Canadian music journalist, author and former Exclaim! associate editor Michael Barclay covers a lot of ground in his new book Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music 2000–2005, out today (April 26) via ECW Press. Touching on everything from the rise of Broken Social Scene to the emergence of Canadian hip-hop on the international stage, the nearly 600-page tome drops a lot of band names. Nevertheless, "Every review of this book will quibble about who's in and who's out," he quips in the book's introduction.
In that spirit, here are eight great artists who did get a nod. Some are bigger characters while other barely get a passing mention, but all were highlights from this spectacularly fruitful period in Canadian music.
Bell Orchestre
The flip-side to indie artists mixing orchestral instrumentation into their music were Bell Orchestre, an avant-garde orchestral sextet featuring Arcade Fire members Richard Reed Parry and Sarah Neufeld and Snailhouse's Michael Feuerstack. Their gorgeous debut, 2005's Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light, was recorded at the same time as Funeral.
"At Concordia, [Richard Reed Parry] was commissioned to score a dance piece, and to do so he formed Bell Orchestre with violinist Sarah Neufeld and drummer Stefan Schneider; Parry played upright bass. Trumpeter Kaveh Nabatian and French horn player Pietro Amato were soon added. The first time Bell Orchestre played a rock show was after a dance performance, when they rushed to Win Butler's loft to open for Arcade Fire. Parry was doing double duty that night: also on the bill was his other band, the New International Standards, led by [future Arcade Fire member] Tim Kingsbury."
The Black Halos
Glammy Vancouver punks the Black Halos were riding the success of 2001's The Violent Years (released on Sub Pop) and the minor hit "Some Things Never Fall" when guitarist Rich Jones split to join Amen. Though they've since reformed in various iterations, they've never quite recovered from that temporary hiatus.
"The former jerks with bombs started recording the new band, Black Mountain, in their practice space underneath the Argyll Hotel at Hastings and Abbott. "It was this big, really high ceiling, cavernous jam room," recalls [Black Mountain singer and guitarist Stephen] McBean. "I don't think we had monitors, so everything was done with headphones." Colin Stewart loaned them an eight-track and a mixing board. McBean played most of the bass parts, later overdubbed by their friend Matt Camirand, who was playing in Sub Pop glam band the Black Halos."
Blinker the Star
Though Jordon Zadorozny's work with other artists is better known — he co-wrote a song on Hole's 1998 album Celebrity Skin and played a key role in Sam Roberts' early years — he has been releasing beautiful and eclectic indie rock records under the alias Blinker the Star for almost 30 years. Following 2003's Still in Rome, he retired the project and worked with fellow Montrealer Melissa Auf der Mar on her solo records before once again picking up the name in 2012.
"Everybody can move to Montreal now and start a band and 'be' a Montreal band and the postal code offers you a chance at getting [noticed]," [Sam] Roberts continues. "It's hard to explain how it was so much the opposite in the '90s. You felt like you were living on this island that nobody wanted to pay the slightest bit of attention to. It was an insular place. We had to fight for every inch. When Blinker the Star or Godspeed or Bran Van 3000 or Melissa or whoever managed to get a foothold in somewhere that wasn't [local weeklies] the Hour or the Mirror, it was highly motivating for the rest of us. There'd also always be talk of shitty music or how some record exec was conned into signing so-and-so. 'Oh, it must be. Who else would sign that shit band?'"
Cuff the Duke
Walking the line between folk, country and indie rock, Oshawa's Cuff the Duke were signed to Three Gut Records and toured as Hayden's backing band before dropping their excellent self-titled record in 2005 on Hayden's Hardwood Records.
"Three Gut signed its first artist outside its social circle: a young band from Oshawa called Cuff the Duke, whose stunning 2003 debut, Life Stories for Minimum Wage, was an odd combination of alt-country, art-rock and Godspeed. While Cuff the Duke easily fit on bills with the Sadies and Blue Rodeo, they were equally at home with the Weakerthans or Constantines."
Andy Dixon
Few artists were as busy in the first half of the decade as Vancouver's Andy Dixon. He founded Ache Records to put out the final EP from his punk band d.b.s. (recorded by the band's singer Jesse Gander, a future producer for Japandroids and White Lung). Ache later released the first recordings from Hot Hot Heat and Death from Above 1979. At the same time, he was playing in screechy post-hardcore band the Red Light Sting while also making solo electronic music under the names the Epidemic and Secret Mommy. He's now a successful painter.
"That same year, young Victoria band Hot Hot Heat were breaking up after the departure of their singer. Andy Dixon, who ran a small Vancouver record label that had put out singles by the band, was using a file-sharing service to poke around the files of keyboardist Steve Bays, just for kicks. He found some demos that were more melodic than the prog-punk Hot Hot Heat played at that point. Excited, Dixon offered to put them out. The band decided to make Bays their new singer and change their musical direction entirely, and Hot Hot Heat became a big buzz band three years later."
Grade
Pairing beauty with brutality wasn't new in the late 90s, but few bands both threaded that needle and landed hook-laden, hardcore-adjacent videos on MuchMusic. Signed to US mega indie Victory Records, Grade managed to walk the line between the mainstream and underground. They split up following 2001's Headfirst Straight to Hell, but their legacy includes inspiring the next generation of similar minded acts, including Alexisonfire.
"Just west of Toronto on Ontario's Highway 403, in Burlington, was Grade, a band credited with taking the emo genre of aggressive music and transforming it into screamo — punk with death metal vocals. "I think Grade is one of the most underappreciated punk and hardcore bands of all time," says [music journalist Sam] Sutherland. "They occupy the same space as Refused: they did something incredibly innovative, and unfortunately almost everyone who followed in their footsteps sucks absolute shit. So they either get no credit because their progeny is hideous, or they're dismissed because serious music journalists don't pontificate about bands Alternative Press covered. But there really was no one doing the seamless integration of the screaming and singing that Grade did on [1997's] Separate the Magnets and totally perfected on [1999's] Under the Radar."
The Organ
This Vancouver five-piece made haunting post-punk-tinged indie rock in the mode of Joy Division and the Smiths, producing 2004's stone cold classic Grab That Gun before splitting up in 2006.
"The five women in the Organ could barely play when they began; by the end of their career, they were playing festivals in France in front of tens of thousands. They landed a TV spot that proved to be a transformative moment in North American queer culture. A novel yet ultimately destructive record deal stymied their future, and as a tragic result, it seemed unlikely [lead singer] Katie Sketch would ever make music again."
Royal City
Though they play a pivotal role in Barclay's narrative, these Three Gut Records pioneers remain somewhat of an enigma outside of Ontario. But their 2003 album Alone at the Microphone, a DIY indie-folk masterpiece, remains a standout from this era.
[Alone at the Microphone] was a critical favourite across the country that year and still gets mentioned as a classic of the era. It was on an entirely different level from other records that happened to be made by friends in [Hearts on Fire author Michael Barclay's] musical orbit. It eventually got Royal City a record deal with the UK's Rough Trade Records, with the man who'd signed both the Smiths and, more recently, the Strokes; the label signed the Hidden Cameras at the same time."
The Russian Futurists
In the early 2000s, lots of artists were using the then-new digital recording tools to make intimate bedroom pop. But few projects captured the intimacy and glee of the process the way Matthew Adam Hart did with Russian Futurists.
"[Caribou's Dan] Snaith's high school friend Ryan Smith, of Kaptain Hairdo non-fame, was in Toronto playing with the Russian Futurists, led by Matthew Hart from Peterborough. Originally a solo bedroom electropop project, the Russian Futurists' live show consisted of four guys seated, playing keyboards on a project table while swigging beer, with Hart in the centre singing. That band's debut, The Method of Modern Love, got British press and accolades from Blur and R.E.M., though it remained obscure in Canada. Hart lived next door to Snaith and Smith on Hogarth Avenue, off Broadview in Toronto's east end. "We were both enjoying this weird time, where someone would send us reviews of our records in some esteemed publication," says Snaith. "The people who loved Matt's first record were really evangelical about it. I love it."
In that spirit, here are eight great artists who did get a nod. Some are bigger characters while other barely get a passing mention, but all were highlights from this spectacularly fruitful period in Canadian music.
Bell Orchestre
The flip-side to indie artists mixing orchestral instrumentation into their music were Bell Orchestre, an avant-garde orchestral sextet featuring Arcade Fire members Richard Reed Parry and Sarah Neufeld and Snailhouse's Michael Feuerstack. Their gorgeous debut, 2005's Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light, was recorded at the same time as Funeral.
"At Concordia, [Richard Reed Parry] was commissioned to score a dance piece, and to do so he formed Bell Orchestre with violinist Sarah Neufeld and drummer Stefan Schneider; Parry played upright bass. Trumpeter Kaveh Nabatian and French horn player Pietro Amato were soon added. The first time Bell Orchestre played a rock show was after a dance performance, when they rushed to Win Butler's loft to open for Arcade Fire. Parry was doing double duty that night: also on the bill was his other band, the New International Standards, led by [future Arcade Fire member] Tim Kingsbury."
The Black Halos
Glammy Vancouver punks the Black Halos were riding the success of 2001's The Violent Years (released on Sub Pop) and the minor hit "Some Things Never Fall" when guitarist Rich Jones split to join Amen. Though they've since reformed in various iterations, they've never quite recovered from that temporary hiatus.
"The former jerks with bombs started recording the new band, Black Mountain, in their practice space underneath the Argyll Hotel at Hastings and Abbott. "It was this big, really high ceiling, cavernous jam room," recalls [Black Mountain singer and guitarist Stephen] McBean. "I don't think we had monitors, so everything was done with headphones." Colin Stewart loaned them an eight-track and a mixing board. McBean played most of the bass parts, later overdubbed by their friend Matt Camirand, who was playing in Sub Pop glam band the Black Halos."
Blinker the Star
Though Jordon Zadorozny's work with other artists is better known — he co-wrote a song on Hole's 1998 album Celebrity Skin and played a key role in Sam Roberts' early years — he has been releasing beautiful and eclectic indie rock records under the alias Blinker the Star for almost 30 years. Following 2003's Still in Rome, he retired the project and worked with fellow Montrealer Melissa Auf der Mar on her solo records before once again picking up the name in 2012.
"Everybody can move to Montreal now and start a band and 'be' a Montreal band and the postal code offers you a chance at getting [noticed]," [Sam] Roberts continues. "It's hard to explain how it was so much the opposite in the '90s. You felt like you were living on this island that nobody wanted to pay the slightest bit of attention to. It was an insular place. We had to fight for every inch. When Blinker the Star or Godspeed or Bran Van 3000 or Melissa or whoever managed to get a foothold in somewhere that wasn't [local weeklies] the Hour or the Mirror, it was highly motivating for the rest of us. There'd also always be talk of shitty music or how some record exec was conned into signing so-and-so. 'Oh, it must be. Who else would sign that shit band?'"
Cuff the Duke
Walking the line between folk, country and indie rock, Oshawa's Cuff the Duke were signed to Three Gut Records and toured as Hayden's backing band before dropping their excellent self-titled record in 2005 on Hayden's Hardwood Records.
"Three Gut signed its first artist outside its social circle: a young band from Oshawa called Cuff the Duke, whose stunning 2003 debut, Life Stories for Minimum Wage, was an odd combination of alt-country, art-rock and Godspeed. While Cuff the Duke easily fit on bills with the Sadies and Blue Rodeo, they were equally at home with the Weakerthans or Constantines."
Andy Dixon
Few artists were as busy in the first half of the decade as Vancouver's Andy Dixon. He founded Ache Records to put out the final EP from his punk band d.b.s. (recorded by the band's singer Jesse Gander, a future producer for Japandroids and White Lung). Ache later released the first recordings from Hot Hot Heat and Death from Above 1979. At the same time, he was playing in screechy post-hardcore band the Red Light Sting while also making solo electronic music under the names the Epidemic and Secret Mommy. He's now a successful painter.
"That same year, young Victoria band Hot Hot Heat were breaking up after the departure of their singer. Andy Dixon, who ran a small Vancouver record label that had put out singles by the band, was using a file-sharing service to poke around the files of keyboardist Steve Bays, just for kicks. He found some demos that were more melodic than the prog-punk Hot Hot Heat played at that point. Excited, Dixon offered to put them out. The band decided to make Bays their new singer and change their musical direction entirely, and Hot Hot Heat became a big buzz band three years later."
Grade
Pairing beauty with brutality wasn't new in the late 90s, but few bands both threaded that needle and landed hook-laden, hardcore-adjacent videos on MuchMusic. Signed to US mega indie Victory Records, Grade managed to walk the line between the mainstream and underground. They split up following 2001's Headfirst Straight to Hell, but their legacy includes inspiring the next generation of similar minded acts, including Alexisonfire.
"Just west of Toronto on Ontario's Highway 403, in Burlington, was Grade, a band credited with taking the emo genre of aggressive music and transforming it into screamo — punk with death metal vocals. "I think Grade is one of the most underappreciated punk and hardcore bands of all time," says [music journalist Sam] Sutherland. "They occupy the same space as Refused: they did something incredibly innovative, and unfortunately almost everyone who followed in their footsteps sucks absolute shit. So they either get no credit because their progeny is hideous, or they're dismissed because serious music journalists don't pontificate about bands Alternative Press covered. But there really was no one doing the seamless integration of the screaming and singing that Grade did on [1997's] Separate the Magnets and totally perfected on [1999's] Under the Radar."
The Organ
This Vancouver five-piece made haunting post-punk-tinged indie rock in the mode of Joy Division and the Smiths, producing 2004's stone cold classic Grab That Gun before splitting up in 2006.
"The five women in the Organ could barely play when they began; by the end of their career, they were playing festivals in France in front of tens of thousands. They landed a TV spot that proved to be a transformative moment in North American queer culture. A novel yet ultimately destructive record deal stymied their future, and as a tragic result, it seemed unlikely [lead singer] Katie Sketch would ever make music again."
Royal City
Though they play a pivotal role in Barclay's narrative, these Three Gut Records pioneers remain somewhat of an enigma outside of Ontario. But their 2003 album Alone at the Microphone, a DIY indie-folk masterpiece, remains a standout from this era.
[Alone at the Microphone] was a critical favourite across the country that year and still gets mentioned as a classic of the era. It was on an entirely different level from other records that happened to be made by friends in [Hearts on Fire author Michael Barclay's] musical orbit. It eventually got Royal City a record deal with the UK's Rough Trade Records, with the man who'd signed both the Smiths and, more recently, the Strokes; the label signed the Hidden Cameras at the same time."
The Russian Futurists
In the early 2000s, lots of artists were using the then-new digital recording tools to make intimate bedroom pop. But few projects captured the intimacy and glee of the process the way Matthew Adam Hart did with Russian Futurists.
"[Caribou's Dan] Snaith's high school friend Ryan Smith, of Kaptain Hairdo non-fame, was in Toronto playing with the Russian Futurists, led by Matthew Hart from Peterborough. Originally a solo bedroom electropop project, the Russian Futurists' live show consisted of four guys seated, playing keyboards on a project table while swigging beer, with Hart in the centre singing. That band's debut, The Method of Modern Love, got British press and accolades from Blur and R.E.M., though it remained obscure in Canada. Hart lived next door to Snaith and Smith on Hogarth Avenue, off Broadview in Toronto's east end. "We were both enjoying this weird time, where someone would send us reviews of our records in some esteemed publication," says Snaith. "The people who loved Matt's first record were really evangelical about it. I love it."
