How you feel about the new Kanye West CD is dependent on several factors:

1) Are you sick of this guy yet?
Kanye and I actually experienced a brief break-up after Graduation. By the time that album came out, it felt like he was just trying to finish this trilogy that he’d started and he was running out of ideas. Kind of like my own senior year of university.

2) Does it matter to you that one of the world’s most successful rappers has decided to do a CD with almost no rapping on it?
Hell no! As a producer-rapper, Kanye’s songs have always been more about ideas and composition than his ability to spit. When I heard he would primarily be singing on the new album, I was amused. Had the guy lost his mind or had he finally found his true voice?

3) How much Auto-Tune can you stand?
Well, he certainly didn’t find his true voice because the tracks are laced with Auto-Tune. Making yourself sound like a robot is apparently all the rage in hip-hop and R&B these days. In my opinion, Auto-Tune should be viewed as just another instrument, another element that he puts into his music. Hip-hop music production is all beats and loops anyway and it isn’t like he uses it for no reason. The mechanical voice suits the songs on the CD. Kanye doesn’t aspire to make hip-hop for the 21st century, he’s already looking towards the 22nd. He does not entirely succeed, but even when he crashes and burns on tracks like Robocop, it’s a thing of beauty.

Which brings me to Heartless. The only song on the CD that he actually raps on and not coincidentally, it’s the best one. What was I talking about again?

You know what I hate about this song? It starts so abruptly. I mean, it literally sounds like a production error. I can only imagine the horror of the band felt after listening to the release version. “Uh, what happened to the first five seconds of track 1?”

Of course, I kid. If anything, this unorthodox opening to this song is further evidence that I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to electronic music. In Ghost Colours is one of those unfortunate albums that someone like me must listen to in its entirety everytime otherwise the effect of it is completely lost. It is a seamless, enchanting production. Feel The Love seems like the least complicated, most radio-friendly song on this album and for a philistine such as myself, that works out fine.

First, a word from Gareth:

This is a song about a long-distance relationship which I had, and the negative feelings that began to come as the relationship reached its close, as nothing seems to be good enough for each other and the end is clearly in sight. When the happy anticipation of seeing my then girlfriend had been replaced by the fear of a difficult weekend. The night previous to one such visit I had a dream that I was a deer. The next day, en route to her house, I saw a dead deer in the side of the road. Pretty deep, huh?

I love that.

Upon first listen, I described Los Campesinos! as Broken Social Scene but with three less guitars. That was clearly a superficial description as their style is certainly their own and they have this careless, effortless energy that makes them unique. I wish more people knew about this band, because maybe they’d realize that punk isn’t dead. It’s just got a nicer disposition.

One of the most hotly anticipated albums of the year, Elephant Shell was not the quantum leap forward that was expected from a band that had all but achieved indie immortality after only a couple of EPs. I exaggerate, but with A Lesson In Crime remaining vital long after it’s release over two years ago, a lot was expected of these humble boys from Newmarket. What they released wasn’t revolutionary, but it is a pretty damn good first album. I don’t think there’s a clunker in the bunch, but at the same time, none of the tracks offer more than hints of what this band is capable of. I found In A Cave to be the catchiest, most complete track and a perfect example of how the band effortlessly weaves familiar tales of youthful misadventure into a surprisingly fresh package.

Short story: Having these guys go on before Angels And Airwaves at the Weezer concert we went to this year was a huge, though understandable mistake. I think that Tokyo Police Club killed with their set and when Angels And Airwaves came on after, they had no chance of matching that energy with their snoozy tunes. One day, when these guys are headlining the Air Canada Centre, everyone will understand.

This is one of those songs which may be benefiting from a positive association. You may not know this about me, but I dread checking my e-mail. I’m not sure why exactly. I mean, obviously I’m prone to reclusive behaviour. That is not news. However, how much anxiety can be caused one’s inbox? At most, I have to sort through a couple of e-mails suggesting get-togethers that I want no part of or offensive YouTube comments that have been posted on videos that I’ve uploaded. Other than that, it’s not all that bad.

Every now and then people send me nice things and one day Shirley sent me a link to this song. It is a nice thing. There is great pop music out there, you just have to take a little time to look for it.

Also, Gary seemed to enjoy this song when we were listening to it in my van and that guy is nearly impossible to please.

This collaboration between Kardinal and Akon rubs me the right way. The verses are short, the rhyme scheme basic and the hook is insidious. Akon has a gift for never seeming out of place on a track despite having such a distinct style. That is to say, his presence is rarely forced and always welcome. This yielded Kardinal his first top five single in the U.S. (not a small feat for a Canadian hip-hop artist not named Snow) and it was well deserved. Too often we see an R&B artist tacked onto a song to guarantee sales, but in this case that element is essential to not only creating a hit record, but a song that feels like a hit record. This was the song of the summer for me.

After the disastrous XY, my anticipation for a new Coldplay release was, at best, non-existent. It had become disturbingly clear that the band was in a rut and it would require either a major makeover or a major personal tragedy for them to remain relevant. Thankfully, the band hooked up with producer Brian Eno (who you may know from…a shit-ton of projects) and Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends was one of the year’s most pleasant surprises.

I still think the whole album, while solid, sounds like a band trying way too hard to change their image. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but you have to accept that the results will be mixed. Perhaps this is why I liked Violet Hill so much despite all the praise being lavished upon the album’s second single, Viva La Vida. While the latter is a pleasant, albeit derivative tune possessing a lovely orchestral quality that I enjoy in so much of my pretentious music, Violet Hill seems to express itself more naturally. I love how the band reaches into its bag of tricks sparingly. Chris Martin uses his falsetto effectively and the guitar solo sounds like it was inspired by a bad dream. Apparently, this was one of the earliest tracks they were working on and they almost discarded it, but as it stands it perfectly meshes their heavier style with those old Coldplay sensibilities.

Frontman Craig Finn has been blessed with the gift of aging gracefully while still holding on to that youthful angst from which many great songs are born. On the title track of the outstanding Stay Positive, Finn talks about the overwhelming comfort that is provided to him by the next generation. All we seem to see in the news these days are stories about young people screwing up and doing awful things to each other and because of that there is a large section of society that thinks the future lies in shaky hands. The Hold Steady are here to tell you the truth: Kids these days are truly, deeply fucked up, but they’ll figure it all out some day. Have no fear.

This album is total shit, but you knew that already.

From what I’ve read, and I could be wrong about this, Rivers Cuomo is at his best when he’s not trying too hard. On last year’s uneven, but irresistible Alone: The Home Recordings Of Rivers Cuomo, Rivers explains that he experienced great difficulty when working on the original Weezer album and wrote a throwaway song called Chess. He felt better after and it is one of the best tracks on Alone. Fast forward to 2008. After listening to the new CD, the record label apparently requested that Rivers write a song that would be suited to radio-play and thus, Pork And Beans was born. Guess what? It’s the best track on the new Weezer album and one of my favourite songs of the year. When you are as gifted as Rivers, you can crank out songs like this anytime you want. Even the bridge is a big F U to the execs and critics and to anyone else who thinks he owes them any more than he chooses to give. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care! And why should he?

Despite all of my criticims regarding Weezer this year, you know I still have nothing but love for them. One thing that I respect about Rivers is that he truly does not give a fuck. Even his blatant selling out seems like he’s being true to himself if that’s even possible. He is a happy man these days and has a family to consider so he’s making that money and writing music that fits his station in life right now. He said, Hey, I’m going to put together an album that name checks Abba and Devo for no good reason, includes tracks written by my bandmates that don’t have any business being there and that in the end will have absolutely no soul or personality. And he did and it was freakin’ terrible, but I firmly believe that he released what he wanted to release. I have to respect that. I also believe that somewhere down the road, the greatest band in the world and I are going to fully reconcile and it will be glorious.

There are so many catchy tunes on Red, Yellow And Blue that it is nearly impossible to pick just one. While it was tough to argue with the sweeping charm of Little Garçon and the infectious Badonkadonkey, it became evident that Foxes Mate For Life was the track I kept coming back to. I have no idea if there is any truth the title, but it makes for a sweet image doesn’t it?

This is my favourite album of the year, but you knew that already.

This band owns my life. I mean that. I’m not sure I can judge there music objectively anymore, because every song they write affects me so deeply that I am incapable of rational evaluation. There comes a point where a band is your favourite band and they can literally do no wrong. It’s a tough place to be for an aspiring music critic.

I’m not even sure if Kissing The Beehive is the best track from At Mount Zoomer, but it’s the longest so it has to be the best, right? In all seriousness, this song represents everything that is good about this band:

*Dan Boeckner’s wailing on his guitar and in his larger than life vocals.

*Spencer Krug’s menacing synth compositions and a delivery that sounds like the mourning of a young god.

*Lyrics that question everything, offering no easy answers.

The song ends with a four-minute long instrumental bit, all but announcing We’re the greatest band in the fucking world. This is one of the shortest ten minute songs you’ll ever listen to, believe me.

The kind of song that I wish I could write. Apparently, the whole concept stems from the lead singer’s reluctance to share his guitarist with another group. All you need to know is that this song will get into your skin like a chigger. On the surface, this song is a super smooth track laced with nonsense lyrics. Look past that layer and…well…I’m not sure there is anything more than that.

I do have to give credit to Max for introducing this song to me. Much like when he queued up Wolf Like Me for the first time, after one listen I was like, I want to buy that now.

I was shocked to discover that this song was not produced by Kanye, but rather Will.I.Am. I had a whole Kanye rant to go here, now I don’t know what to do. Okay, I suppose I should give Will.I.Am some credit. As much as I hate the Black Eyed Peas, this man can produce a hit and American Boy is no exception. Estelle and Kanye team up to give us an old-fashioned diddy about meeting a handsome stranger and getting away from it all.

Possessing possibly the best hook of the year, if you listen to this song and don’t immediately begin shaking your groove thang, you are quite possibly deceased. I mean it. Not enjoying this song makes you the equivalent of the living dead to me and you know how I feel about that. Your decapitation is imminent.

It is almost insulting that out of all the great songs on this CD, I am picking the one that probably took about six minutes to write and record. Is it possible for a track to be considered a stand-out when it is its total lack of frills that make it stand out? Allow me to elaborate. Visiter is a lush, wonderful album. From the triumphant opening track Walking to the tribal beat of Red And Purple, from the hectic Jodi to the delightfully lethargic Park Song, Meric Long and percussionist Logan Kroeber never seem to run out of good good tunes. Everything seems so stripped down, yet so full (another of the album’s contradictions). To call this a light, conceptual album takes away from the precision with which these songs have been crafted and recorded.

Undeclared is the song most likely to end up in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or as part of some sappy montage in a Hollywood romantic comedy. Armed with nothing more than his guitar and what sounds like a metronome, Long goes on to tell the timeless tale of obsession and all of the stupid thoughts that come with it. These aren’t lyrics to be proud of. They’re revealing, embarrassing and even invasive as Long has the temerity to not only write the female counter-perspective, but to sing the part! Oy. With that said, the song is completely engrossing and I will now listen to it for the millionth time.

With each passing year I find myself becoming more and more detached from mainstream music. Has the quality of music on the radio become that bad? Surely, this cannot be. Were our Creeds and Mases and Spice Girls‘ truly that much more compelling than the Good Charlottes and Hilary Duffs of today? One’s head could explode contemplating this question. Thankfully, every now and then a song like Single Ladies comes along and renders the whole thing moot. Brought to you by upcoming hitmaker Christopher “Tricky” Stewart (also responsible for minor, indie hit Umbrella), Single Ladies is a sinister collection of hand claps, synth effects and a hook that is going to either invigorate or annoy the fucking shit out of you. This is one of those songs that is so primitively effective that it makes you wonder why more people can’t do this.

Beyoncé deserves a lot of credit for selling the whole concept of course. Even putting aside the retina scorching video, Mrs. Carter always finds a way to utter the most ridiculous lines (see also: If I Were A Boy) with absolute conviction and somehow come off as genuine. That’s exactly the kind of skill that you can’t teach and what I think separates her from someone like Rihanna (who, while entertaining, comes off with less personality than Vanilla Ice). Bonus points for the always entertaining “creation of a new persona to express alternative ideas/sell records” (Chris Gaines, where you at?) and the fact that Beyoncé got married last year. He did put a ring on it!

Michelle always accuses me of being a contrarian. She insists that the majority of my opinions are a product of my wanting to be different from or independent of the majority. I suppose there is some truth in that, but I like to believe that my thoughts are my own and I can assure you that I do everything in my power to avoid reading too much about anything before I get a chance to appraise it myself. I’m telling you this because I hope that it wasn’t just hype that was keeping me from listening to Tha Carter III. Surely, I must have had reasons more substantial than that.

I was definitely justified in avoiding the lead single, Lollipop. The man has written entire rap about how badly women want to suck his dick for chrissakes. Where does it end? I heard the song once and dismissed it as yet another example of how trite and awful hip-hop has become. The beat was kind of good and Lil Wayne’s delivery was certainly worthy of attention, but I refused to embrace the track. Unfortunately, this was arguably the most popular song of the year and inevitably, it got to me. To say I was defeated would be a misnomer; I had merely been enlightened in the ways of Lil Weezy.

The same things that repelled me at first are what I find so attractive about this album. Lil Wayne is not a genius by any stretch of the imagination. The man’s writing style would be best described as meandering, but what wonderful places we find ourselves in when we listen to this maniac at work. Regarding the album in general, Lil Wayne continues in the tradition of cool cats everywhere by showing that the best way to represent is to truly not give a shit about anything (see also: Cuomo, Rivers). The only thing worse than the metaphors and allusions on this CD are how badly the listener is bludgeoned with them. Lil Wayne is the kind of guy who drops a vicious fart and then proceeds to fan it towards everyone else, proudly barking I did it, I did it! The scary thing is that this guy is as charming as hell and for every bad line he writes, he produces at least twice as many exhilarating moments. Eventually, his corny material becomes more than transitional and even becomes, for lack of a better term, endearing.

Returning to Lollipop: The sheer joy of this song is intoxicating. What I once found sinister I now see as an MC at the top of his game facing sky high expectations going into the production of Tha Carter III and deciding to have fun with the whole thing. Is this song vulgar? Yeah. Is it pointless? Yeah. Is it a work of blinding brilliance? Kind of, yeah. And every radio station knew they had to play it or else. Rather than resort to a simple verse-hook formula, this is the club banger that feels like a dozen different concepts strapped together. It speeds up, it slows down, it rolls hard, it cracks wise and even after being forced to listen to it a hundred times, it still surprises. Resistance is seriously futile.

In a year in which I criticized Rivers of self-indulgence for writing The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn), I have the audacity to pick this as one of my favourite songs of 2008. Go figure. Maybe it’s because Ben Gibbard didn’t lose his fucking mind and turn the song into a 10th grade poem in the middle of it. Maybe it’s just me.

Look, you either love or hate the four and a half minute instrumental opening to this song and I lean towards loving it. I feel it creates a beautiful lead-in to the meat of the song and elevates this beyond your usual pop single. The bass line is pleasant enough and I enjoy all the elements that are added to it, like the soaring strings and faint “la la las”. It is fair to say that the band is blatantly trying to appeal to their older fans by returning to a more experimental style (though it’s a safe experiment) while keeping things punchy and radio-friendly with their post-Transatlantacism, fan friendly verses that began with Plans. The funny thing is, they may have ended up alienating both camps. For me, this is simply one of the best songs of the year and somewhere in this 8+ minutes long non-epic, is the story of a guy who loves a girl and knows that they would be good together. It is for those of us who live in our own little movies, where unrequited love is a fact of life and stalking a person is not only perfectly acceptable, but charming.

Vampire Weekend has to be the most loved/hated young band out of New York since The Strokes. A bunch of hipsters enrolled at Columbia University, these guys are cooler and more talented than you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Damn them. Nowhere is this more evident than on M79, a violin-driven pop diddy that may or may not be about a failed relationship with a Middle Eastern woman. If that is the case, then we can all move on from our fixation with half-Japanese girls (oh Lauren Fujioka, how you haunt me) and embrace these mysterious women and the hopes and fears they provide. Perhaps they will replace Asian women as the femme du jour pour l’homme blanc within the next few years. I digress.

This otherwise cheery album came out in the early winter doldrums of 2008 and immediately I was confused as to how to review it. Winter is a time for me to be depressed, but listening to Vampire Weekend made me feel…happy? Eventually spring and summer rolled around and these songs continued to resonate with me. Admittedly, I would have enjoyed this album even more if it had come out when I was still in school as some of the music perfectly captures that feeling of numbness that washes over you whilst navigating the University of Toronto campus. But in another sense, I’m glad that this album escapes association for me. It exists almost in a void and what a kickass void that is.

In another world Jakob Dylan is Jakob Jones. Jakob Jones is not the son of the most famous songwriter of all time and he has never heard of, much less fronted a band called The Wallflowers. Jakob Jones lives in a cabin in the woods spending his time whittling and writing folk-pop gems. His songs are not heard by many, but those who catch his performances at the nearby inn say that he’s got a great singing voice and his songs ain’t too bad for a pretty boy.

In this world, Jakob Dylan is Bob’s kid and every thing he does is going to be compared to his father no matter what people say. At the same time, I’m happy that Jakob was born into the situation he was because otherwise we might never have been treated to those hits he wrote with The Wallflowers and this solo project would definitely never have seen the light of day. Not for a lack of talent, just connections. Seeing Things is not an amazing album by any stretch of the imagination, but it reminds me of Eddie Vedder‘s solo album from last year in that it feels deeply personal and is so singular in its approach that you cannot help but admire it. There is a high chance of experiencing “same song-itis” when listening to these tracks, but for a folknut like myself, there is a lot to like.

Will It Grow contrasts the struggles of maintaining a relationship with the hellish existence of life on the prairies. Regret, loneliness, alienation, boredom, catharsis…all the good stuff. The chorus maintains the metaphor beautifully, with Dylan cursing himself and his situation while wondering if all the hard work he’s done means a damn thing in the end. The constant need for rewards and affirmation in the face of crushing self-doubt…a theme we can all relate to unfortunately.

Ladies and gentlemen, the best Beach Boys song never written. If you’ve heard the song, you know that it is futile to attempt to explain its appeal. So I won’t.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve hated winter. Aside from the obvious inconveniences, there are several traumatic episodes that stand out in my mind. I recall playing in front of my house in Avon with some of the neighbourhood kids. One of them smacked me right in the face with an icy snowball. I burst into tears. Some years later, at William Berczy, Mark Thompson is stuffing my face into the snow and cussing me out for one reason or another. I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was going to die that day. Fast forward to early 2008. I’m working at a bank, staring out the window and watching the sheets of snow fall off the roof. It takes forever to hit the ground. I so hate the winter and I don’t have many nice things to say about it.

At least now I have White Winter Hymnal. I close my eyes and I find myself living out memories that couldn’t possibly be mine. I’m frollicking in a forest, up in the mountains. I relish the absence of grownups. I’m falling slightly behind the other kids, like in all my dreams. Before I know it, I’m lost and have to make the long trek back all by myself. I wish you could be there with me now.