Dec. 30, 2009 - Issue #741: 10

The Decade: The Wheat Pool

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Again, full disclosure: Mike Angus is also a regular contributor in this paper. But again, he's also a pretty good songwriter, a role that he shares with his brother Robb in the Wheat Pool. The band came by the studio for a few songs in advance of the release show for its sophomore record, Hauntario.

The chicken or the egg?

When I started looking back over the last 10 years, as seen through my beloved record collection, I started to worry of growing old, or even worse, out of touch. When I drew a rough list of my favourite records from the last decade, the first five to come to mind were released in 2000. So where has my attention been for the other nine years? I started to panic and worry that I was losing touch with the pulsing frontier of new music.

But look at the big picture of the state of music itself, and you start to get a clearer picture of where the last 10 years in music have brought us. I mean, this decade brought us the dawn of YouTube and iPods, and the result of this revolution has sparked debate concerning the death of the album, right? So then how do you explain vinyl’s comeback? As far as records go, maybe I’m not alone when I say I still love records.

Which brings us back to The List. Like I said, it’s hard to move past the year 2000: Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump, Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker, Weakerthans’ Left and Leaving were all records that inspired me beyond just listening to music. Wilco had put out so many important records leading up to Y2K that I have to include Mermaid Avenue 2 here, since it really represents the last record of that band’s incarnation before it imploded into a different animal with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Wilco’s imprint on the past decade’s Americana scene cannot be underestimated, however boring their recent records have been; while post-grunge bands bored us with UFC soundtracks, the alt-country scene that Wilco continues to inspire flourished with a new American folk tradition: Iron & Wine’s Our Endless Summer Days, Beck’s Sea Change, Sufjan Stevens’ Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State or Seven Swans (I can’t decide which is better), M. Ward’s Post-War—all innovative, ambitious electro-folk albums that place an emphasis on tradition, literate lyricism and texture beyond their subtle folk sensibilities that we wouldn’t see re-emerge until 2008 with divine records like Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago and Fleet Foxes’ self-titled long player.

The last decade has seen the end of some important bands as well. We lost Elliott Smith in 2003, Grandaddy packed it in soon after and out of the Rheostatics’ demise came Martin Tielli’s exceptional solo record We Didn’t Even Suspect That He Was the Poppy Salesman. And while I’m glad emo died, Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism might prove to be a perfect record. Only time will tell.

The Shins delighted us over the last 10 years with three outstanding, artfully-crafted recordings, crowned by Wincing the Night Away. The last half of this decade has seen the critical and commercial success of the oddest outsiders, like Beirut’s Flying Club Cup and Montréal’s Polaris-worthy scene—the Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Feist’s The Reminder and Patrick Watson’s Close to Paradise. Just south of the border, Brooklyn exploded with such penetrating records as Sufjan Steven’s Illinois, Interpol’s Antics and the National’s Boxer, proving that music could still be fresh, exhilarating and surprising, shuffle be damned. V

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