-heads Azari & III initially seemed destined for a similar fate (the video for their menacing 2009 debut single “Hungry for the Power” was loaded with graphic sexual and violent imagery), but their debut full-length album is a sultry, carefully considered affair. Fittingly for an album that begins with a track called “Into the Night,” Azari & III charts the euphoric high and cool comedown of a dusk-to-dawn journey, and while singer Cedric Gasadia’s silken, androgynous voice may trigger hallucinatory turn-of-the-’90s flashbacks, his cautionary words about empty promiscuity and unrequited desire provide sobering reminders of the anxieties we face after the clubs clear out.
Drake
TAKE CARE
Young Money/Cash Money/Universal
Twenty-eleven was definitely Aubrey Drake Graham’s year: It seemed like every other tweet brought word that the T.O. native was guesting on a high-profile tune or dating someone famous…and then he dropped his hugely anticipated sophomore album. While far from perfect, Take Care is one of the most important Toronto releases of the past year, since it confirmed to the world at large that hip-hop is alive and well in this city—and not just because Weezy says so. The album boasts a cluster of great tunes, but more importantly, Take Care finds Drizzy picking up his rhyme game, so much so that he holds his own alongside big-name guests. It might be weird to think of a guy who’s selling out stadiums as someone who’s on his way up, but Take Care is the work of someone whose potential has yet to be tapped—we expect big things from Drake in the years to come.
Feist
METALS
Arts & Crafts
Shortly after Metals came out, a chorus of critics—some positive, some negative—declared the album “adult contemporary.” To that, we say: Uh, fuck yeah! In contrast to the bubbly, jangly pop of The Reminder and the wispy sketches of Let It Die, Feist’s fourth LP (including ’99’s Monarch) is the sound of an artist who’s grown up and into her sizeable talent. It’s a sophisticated collection of precisely crafted songs with nuanced arrangements that hover like steam around Feist’s voice. Even in its most restrained moments—the cascading melodies of “The Circle Married the Line”; the muffled lurch of “Graveyard”—Metals is arrestingly powerful. And if its appeal is subtler than that of Feist’s other releases, it’s also her most punk-rock album.
Fucked Up
DAVID COMES TO LIFE
Matador
Outsized ambition is nothing new for these hardcore heretics. Amid all the talk about the sheer audacity of David Comes to Life—an 18-song multi-character punk-rock opera set in Thatcher-era England—it’s easy to forget that this was Fucked Up’s second double-album release (after 2006’s equally weighty Hidden World). Never mind the convoluted storyline, the real drama on David Comes to Life is a product of the band’s internal contradictions. By pitting Damian Abraham’s broken-glass bark against an onslaught of glistening, multi-tracked guitars and windmill-able riffs, the album crystallizes the paradox of being a veteran punk-rock band, wherein ideological purism must yield to artistic exploration. “Evolve or die,” the saying goes, but with David Comes to Life, Fucked Up show you can really have it both ways.
One Hundred Dollars
SONGS OF MAN
Outside Music
They may not be as showy or stylish as some of their peers, but on their sophomore album, Toronto country crew One Hundred Dollars demonstrated some of the finest writing you’ll find on any album released this year. Singer and songwriter Simone Schmidt has a documentarian’s eye for narratives, a dramatist’s ear for distinct voices and a country ’n’ western veteran’s knack for spinning memorable, lyrical yarns. Her Songs of Man are stories of real-life characters—a repentant addict, an immigrant worker carrying guilt and grime from the tar sands, a lovable lothario who can’t speak—that bristle and breathe, buoyed by her seasoned band.
Sandro Perri
IMPOSSIBLE SPACES
Constellation
Sandro Perri has earned fans and accolades in certain circles for his skillful production work and the eclectic material—from Arthur Russell homages to hypnotic techno—he’s released under pseudonyms. But with the remarkable Impossible Spaces, he’s not only made something that properly showcases his myriad talents, he’s also reached an audience that extends far outside the cozy walls of the Tranzac Club. The album is a delirious mix of undulating rhythms, joyous woodwinds, retro-futuristic organ sounds and clever dynamics tied together by the soothing balm of Perri’s voice. He may no longer be one of this city’s best-kept secrets, but if anyone’s equipped to serve as an ambassador for T.O.’s diverse music scene, it’s this guy.
Timber Timbre
CREEP ON CREEPIN’ ON
Arts & Crafts
In just a few years, Taylor Kirk has taken his Timber Timbre project from being a regular act at the Tranzac to headlining soft-seater theatres. While maintaining his woodsy demeanor and graveyard-at-dawn aesthetic, Kirk expanded the lo-fi folk of his earlier releases with a funky yet unnerving collection of deceptively catchy tunes for his fourth effort, the Polaris Prize–nominated Creep On Creepin’ On. At its most accessible, this album could easily slide into the rotation at your local Starbucks, but it still contains a healthy dose of freaky soundscapes that wouldn’t be out of place in a horror film. As such, it’s fair to say that Creep On Creepin’ On is probably even more Lynchian than David Lynch’s own album.
The Weeknd
HOUSE OF BALLOONS
Independent
Apart from playing two brief but thrilling shows this past summer, The Weeknd has yet to make a proper public appearance in Toronto. Nevertheless, the elusive figure made a splash well beyond our city’s borders—without ever offering up a formal introduction. He may be slippery, but The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye delivers his dulled-senses brand of boundary-pushing R&B with wary aplomb. His voice is his weapon, an eerily hollow echo that hints at nights of depravity: the sex, the drugs and that profound self-loathing masked by a veneer of hedonistic defence mechanisms. We may not yet know The Weeknd, but his cagey marketing strategy is part of what makes House of Balloons both captivating and cinematic. You’re left using your imagination to fill in the blanks of Tesfaye’s slow-burning confessions.
Yamantaka // Sonic Titan
YT // ST
Psychic Handshake
Yes, we’re slipping this one into our list on a technicality: Though the debut album by Yamantaka // Sonic Titan was conceived and recorded over the past three years in Montreal, founding member Alaska B now calls Toronto home. And, like poutine, this potent hit of pan-cultural psychedelia is an addictive Quebecois export well worth co-opting as our own. Over the course of a compact 30-minute set, Alaska B and creative foil Ruby Kato Attwood connect the dots between Japanese folkloric tradition, ’70s classic-rock radio and contemporary underground noise scenes, displaying an equal facility with pastorally serene balladry and nightmarish acid-metal assaults. This is progressive rock for people who still think “prog” is a four-letter word.
