What took you so long

I would like to report, once again, that I'm very slow to discover a fucking amazing artist (not totally to blame, more details later in this post). Having been raised in Edmonton I can quite accurately state that nothing good in the realm of the recorded arts hath spawned from this crude oil soiled Province, much less stayed there to flourish.

That is why I am so stunned and awed by the body of work that Chad VanGaalen has produced. This guy lives and records (in his basement) in Calgary. I hate so much of what Canada has offered up for the indie community to consume, so this is as shocking to me as it is for you to hear me gush over an over-achiever in this lazy member of the commonwealth.

Of the three albums (Skelliconnection, Infiniheart and Soft Airplane; all on Subpop no less) I've been listening to over that last three months I've found it hard to find fault in this genre bending wunderkind. He does the acoustic ballad, electro pop and lo-fi rocker all with equal aplomb. I want to know how he has managed to barricade himself from the mediocrity that thrives in Radiant City.

Another musical find this year was Elbow. When I first heard grounds for divorce I thought, wow, this is like a Haruki Murakami novel condensed into 3:39 minutes. After listening to the rest of the album (The Seldom Seen Kid) I was won over by the variety, poetry and ingenuity of this British band. I download the rest of their catalog at that point. Of the 4 studio albums that they have released all of them are uniformly great.

Guy Garvey's voice at times sounds like Peter Gabriel or Sting but the musical accompaniment is something altogether different. They just don't really have a formula. They seem to re-invent themselves with each song yet retain their own identity. I think how can a band like this go largely unnoticed outside of England when the bland-as-fuck Coldplay seems to add a million more fans with ever release. Something is wrong with the music listening public and has been for a while. I'm resigned to the fact that the real good ones will never convince the public of their greatness but will create ten times the adoration in smaller fan bases.

In an era where we have algorithms and AI that collect and process your music listening habits why is it that this band has eluded me? I've been actively searching for a band like this and it's taken me 7 years to gain access to their amazing body of work. What up with all this taste-making technology? I've been fucked over by the machine. It shouldn't be that hard in 2008 to match up the appropriate band with its intended audience. It's not like I'm a casual listener or anything.

Hey technology, get better. I'm warning you.

Having said this, I'm grateful for finally discovering these bands on my own and will be listening to them for years to come.