New music

It dawned on me recently just how much my musical explorations have slowed down in the past year. I've made a few discoveries, of course, but not as many as I'd become accustomed to during grad school. I became aware of it during a recent conversation with my cousin Christine, whose musical tastes are impeccable and who has long been a great source of new music for me. We played our usual game of exchanging discoveries, except that when it came to me, all I could muster were the same bands I'd mentioned to her last summer. Terribly lame.

So, with renewed vigor, I've recently gone on a campaign to renew my bond with music. The following is a sampling of the good, the awful, and the unforgettable.

Malajube
Yes, I know I'm late to the party for this one, but I recently downloaded Malajube's 2006 album "Trompe-l'oeil" ("Optical Illusion"), and I'm once again reminded of just how great some of the music coming out of Montreal is. It seems every time I open an issue of Rolling Stone there's a new band from Montreal being touted as the next thing.

These guys, however, are truly something special. I'm currently obsessed with "Pâte filo" (playing as I write this), but the album as a whole sounds, for lack of a better term, massive. Great songs, solid playing, and a richness and texture to the music that is just baffling considering how young these guys are. This is the same realization to which I came when I heard Karkwa.

Karkwa
There's no good way to write what I'm about to write, because it sounds as though I think very little of my fellow Quebecois, but I didn't think it possible that such great music could be sung in French. Lately, however, it seems Montreal's carved an enviable spot for itself in the international music scene, and an amazing variety of truly magnificient music is coming out of my hometown, making me at once proud and nostalgic.

The first band that started me thinking along those lines is Karkwa, when I first heard "Les tremblements s'immobilisent" (The Tremors are Quieting), I was captivated immediately (which hardly ever happens to me). I'm indebted to Chake for exposing me to these guys. I still have to pause when I hear "La marche", just because I can't begin to understand how such masterful songs are created from the ether.

Such was my admiration for these guys that I was briefly in touch with their manager, a person named Sandy, to whom I just felt compelled to express my admiration for the band in writing. Unfortunately, Sandy's interest in our conversation dried up when I bluntly asserted that I could in fact do nothing for their career save for writing elogious e-mails about them.

I won't hold my breath for their american tour, but I do hold out hope that they'll eventually write some material in English, if only so that they take the next logical step and come touring down here.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
I attended these guys' show this past Friday, on the recommendation of a friend, at the Fillmore on South street. Though the Fillmore is (like pretty much everything else on South street) pretty inauspicious from the outside, it is in fact a phenomenal venue for live music. This only makes me regret even more the fact that I missed The Hip on their visit to Philly last month, as I realized just how precious the opportunity was to see them in a small and intimate venue—something I would definitely not be able to do anywhere in Canada!

BRMC are a three-piece band from San Francisco that plays a pared-down and intense brand of rock. Nothing complicated—in fact, it's unclear to me whether their music left me relatively unmoved because it's so pared-down, or because of my chronic inability to catch something on the first go-round. But I'm going to follow up on them, so there'll be more to come, I'm sure.

Amy Winehouse
Yes, again, you may say I'm late to the party, but I should note that I've been yearning for someone to make an album like "Back to Black" for a long, long time. Anyone who knows me knows I'm an unabashed musical snob, and many times I've complained that many contemporary female singers were wasting their talent on uninspired, unidimensional R&B (hello there, Christina Aguilera et al), rather than taking a chance and using their magnificient voices to create something truly novel.

And as usual, it took a Brit to make that leap. Amy Winehouse is, quite simply, the purest expression of raw talent I've heard in a decade. Her phrasing on "Rehab", her choice of words on "Addicted", the prodigious backing section that recasts the Motown sound anew—all of it speaks of a monumentally inspired musical experiment. I still can't believe a waifish white jewish girl from North London is the source of that soulful voice.

Current favourite is "You Know That I'm No Good". Simply stellar.

Mika
If you know Mika and are wincing now, trust me, I'm wincing too. My beloved cousin—the one with the impeccable musical taste—planted this name in my head, and were it not for a freakish ability to recall useless and inane trivia, the name would have been forgotten, since she mentioned it about two weeks before I eventually looked it up online.

Rolling Stone dubbed this "pop that makes you feel guilty in the morning", and the analogy couldn't be more appropriate. This is icky, sticky, sickeningly sweet bubblegum pop, the musical equivalent of an ill-advised Jersey shore hookup after a week-long Whopper binge. This music evokes big-eyed, furry, multicolored cartoon animals traipsing through a field of lollipops and candy-coloured clouds—not unlike what I imagine one sees when one consumes a week's ration of painkillers in one sitting, and washes it down with a six-pack of Red Bull. And because the human mind naturally relates to melody, this perniciously melodic pap attaches itself to your very soul, and from there wages a war to the death with your free will. I battled this for weeks, waking up with one song on the brain in the morning, and never being able to shake it for days.

If you don't know Mika and you're now curious after reading this, proceed with caution. My cousin is family—I love her and am willing to overlook this egregious affront because, well, she's family. You may not owe me the same courtesy, so don't hold it against me if you end up similarly afflicted.

You've been warned.

More to come.