The year in review will start today!

DON'T CALL THEM COMEBACKS. One of the best things about New Order's latest, "Get Ready", or almost any New Order album for that matter, is how much it sounds like New Order. This New Order album kicks off with the single "Crystal", which begins with a delayed intro of keyboards and soaring female vocals. Then, the beat kicks in, and within ten seconds of that happening, you hear the completely unmistakeable guitar playing which can only belong in a New Order song. In this way, New Order are a lot like Aphex Twin, in the sense that anyone who's ever been a fan of New Order can hear a new New Order song and know before now that it's a new New Order song, even if they've never heard the song, because it's part of the magic of New Order that everything they do sounds so much like New Order, which isn't to say that all New Orders' stuff sounds the same, because that's certainly not true, since New Order have been one of the most fearlessly original bands in the post-punk era. New Order's are just one of those artists that you can immediately recognize as themselves (and Barney from New Order's aforementioned guitar playing just screams "New Order!", it's as distinctive to the New Order mystique as Hooky from New Order's more vaunted bass playing). The funny thing is how New Order sound more like New Order as they age. For instance, "Technique", their most original album, kicks off with "Fine Time", which at the time, sounded nothing like New Order, until you got a few minutes into it, at which time Hooky's New Order bass playing came to the forefront and you could breathe a sigh of relief and say "Ahh, now THIS sounds like New Order" and then further relax as that unmistakeable New Order guitar playing breaks open the second track, "All the Way". On the other hand, when New Order's 1993 album "Republic" (which was looking to be the last New Order album, much more so than all the other times when it looked like there wouldn't be any more New Order albums) was released, I'd also recently bought New Order's 1983 album "Power, Corruption, and Lies", and I would play tricks on friends by playing "Leave Me Alone" and those in the know would immediately ask "Is this New Order?", and I would say "Yes, it is New Order, but it's from 1983" and they'd say, "No way, it sounds exactly like New Order", and I knew that they meant it sounded so much like 1993 New Order, even though it was 1983 New Order. Similarly, with "Get Ready", New Order have made "Brotherhood Part II" just like New Order made "Power, Corruption and Lies Part II" with "Republic". That is, the latter two albums displayed New Order's dance-y tendencies embedded those records' rather dour overall mood, while the former two are extremely guitar heavy, collectively comprising New Order's most rocking statements to date.

-----------------

The new Curve album, "Gift", can't be considered a comeback record. For one thing, they never really left the music business. In 1994, they announced they'd be taking a "hiatus" and repeatedly stressed that Curve were not breaking up, but basically everyone ignored that and considered the band to be broken up for the next five years. Well gosh, Debbie Smith went off and joined Echobelly, and goodness knows when your guitarist runs off to join a legendarily successful and groundbreaking band like Echobelly then you'd better just call it quits [note: that was sarcasm]. Anyway, if Curve had a comeback album, then it was certainly 1999's "Come Clean", which had them plunging headlong into the electronica boom and making an album laced with thundering neo-industrial beat. In other words, it sounded nothing like the Curve we'd ever known, even though the actual results were patchily successful. At the time, I likened it to Sonic Youth's "A Thousand Leaves". Both bands engaged in new (for them) musical textures, which seemed the result of skimming ideas from the bands that in turn had been influenced by them many years earlier.

"Gift" is a return to Curve's classic sound of 1992-3. It still sounds remarkably contemporary, in no small part due to Garbage, Republica, et al having made careers out of ripping off Curve and helping to preserve their memory in the process. Like other Curve albums, there is some unnevenness in the material, as usual, the high points are truly remarkable. "Perish" may be the best thing they've ever done. And I'm not just saying that because Kevin Shields plays guitar on it.

No really, I'm not.

Stop looking at me like that.

I took a short dip into the waters of Vancouver nightlife last Friday night. Now, I won't insult the people of Vancouver by playing judge and jury over their music scene after being there for only one week, so keep in mind that these are merely observations.

Trying to get into the DJ Krush show at Sonar proved fruitless. When the papers say "doors open at 8 PM", Vancouverites must do the wacky, sensible thing and actually show up on time. By ten, the place was packed and the lineup outside more closely ressembled your average glacier than a horde of young music fans. The art of deciphering the start time of a show from the listings in the papers is a problem akin to finding a cure for the common cold, i.e. nearly impossible due to the hundreds of different varieties of the elusive beasts. The lineup itself was startlingly calm and reserved. In Toronto, people would be trying a thousand different means to skam their way past the security, saying they know anyone from the head bartender to the roadies to the janitors in order to bypass the line. Vancouverites seemed more concerned with what they scored earlier in the day, what they could score once inside, and who they needed to score from once inside.

Afterward, I got to play out a little fantasy of mine. In early 1980's Detroit, house parties (in whatever sense of the phrase) were attended by smartly-dressed, upper-middle class kids. The music was smart and energetic, the crowds extremely lively, the DJ's willing to drop any wild record at any time. Everyone was mad for it but the overall impression (at least to me, and it's my fantasy so I can think what I want and mix fact with wishful thinking without malice) was that of culture and class.

I was at such a club last Friday. Its name has been wiped clean through subsequent alcohol scrubbings, but no matter. It was in a beautiful, spacious second floor loft overlooking the pleasant red-brick streets of Gastown, massive video screens blasting kaleidoscopic cartoons flanked the DJ, who was clearly having the time of his life, and the crowd was fashionably dressed, and very clearly in a mood to dance, drink, socialize and immerse themselves wholeheartedly in this scene.

One more thing. THE YEAR IS 2001. Everybody in there -- the staff, the DJ, the customers -- looked desperate. They desperately believed that they were in at the genesis of something groundbreaking. Their body language desperately intoned that in the room in which we stood, a unique, vibrant rump-shaking happening was taking place, and our collective responsibility as club-goers was to spread the fledgeling gospel, bring more converts back to this haven of budding revolution before it got too massive and watered down to fully appreciate, all while wearing an "I'm so cool to be here, so cool that I won't even show it on my face" look. And it was all so pathetic because everything that I described did exist -- TWENTY GODDAMNED YEARS AGO. You can play dressup all year long but it can't change the fact that the genie's been out of the bottle for decades, and you can't pretend that he just popped out of that bottle just because you didn't notice him until years later.

Learn. Listen to some house music. When you solely rely on the DJ to shape your tastes, you end up in a loft dancing your tits off to dreadfully soulless plastic house music with nary a memorable pounding beat in sight. Use your ears. A sax solo does not soul music make. Think before you dance.

#2. My Bloody Valentine -- Loveless. MBV changed rock. They heard the Mary Chain and ran with the ball. They took some guitars, and made them sound fuzzed up, jacked up, and totally f***ed up. They married this to one of the best collection of sweet and dirty pop songs of the postpunk era, all while distorting these beautiful melodies behind a hazy fog of twisted frequencies and subdued erotic vocal meanderings.

Three years later, they made "Loveless".

"Loveless" doesn't rock. It doesn't even have real drums on it. Nothing on it, save perhaps "What You Want" and "When You Sleep", rocks out with the wantonness of "When You Wake (You're Still In A Dream)" or "Suisfine". Nothing purrs and simultaneously unsettles like "Isn't Anything"'s "No More Sorry" or "All I Need". Instead, "Loveless" is a collection of lurchings and mid-tempo strolls set to an army of effects that try their best to blanket the lack of strong fuzz-pop scorchers. Compared to the more visceral rush of its predecessor, it is mechanical, submerged, and its overall emotional rush muffled behind a screen of cotton balls. As an engineering marvel, it is top notch. As a pop album, it is not. Just because everyone else went dance in 1990 doesn't excuse "Soon", their "contribution" to the new ecstacy culture. There are fine tunes here, such as "Blown a Wish" and "Sometimes", but their "more is more" approach swamps these simple paeans of love beneath their sound experiments, without ever letting the melody breathe. Listen to "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)" or "Lose My Breath" to prove to yourself that a little acoustic clarity doesn't diminish the hazy atmospherics. Noise may be everything, but it's not the only thing.

#1. Orbital -- Insides. Sometime in 1994, Orbital realized they needed to stop making groundbreaking techno and start making groundbreaking music. "Snivilisation", their concept piece extraordinare, made you think about how society breeds confusion and it even made you dance. And for those without much of a brain, it offered radical new sounds -- the dizzying jungle of "Are We Here?", the futuristic lounge jazz of "Forever", the clanging minimalism of "Philosophy By Numbers". There were a million new things combined in a million new ways.

"Insides" combined a million old things in a million new ways. It contained an even stronger political agenda, but it was set to a soundtrack of old and easily found sounds. Everyone and their dog had gone drum n bass by this time, and the light, shuffling breakbeats of "The Girl With the Sun In Her Head" and "PETROL" were Orbital's perfunctory take on such rhythms. Now that DnB is but a shadow of its former stature, those tracks have aged disconcertingly rapidly. Orbital's more straightahead, banging techno updates of their old material during their recent tour seem to find them scrambling to cover up this fact.

The sequencing of the melodies, the way they skirt and dart all around the mix like cats chasing mice (particularly during the concluding half of "Out There Somewhere") are pure late 70's Kraftwerk and Georgio Moroder. Yes, they did the same thing on "Snivilisation"'s "Kein Trink Vasser", but that was but one song, not an entire album. The homogenous feel to the album's "instrumentation" may make for a smooth ride, but as a statement of electronic sound innovation, it is passable at best.

Orbital wanted to make a proper album. They succeeded.

#3. Spiritualized -- Pure Phase. The twelfth track, "Pure Phase" is the embodiment of this album. A whirring, humming, single note (G) fades back and forth, from speaker to speaker, for six and a half minutes. Jason Pierce likened it to the sound of a violin section tuning up -- a single, pure, sustained note to relax and lose yourself in. If indeed you find yourself lost in such a listening experience, then "Pure Phase" may be for you.

Otherwise, this album can try your patience like no other. "Pure Phase", that everlasting G, never really goes away, as it is featured at various levels of the mix throughout most of the album. Thus, the entire album is in a single key, casting a blanket of sameness over all of the material. The usual concept of "songs", with verses, bridges and choruses, is flippantly tossed aside. With a few exceptions ("These Blues", "Lay Back in the Sun" are two of them) everything is a sequence of instrumental one note mantras (e.g. "Electric Mainline), and semi-stoned warbling over wibbly guitar feedback (e.g. "Slide Song") is a tracks . Jason seems to disappear over long, vocal-less sections of the album, vanishing into a swath of droning, purring notes, while the listener is left behind wondering and waiting if the droning will ever stop and if something will actually happen on this album. "Spread Your Wings" is a fine example of the kind of orchestral arrangements that would be further perfected on the next two Spiritualized albums, but it is the sole example of it's kind here, in the presence of "balladry" such as "Take Good Care of It", which contains one sustained chord, Jason's voice buried beneath a mile of gauze, and very little else.

It's not difficult to understand why Spiritualized had to wait until "Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating In Space" to make their critical and commercial breakthrough.

#4. Pulp -- His N Hers. This album was a perfect artifact for its times. It was blatantly pop, and unashamedly British. It was about the often seedy, always fascinating sex and relationships in and around Sheffield. The lyrical sentiments -- or lack thereof -- were clearly the work of a band that could afford to take the piss, talk about inconsequential day to day interpersonal dalliances, without any pretentions of being important musical artists with a responsibility to convey relevant sociopolitical messages. That all changed in 1995, as Pulp became the voice of the underappreciated underclasses. The production became bolder and more assured, which was reflective of the toughening of the message being conveyed (and also due to a different producer). But hearing "Acrylic Afternoons" today, it carries a whiff of irrelevance. Who cares about carrying on an affair with a married woman underneath her dining room table when there are real, pertinent issues to deal with in life? The production does help -- Ed Buller's glossy, extrovertly showbiz production style comes off as an indie version of a 50's musical set in the glitteball 70's. And the glossiness connotes plasticity and insincerity.

The illicit tales can be irresistable, and Jarvis Cocker is undoubtedly a gifted storyteller. But as a musical statement, "His N Hers" -- a wonton depiction of a fantasy world removed far from reality, set to backing tracks produced so slick you could play ice hockey off them -- is as outdated a means of communication as Blur's Cockney yuppie keener characters (from the same time period). Of course, "Parklife" sounds daft and goofy today.

#6. Drugstore -- Drugstore. After a couple of years in nondescript indie obscurity, this album sprung forth out of nowhere before the the bands redescended into indie obscurity, pausing briefly a couple of years later to feed off of Thom Yorke's rising star. The sound of "Drugstore" ages well, but how could it not when they've chosen such classic and innovative bands to pilfer from (Jesus and Mary Chain, Velvets, etc.)? They tread unsteady ground between the fury of the former and the urban folk of the latter's 3rd record. In the first instance, they often threaten to lash out on tracks like "Superglider" and "Gravity", but end up restraining themselves for unknown reasons. In the second instance, some of their more sublime moments ("Speaker 12" being the prime example) are plundered courtesy of sudden squalls of guitar. In between trying to figure out what volume they want to play at, they are quite successful at picking one level and sticking with it, such as the poignant "Accelerate" and the delicious power chorded grind of "Fader".

Isabel Monteiro's sultry voice is the album's main drawing card, but her lyrics often delve into semi-coherent stream-of-consciousness ("Nectarine") and pedantic lust and longing ("Starcrossed", "If"). And since Joan Osborne wrote such peurile and benign musings on the man upstairs, it has sabotaged any likelihood that anyone can listen to ruminations on G-d within a pop song ("Favourite Sinner" without either cracking up or hitting the mute button.

#7. Woob -- Woob. Em:t, the label on which this album appears, was a series of hit-and-miss releases. You'd have dull astract ambient hip-hop and whale noises one minute, and warm, organic mellowness emerging from the rainforest muck the next. This is in abundance with "Woob", sometimes spanning those extremes within the very same song. The 32-minute opener, "On Earth", takes forever to get going, but once it does, it's a storming dub bohemoth. Then it returns to ambient wibbling for a second dose of forever. It's long for the sake of being long, which is never a good thing.

"Odonna" is Woob at his baffling best, that is, when he wants you to freak out, not mellow out. It's confortable beginnings do little to forshadow it bizarre endings, with it's blaring keyboard washes ressembling a zombie choir singing beside your bed. Then he ruins the unsettling mood by going 1993 hippie ambient, with the soft tribal drums and faraway chanting of "Wuub". Later, he scares the crap out of everyone within earshot with the horror film samples and cold emptiness of "Strange Air", before descending into the disturbing, but quite anticlimatic, subterranean bowels of "Emperor".

The high points are undeniable, but the overall unevenness and all too often lapses into ambient cliche tends to muddle the flow of the record.

#8. The Orb -- The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.

As far as 110 minute debut albums go, this is about the best you can hope to find. In North America, it was edited down to 70 minutes, in other words, short enough to fit onto one CD or cassette. Ordinarily, a true fan's response to the truncation process would be several sustained cries of "Sacriledge", but ironically, the editors got many things right. They chose brisk, dancefloor-friendly versions of "Perpetual Dawn" and "Star 6 & 7 8 9". In particular, the latter is a ultra-E-friendly, sunny chiming number that readily invokes the twinkling qualities implied by its title. On the double CD, "Perpetual Dawn" open the second disk with a thud in following up the pristine bliss of "Spanish Castles in Space", the first disc's closer. As with the 2CD's version of "Star", its grumbling dub loops endlessly meander, displaying some of the directionlessness that made the benign "Orbus Terrarum" such a disappointment.

In fact, the entire second CD comes off as dull compared to its companion. The first CD is marvelous because it doesn't try too hard to be ambient. "Little Fluffy Clouds" is a delicious slice of offbeat humour that is every bit as refreshing then as it was back then, "Gaia" is just downright spooky, "Supernova" gets starkly funky (just listen for all the wonderful dead space in the mix -- the track is a blueprint on how find bliss while shaking rump without cluttering up the mix). The second disc screams "chill out ... downtempo grooves ... NOW". "Outlands" isn't half the dub-hop floor-filler that it thinks it is, and "Into the Fourth Dimension" isn't one-quarter the space travel ravers come-down that IT thinks it is. Finally, they made a huge blunder by choosing the "live in-studio" version of "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld", which is the worst of the 5824 versions of that song (the 21 minute version from their first Peel Session is the best I've heard -- and having been recorded during in December 1989, makes it the last classic track of the 1980's, IMO). Burn CD1 from a friend and save your time and money for tracking down all their Peel Sessions for the one of finest collections of crust-free, dub-free ambient stasis you'll ever hear.

I love the University of Toronto Department of Music's Annual Sale -- where else can you get nine records and three books for a measly $18.50?

For a near crimminal 50 cents, I grabbed the "Trouser Press Guide to '90's Rock", published in 1996. This volume was edited by Ira Robbins, who also is a main contributor (along with a few dozen other journalists). Robbins warns us in the Forward that his essays were meant to be both informative and critical. You can say that again. From what I've read so far, his pieces are far more scathing than any of the other authors. Among his victims are many of my favourite groups and albums.

On one hand, criticism and alternate points of view are extremely constructive. A fan will be upset about a bad review of their favourite band, and they will quickly erase such negativity from their minds immediately after reading it. A music appreciator may get upset, but he or she will store those words in their head for a long time afterward, pausing to reflect on them from time to time and perhaps getting around to questioning whether they contain an element of truth.

On the other hand, no matter how brilliant a piece of music may be, you can always find something to criticise. And criticism for the sake of criticism is a practice that many writers engage in, maybe due to a reluctance that they will gradually become indistinguishable from the common fan should they allow themselves to like something too much.

To demonstrate both points, over the next several days, I will make concerted criticisms of my ten favourite albums of the 1990's. Actually, there will only be seven, since in the case of bands with multiple entries, I will choose the higher ranking record.

After getting over the initial shock of hearing the news that Sam the Record Man had filed for bankruptcy, my thoughts turned to more selfish pursuits -- the impending clearance sales. Yes!

I know nothing about how Sam's was run as a business, but as a music store, nobody viewed their downtown superstore in the same way after HMV opened up down the street in 1991. Sam's was basically a big warehouse that happened to sell a lot of good music. The opening of HMV was an event, and the store was a spectacle in itself. It was sleek and high-tech, brilliant blue facades, four floors of music and greyish-silver steel -- it was more like a dance club than a music store, and people went to see it regardless of their interest in music. It's like when a new sports arena opens, such as with SkyDome in 1989, everybody asked everybody else "have you been to SkyDome yet?". It became the newest location that everybody just had to visit, if only to say that they'd stepped foot inside and nothing more.

Competition between the mega-chains drove prices down. I had no complaints. But for years, HMV remained the sexy new store, while Sam's and nearby Sunrise were just big white boxes.

Sam's eventually opened a dance and R&B-oriented second floor, but it never took off. They renovated a couple of times, most notably the front, with it's cramped layout and cash register placement nearly indistinguishable from a supermarket checkout. But the overall look stayed the same. Sunrise eventually smartened up and completely overhauled their interior, with a flashier, more HMV-ish concept in mind. They continued to offer loads of discounted CD's, and their selection improved. Sam's basically stayed the same.

I'm biased, but I came to rely on HMV because they, in my mind, led the way for major chains selling dance music and British import CD's (probably because they are a British company). Ironically, in the last couple of years, Sam's did develop a rather impressive selection of techno, but HMV built theirs up around 1994, a very large head start. Those were Sam's problems in a convenient microcosm. They cited competition from online retailers and local chains as main reasons for their demise. They admitted, really, that they'd been behind the times for quite a while.