Best of 2019 #1: METZ - Automat (Sub Pop)

 It's always a cause for celebration when METZ puts out an album. Toronto's masters of pummeling, patent-leather-tough noise rock knock it out of the park with this album, which is mostly outtake and b-side material from their first three albums. Normally, I won't consider re-released material for my Top 10, but the freshness and urgency of this album compelled me to keep listening and listening. As is typical for METZ, they approach each song with the idea of crushing your tiny brain, tender ears and meager sense of self into soft, mushy soup. Each song is brutal, punishing, driving, droning noise rock, backed with the finest of gutteral screaming. You'd be tempted to call this a punk album, but it has more in common with a middle-finger wagging post punk band. It's literate and smart, and at the same time, utterly base and streetsmart.

DNTTA Playlist for May 21, 2020 - Quarantine Edition #7

Artist - Song - Album (Label)  * indicates Canadian Content 

Listen to Do Not Touch This Amp every Friday 8-9 PM Pacific (currently Thursdays 7-8 PM due to pandemic quarantine) at www.thex.ca 

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Fidgital - Drag and Drop* - Spyglass (Independent)
Jessica Bailiff - Failing Yesterday - Kranky Kompilation (Kranky)
Manhole Vortex - Superhuman Machines - Electro-Cution (Arts Industrial)
Mannequin Lung - Is it Live? - The Art of Travel (Plug Research)
Uffie - Robot Ouef - Ed. Rec Vol. III (Ed Banger)
The Inner Thumb - Citroens and Sitars - Space Baby Blast Off (Emperor Norton)
Translucid - Hang - Unheard Artist Compilation Vol. 2 (Plastiqmusiq)
The New Deal - Gone Gone Gone* - Gone Gone Gone (Sound and Light)
Hello Moth - River* - Infinitely Repeated (Independent)
Devo - Planet Earth - Freedom of Choice (Warner)

Best of 2019 #2: Orville Peck - Pony (Sub Pop)

Orville Peck was one of the most unique artists of 2019. Performing under a fringed leather mask, and overlapping the genres of country, indy rock, shoegaze and electronics, no one could match Peck's odd sound. Pony earned him a lot of play on campus radio as well as more adventurous ends of the country music radio spectrum. His real identity is a mystery; he says he wears the mask because he is a well known name in the music industry in Toronto, and wants to separate his Peck persona from his own identity to carve out his own musical space. Peck is hard to put into a category. Ostensibly, this is a country album, a brooding one that only tangentally addresses country, with banjo and steel guitar floating in and out of the music. But it's not solidly in that camp, with shoegazing indy rock taking most of the rest of his sound. It's a tough album to get, but when you do, you'll get it full on.