Hottest Bands in Canada 2008

Oh hello blog. You thought I forgot about you, didn't you? Sure, I may have been devoting my attention elsewhere, but you still hold a special place in my heart. And I promise to pay more attention to you in the next little while.

Helping me break the silence was another round of the Hottest Bands in Canada poll. For those who didn't follow my post last year, iheart music - an insightful and perceptive Canadian music blog - releases a yearly list of the "Hottest Bands in Canada". It's actually a meta-list, since iheart solicits lists from dozens of bloggers coast-to-coast. Everyone sends in their top ten hottest bands (with the definition of "hot" and "canadian" up to the individual blogger) and iheart compiles the result into a 33-band round-up.

Like the bloggers it polls, the list is a tad biased towards English indie rock (especially from Eastern Canada), but it's a pretty decent snapshot of what's happening in Canadian music this year. We could debate who made the cut (or who didn't), but ultimately the list is more useful when used as a way to discover a few talented domestic acts that may have escaped our ears this year.

The full list is here and well worth a read (as is the list of bands who got votes but didn't make the top 33).

And finally, here's my top ten, with honourable mentions.

Honourable Mentions (i.e. bands that were hot but I didn't pay enough attention to: Radio Radio, tUNE yARDS, Two Hours Traffic, Black Hat Brigade, and Holy Fuck)

10. Céline Dion
Between Carl Wilson's book (Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste) and the big Quebec City anniversary bash, it's hard to keep Céline off this list. Although it goes against any kind of indie aesthetic the "Hottest Bands in Canada" list may be trying to cultivate, starting off with Céline is probably ok now that Wilson has explained our culture's troubled relationship with her. And hey, maybe mainstream is the new indie.

9. Mother Mother
I had heard snippets from this West-coast crew's debut album, but it wasn't until seeing them live at this year's Pop Montreal festival (promoting their follow-up) that I felt they deserved a spot on this prestigious list. Great energy, great harmonies and a batch of songs that stick in your head like gum.

8. Women
Women's debut album took me a while to get into. In fact, I thought I hated it for the bulk of 2008. I'm glad I stuck with it though. There's some insane guitar work in their tunes and the lo-fi production on it actually makes Women sound different than a lot of current Canadian indie-rock.

7. Shad
Rapping about being broke and otherwise inadequate is awesome. Other people have tried it (Andy Samberg, Jon Lajoie I'm looking at you) but Shad nails it.

6. Tokyo Police Club
As far as critical acclaim goes, TPC weren't hot this year. Their album was tepidly received at best, frigidly at worst. Despite being pumped about their previous EP, journalists and bloggers turned on TPC faster than Sarah Palin can say the word "maverick". People wanted TPC to be the next great saviours of rock. But what got lost in the midst of all the talk about how they weren't is the fact that Elephant Shell is a damn good, tight rock album.

5. Karkwa
Karkwa - who walked away with 3 GAMIQ awards this year - are usually referred to as the French Radiohead. I think that's just what Anglos say to convince other Anglos that it's ok to listen to francophone music. Take two or three listens to their beautiful Le Volume du Vent and you'll realize that they don't need to be compared to anything to convince you they are worth the time.

4. Born Ruffians
The opening notes and words of this album make me immensely happy. I start marching around the house, singing the national anthem of a country that only exists in my imagination. I thought this band was a one-trick pony; I owe them a beer for my mistake.

3. Land of Talk
This vote may reflect a bit of recency effect, since Some Are Lakes was just released. Still, I can't stop singing the title track. The other songs on the CD aren't as sing-a-ble, but producer Bon Iver has helped LOT craft an honest, straight-up exercise in no-bullshit rock.

2. Chad Van Gaalen
Chad Van Gaalen is a weird dude. I doubt his latest album will change that perception, since Soft Airplane is obsessed with death and other depressing and odd topics. Still, the album is one of his most complex to date; a lonely trip into Chad's head and basement studio.

1. Plants and Animals
Fuck Caribou. Not really. I mean, you shouldn't do that to animals and Andorra is actually a decent disc. I just don't think it deserved the Polaris. Parc Avenue, on the other hand, did. I can barely count the number of times I listened to this album this year.

Radiohead addendum: Quick Math

Comscore, an Internet measurment company, released a report earlier this week detailing some data from Radiohead's pay-what-you-can marketing stunt. Here's a quick recap:

1.2 million people visited the site in Oct.
62% of people paid nothing.
38% paid something.
Of that 38%, the average paid was $6.

Coverage of the report has been predictably skewed, with many - including the report's titular jab at freeloading - concluding that the experiment was a failure, that the poor results confirm that the tip jar model just doesn't work.

Here's some quick math:

- 38% of 1.2 million paying $6 = $2,736,000 (almost all of which goes to the band)

Or, factoring in the 62% who paid nothing, the average price people paid was $2.26:
- 1.2 million paying $2.26 = $2,712,000

Hail to the Thief sold 300,000 in its first week. If it continued at that pace for the whole month (which it didn't), that gives about 1.2 million. Or, for even more fun, let's assume that Radiohead could sell as much as Kanye West's Graduation (which it couldn't, Graduation was the highest selling album in 4 years). It moved 957,000 units in it's first week. It moved 226,000 the week after. It continued to decline. Again, 1.2 million in the first month is a good guess (but incredibly high estimate for CD sales).

- 1.2 Million units at $15 - $18,000,000

Of course, not all of that goes to the band. Usually bands get a 10-15% cut. Higher, obviously, for bigger bands.

- 18 million with 15% cut = 2.7 million
- 18 million with 20% cut = 3.6 million

Set aside the fact that Radiohead was doing this as a publicity stunt, some pre-hype for their upcoming CD release. Even at 38% pay what you can, the band made about as much as if they had released it traditionally. Sure, being Radiohead, they may have gotten more than a 20% cut. But, being Radiohead, they probably wouldn't have sold 1.2 million physical copies of their album anyway.

Hottest Bands in Canada

So this was kinda fun.
For the last three years, iheartmusic, one of the better mp3 blogs out there (and Canadian too), has been compiling a list of the hottest Canadian bands. Earlier this month, I got asked to be part of the loosely formed panel of 30 plus bloggers that gets brought together (virtually) to nominate artists for the list. Each voter gets 10 suggestions; the definition of what counts as hot and what counts as Canadian were up to the individual reviewer.

iheart then had the good heart to sift through the hundreds of nominees and rank them. The result is a top 33 list of bands you may know or maybe should know. Like any list of this sort, its not perfect. And it definitely skews to English indie crowds. But it's a pretty good summary of who's been kickin' musical ass in the last year and a testament to how much good music there is in Canada right now (especially when you consider the dozens of bands that could have just as easily made the cut).

I could spend this post doing a meta commentary on the influence (or lack thereof) of mp3 blogs in the critical chain. But that would probably be boring. Instead, I'll share with you my top ten (which may also be boring), and the reasons I included them.

A few notes: I didn't vote for the Arcade Fire, since I knew they'd make the list without my help. I'm a bit sad that the Most Serene Republic and Do Make Say Think didn't make the cut, since their 07 albums are easily as good or better than anything else on the list. And if someone can explain to me what everyone sees or hears in Basia Bulat, please do. She reminds me of a female Kermit the frog.

10. Patrick Watson
Overrated? Maybe. Hot in 07? Undeniably. One of my favourite musical memories in 2006 was randomly stumbling upon Watson and co. playing in a tiny outdoor park on the corner of St. Laurent and Rachel, Watson's voice soaring over the twilight traffic. For that show alone, I'm glad 2007 was good to them.

9. David Myles
This may be a throwaway vote, but David Myles had a good year, racking up a few songwriting awards and an ECMA "rising star" nomintation. His raspy blues-folk may be a bit too saccharine for the indie blogosphere, but if his next album is as solid on guitar plucking and storytelling as Things Have Changed, then 2008 should be a good year too.

8. Rock Plaza Central
After getting rave reviews from the Pitchfork gods for their equine-themed 2006 album (Are We Not Horses), Rock Plaza Central spent most of 2007 touring and spreading their twisted rock/folk goodness to fortunate citizens. I don't know if that qualifies as hot or not, so I've left them at #8.

7. Miracle Fortress
If there was a summer album for the sunny days of 07, it's Five Roses. Graham Van Pelt's solo project beams with shiny sounds. If you put this album on, and fail to smile, there is something wrong with your central nervous system.

6. Oh Bijou
I think this band just missed the cut on your list last year. So I'm pushing for their inclusion this year. I think I'm a sucker for strings. In 07, you could find Oh Bijou showing off their beautiful debut Swift Feet for Troubling Times (2006) and previewing songs from, what sounds like it will be, a stunning follow up. Oh Bijou makes songs that help the moon go to sleep at night.

5. Great Lake Swimmers
There must be something in the water. Great Lake Swimmer's contribution to 2007, Ongiara, is as vast and scenic as the country it describes. Tony Dekker's metaphors run deep. The album sounds like it came from the ground.

4. Feist
In a year of incredibly mediocre highly anticipated followups (Arcade Fire, Bloc Party) it's refreshing that Reminder is not only solid the whole way through, but even more enchanting than Let it Die. Her voice still reigns supreme. "1 2 3 4" is so catchy it may even be able to withstand the unbelievable overplay it's getting from iPod commercials.

3. Do Make Say Think
Who needs lyrics when you make music like this? Not only did DMST put on some monumental shows in 07, their album, You, You're a History in Rust, crashes my iTunes with its awesomeness. Post-rock and hot don't usually go together, so why don't we just call DMST post-hot.

2. The Most Serene Republic
This band is too all-over-the-map to ever be a really hot band. But their latest album has massive, messy moments that deserve your attention. They will be the new mayors of broken social scene ville, should BSS continue splintering off solo albums.

1. Chad VanGaalen
Even Patrick Watson thought Chad VanGaalen should have won the Polaris. But, CVG has been under appreciated for years, particularly here in Montreal (his shows at small clubs rarely come close to selling out). Hopefully the polaris nomination (and his stunning performance at the award show) brings this haunting and oddball signer-songwriter some much deserved respect.

Honorable mentions (or bands that were hot but I never got into enough to talk about with any credibility on this list: Plants and Animals, Besnard Lakes, Sunset Rubdown, Julie Doiron)

Crisitunity

Lisa Simpson: “Look on the bright side, Dad. Did you know that the Chinese use the same word for ‘crisis’ as they do for ‘opportunity?’”

Homer Simpson: “Yes. ‘Crisitunity!’”

Sorry. I know that quote is overused, but I saw a repeat of that episode recently and it still makes me laugh.

Chris Anderson, he of Wired Magazine and Long Tail fame, has some informative numbers on the music industry posted on his blog today. The figures are yet another reminder that the current "crisis" is only afflicting a fraction of the players involved in the music industry. It just so happens to be the fraction who has the most to lose and the fraction who has the political and (dwindling) economic clout to make the most noise about it.

Just as interesting as Anderson's figures are the numbers posted in the comments section from (presumably) someone at CD Baby, an online distributor of physical CDs for independent artists. I'm sure that data from people purchasing CDs at gigs, if anyone is tracking this, would also support this overall argument. It's not that people aren't buying CDs, they're just not buying them from the places the major labels want them to (and where reliable data can be gathered).

Anderson is not the first to remind us that the music industry is more than just the sale of recorded CDs, but it's worth bearing this in mind when anyone mentions the current state of the music. The technologies of music making and music listening are changing, so are the practices through which people incorporate music into their lives. It's not surprising that the make up of the music industry should shift along with it.

Radiohead Addendum

Here's a range of commentary on Radiohead's marketing plans:

The first, is a fairly generic article from two weeks ago, talking about how the band is changing the rules of the game

The second, from MTV news on release day shows how some fans are a bit sour over the low quality audio files, and over the realization that the files are just digital placeholders until the album comes out (which Radiohead expects them to pay for, again)

The third and most vehement, from the eternally cranky Bob Lefsetz, blasts Radiohead for duping fans with a marketing scheme (far greater than one any label could have concocted).

The interesting thread here is not that people are angry. It's that people somehow feel cheated that the electronic launch of this file is actually just marketing. Its not some kind of sonic or industry revolution, as they had hoped (though, as I said in the last post, it will have a relatively revolutionary impact: people paid for digital files).

Almost every digital music file online, whether it be streamed on myspace, sold on band websites, or available for download from an mp3 blog is a piece of marketing for other things the artist in question is doing. It may be band-driven promotion or user-generated hype, but it's rarely the end goal.

If you bought In Rainbows, you weren't duped. You got what you paid for. Which was up to you.

In Rainbows - Marketing Radiohead Style

I'm listening to the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, that I *bought* yesterday from their online store. If you've read any paper/blog today, you know the deal. Radiohead are finally without a label and have decided to release the album themselves, online. Perhaps more radically, they're letting fans set the price. All you have to do is go to their website and, server crashes notwithstanding, pick the price.

I'll spare you my opinion on the songs, since describing an album after only 24 hours of listening is at best futile and bound to be inaccurate in the long run. But I will talk the album's marketing, or rather, its anti-marketing, since that may be ultimately what's most interesting about In Rainbows.

Radiohead have long been masters of anti-marketing. After the intense press hype and intensive touring schedule for Ok Computer the band had a near meltdown. Their follow up album, as a result, was a different album (complete with electronic glitches and odd time signatures) that was marketed differently. For Kid A, Radiohead abandoned traditional music videos, pre-released radio singles, and they did very little initial touring. Instead, they held private listening parties and used their website to update fans on the development of the album. Kid A’s semi-secretive campaign created an air of intrigue that became an important statement about the band. Far from a lack of marketing, Kid A’s anti-marketing said much about Radiohead and positioned them as avant-garde, anti-corporate musicians.

Now, sans label, Radiohead is extending this strategy even further. To get the word out about the new album, they've relied solely on touring, their website, and the immense peripheral press (mainstream and online) that comes from a band as huge as Radiohead deciding they're going to let fans set the price they're willing to pay.
But they've also had over a decade of brand building done on their behalf (courtesy of Capitol/EMI). Without this, they could never have pulled this stunt as successfully as I'm sure it will work out.

And it will work. People will pay, because Radiohead represent a valuable product (in the eyes and ears of its fans). Also, the faith they are placing in their fans shows a level of respect for their fans not seen elsewhere (like the 6 recording companies who just last week sued a woman $222,000). Radiohead realize that people can and will get their product for free. Rather than fight through legal or technological means, they simply created a mechanism for people to show their appreciation, should fans feel its worth it. Importantly, this appreciation goes directly to the band, not through any label or (apparent) middleman. This only increases the likelihood people will support the initiative.

With Kid A Radiohead successfully convinced consumers the band was anti-corporate and unbranded, despite being on the roster one of the world largest recording labels. With In Rainbows their greatest achievement will be that they got consumers to pay for a product they increasingly frequently get for free. It's just too bad Radiohead didn't go the full 9 yards and allow fans to sample the work before deciding how much it was worth.

I Can't Believe it's Not Advertising

One of the most interesting aspects about YouTube's rise and ensuing attempts to become a legitimate service has been the way individuals and institutions have incorporated the site into their marketing plans.

Independent bands looking for ways to get the word out have turned to the site as a place to publish music videos. Although The Arcade Fire probably doesn't need much more publicity these days, it is significant that they used YouTube to share the first sounds from Neon Bible. The clip is a tongue in cheek anti-ad, but it's an ad nonetheless. The band knew the low-budget clip would be worth the price they paid for it versus anything they could have sent to Much Music.

Then there's the not-so-independent bands that are trying their best to look independent. YouTube is the ultimate venue to show off an amateur aesthetic, despite how many professionals may be behind the scenes. I was sent this video by email. Like most videos I receive, it came with little context. "Check this out, it is awesome." It is an impressive and seemingly spontaneous subway station performance of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight". A bit of digging, however, shows that the band , Naturally Seven, is a SonyBMG artist and that the video is part of a massive multimedia campaign to launch the single and the band's debut album. The video's credibility rests on the assumption of spontaneity. On YouTube, it appears as any other user video would appear, bringing even further assumptions about it (i.e. that this is something someone captured in the Paris metro station, though it was cool and uploaded it).

Perhaps the best example of what I am getting at here is the bride freak out video that garnered millions of views before the hoax was up. It turns out the video was what advertisers call a "net seed", the precursor for a shampoo ad campaign. The problem with these types of clips is not that they are intentionally deceptive. It's that they destroy the credibility of the social networks on which they depend. Advertisers want to be where the viewers are, but trying to sneak in through back doors does more damage than good. MySpace users are now inundated with friend requests from Fox TV show characters.

As marketers invent new ways to reach their target through social networks, their biggest challenge will be not to destroy the very environments they hope to tap. Otherwise, they'll end up like TV or Radio, media that users are increasingly leaving out of frustration. It might be good if marketers heeded the honest simplicity of Montgomery's Flea Market. Unless of course I've been duped and this is actually the first single of this guy's new album.