#6 Someone To Love Me by Jont & The Infinite Possibility (Halifax, NS)
#5 Blue Morning by Dark For Dark (Halifax, NS)
Another recent release, Dark For Dark’s ‘All Dressed’ is a haunting melange of softly sung questions, where ‘Blue Morning’ is the sudden uptick in the album that suddenly catches your ears amidst all that pedal steel with its chorus. An album consumed with a feeling, ‘All Dressed’ may as well be a pocket universe you can get lost in for twenty minutes.
#4 Try Me by David In The Dark (Fredericton, NB)
David In The Dark’s album ‘Fire’ itself is a bundle of catchy little pop rock hits. It gets real deep with its verses, and real simple with its choruses, but consistently makes us move around in an uncomfortable fashion some might refer to as ‘dancing’. It’s festival season though, and we’ve been practicing. ‘Try Me’ is just the first of a ten song long series of punchy nuggets. The whole album fits somewhere on this list, but that wouldn’t be fair.
#3 Amerika by Wintersleep (Halifax, NS)
Wintersleep put out a song that turns around a poem by Walt Whitman about the beauty of America . Need we say more?
#2 Shout by Hillsburn (Halifax, NS)
In The Battle Years by Hillsburn has been our favourite album this year. It was hard not give this song a first place ranking, just because as a whole the album is so consistent in its quality, and simultaneously so stylistically diverse. ‘Shout’ is a battle cry of the heart, it meekly wanders in with a mandolin, and ends up a breastbeating anthem. It reminds us of what it is to be young, and makes us dream of what we might accomplish if we only had a full orchestra.
#1 The Stranger by The Burning Hell (St. John’s, NFLD)
Mathias Kom is a story dispersing machine gun, an unceasing ticker tape of intrigues. His tale of a couple seeking shelter with a stranger while running from a jealous ex-boyfriend is delivered in detail at speed, and punctuated with saxophone solos en lieu of a chorus. The Burning Hell’s Public Library is full of these quirky lyrical nuggets.