Best of 2014 #6: Viet Cong - Viet Cong (Flemish Eye)

This was an earlier pick for album of the year for me. Viet Cong were formed out of the ashes of the great Calgary-based post-punk band, Women. Women had been one of my fave Canadian bands for a while, in fact, their second album Public Strain made my best of list back in 2010 at #4. The band's style of post-punk is very similar to what Women were doing. Women had a more structured and subtle sound, Viet Cong is a bit more chaotic, noisy and gloomy. "Continental Shelf" is the stand out track here, channeling the moody traditional Joy Division style of post-punk through a beefy bass line. A couple of tracks, "March of Progress" and the closer "Death" have some nice, noisy electronic noodling in them. The album is short though, just seven songs. This feels like a teaser for something bigger.

Viet Cong caused some controversy over the summer, when they were accused of having an offensive name. I wrote about this back in September, and honestly, it still ticks me off a bit. The whole social justice movement really boils my potatoes in general. Viet Cong, wanting to focus on music, have decided to change their name, though they don't have a name nailed down yet. So, right now they're The Band Formally Known as Viet Cong.

Best of 2013 - #9 - The Besnard Lakes - Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO (Jagjaguwar)

The Besnard Lakes are fronted by a husband and wife team from Montreal. Their music is spacy, melodic and more than a touch menacing. They remind me a lot of Mogwai, if Mogwai dropped most of the guitar noise and added more vocal harmonies to their work. I picked their album Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse as my favourite album back in 2007. Their follow up, 2010's Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night, I found lacking and uninspired. It wasn't til this past year that I felt they had reclaimed the greatness they had in 2007.The album's name comes from a mangled foreign language to English translation of a review of one of their past albums. Here's the soaring "Colour Yr Lights In":