Is This What You Want? - Top 10 Records of 2010 (Part Two)

6. Anagram - Majewski (Dead Astronaut)

Toronto is a really excellent city. There's a million things to do on any given night and hundreds of bands playing every week in every conceivable genre, be it bearded expeimentalists, or the next Drake. The one thing that I think Toronto is missing is a really solid rock & roll scene. Population-wise, the city is so large and fragmented that the impetus to try and do something different with punk rock is pervasive - so much so that the fundamentals often get forgotten. A common aesthetic and philosophical sensibility unties scenes and allows creativity to thrive, rather than encouraging copycats, as smaller cites like Ottawa, Calgary, and even Vancouver have proven.

Which is why, I suppose, that it took so long (not until the release of this album) for me to find out about Anagram, perhaps my favourite current Toronto band. It took them about three minutes to win me over at their album release show this fall, playing a hypnotically intense, casually powerful set. The urgency of Matt Mason's vocals are the driving force - confrontational without being obvious or forced. This is the kind of record that demands you to listen without being intrusive. In other words, Anagram is the sort of band that leaps out at you with instant intensity but respects your intelligence enough to let you figure out exactly what's going on. It's kind of the less speedier, more drunk and brooding cousin to The Bottom of the City.

I hesitate to say that there's something characteristically "Toronto" about it, but it does seem to have that certain combination of angst and avant that reveals something about the appeal of this big place. It's also punk rock enough to say, "Fuck that, fuck the city, fuck you, fuck everything. Just listen."


7. Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be (Sub Pop)

It's nice to follow a band from near-inception and watch them evolve. It can also be nice to see a band pick an aesthetic, refine it, and run with it. Dum Dum Girls' melancholy pop aesthetic is the product of Kristin "Dee Dee" Gundred's work with bands of a similar ilk, notably Blank Dogs (whose sole member she collaborated with in the band the Mayfair Set) and Vivian Girls. Dum Dum Girls kind of sounds like a cross between those two bands, mixing a constant, propulsive drumbeat, with simply played guitar chords and wistful vocals.

The songs here help set Gundred apart from her previous peers as I Will Be maintains a consistent, metronomic sensibility. The whole thing is heavily stylized, and it works to her advantage. It's easy for an artist to distrust their own sensibility, but a constant, pathological need to try and set oneself apart often leads to boring records. Dee Dee and her girls were smart enough to copy what everyone else was doing, and do it better.

It's nice to see female-fronted bands carving out their own niche. Along these same lines, I particularly enjoyed the more pop-oriented Best Coast, and more angular Effi Briest. But I think it was Dum Dum Girls who did it best by setting a goal and sticking to it. The record swings back and forth, keeping time with the beat of the heart, and by the time it reaches its lovely conclusion with a simple, unadorned cover of Sonny & Cher's "Baby Don't Go" mine's in pieces.


8. Puffy Areolas - In the Army 1981 (Siltbreeze)

Quiet. Quietquietquiet. ScrrreEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. NOISE NOISE NOISE. YellYellYell. RiffRiffRiff. POUND POUND POUND. Bleeeeaaauuurrrrrgh.

This is the heaviest, noisiest, and craziest record on this list. Straight out of Ohio (no surprise) and led by some guy named Krauty McKraut, this is basically classic, hardcore-influenced, riff-heavy garage punk with a hint of psychedelic noise-noodling here and there to give everyone a few minutes to breathe. The last band that did this on the same level was Comets on Fire, and there's your band analogy if you want one. The Puffys have that same wild-eyed, nasty, go-for-broke insanity that Comets had on their first few records, just without the same level of pedal fetish.

Simply, these guys are carrying on the tradition of fucking around with the punk rock template that started with, oh I dunno, let's say the Electric Eels, and injecting their smoke-choked rust-belt sensibility. This record is also really fun in that jump-around, arms-flailing, fuck-my-dumb-life kind of way. Beer-soaked godhead.


9. White Lung - It's The Evil (Deranged)

It seems in some way that this was the punk record everybody needed to hear in 2010. Well, maybe not everybody, as I'm not sure if it's ultimately going to break out of its ghetto, but it obviously seems to have struck a chord. Again, this is a record that I think is successful by returning the the basics and sticking to a formula. Each song is defined by a distinctive, simple riff, a insistent bass-line, precise percussion, and a crazy girl singing.

Another Vancouver act - a town that keeps pumping 'em out - whose urgency and dedication is palpable. This is a simple, classic punk record that sounds easy, but seemingly was born from a great deal of dissatisfaction with a scene, locally and globally. This kind of straight-up, unapologetically pissed-off stuff hasn't sounded as vital as it does now in quite a long time.


10. The Soft Pack - s-t (Kemado)

A straight indie-rock guitar record, taking its cues from Dunedin, Chapel Hill, and England in general. Indie rock has been cold, stiff, and lifeless for, oh, I don't know, fifteen years, so thanks go out to these fancypants-ed San Diego lads who took a few moments out of their days sitting out in the sun eating ice cream and sipping on gimlets to grace us with these ten hook-filled future classics.

In this case, youth is not wasted on the young, as these guys (formerly known as the Muslims) have put all their youthful vigor and misappropriated cool into their songs. They are kind of the sun-kissed version of the Strokes (of ten years ago), and, in fact, this may be the best record of its ilk since Is This It.

Endlessly listenable and full of promise, these guys are leagues ahead of the deathless boring mid-tempo Libertines clones that litter the landscape.

See my full list here.