This Film is Based on a True Story

You’ve just watched a film, likely one from Hollywood. You may have caught the quick text flying across the

screen—just after or before the opening credits—declaring that this film was “based on” or “inspired by” a true story, or, even more vaguely: “true events.”

                Inspired by true events. How’s that for safe? What story isn’t inspired by true events at some level? And “based on”? “Based” means the directors and producers—I carefully avoid using the term “artists” in this sense—are declaring their right to take as much licence with the truth as they feel is necessary to sell tickets. Every film, if you stretch your thinking far enough, every piece of art at all, is based on true events, or inspired by them. I mean, where else do ideas come from?

                They add and alter to create drama. The question becomes, why can we not simply tell a true story? Why must we inject lies into truth to make it supposedly more interesting? Sin? Sex sells?

                So you watch the film, which follows a pretty basic Hollywood formula. Despite this, because of the little disclaimer at the beginning, you keep telling yourself: true story, true story, true story.

                Then, if you’re like me, once you’ve seen the film, you go look it up. You’re surprised that what you watched was nothing like what really happened. You’re a little hurt. Maybe you even feel cheated. Very little of what you saw was true, yet they used the names of real people, they used actual dates and locations in quick flashes across the screen, so that you would note “this moment was important,” and, depending, draw parallels to other events in history or your own life that were happening at the same time. (Was I the only one thrilled by the Star Wars toys at the end of Argo? Doubt it.)

                So you’re disappointed, feeling conned into believing this great story of sacrifice /success /ingenuity /perseverance /insanity /sex was actual, when really it’s just another fiction.

                When you follow up those inaccuracies, you learn that the director or producer or screenwriter made the changes for the sake of drama. That is, for the sake of fiction. To make the truth more moving, they needed to turn it into a lie.

                This always bothers me. Not because I don’t like fiction—I love it—but when they use real names and events and then dress them up, they try to fool the audience to gain its sympathies. It’s like they don’t trust themselves enough to tell a good made-up story, so they give steroids to a true story, but then hide what they’ve doctored.

                Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Titanic, Munich, Bonnie and Clyde, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Patton—just a cursory glance at the Academy Award nominees list for any given year will reveal that lying about the truth sells very well as art. But when you do a little research, you ask yourself why they didn’t tell the truth in the first place, why it wasn’t good enough.

                One of my favorite films is Finding Forrester. It’s loosely inspired by the life of J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye. Rather than deal with awkward bits of reality, or whore up the truth to make it exciting, the creators took the themes and a handful of applicable facts regarding Salinger’s seclusion and turned them in to a very fine fiction, without using real names, people, or events. If you know Salinger, you know it, but you don’t need to know Salinger to know it. It’s inspired by a true story, but they don’t need to flash you a lie at the beginning. They trust that their art can stand by itself, and it does.

                When I was young, I saw the violent climax to the film Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde gets out of the car to help a stranded motorist he recognizes. He munches an apple and smiles in the bright sunshine. Suddenly, a Thompson-toting posse springs up from some nearby bushes, the old man dives under his truck, and the ambush is sprung. Clyde gets that one, meaningful look back at Bonnie, who is sitting pleasantly in the car with the door open. Then, for what felt like forever when I was ten, the bank-robbing lovers are hammered with machine gun bullets. I recall still the spasms of Bonnie’s body as they fired and fired.

                Violent, horrifying, intense.

                Untrue.

                In reality, the car never stopped. The posse leapt up and opened fire—no one gave the order—and turned the couple into Swiss cheese while they were still driving. Hundreds of rounds were fired, passing through the car panels, the couple, and then the other side.

                Violent, horrifying, intense.

                True.

                I’ve often wondered what that ending would have been like if the true version would have been filmed. Would I have felt cheated because Beatty and Dunaway wouldn’t have been filmed in close up for that last “I love you” look? I don’t think so, but my dependence on art has begun to influence my truth.

                Cliché time: art imitates life. But when life becomes so informed by art that only art can be depicted, where is the life at all?

                Have we become so dependent on drama that we can’t tell a true story? Has capitalism and salesmanship so permeated our thinking that lying isn’t just easy and natural, but expected?

                Perhaps the next great movement in film will be a true cinema verite; the true story as accurately as you can give it without making a documentary. How’s that for a challenge for actors: to make them act like it’s life, not art. 

Canada. Winter. Snow. Cope.

If this surprises you, you better be a brand new immigrant from Thailand. 

     I always marvel at the reaction to a day like yesterday in Southern Alberta. It's March and it snows. People freak. They rant, they rave, they curse as they shovel mounds of accumulation that didn't have the good sense to come down as rain.

     Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter go buck-nucking-futs with images of "the view from my window this morning, swell" or "the view from my car this morning, great" or "the view of people digging out their cars, gotta love Canada." Angsty declarations of how horribly unfair the world is abound. One in every twenty of your friends quips about how much they miss it (NOT!) and post the view from the beach they're currently sitting on somewhere . . . and yet the only thing they're surfing is the Internet.

     S'Canada. It snows here.

     Suck it the hell up.

     Every year I spend the winter listening to people gripe about a season that takes up half of our year and 99% of our cultural identity. 

     "Getting pretty sick of winter," he says just after Thanksgiving.

     "This is nuts," she says, scraping her windshield.

     "I can't believe this," he opines, when it snows in a month that is winter, spring, or fall in a country that is not straddling the equator.

     You can't believe that we got a blizzard in March? That it can happen in April, May, or even June? Huh. Where'd I put that Willy Wonka meme . . .

     Listen, I'm sorry that your ancestors figured this was a better place to live than wherever they came from. If the Bering Land Bridge Theory is accurate, every single person on this continent is in the same boat. It might just be time for you to deal with the fact that you live where winter is, and it doesn't pay attention to dates. I'm a believer in climate change, and for a decade we've seen later, more temperate falls, winters that hold on longer, wilder storms, more snow. It happens. Stop treating snow like it's a four letter word, stop whining for six straight months, stop shopping for real estate in Victoria. 

     This country gets winter. We also have free health care, great education, a sparse population, and relatively little pollution. I'm in such a good mood today that I'll even ignore a long commentary about how our various Conservative governments are hell-bent on undoing all of the above.

     It's time for you to embrace winter.

     I'm sorry your car got stuck. Build a snowman.

     I'm sorry you have to shovel again. It's great exercise. Afterwards, why don't you get bundled up and go for a walk in that haunting winter evening light. It's like therapy. 

     I'm sorry the highway is a mess. Slow down.

     I'm sorry that snow covers everything. Have you noticed any cockroaches, packs of wild dogs, or mounds of maggoty-garbage? No? That's because winter is Nature's broom. 

     Having lived and traveled in many places where they don't get winter, I have a great appreciation for the good it does. Hell, if nothing else than for the euphoria of springtime.

     It's time to stop wishing for an earthquake to hit your friends in Vancouver. It's time to stop blowing $3000 you don't have on a week in Mexico. 

     It's time for you to see the good in winter, you Canuck knucklehead. 

     Snowboard, cross country ski, snowshoe, build a fire. Hell, pick a snowball fight with that irritating neighbor's kid. Stop and look at the savage beauty around you for a second. Your landscape changes from the top down. Frequently. Try to view this as remarkable rather than just getting on your knees and praying to the Chinook gods--if you are so blessed.

     Stop spending six months whining, moaning, and cocooning yourself on your couch, surrounded by chips, chocolate, and reality TV. Stop only exercising when you can wear shorts outdoors.

     Winter is special. It can be very giving, and wondrously harsh. That's a hell of a lot more fun than the status quo. 

     Just think about how great your life is going to be once you stop spending six months pining for the other six. 

About (about) a decade with (basically) no TV.

                I watched the Oscars on Sunday. No, this isn’t some post-awards rant. I didn’t have any favourites (with the exception of Christoph Waltz in Django). I wasn’t cheering or betting. I just really like it as a show. One of America’s biggest, most wasteful self-loves and the absolute zenith of what’s wrong with art and yet, and yet, I have always been captivated by it. I think I’ve seen every Oscars telecast for the past fifteen years or so. Rarely miss a second of it, even when they’re (and they usually are) predictable and dull.

                I like watching hockey, CFL football, some NFL, and smatterings of other sports. Winter Olympics. I watch it, but unless it’s playoffs or my Habs or Riders, I usually am busy working on something else, reading a book, something. Not often able to sit through an entire sporting event, save the playoffs again. Still, I can’t tell you the last time in the past twenty years I’ve missed the Stanley Cup being awarded.

                I used to have shows. Like most folks, I grew up watching whatever was on. Sitcoms, and cop or lawyer dramas. Danger Bay. I watched a fair amount of TV as a kid. I was raised on The Simpsons. I recall that just before I left Canada I was hooked on this teaching show called Boston Public. That would’ve been about a decade ago.

                Like most folks again, I probably felt guilty about the amount of TV I watched. There was a lot of crap, and there was a lot better I could’ve been doing. Great form of procrastination. But even despite the gruelling work of university, I was able to get in my fair share of the boob tube.

                Then, about a decade ago, I moved to Asia for a bit. Needless to say, North American prime-time TV was hardly as prevalent there. The major shows were hard to track down. Some of the big reality shows of the time were on, and lots of reruns. Had trouble finding my precious Simpsons, and forget about Rick Mercer or 22 Minutes. This was 2002, so there wasn’t a lot of online TV. I remembered there being an overabundance of Sex and the City and Two Guys and a Girl reruns. Big events like the Oscars and hockey playoffs were still miraculously available. Mostly there were just a lot of movies for the English-speaking public.

                My time there came and went, and I basically fell out of any sort of a TV routine. Got my news from the Internet, saw movies, read a lot as I always have.

                When I moved back to Canada, I just had better stuff to do. For a decade now, I’ve been functioning pretty much TV-free. I watch some sports, some news (though most comes from Internet or radio), and the odd event like the Oscars. Really, that’s one of the only events like that I see. Not the Grammys, not even the Junos. And some of that watching is half-hearted at best. Most evenings that don’t involve me doing my job after my kids go to bed involve reading and writing. Running. Playing guitar. 

I don’t miss out on water-cooler discussions of the latest antics of The Walking Dead because I don’t have a water cooler job and also because it just seems so long a commitment to get excited about a zombie show once a week. Got better things to do. I’m thankful that Game of Thrones is available for download and only ten episodes per season, so I can watch it all in about four weekend evenings with my wife.

                My laptop clock says it’s 8:02pm. I have no idea what’s on right now. The only show schedules I’m aware of the  are, say, Grey’s Anatomy, which I know keeps my wife up late on Thursdays. I’ve never seen an episode.

                I think it’s fitting that I got out of watching pretty much anything on TV around the same time the reality TV craze got swinging, because that’s a low ebb for even the most brainless medium we have access to.

                I didn’t quit watching TV to make some sort of a stand. I’m very happy that I don’t, but I’m not lording it over anyone. Unless you watch the Bachelorette or shows about people bidding or storage lockers or Texans hunting pigs. Then I am, because you’re an idiot.

                No, my point is that I cut TV out of my life and really didn’t notice. Freed up a whole bunch more time, I guess. Have more to my routine than sitting on my ass watching sex jokes. I’d get rid of the physical device itself altogether but, as I said, I like some of the above.

                I hear people talking about Netflix and Apple TV or whatever the latest thing is. Complicated cable packages geared to you as a person. When I say I’m not interested in such stuff I’m often viewed as behind the times, like an analog monkey trying to still run with rabbit ears. Fact is, I just don’t care.

                Woke up the other morning and realized, “Huh, been ten years since I cared about TV.”

                Just got better things to do.  

My Favourite Vikings

The other day I finished teaching a class about heroic archetypes. We studied The Odyssey, discussed King Arthur, and, because it was me teaching it, read a version of Beowulf, that Anglo-Saxon epic and testament to the Viking hero, flaws and all. Then I showed them the 1999 film The 13^th Warrior, as a means of explaining how the Beowulf legend could be interpreted. A good movie, not a great movie, but along with the animated Beowulf (2007) really all we've had showing true Viking-ness in the past while. (Okay, How to Train Your Dragon has its moments, too).

That very evening, my wife discovered this: http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/12/19/history-vikings-trailer-exclusive/

I’m excited, even if I don’t get that channel or really watch TV at all anymore (to be continued March 1). Whatever, I’ll download it. Apparently the story is about Ragnar Hairy Breeks (Vikings have the best nicknames). Good choice, as he's a pretty famous one, most significantly he was played by Ernest Borgnine in the surprisingly-decent The Vikings (1958). We do need some better titles, though . . .

So, anticipating a possible renewal in all non-Avengers things Norse-related, I thought I'd tell you about about my favourite Vikings, some fellas who could do well with a little film treatment of their own.

1. Harald Fairhair (c.850-932)

The most important king of the early Viking Age (it ran about 870-1066). He was the first ruler of a pretty much united Norway, and he got that job by forcing petty chiefs to obey him or leave. Many fled to Iceland, forming the first modern democracy and leading to that country's Golden Age. In the half-legendary Heimskringla, it's related how Harald got his nickname when he tried to woo the lovely Gyda, who refused his advances until he was king of something substantial. And so, he refused to wash, cut, or comb his hair until he had conquered Norway (going by the nickname Tangle Hair for a few years). You say, what's the big deal, he was a barbarian. Well, the Vikings have suffered in historical accounts because these are written mostly by their victims (especially sissy Christian monks), and so their virtues--such as better hygiene than their French, British, and Byzantine contemporaries--have been ignored. Anyway, dude put his enemies to the sword, birthed a nation, rinsed, lathered and repeated, and rode up all shiny to marry his queen.

Movie moment: The Battle of Hafrsfjord, where Harald beat everyone who dared oppose him, his greasy locks flowing in the breeze.

2. Egil Skallagrimmson (c.910-990)

A butt-ugly, foul-tempered alcoholic Icelander. He would fight anyone, any time, and for the dumbest reasons. Apparently, when he was seven, another boy cheated in a game of kickball and Egil split the kid's head with an axe! However, he was also a fantastic skaldic poet, and a respectable farmer as well. A Renaissance man 500 years before the Renaissance. Basically makes me think of a half dozen of my uncles . . .

Movie moment: Drunk at a party, he takes revenge on a tormentor by grabbing the man and puking all over him. Dude. 

3. Leif the Lucky (c.970-1020)

Unlike most of these guys, you've probably heard of Leif Ericson, and his rambunctious pappy Eric the Red. That Eric. Pissed off everyone in Norway and fled as an outlaw to Iceland--which was named such so no one followed the new settlers to the surprisingly green island. Then he pissed off everyone in Iceland and fled to an ice cube keeping the North Atlantic cool which he named Greenland, possibly the first ever tourist trap. He was lonely, and some suckers without a decent sense of irony joined him there. Bloody and ill-tempered, Eric had a son who was considerably more level-headed. Leif seemed to get a kick out of life, and despite being a rotten sailor, had a great sense of wanderlust. Blown off course from Greenland to Iceland, he discovered North America (suck it, Columbus!), which he named Vinland (wine-land). Hey, if Dad could false-advertise . . . There, he settled in Newfoundland at L'Anse aux Meadows, before his dumbass brother Thorvald lethally picked a fight with the natives and they all had to head back to frosty Greenland.

Movie moment: "Guys, c'mere! Look at the size of these berries! I bet we could sucker people into thinking they're grapes for making wine. Say . . ." 

4. Knut the Great (c.985-1035)

As for the Danish kings, Knut (say the K: "Ca-NUTE") barely edges out the much better-monickered Harald Blue-Tooth because, despite the remains of the latter's rule peppering places like Jelling and Trelleborg, I just can't respect a Viking who converts to Christianity in the 4th quarter. It's like selling out. So, Knut. Remember, kids, Vikings were kings not by birth, but because they were the most ferocious and generous warriors, and attracted the biggest followings. Knut truly was great, both as a conqueror and a politician, and he was for a time the king of Norway, Denmark, and England--an impressive empire if his sons wouldn't have blown the whole thing after his death, leaving England ripe for lame-ass Anglo-Saxons and ambitious Normans looking for nickname changes (see below).

Movie moment: Many Danes wanted it, but Knut actually conquered England. The Norse influence on the British Isles (re: York and Dublin) is significant, but how about, just before the credits role Knut is flushed with victory and sees his own mug on a newly-minted English coin. Then his jarls gather around him like Michael at the end of The Godfather.





5. Harald the Hard Ruler (1015-1066)

My very favourite Viking. Where to begin? A descendant of Harald Fairhair, Harald Sigurdsson Hardrade was fierce and tall (nearly 6 feet), and a warrior before he was ten years old. When his older brother King Olav was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad, he fled to Kiev to work as a mercenary warrior for the Rus Vikings. Next he served in the Byzantine Emperor's illustrious Varangian Guard, a group of hired Norsemen who the emperor kept as his personal bodyguards, famous for their battle prowess, their intimidating stature, and their fiery hair and tempers to match. He fought all over the Middle East, acted as a pirate (pure Viking) in the Mediterranean, before returning to Norway and taking the country back. You knew Harald by the trail of bodies.

In 1066, yet another Harald (Godwinson) took the English throne. Both the Norwegian Harald and William the Bastard of Normandy opposed this claim. Harald of Norway invaded and took York. Godwinson retaliated, and a drunk, unarmored, and recklessly overconfident Harald prevented Norwegian dominance of the Isles forever by getting himself killed at Stamford Bridge on September 25, effectively ending the Viking Age. Godwinson was delayed and his troops exhausted when he faced the invading William (a Norman of Viking descent) at Hastings, and Godwinson was slain. William changed from a Bastard to a Conqueror, and Western History and the English Language were forever altered.

Movie Moment: I love the image of a drunken, barely-dressed Harald going down in a bloody tilt on Stamford Bridge, because every great Viking story ends in spectacular tragedy. 

On Cursive

Teacher: So you never learned cursive?
Bart: Well, I know hell and damn and bi--
Teacher: No, no! Cursive handwriting! Script!
------The Simpsons, "You Only Move Twice"

     A friend of mine asked a group of us--that is, the online community--what we thought about cursive. Should we bother teaching it to our kids and expecting them to use it?
     Those who answered were split between two factions: those who said that it could die, being a form of communicating developed around the needs of a quill and ink pot, and long since past its best-before date; and then there were those who felt that it was worth keeping around as a relic of a more dignified time. Like pocket-watches, rotary phones, and customer service.
     I disagree with both factions, in that I feel that cursive should not die, but also in that it I feel it's still very pertinent and worth teaching to our kids (*). Pertinent: that is relevant, not that it's quaint and reminds us of Grandpa.
     The reason I'm not willing to bury writing with your letters touching as yet another victim of the almighty Digital Age (sigh, that old chestnut), is because it can be faster and is more convenient than anything else we've got going right now. You may note (hopefully in longhand) that most young people text or type faster than they print (PRINT, mind), due to practice  They're just gangbusters on them devices. However, there will never, ever be a time where we don't use a pen and paper for some tasks, and writing is simply faster and more convenient. You device-aholics can practice, train, and preach, but you'll never win out in practicality.
     Balzac, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy all used cursive because they wrote so much, so fast, that it was the best way for them to get their thoughts on paper fast enough. Ideas just poured out, to the detriment of thousands of geese rendered naked. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck were religious about their interaction with their work through a pencil first, for them it was just purer. Even your humble blogger scrawls most of his entries in a spidery black ink that would make a doctor proud for its sometime-illegibility before committing them to the Web.
     Now, as far as the pedagogical discussion asterixed above. Why do some kids learn it today and yet some do not? Because the curriculum is packed. Have you seen these kids type? The time to teach them how to do that--and how to make a PowerPoint, avoid cyber-stalkers, Google--has to come from somewhere. Are teachers just supposed to eliminate fractions? Handwriting should be a teaching priority, yes, but more importantly it needs to be a priority of the kids. Parents should never comment on what a teacher is implementing unless the parent knows the curriculum intimately, or unless they feel their child is being neglected. The first rule of education is that non-educators know very little about education but think they know lots. Point is, I want my children to learn cursive. I'll try to enforce it at home, and I don't intend to quit myself, but to demand it of an overtaxed school system is a bit much.
     In my own classroom, it's frustrating because as adept as the kids are at printing, they can't say as much in their fastest printing--or typing--as I can in my handwriting. On exams, essays, assignments, notes, they just can't churn as much out. Less content means the greater likelihood of less quality = lower marks.
     Probably you'll tell me that I'm not doing enough to embrace technology. My kids probably would do better on laptops or handheld devices. Nope. And besides, there's a balance. Kids will learn how to text just fine on their own. We need to help them for those times when you won't have any sort of device--yes, really--and when having the ability to write will be helpful, even vital. And no, this will not require a zombie apocalypse.
     Last--and I'll admit this is a bit philosophical, but the research and practical evidence support it--the more kids write, the better they read. Getting accustomed to the language, familiar with it, learning its subtleties and rules, its tricks and delights, through your own hand rather than through a keyboard or touch screen will make you a better reader. Yes, it will. And no one thinks reading is going anywhere, despite dropping literacy rates.
     Keep 'em writing.

Hockey is Back, Damn Us.

Hockey is back.

I’m not that old, and yet this is the third time I’ve been able to say that at the wrong time of year. And like many hockey fans, I’m rip-snorting mad at pinhead billionaire owners and whiny, spoiled millionaire players, and, yes, I feel there is a very real need to throw Gary Bettman in front of the Zamboni.

I am an angry hockey fan, yes. But I’m angriest at myself because I don’t know if I can fully turn my back on the players and owners who do not deserve my support, interest, or money.

I’d like to make the same statement many groups are trying to make. Boycott. But they’re not going far enough. Some say don’t go to the first game, some say go to the first game but don’t cheer for the first period. Like this will make any difference?

Let’s be clear. Hockey owners are suits. They are businessmen whose sole reason to exist is to accumulate wealth. They don’t care about you.

Hockey players are spoiled athletes with barely a high school education who have been told for years that they deserve to make more than firefighters and surgeons because they play for a living. They don’t care about you.

The only way anything will change in the NHL is if we all walk away. Not for a period, not for a day. For good. Make ‘em beg to have us back until they lower prices, make it about the little guy again, and close down the ten teams located the furthest south geographically (and the Leafs, for good measure).

But this won’t happen.

Because we’re Canadian, and we’re sad.

Because most of us have been hard-wired for hockey since we were babies.

I want to boycott. I want to start getting my sport fix from soccer. I want to turn away forever. I just don’t think I can.

Give me two weeks to cool off and start thinking about Saturday nights watching the game with my kids, and, well, I know I’m weak. Why can’t I quit you, Ron MacLean?

2012 in Music

Well, I’m a little late on this, but since they’re just getting rolling out there in awards season land, I figure I can still sneak in my review of the best music of the past year. This is the list of music that I listened to this year, the great, the good, and the okay. I don’t put anything out and out bad on here, so don’t talk to me about Jack White or Rihanna or Linkin Park, okay? So, the best music of 2012.

The Best Album of 2012

Oceania by Smashing Pumpkins

I’m as surprised as you are. Billy Corgan has been pulling an Axil Rose for the past decade. From breaking up his band twice, to taking out an ad in a Chicago paper declaring that they would reunite, to whatever the hell Zwan was, to last year’s 42-song online free Teargarden by Kaleidyscope (11 songs of which were actually released), to these massive box set remasterings of their 90s vintage, to this, an album featuring only him of the original SP line-up. And it’s fantastic. Some of the best guitar work and arranging he has ever done, crafty songwriting. It had all the makings of an unmitigated failure, and it turned out to be one of the greatest SP releases ever.

Choice track: “Chimera”

Honourable Mention 1

Some Nights by fun.

I listened to a surprising amount of pop this year (more of a rock man, me), but there was some good stuff, and this was the best of it. A friend put me on this band, and to my surprise I was more than hooked, I was overwhelmed. What a voice! And then the pervading family motif through the whole album makes you think that, yes, sometimes people still actually write songs.

Choice track: “Some Nights” is the best song released this year. If you have the album version and you’re a parent, you may have my creative methods in drowning out the one F-bomb as you listen to this track incessantly.

Honourable Mention 2

Clockwork Angels by Rush

These guys just don’t let up. They still rock hard after nearly forty years, when most of their peers have gone over to easy listening. That they can create some of the best prog/rock going, putting it together on a steampunk concept album with a novelization tie-in just goes to show that they are the smartest and most talented hard rock band going. Way to crown it all with a long-overdue Hall of Fame induction, fellas.

Choice track: “Headlong Flight”

Honourable Mention 3

The 2nd Law by Muse

Even though my band had been playing “Uprising” for three years, it’s taken me until this album to get into this band, but I’ve really been making up for lost time. This is a brilliant album, but if you’re like me and new to them—because apparently we North Americans have not yet realized that this is the greatest band in the world—do check out their past couple. Superb. These guys blend touches of Radiohead, U2, Queen, and Pink Floyd to create a very un-2012 sound, yet they’re not afraid to mix in the technology.

Choice track: “Madness”

Honourable Mention 4

looking for an accomplice by Aaron Krogman

The best entry from a really rich indy music scene this year. Gentle and thoughtful, singer/songwriter Krogman studies common themes—loss of love and life, aging—from self-aware and fresh angles. It’s guitar and voice, yes, but there is some stellar arranging on this, adding just the right touches of added vocals, full band, orchestration, fiddle, banjo, and anything else suited. Grab it at: http://aaronkrogman.bandcamp.com/

Choice track: “Stay Soft”

Honourable Mention 5

The Sheepdogs by The Sheepdogs

Well, they done did it. Last year the Saskatonians made headlines for making a cover, not music. Even though they released a good album, it was hard to hear through all the hype. Was it all just flash? Was there any follow-through? This LP shows that these furry fellas are for real, and their swamp rock sound has matured into its own sound, rather than “it’s just like [insert 70s band name here].” They have proven to be bigger than their origin.

Choice track: “The Way It Is”

The Rest of the Good

Making Mirrors by Gotye

Looks like it’s a one-hit wonder, and the song that started your year shows no sign of abating on the radio or at the mall. However, it means a great pop album will be forgotten in the wake. Worth a full listen.

Choice track: Actually, go get Kimbra’s “Settle Down.” She’s the lady that makes “Somebody I Used to Know” a duet.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Original Soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Though not quite the caliber of their Oscar Winning The Social Network soundtrack, Reznor and Ross continue to create some of the best electronic ambiance going. It’s cool when Nine Inch Nails grow old.

Choice track: “Immigrant Song”

Dead Silence by Billy Talent

I cannot believe this band. Rock solid. And if you think it’s just power-chord punk, why don’t you go make your fingers and brain break and try to learn to play one of their songs. They have so much pluck that chickens avoid them by forty miles.

Choice track: “Viking Death March” got me in on name alone.

Away From Here by The Dave Matthews Band

After a decade and a half, these guys reinvented themselves in with their 2009 release Big Whiskey and the GrooGux King, probably their best album since Crash. This set the stage for a bright future. Does Away From Here live up to the potential? Well, it’s not as mind-blowing, but just okay DMB is still better than 90% of everything else out there.

Choice track: “Gaucho”

Babel by Mumford & Sons

When you release one of the best albums of the decade, and you single-handedly revive the folk music scene, your follow-up is guaranteed heavy scrutiny. Babel is good because it sounds a lot like Sigh No More, but with more stand out tracks and less end to end killer. However, they’ve taken a lot of undeserved flack for the consistency of their sound, so here’s hoping #3 either raises the bar, or people recall how many other bands have been rehashing themselves forever. I mean, AC DC . . .

Choice track: “Below My Feet,” but be sure to check out the cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.”

Now For Plan A by The Tragically Hip

I spent August rediscovering these guys, walking in the great music of my youth, but also with their latest albums. Plan A came at just the right time. They still have it.

Choice track: “At Transformation,” but don’t miss the live version of “Grace, Too” from a Calgary show. Gord Downie is the best improve storyteller in Canadian music.  

. . . Thank You and I’m Sorry by the Trews

I love this band, though their latest release Hope and Ruin fell short of past glories. Apparently this EP is to tide us over until their next album. If that’s the case, they should only release EPs, it’s that good. But what blows me away is one song, an instant classic.

Choice track: “. . . And We Are the Trews.” A band road song culminating in two minutes of shout-outs to the best in modern Canadian music, including all those Gordies.

King Animal by Soundgarden

After all the hype, all the waiting, it came out pretty well. It was exactly what they promised, pretty much sounding like Soundgarden did when they broke up in 1996. Kim Thayil appears to be the most excited to be going again, the guitar riffs being the indication. But why would you leave your best song off the album?

Choice track: “Non-State Actor”

Celebration Day by Led Zeppelin

This live cut of their one-off reunion at the O2 Arena is already five years old, so it’s hardly news. What makes it so surprisingly brilliant though, is after thirty years of aborted and failed quasi-reunions, this one comes the closest to Zep returning to grandeur of old.

Choice track: “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”

Which Side Are You On by Ani DiFranco

She continues to write unabashedly political songs and rip the hell out of a guitar on it in the meantime. The title track is a no-holds-barred dance on the grave of the Republican dream.

Choice track: “Which Side Are You On?”

Americana and Psychedelic Dream by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Had Pill not have been released later in the year, I’d have been right pissed at Mr. Young, new book or no new book. I didn’t need a whole album of American folk favorites, even though “God Save the Queen” was alright. Thank God he harnessed the Horse and set about noodling in his signature plink-a-plink for several 10+ minute songs.

Choice track: “Driftin’ Back”

Cabin Fever by Corb Lund

It didn’t convert me. I just don’t like much country, even Lund’s thinking-man variety. But this will be a crowd pleaser at parties of varied cliques.

Choice track: “Gravedigger”

ⁱUno!, ⁱDos! and ⁱTre! by Green Day

Did we need Green Day to release three albums this year and then for Billie Joe Armstrong to flip out on stage, cancel a tour and go back into rehab? No. Green Day makes great music, but it all sounds pretty similar, and so I haven’t been able to get these down and really decide what’s killer and what’s filler. One great album in here, for sure. However, the choice track is one of their best recordings ever.

Choice track: “Oh Love.”

Songs Not Albums

In a year of great albums, I found myself downloading a lot of great music, but not whole albums. This is rare for me. I mean, I needed to get “Gangnam Style” for the kids, right? Anyway, here’s a short list of the stand out single releases or songs that didn’t warrant me buying the album this year.

“Faultline Blues” by Sam Roberts

“Inside Out (Acoustic)” by Eve 6

“Stick It Out” by Florence + the Machine

“Midnight City” by M83

“Abraham’s Daughter” by Arcade Fire

“Live to Rise” by Soundgarden