My favourite albums, EPs, and demos from the past year. List is unranked because I’m a coward.
Blame Art – Aneuma
My schedule has recently been marked by many days with long commutes home from late shifts at work. The nocturnal landscape of the city makes for something far more evocative than its daytime counterpart. I ride on the train as it whizzes by neon signs and traffic lights punctuating the sleepy night sky. While waiting for the bus, living room lights go out in the house across the street. I’m tired, eager to be at home and cozy, while basking in the quietness of my surroundings, and occupied with existential thoughts that race across the starry horizon. Life is beautiful, horrible, boring, and exciting and at times it conjures up emotions I struggle to describe. Sometimes you’re better off letting a spacey post-rock record that bursts into glorious displays of emo catharsis do the talking for you.
Chat Pile – Cool World
Not to be a negative Nancy, but shit is pretty fucked out there. Cool World is an album that grapples with this in a direct way. I don’t necessarily need every record out there to confront the real horrors of life on a planet ravaged by the climate crisis, genocide, war, and drastic levels of inequality between the haves and have nots. However this is the present, and while the present is always a pressing time for the trajectory of human history, things seem pretty urgent right now. From this standpoint, it can seem like a lot of music is ill-equipped to confront the gravity of the current age, which would suggest a cultural crisis that is indicative of a larger political crisis. While taking a break, or finding escape from injustice and conflict in the world, is a necessary, if privileged, element of coping with our world, it is only temporary. Interventions are ultimately necessary, because in reality there is no escape, and this is the final thought this record leaves us with. In relistening to this record, and thinking about my own work as a musician, I keep coming back to this quote by Chat Pile vocalist Raygun Busch in an interview with Crack Magazine:
“Instead of doing anything about the climate right now, we’re giving billions of dollars to Israel to blow up little kids’ heads and dance on the beach. It’s pretty scary. I’m about to turn 40. A lot of our fans are 20, and I’m just like, ‘What are they looking at?’ We had the world’s hottest day on record ever last week – two days in a row…I mean, what else would we write about right now, anyway? People that aren’t talking about shit like this are cowards. This is the point of creating art, you know?”
Crushingly heavy in its sonic weight and subject matter, whether it is bearing witness to the horrible genocidal atrocities committed by the IDF in Gaza on “Shame,” or in expressing the raw emotions of trauma on “Milk of Human Kindness”, Cool World is as real as it gets. It’s ugly, it makes me feel like shit, and it’s real.
Contention – Artillery From Heaven
Contention remains at the vanguard of the edge metal revival with a record brimming with fury and destructive urges. They got one of the best vocalists in the game and the mosh parts are huge.
Dime – Dime
One of this year’s gems as far as post-hardcore goes, particularly if you like big thick effects-laden guitars. Music that ain’t exactly shoegaze, but ain’t exactly emo, but ain’t exactly melodic hardcore, but would appeal to fans of all genres, is an established winning formula at this point. Dime has the sound dialed in and the songwriting chops to ensure that substance matches the style. This probably goes crazy if you’re “LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!” I am not, but I sometimes feel that I do in a spiritual sense, so it still hits.
Drug Church – Prude
Vocalist Patrick Kindlon remains one of the most captivating lyricists in guitar music today. Avoiding generalizations to instead delve into specific narratives littered with quotable lines makes for an engaging glimpse into the realities of this weird ass world.
Eyes Front – Eyes Front
EF til death baby, what more can I say? Another collection of ass-beating rippers from one of the 780’s best hardcore bands.
False Body – It’s Not Permanent
I think it’s really important to practice gratitude on an ongoing basis. One thing I’ve been quite grateful for is that I happen to live in the same city as False Body. This has let me see this band at least ten times over the last two years, and I swear every set is better than the last. There’s a lot of great bands in the Wild Rose hardcore scene, but I feel like the band is the people’s champ. Their ferocious intense performances command heavy crowd participation in the pit. For me, I feel I lose control of my bodily autonomy as their nasty riffing and sawtoothed snarls of vocalist Michelle Belec trigger some primitive instincts that slip my dancing shoes on. The first spinkick I threw in a pit was due to this band. It was very poorly executed but it felt like the right thing to do.
Funeral Lakes – North American Martyrs
Funeral Lakes craft a sound that sits at a point in indie rock where the expansive ethereal atmospheres of dream pop and the lyrical-driven intimateness of folk music intersect. These thoughtful lyricism captures feelings that arise from the effects of life under Canadian state hegemony in ways that go beyond sloganeering to hit on an impactful level of poignancy that can be challenging to reach within the constrained space afforded through songwriting. North American Martyrs interrogates nationalism, settler identity and the telling(s) of history in Canada, with special emphasis on how glorified (hi)stories of this country can be unsettled by bringing to light what details are omitted when a nation’s myths are told and told again. The record is made further compelling as it takes on a meta quality in how the band grapples with the ways in which musicians, as cultural producers, can take an active role in reinforcing, remodeling, or rejecting the narratives told by those with a vested interest in maintaining sociocultural, political, and economic status-quos.
Guttrot – Demo 2024
Disgusting sludge from the disgusting city of Calgary. Heavy, nasty, and misanthropic.
Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch
This is such a beautiful and enchanting record. The retrospective stylings of bossa nova, brill building, and psych pop sound fresh through Pratt’s charming voice and pristine melodies.
Ka – The Thief Next to Jesus
The final record from an MC who was gone too soon and at top of his game well into middle age grapples with the faith-based pillars of Black communities in America that continue to grapple with economic racism. Religion can give one guidance, community, and an ethical and philosophical framework through which to understand existence, yet material conditions are informed by more earthly processes of everyday life and its administration by powerful institutions. Weaving gospel samples and spoken word snippets with the poetic and grippling lyricism we’ve come to know Ka for makes for a crowning statement in a career littered with great records.
Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate
On her most explicitly danceable record yet, KLO delves into hypnotic prog-house odysseys that whisk one away to dreamworlds where dancefloors line the tops of mountains warmed by the rising sun. Striving for club euphoria with an underlying yearning for real love, whatever that may be for each of us. Sincere, if perhaps a little cheesy (non-derogatory), but I’m not too cool to be dancing.
Kiowa – Forever ends today
Ferocious metallic emoviolence. Packs many punches between its punchy yet raw production, guitars that oscillate between wistful melody and crunchy power, and THREE vocalists shredding their vocal cords.
Lockslip – LOCKSLIP
Lockslip’s debut release is an elite entry in the redalbumcore canon. Redalbumcore, which I will write on in the future, is what I’ve identified a number of hardcore records that have red cover art and sound furious, infernal, chaotic and/or feature mathy diversions into herky jerky rhythms and uncommon time signatures. Anger is a justified emotion when feeling powerless in the wake of economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement. Few songs capture this feeling so succinctly as “Payment,” which one might run back over and over while thinking about what is to be done with CEOs, bourgeois politicians, and their bootlicking minions in the professional managerial class.
“Self-serving rats
They want your money
They want your blood
They want you weak
They want you at risk
They want no blame
They want you to trust them
They want you to pay”
Milan W. – Leave Another Day
Fever dream pop with an alluring yet ominous edge to it. File beside all your favourite albums to listen to while pretending you’re inside an Edward Hopper painting.
Missouri Executive Order #44 – Salt Sermon
I don’t know a whole lot about Mormonism, but this bike helmet hardcore group makes it sound pretty harrowing through their oppressive onslaught of mathy violence.
MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks
Dudes rock but aren’t perfect – “we’ve all got work to do.” Lenderman dives into character studies of various loser guys, presented in a way that is observational and poignant without being overly judgemental and interpretative. His everso quotable pen game is equally matched by his penchant for crafting sticky hooks and slick riffs.
Polo Perks, AyooLii & Feardorian – A Dog’s Chance
There are many ways to make great beats. One of them, mastered by Feardorian, is finding one dope sample and looping it over drums you can shake ass to. Add the infectious energy of two charismatic MCs, and pander to me by sampling one of the most iconic midwest emo riffs ever, and I’m bound to have your record on repeat
Rabit – LIL BOY
Yet another banging entry in Rabit’s tried and true repertoire of merging the syrupy sounds of Southern hip hop with the haze and gaze of witch house.
Salimata – Wooden Floors
Salimata spits with an effortless cool through the smooth grooves of glorious soulful samples on Wooden Floors. If the sun was shining and the birds were singing and I had the day off of work, there was a good chance that I was listening to this album this past summer.
Slewfoot – MISCONDUCT
Saw this band in Toronto back in the summer. They introduced their set by playing the Hockey Night in Canada theme song over the PA, so naturally I’m inclined to like them due to the long-term repercussions and concussions of my upbringing as a toxic hockey boy. EP rips, hits harder than Raffi Torres does 7 seconds after an opposing player passes the puck.
Yung Lean & Bladee – Psykos
This is a record that may require one to meet Bladee and Yung Lean halfway, thus not being the best intro to these two. But if you’ve already bought into the aesthetics and emotional undercurrents that flow through their most compelling work, Psykos is another highlight in their catalog. Life-affirming wistful chord progressions and uncomplicated poignant lyricism make for a pristine canvas of ethereal melancholy to paint your headspace over.