The year in Toronto-centric music, 2011
2011 truly was a "Fucked Up" year, you might say.
We haven’t really had a full year yet. But we still have plenty of stuff we’re proud of. So, as we wind down for our brief holiday respite, we’re putting together some of our favourite stories from 2011, so we can all take a little walk down memory lane together. Oh, September. You were so innocent.
• In the first entry in our much-beloved (by us, anyways) Beaver Hour Index weekly feature, we took a dose of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. And it was good!
• Because vinyl is back and here to stay, we put on our crate-digging gloves and flipped our way through Toronto’s best record stores.
• In the ultra-rare case where we actually broke a news story, we reported that Canadian music site ChartAttack was back, and spoke with the new editor, Dan Busheikin.
• When Halloween rolled around, we looked at a bunch of bands who were playing cover sets as other bands.
• As part of our, um, “spook-tacular” Halloween coverage, we looked at five of the weirdest Halloween sound effects tapes on the market, including Halloween Fart Attack by The Goblin Tooters.
• And speaking of Rush, a band never far from our minds (or hearts), we gave the group’s soaring space opera 2112 the Beaver Hour Index treatment, only to find that, yes, it’s still nerdy as shit.
• We didn’t go to many of those Polaris Salon things. But we did go to the one hosted by Sam Sutherland, in which he spoke with Fucked Up drummer Jonah Falco about the band’s 2011 opus, David Comes To Life. Man that’s a great record.
• In a piece of studied consideration, we looked at how Toronto indie rapper D-Sisive may undermine Drake’s riches-to-riches Hogtown success narrative.
• We talked with Nils from Rural Alberta Advantage, in a great interview that took Tim Hortons lasagna to task, finally.
• With his much-anticipated first solo record dropping this fall, we chatted with ex-Constantines frontman Bry Webb about making punk rock for dads.
• In one of the most fun stories we put together all year—mostly because we got to talk about Black Sabbath, the last good band ever—we interviewed the members of Toronto’s Cancer Bats, who recently began touring as a Black Sabbath tribute act called, appropriately, Bat Sabbath.
• Everyone knows Twitter is magic. But how magic? In our profile of T.O. folk banjoist Darren Eedens, who nailed a gig opening for Louis C.K. thanks to tweets and twits, we looked at how some savvy social networking can open doors for indie musicians.
• And just when you thought it was safe to go back to 1997, one of the last Beaver Hour Index entries of 2011 reminded you that Our Lady Peace’s Clumsy was an album that exists and that you probably owned on cassette.
