The Soft Pack are more than just the sum of their parts, though, for their material is replete with insanely catchy riffs, with lead singer Mark Lamkin's deadpan yet heartfelt vocals expressing cynical disaffection. Once you listen to tracks such as the brazen and anguished "Answer To Yourself", the jangly and melodic "More Or Less", and the relentless "Pull Out", it's a sure thing you'll be hooked to The Soft Pack's hard-driving snot-punk anthems.

Jones/Baraka took an uncompromising stance in support of the jazz avant-garde, lamenting its lack of commercial viability vis-à-vis the more successful hard bop (which he disdained) and third-stream. His writing would become increasingly militant during the loft jazz period of the 70’s, when left-field jazz became further marginalized.

Time has vindicated his canonization of such figures as John Coltrane (who had widely alienated the jazz mainstream by the time of these writings), Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, and many others whose work continues to grow in stature for music fans who favour intensity and raw emotion over mindless technique.

Complementing the occasionally uncomfortable nakedness of their singer's delivery is a band whose direct approach never lets a song overstay its welcome. For all of their emotional weight, they wisely sidestep grossly overdone climaxes or loud-quiet-loud post-rock pitfalls. Sophisticated and eloquent, Shearwater understand inherently that our most personal moments are often the most difficult and embarrassing to share with others. With its meticulous delicacy and unflappable seriousness—not to mention a 72-page "dossier" in some versions—The Golden Archipelago is that friend that tells you its darkest secrets first, so that you'll feel more comfortable doing the same yourself in return.

Cut to February 2010: Zeus' debut album is out, and the tunes they played that night sound as fresh and catchy as I had remembered them. They might seem like an odd fit on such an indie-centric label as Arts & Crafts, but it’s that type of lateral thinking that has gained the label such notoriety. It’s easy to compare them to the Beatles or the Kinks, but what’s so bad about that? It‘s not easy to take such well-trod influences and make them your own. They also touch on some great hard rock riffs, occasionally married to southern rock comfort, along with the sort of group harmonies that you just don’t hear anymore. The fact that this group has three different singer-songwriters speaks volumes of their ability to work as one well-oiled cohesive unit. As their name implies, these aspiring gods of rock are getting their mythmaking off to a solid start.

(Zeus will be playing a free live in-store performance here at Soundscapes on Sat. Mar 6 @ 6pm.)

In short, the man's got an ear for melody and a respect for the structure of a song. There Is Love In You holds true to this, in Four Tet's own unique way. Unlike close friend Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, he has not made a full switch over to embracing what would be typically termed 'songs' with distinct verses and choruses, but this album still maintains a close relationship with melody via disembodied, cut-and-paste voices and swirling, levitating synth arpeggios. His attention to layered detail is acute without strangling the life out of the music—in fact, quite the opposite is true. The buoyant, evolving groove of "Love Cry" wastes not a second of its nine minutes, twisting itself in and out of fascinating, yet ever danceable, musical knots. Even the most straightforward pieces—the stately "This Unfolds" or the barely-there "Reversing"—have plenty of meaty strata through which to dig.

Four Tet doesn't mine any new territory here, but a voice already as strong as his doesn't need to. This is heartfelt computer music, where the hand of an 'unfeeling' machine is used to communicate some beautifully oblique emotions.

For someone who's still very eager to pull out The Hurting whenever the urge arises, this isn't really a bad thing. For all of its embracing of 'cold' technology, the '80s were often about dramatic, populist emotional gestures. Yeasayer hit this notion up for all it's worth, with choruses proclaiming "Stick up for yourself, son/Never mind what anybody else done". Is it uplifting? Corny? The group simply plays their hand and lets you figure that out.

The same goes for highlights like "O.N.E." and "Love Me Girl". Sonically, these songs are natural results of a recent decade that saw an entire pack of NYC bands—from The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs to LCD Soundsystem and Liars—offer their own theses on the lasting musical impact of the '80s. But as the source of these influences shifts further from groups that were always pretty cool to those that have been treated like lepers for ages, it's little like seeing a friend you thought was dead dancing in front for your face.

Which is really just a way of saying that the method by which these songs are delivered is so loaded taste-wise, it can be a little distracting. One wonders whether a slightly less obvious tact on the part of some of the music would've yielded a more timeless, individual album. But there's a lot more to Odd Blood than kitschy neon geometric patterns and acid-washed jeans—if you can sidestep those elements, the joyous, inventive Odd Blood is yours to enjoy freely.

Basia Bulat is not one of those musicians. She is like a five-pound nugget of gold sitting in an barely bubbling inch-deep creek. Tapping these riches is about as easy as tying your shoe—sit down on the couch next to her, give her the phone book to sing, and prepare to be wowed.

I'm not sure that one could really call it a problem, but if there's an Achilles heel to all of this, it's that this kind of prodigious talent makes it all sound a little too easy. Bulat draws from a very familiar folk template throughout Heart Of My Own, and this fact, combined with her attention-grabbing voice, threatens to reduce the songs themselves to playing a bit part.

Is this more of a symptom of an age in music that often puts a higher premium on innovation than is sometimes warranted? True, the thrill of this record—and Bulat's talent in general—is not in hearing something you've never heard done before, but in the opportunity to hear this girl sing with her quivering cannon of a voice. And even at this young age, she has the maturity to understand when to rein it in, producing some the record's most deeply-affecting tracks ("Sparrow" and "Gold Rush").

Sure, Bulat is still likely a record or two removed from making a truly classic album—one woven with the kind of experience and weight that only time can provide. But if that sounds like a slight on Heart Of My Own, it's not. This is a very good record. It's merely recognition of the fact that, for a singer this talented, the best should be yet to come.

(Basia Bulat will perform a live in-store set here in our shop on Tue. Feb 16 at 7pm.)

Author Liz Worth thoroughly researched this labour of love, the first book to chronicle the development of Toronto's punk underground. All the movers and shakers of the scene were interviewed, including members of local legends like The Viletones, The Diodes, The Ugly, and The B-Girls, all offering up bittersweet recollections of making music distinctly at odds with the stagnant rock mainstream of the day. Crucial musicians from Hamilton, an important punk breeding ground giving us Simply Saucer, Teenage Head, and The Forgotten Rebels, also make up an essential chunk of the story. It's a fascinating and occasionally disturbing tale, as the Toronto scene wasn't immune to infighting, gratuitous violence, and drug abuse. Faced with hostile reactions from news media along with radio and record company neglect, it was a pretty thankless job for Southern Ontario punks to make inroads in a country resistant to their audacious music.

Nevertheless, they established the nucleus of Toronto's alternative/indie-rock infrastructure, and Treat Me Like Dirt recognizes the importance of such larger-than-life personalities as The Viletones' Steven Leckie, the aptly-named Mike Nightmare of The Ugly, and Teenage Head's charismatic Frankie Venom, not to mention the managers and promoters who took chances on controversial groups when nobody else wanted to come near them. They're all here in this remarkable book, recommended to anyone who cares about this city's musical legacy.

(Author Liz Worth will be in conversation with Liisa Ladouceur here at Soundscapes on Sat. Feb 13 at 5pm.)