blame canada

I am such a fool. I have had SirusXm radio in my car for the past 6 or 7 months. It’s the greatest investment I have ever made, by the way. Terrestrial radio is a dying medium. Aside from the fact that there isn’t a decent station in New York anymore, they have become less and less bold with anything they do, it’s just a really, really boring scene. But I digress. I’ve been mostly listening to Opie and Anthony, but there are so many great music stations. Stations that play punk, stations that play indie, there’s a 90’s Alt channel, hell, there’s even a station that plays only Jimmy Buffett (and other Margaritaville inspired music).


About 6 weeks ago, I was sitting in stand-still traffic on the Long Island Expressway (shocker? hardly!). I was casually scrolling through the SirusXm stations, and I noticed that XM 87 was playing “Hummingbird” by Born Ruffians. Born Ruffians were pretty much my favorite band of 2009. My iTunes top 25 of the year featured 10 of their songs. I owe this, of course, to SarahSpy and her 2008 Best Album list. (Her 2009 list is pretty impressive as well. Freelance Whales might be my Born Ruffians of 2010). So naturally I turned on channel 87, which is called The Verge.

The fact that I went 7 months without discovering this channel is pretty much my only regret of 2009 (forget losing my job and falling into debt). This station plays the best bands that I have heard in a long time. And here’s the kicker. It’s almost all exclusively Canadian artists! I’ve been suffering the monotony of American indie bands for so long while there are so many undiscovered gems north of the border. Shame on me! Why the hell has everyone been telling me to listen to some boring ass shoegaze band from Williamsburg when I could have been listening to an upbeat but poppy indie band from Saskatchewan? Shame on all of you as well!

Now I know I’ve had some beef with Canada in the past. There’s no evidence of it, but probably 13 years ago, I created an Anti-Canadian website, using the now defunct Geocities. But that was so long ago. Since then, I have really embraced Canadains and their way of life (except French Canadians). And now that I’ve discovered a handful of awesome bands from our neighbors to the north, I have a whole new respect for them. So while you keep listening to your simple noise band from Flatbush, I’m going to keep on searching for the best song writers in Winnipeg.

Here’s a few of the awesome bands that have taken over my iTunes the past few weeks.

Rah Rah - Sounds like a party

Library Voices - Pop as Fuck. But so good.

Quinzy - I’m not gonna lie. I feel good when I listen to Quinzy.

Japandroids - I remember Michael Nelson writing something about them when they were playing in NY not too long ago. I wish I checked them out then. How only two people can make such great music is beyond me. I mean, the Presidents of the United States of America put out a lot of great music with 3 people, but Japandroids combination of a drum and a guitar is so rad.

So that’s that. For now. I’m sure I’ll be stuck in more LIE traffic sometime soon, and I’m sure I’ll discover the next big thing from Quebec sometime soon too.