Staff Top Ten Lists!

Filed Under The Store | December 18, 2010

Ok we’re a little long-winded this year, but there was a lot to be excited about.  As mercurial as music is, this year had something special about it.  With no further ado…

Dave

New Releases Top 10 in No Particular Order

Deerhunter – Haylcon Digest

Frightened Rabbit – Winter Of Mixed Drinks

Fresh And Onlys – Play It Strange

Loscil – Endless Falls

Brian Eno – Small Craft On A Milk Sea

Kathryn Calder – Are You My Mother?

Royksopp – Senior

Barn Owl – Ancestral Star

Black Angels – Phosphene Dream

Dean & Britta 13 Most Beautiful Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

Top 6 Re-Issues

C’est Chic – French Girl Singers Of The 1960’s

EMAK – Synthetic History Of …

Jim Sullivan – U.F.O.

The Clean – Modern Rock

The Clean – Getaway

Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street re-issue

Concerts Enjoyed

Pavement @ The Queen E

Deerhunter @ The Rickshaw

Fond Of Tigers @ The Commodore

Frightened Rabbit @ The Biltmore

Record Store Day @ Red Cat Records with Loscil, Aunt’s & Uncles, Ladyhawk & Dan Mangan

Lasse

TOP 10 New Releases

Emeralds – Does it look like I’m here?

Neil Young – Le Noise

The Budos Band – III

White Noise Sound – White Noise Sound

Pantha Du Prince – Black Noise

Owen Pallet – Heartland

Brian Eno – Small Craft on a Milk Sea

Besnard Lakes- Are the Roaring Night

Marnie Stern – Marnie Stern

Fresh and Only’s- Play it Strange

Shows Transported

Joanna Newsom – Vogue

Fond of Tigers – Commodore

Aunts and Uncles/Dan Mangan/Ladyhawk/Loscil Record Store Day

Grinderman – Commodore

Emeralds/Caribou – Vogue

Morgans Recital – 400 Block East 10th

Best Re-issues:

Four Tet – Rounds

Nice Face – Inner Etwas

John Fahey – The Yellow Princess

Parasites of the Western World

Ford

Ford’s Top Ten of 2010

As per Jan LaRue’s Practical Guidelines For Musical Style Analysis:

1.SOUND EMERALDS: Does it Look Like I’m Here?/ELEPHANT 9: Walk The Nile

2.HARMONY KONONO No.1 Assume Crash Position

3.MELODY KATHRYN CALDER: Are You My Mother?

4.RHTHYM ELLIOT CARTER: The Music Of… Vol 8

5.SUB POP Congratulations on a triumphant return to relevancy and a career year (MALE BONDING, NO AGE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, etc)

6.GESTURE NINA NASTASIA: Outlaster/OWEN PALLET: Heartland

7.GROWTH Aleksander Melnikov: Shostakovich – Preludes & Fugues, Op. 87

8.CONTOUR ROYKSOPP: Senior/ MI AMI: Steal Your Face

9.TEXT INFLUENCE THE FALL: Your Future, Our Clutter

10.SOME TOTALLY SURPRISING SHIT TOM JONES: Praise and Blame/Robert Plant: Band of Joy

Re-issues!

1. NICE FACE: Inner Etwas

2. FELA: all of ‘em

3. V/A: Turkish Freakout

4. Joe Tex: Singles A’s and B’s 1960-1964

5. Government Issue: Boycott Stabb

LIVE!

KILLING JOKE at Venue

INVASIVES, LAURA BARRETT, YONCALIA DRAIN, THE KETTLE BLACK at Scratch Records

X/MUDHONEY at Dundas Square

PRAZAK QUARTET at the Vancouver Playhouse

LOSCIL,LADYHAWK,DAN MANGAN,AUNTS & UNCLES at Red Cat Records

ELLIS

Ellis’s top 10

WOMEN – Public Strain LP/CD

White Rainbow & Stag Hare – White Stag LP

Teengirl Fantasy – 7AM LP/CD

MGMT – Congragulations LP/CD

Sun Araw – On Patrol + Off Duty LP/CD

Bitchin Bajas – Tones/ Zones LP

Woods – Songs of Shame  LP/Tape/CD

Serena maneesh – S-M 2: Abyss In B Minor LP/CD

Cloudland Canyon – Fin Eaves LP/CD

Silly Kissers – Precious Necklace 10 inch

Top Two 7 inches

Brazilian Money -Doing What I Want EP

Role Mach/ Apollo ghosts (Split on Geographing Records)

Top Three Cassettes

Duzheknew/ Cousins – tour tape

Apollo Ghosts/ Thee Ahs

No Ufo’s – Soft Coast/ Mind Control

Top 5 shows

Apollo Ghosts/ Dirty Beaches/ Shawn Mzraek Lives @litlle Mountain Gallery

Man Man & Lets Wrestle @ the Rickshaw

Caribou @ the Rickshaw

Braids @ GOODIE & Sled Island

Woods/ The Mantles/ Art Museums @ The Media Club

EVAN

Top Ten

White Fence – S/T

A tightrope balance of 60’s freak out and heart wrenching folk songs.

Happy Birthday – S/T

More bands need to utilize power pop tendencies as well as they do.

Women – Public Strain

Western heros. US Maple, Television, and Glenn Branca in a paper bag. Insurmountably fresh “art rock”.

Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here?

Taking analog synthesizers to the next level. See them live and you will be surprised at the amount of headbanging.

Mount Kimbie – Crooks and Lovers

Wonderfully subdued melodies and one of the most organic sounding sample-based albums I have ever heard.

Broken Water – Whet

The best active band in the Republic of Cascadia

Loscil – Endless Falls

Every night before I go to bed, I play this album.

Forest Swords – Dagger Paths

Rangers – Suburban Tours

Julian Lynch – Mare

All these albums were released on Olde English Spelling Bee, a label that really grabbed my ears this year. Their releases are stylistically different, but have a great retro-futuristic aesthetic that runs throughout. Check them out at http://oesbee.blogspot.com/.

Favourite Local Release of 2010:

Apollo Ghosts – Mount Benson

Notable Shows:

Matmos + So Percussion @ Biltmore – They played in Quadrophonic sound, had too much gear to count, and were endlessly charming. You can’t beat this one.

Guided By Voices @ Showbox SODO – The night I crossed “share tequila with Bob Pollard” off my bucket list.