The Advent of Canadian Rock

If you have been paying attention at all to the whole music scene of late you would probably have a feeling that something is going on in the Canadian scene. Some of the best music put out right now is coming out of Canada, the press and other musicians are starting to notice. The Arcade Fire was on the cover of Time Magazine Canada, Broken Social Scene was recently on the late night show with Conan O’Brien and Black Mountain was just giving huge props from Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. On stage with the BSS during the Conan show was Fiest and Emily Haines of Metric, another two Canadian musicians. These musicians however are only the tip of the iceberg in Canadian rock and once you start digging a little deeper you start to find even more great stuff coming out of our home and native land.

Now how do you find these bands? Well you could read some online mags like Pitchfolk or Discorder but I would personally check out CBC Radio 3. Each week Grant Lawrence puts together an hour long show featuring some of the best in new Canadian music. From listening to these podcasts (yes I have listened to all 38 of them), I have found out so many great Canadian bands, and through their New Music Canada website even more. Recently CBC Radio 3 has also gone on to become a full time radio station on Sirius Satellite, and also streamable online off the CBC Radio 3 website.

If you haven’t yet explored the Canadian music scene, now is the time. Go explore CBC Radio 3 or New Music Canada and see if you can draw the many connections between bands. If you need some incentive here are a few bands to get you started:

Pink Mountaintops – Out of Vancouver and part of the Black Mountain army Pink Mountaintops is a sexed up version of their Black Mountain counterparts.
Joel Plaskett – Sounds from the Atlantic coast, check out the song Love This Town; I love the rip on Kelowna!
Do Make Say Think – Post Rock band that fuses a bit of an electronic/dub feel into their tunes.
Stars – Another amazing band on the Arts and Crafts label (seriously check out the bands on this label).
The Organ – Very 80′s feel to this band; a GOOD 80′s feel!

There is no reason to be listen to the same crap day in day out, lately I have been listening to new music daily, and mostly Canadian to boot!