Late Sunday night slash early Monday morning: Canadian Music Week and my sixth straight night of concert going is now over. A thin sheet of mist is currently dusting Toronto like the produce aisle of a grocery store. I’m exhausted, my head is spacey – I feel like my brain has been effectively liquefied – and we are launching in mere hours. I’m wondering just exactly how I should take this article, this recap of the festival and my experiences within it. I’m wondering if I should go through what I saw day-by-day and give a chronological account of my personal wanderings throughout Toronto during the past week, but I don’t know how interesting that would be to read as what I saw is not necessarily an accurate cross-section of a very large festival; there is very much that didn’t see, so many excellent acts who I still haven’t even heard of. Is the fact that I, being human, and therefore only capable of being in one place at a given time a fair way to handle this, a concise overview?

I’m leaning toward “no.”

Another thing that I’m somewhat conflicted about is how flagrant I should be about overtly criticizing the festival – which I would very much like to do – when I am already aware that this recap is supposed to be this month’s cover story. When a magazine puts something on its cover, does that immediately necessitate glowing support for that thing? I wonder if my general opinion of Canadian Music Week being that I saw many amazing artists, but that the festival itself is not particularly effective is inappropriate.

In this case, I’m going to say “no” again. I don’t think that it’s inappropriate.

In an issue of Steel Bananas that sees its one of its own writers turning on his fellow contributors in a spectacular display of both dissent and solidarity at once, I’m feeling bold enough to say that Canadian Music Week is a good festival, though far from being a great one, cover be damned. Thanks for the jolt of ballsiness, Mr. Wong. I throw my infinite praise behind the many fantastic artists that I saw over the past few days: Yukon Blonde, The Balconies (pictured on the aforementioned cover), Zeus, Jason Collett, Bahamas, P.S. I Love You, Diamond Rings, The Besnard Lakes, Parlovr, The Darcys, The Body Electric, Hemingway and Jane’s Party, you are all fabulous. Some of you are, admittedly, friends of mine and two of you even write for Steel Bananas; nevertheless, you made Canadian Music Week fantastic, much, I’m sure, to Canadian Music Week’s chagrin.

Last year, in a preview of the festival I wrote that “It would certainly seem... that the organizers of the twenty-sixth annual Canadian Music Week festival and conference don’t want you to come to their event at all,” and looking back that is a statement that I still stand by. More often than not, a festival is only as good as the artists that appear, and if we are thinking in terms of this, Canadian Music Week is a very good festival, if paling more than slightly in comparison to NXNE to which it appears to be like a misguided little brother. On the whole I feel like Canadian Music Week misses the mark somewhere along the line despite itself, and I think I have a pretty good idea of where that spot on the line is.

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Early Monday afternoon: I’m in a slightly more coherent headspace, though I now have no doubt that I am acquiring what will probably be a thoroughly nasty cold. Bummer. Still this article is bound to take a far stranger direction than is likely necessary as my dazed introduction set me off on a line of thinking that is fairly difficult to reverse. I am also pretty happy that I went to sleep when I did, otherwise strange and terrible things might have happened, and you might have had to read them. Trust me, it’s better off this way.

Moving right along though, I find it interesting that in my own personal Canadian Music Week experience I didn’t see all that many bands that I hadn’t seen before, and liked even fewer of the bands I hadn’t seen than I might have expected. It was a festival marked by repeated views with relatively little new talent leaking onto my radar. Unlike last year’s NXNE where I returned home with a plethora of new and exciting things to keep track of, there were only two acts at CMW that I wasn’t familiar with that I can now count myself as keeping track of.

First was Montreal’s Parlovr who performed on Friday night as part of the Pop Montreal showcase at the Silver Dollar. I had only heard of Parlovr in passing before and had only scoped their Myspace page the afternoon of their show – and even then only in passing – but was thoroughly impressed after they traipsed onto the stage following a face-melting performance by Kingston indie-rock two-piece P.S. I Love You, as well as solid sets by future humongoid giant superstar Diamond Rings and all-female garage rock noisemakers The Peelies. Parlovr are a three-piece band of weirdos who play an odd concoction of synthy, anthemic party-power-pop, and astonishingly loud, fuzzed-out noise drawing influence heavily from 80s post-punk and new wave.

These guys put on a frenetic, erratic set full of energy and goofiness that counters the fist-pumping self-described “sloppy pop” that can loosely be described as sounding like Japandroids with a hard-on for Devo and Gang of Four. I was impressed by their giddy, madcap energy, their hilarious stage personae and their devotion to making party songs that only happen to be extremely noisy and strange. While I am yet to hear their self-released, self-titled debut album that came out in 2008, from what I have heard on their website, it sounds every bit as exciting, reckless and chaotic as their live set. According to their blog they are recording a new EP, which is nearing completion, and they have signed with Toronto-based Dine Alone Records, who are apparently re-releasing their record.

The other serious new discovery for me, an even more important discovery than Parlovr, was found Saturday night at one of the ChartAttack showcases at the Horseshoe Tavern. Vancouver’s Yukon Blonde were easily the best band that I saw that I knew virtually nothing about at this year’s CMW. Their set was absolutely fabulous top to bottom, I was immediately enraptured by them and I as well as everyone I talked to at the venue that night could not stop raving about the west coast four-piece even before their set had ended. As it turns out, their self-titled debut record (released jointly by Nevado and Bumstead) is just as magnificent and powerful as the live set, full of sunny melodies, gorgeous harmonies and an air of nostalgic wonder.

Yukon Blonde are part of a recent and increasing rise to prominence of acts who are embracing wholeheartedly the sounds and aesthetics of 60s pop and classic rock to the point where their throwback tendencies become fresh and exciting. This group of artists, which most notably includes Caribou, Zeus, Bahamas, Plants and Animals and Dr. Dog, wear their debts to the Beach Boys and the Band as badges of honor and want nothing more than to expand upon the music they admire the most, with little concern for how their influences might define them. As we all know, classic rock isn’t cool.

In a recent interview with Exclaim, Carlin Nicholson of Zeus explains, “Zeus songs are in a zone that nobody's tapped for a long time… Like, the very intentional back-up 'ooh-wa-wahs' with no fear of doing it on stage, y'know? There are a lot of angular bands that don't do that but I find that even those guys are into this stuff; even the hardest rocking dude will say 'I like the Band, I like Neil Young.' So how come no one sounds like that any more? I mean everybody I know listens to that old stuff. So where is it? Why am I not hearing any new stuff like that?" A couple of years ago that might have been true, even as far back as 2007, anyone so bold as to attempt to revive the earnest, happy-go-lucky aesthetic of the 60s in the steadfastly forward thinking 2000s would have surely been tarred and feathered by critics. In 2010, however, the idea of being less concerned with looking forward, less concerned with posturing newness for the sake of itself and instead embracing what you love the most is becoming practically and finally commonplace.

Yukon Blonde are bearded Band-loving Vancouver residents who could not stop smiling throughout their set as they sang in glorious four-part harmonies to shimmering, reverberated guitar noise. They have an easy-going, lighthearted air about them that matches perfectly with their energetic, upbeat and immediately likeable songs that evoke everything that we like about 60s music today. Their lead vocalist, Graham Jones was, very notably, wearing a Jon-Rae & the River t-shirt, which if you know me, would also know that that obviously went over very, very well with me. The Horseshoe was abuzz with “Holy Shit” on the lips of everyone previously unaware of this very exciting act.

In any case, I am very much in favor of the fact that one thing that I’m really noticing in the latter years of the 2000s and the early stages of this extremely young decade is that all of the best artists aren’t dark and brooding anymore. All of the best music made in the last three or four years has been almost invariably happy, hopeful and genuine. Also, a lot of it has been Canadian. Caribou’s Andorra, LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, Plants and Animals’ Parc Avenue, Joel Plaskett’s Ashtray Rock, Bibio’s Ambivalence Avenue, Japandroids’ Post-Nothing and Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca are all extremely indicative of this. Even when the good tunes have been on the darker side, as in Jon-Rae Fletcher’s Oh, Maria and Chad VanGaalen’s Soft Airplane they are undeniably genuine and sincere. I am looking forward to seeing this trend continue.

CMW was kicked off with the most magnificent display of this movement on Wednesday night at Lee’s Palace with the Bonfire Ball Revue, a collaborative performance by Jason Collett, Zeus and Bahamas. Instead of the usual fare of putting one band on after the other in any kind of succession, the artists here all remained on stage for nearly the entirety of the three-hour show in front of a jam-packed Lee’s. Zeus, in addition to playing almost all of their recently released debut record Say Us, also served as backing band for Collett as they have now for several years, as well as for Bahamas, which is the stage name of Afie Jurvanen, former sideman for both Collett and Feist. All three acts alternated songs with no set pattern so the show was always fresh as the audience was always in the dark as to who would get the next song.

Zeus, fabulous as always – I believe this is the fifth time I’ve seen them – are never tiring; their stage presence is absurdly powerful, as is their tone which is so enormous and magnificent that it shouldn’t be legal. Collett, fresh off of his own new record, the decidedly more band-centric Rat a Tat Tat (produced by Carlin Nicholson and Mike O’Brien of Zeus) was charming and exciting as usual. The man is a born performer, an excellent singer, and a charismatic personality who also happens to be one hell of a great songwriter. Collett is easily one of the best live acts around because he is quite simply a total package – he can do it all. Bahamas, however, I had never seen before and was very deeply impressed. I’ve heard his recordings before and they are very good, but I was not prepared for just how smooth and soulful that Bahamas sound really is. The understated, lighthearted Jurvanen has a powerful voice and a relaxed, easy-going sound that would nothing more than to be likened to its project’s namesake. The Bonfire Ball was really a show I am glad to have seen, it was an original, fresh take on the live concert format which not only demonstrated the musical prowess of its participants, but also helped to solidify the growing sense of community within the Canadian music of today.

The majority of the other shows that I caught at CMW, however, were from artists that I am already quite familiar with, but nevertheless added a lot to my festival experience. The Balconies, who actually followed Yukon Blonde immediately at the Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday night and whose vocalist/guitarist Jacquie Neville is currently featured on our cover, were stellar as always with their catchy, technically fantastic and very original pop. I like the Balconies because not only are they fun and very good performers, but are also very clever, talented songwriters. Their sound is not easy to pin down. They have been getting a lot of very well-deserved buzz around Toronto these days and their fabulous self-titled debut record has been getting a lot of very well-deserved good reviews. Like Jason Collett, the Balconies are a package deal; they can do it all.

In other news, local noise-rockers The Darcys (featuring recent addition to the SB staff, Dave Hurlow on bass) made their first performance without lead vocalist Kirby Best at the Audio Blood Media showcase at the El Mocambo. Best had left the group only a few weeks before the festival, allowing guitarist Jason Couse to step up to the front. All in all, I would say that despite the band’s obvious anxiety about the situation, it went extremely well and in many ways bested their previous incarnation. Being down to only two guitar players as opposed to three has opened up the Darcys sound considerably, rendering it clearer and more direct as opposed to their usual wall of impenetrable noise. Also, Couse as vocalist was forced to stick to guitar where he usually alternated between guitar and organ, which allowed his guitar playing and that of Mike La Riche to really come to the forefront with very positive results.

In the end, however, Canadian Music Week is a strange sort of entity; it really wants to be as relevant, as comprehensive and as cool as NXNE, but it never reaches that mark. Notably, this occurs in the sense that CMW has no clue how to market itself. Their posters usually boast the names of artists that would never in a million years appeal to anyone in their core audience, with the likes of Hedley garnering the largest font this year, along with Our Lady Peace. At least this year Constantines, Joel Plaskett and Jason Collett had their names near the top of the poster, last year the quote-unquote “headliners” of the festival included Buckcherry, Default, Hinder and Papa Roach. I would assume that CMW is targeting a similar crowd as NXNE, and if my assumption is correct, then why in God’s name do they make their festival so severely unappealing on the surface. It’s a good festival, but I will never understand how they imagine they might attract people who bought wristbands for NXNE by dangling Hedley in their faces. It’s actually baffling to me. Aside from most of the bigger shows that they put on, CMW is on the whole a pretty well-run and interesting operation with a lot of artists on the bill that would have been well worth seeing.

Though I must say that in general CMW is pretty far away from the pulse of Canadian music at large. I will never understand why they insist on booking the most expensive people they can to be keynote speakers instead of anyone who might have anything interesting to say about Canadian music. Last year’s calamitous keynote by Gene Simmons apparently taught CMW’s organizers nothing and so this year they decided to book someone only slightly more relevant than the utterly obsolete Simmons, in none other than Slash, who allegedly proceeded to discuss nothing in his speech except his recent autobiography. Hoo-rah. CMW’s apparently unwillingness to get in touch with Canadian music on anything but a superficial level I find rather distasteful. Almost all of the performances I saw that were noteworthy were part of showcases organized by entities outside of the festival or were concerts, such as the Bonfire Ball that would have happened even if the festival hadn't slapped its name on them. Fortunately Pop Montreal, ChartAttack and other such organizations have a lot more sense and were able to knock a little bit of taste into the typically uninspired festival.

There is a lot to be said about Canadian music. Our country has produced some of the most unique and sincere music of the past decade; our artists have been doing amazing work in many genres and fields, and many of them have gone on to great international recognition. There is much to be proud of, many albums worth noting and many movements worth praising – many of which were demonstrated at this year’s CMW. The main thing that Canadian Music Week demonstrated, however, was that even though we are doing many groundbreaking and original things, we are still very much a nation with an inferiority complex. Canadian Music Week is a festival with a lot of potential that continuously sells itself short when it could do amazing things. Instead it chooses to be only a few notches better than the Junos, which attempts to award the best of Canadian music, but is the sort of entity that views Avril Lavigne as being edgy. We have made great strides to remedy this and recognize out true artists who are doing wonderful work, unfortunately our own cultural stigmas are still haunting us and are proving extremely difficult to shake.