Top 40 Canadian Albums of the 2000s

Post-rock co-op Godspeed You! Black Emperor were, perhaps, the first sure sign that a Canadian rock revolution was taking place. The provocative, political, thoughtful entity embraced the urban-blight of their hometown, Montréal, both musically and socially. On record —as on their monolithic double-LP classic Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven— they practiced a kind of musical architectural psychology; every dewy note of frayed guitar, every ghostly field recording, every weeping wail of violin teasing out their soundtracked city's every alley, every crack, every drain, every broken pane. Off the record, they helped build the recording studios, rehearsal spaces, and live venues from which Montréal's music scene would soon erupt.

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Merrill Nisker was an ex-pat school-teacher who, after years playing coffee-house folk in Toronto, had hitched to Berlin with but a 505 (the groovebox!) on her back. Ditching the pretty for the dirty, she punched at the drum-machine's buttons in a punk-rock fashion, and invented herself anew. Nisker authored the outlandish persona Peaches —a salacious, foul-mouthed, sexually-aggressive provocateur part Prince, part Lil' Kim— and set about creating a wild, out-of-control one-woman-show. Such chutzpah may've stalled, except every song Nisker wrote seemed like an anthem; her debut LP, The Teaches of Peaches, filled with tunes —"Lovertits," "AA XXX," "F**k the Pain Away"— that'd remain liveshow staples for the rest of the decade.

Long before they were epic indie-rockers hailing from a much-hyped Montréal scene, before, even, they were one of the countless bands whose career got a leg up via their membership in Broken Social Scene, Stars were just a couple of dudes living in New York, making twee, '80s-centric, Pet Shop Boys-loving electro-pop at a time in which that couldn't have been less cool. Torquil Campbell and Chris Seligman's debut album, as Stars, has none of the swelling grandeur of 2004's Set Yourself On Fire, but its lack of ambition brings with it its own charm. The only real balls-out moment is when the pair dare to cover their heroes, The Smiths, taking on their most-famous song, "This Charming Man," with an army of synths and a sense of humor.

Given few cared about Hangedup in their day, it seems likely they'll only grow more neglected with each passing decade. Their debut LP found the duo —Sackville members Genevieve Heistek and Eric Craven— cranking out a locomotive sound from only viola squalls and junkyard percussion, their insistent playing fostering a rhythmic chug of perpetual forward motion. They even dare to bring New Order's "Blue Monday" along for the ride, refashioning the eternal dancefloor anthem as a stark, rattling, post-classical study in attack and decay. Their next two albums —2002's Kicker in Tow and 2005's Clatter for Control— would sound pretty good, too, but this set captures Hangedup's elemental sound at its most essential.

As one of the founders of Eric's Trip, Julie Doiron helped put Canadian alternative music —not to mention Moncton, New Brunswick— on the international map. Her band's fuzzed-out love-pop fit in during Sub Pop's grunge hey-day, but her solo music was another story. Initially recording as Broken Girl, Doiron played with a frightening fragility: her guitar lightly brushed, her singing hardly even a whisper. By her fourth album, Heart and Crime, Doiron was employing her tiny sounds with savage emotional precision; every note that punctures that resounding silence carrying with it a sense of genuine gravity. Oh, and, the LP's opener, "Wintermitts," also happens to be possibly the most romantic depiction of family life ever committed to tape.

Let's just say it: "Lover's Spit" is a power-ballad up there with U2's "One" and Pat Benatar's "We Belong." Sure, the song's suggestively about fellatio —both symbolic and literal— but, to listen to its hyper-romantic wall-of-sound is to submit yourself to something grand, romantic, and a tiny bit embarrassing. Sardonic lyrics aside, it's a reach-for-the-sky moment: its masses of guitars, washed-out strings, tender piano parts, and brass highlights like some six-minute slow-dance for hipster proms. "Lover's Spit" is, still, the defiant highlight of Broken Social Scene's second record, whose success was so colossal that it shined a global spotlight on a small community of Toronto musicians, as entirely contained in one very big band.

Blessed with the star quality of the very charismatic, very blonde Emily Haines, Metric were always a sure bet for success. Yet, those clueless music-biz suits initially botched the sale: the band's debut, 2001's great Grow Up and Blow Away, was permanently shelved by their label, Rykodisc, and only exhumed long after Metric were a known commodity. Yet, Haines and co were hardly defeated by the experience: their first-actually-released album, Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?, delivered a boisterous set of spiky, sparkling pop-songs masking melancholy lyrics riddled with doubt. What was never in doubt was Metric's eventual, inevitable fame; and, sure enough, in these 37 minutes they went from biz casualties to Gold Records.

Dan Snaith's debut album as Manitoba, 2001's Start Breaking My Heart hardly suggested greatness. In fact, it barely suggested mediocrity: Snaith debuting with a bland collection of coffeehouse electronic mood music. Two years on, and Snaith showed himself, thankfully, as proponent of radical reinvention: Up in Flames fashioning a far-more unique, wildly alive electronic psychedelia steeped in the saturated pop of Cornelius and the giddy, doped-up delirium of the Flaming Lips. This record's artistic success trigged a propensity for reinvention that stuck with Snaith throughout his career: his albums —released, thereafter, under the name Caribou— never turning the same trick twice.