Artist: Elliott BROOD
Album: Mountain Meadows
From: Toronto
Links: Website | MySpace

Mountain Meadows has the old-shoe familiarity that’s essential to good roots
music, but there’s something wild and dangerous around the edges that
flashes like heat lightning and crackles like ozone. Intimate and yet
somehow epic, it doesn’t inspire singing along; it inspires howling.

Jill Wilson, Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg

Artist: Fucked Up
Album: The Chemistry Of Common Life
From: Toronto
Links: Website | MySpace

So people say Canadian songwriting is ironic and distanced? Fucked Up has as direct a line to pissed-offness as any Brit or U.S. punk. Yet they rewrite the laws of fast-hard-loud with eight-minute songs, melodious backup vocals, even flutes. The Chemistry of Common Life confirms Canadians can wear their brains on their sleeves even without a shirt - the sound of a year when everything depended on getting mad without getting stupid.

Carl Wilson, Globe And Mail, Toronto

Artist: Great Lake Swimmers
Album: Lost Channels
From: Toronto
Links: Website | MySpace

Lost Channels isn’t a record you listen to. It’s a record you absorb. Each smoldering word, each angelic melody seeps deep into your humanity and becomes part of the hopeful light within. The Great Lake Swimmers make every song feel precious. Lost Channels is truly gorgeous, and no one’s whole without it.

Amanda Ash, freelance journalist, Vancouver

Artist: Hey Rosetta!
Album: Into Your Lungs (and around your heart and on through your blood)
From: St. John's
Links: Website | MySpace

From Newfoundland you say? Into Your Lungs by Hey Rosetta! offers a delicious collection of memory-engraving mini-epics where classic meets classical and the conventional takes flights of fancy into intelligent, extended excursions that know when to quit – all while maintaining a firm grasp on melodic vibrancy, soaring dynamic range, and broad instrumental palette.

Roch Parisien, Galaxie Folks Roots, Ottawa

Artist: K'NAAN
Album: Troubadour
From: Toronto
Links: Website | MySpace

My first experience with K’NAAN’s Troubadour album was a complete revelation. Here was a collection of 14 songs that were masterly crafted, hook laden, inspirational, and completely joyful, despite the occasional dark subject matter. With repeated listening my affection and admiration only grew and it became clear that Troubadour was a Canadian classic.

Robert Benson, Bravo, Toronto

Artist: Malajube
Album: Labyrinthes
From: Montréal
Links: Website | MySpace

Die-hard Quebec rockers used to say Malajube were “precious”. When the band came up with an infectious nugget of a second album, Trompe-l’œil, some chuckled at the inventive synths and clever lyrics; and when the band launched their intricately proggy and spookingly medieval third, Labyrinthes, a few still wouldn’t budge. I say that if going labyrinthine after a world-wide indie success isn’t a sign of having rock-hard balls, all the while infusing the new twists and turns they’ve taken with a natural talent for poppy hooks, I don’t know what is. So, precious? Sure. Because Malajube’s latest is a truly unique rock gem.

Evelyne Côté, ici, Montréal

Artist: Metric
Album: Fantasies
From: Toronto
Links: Website | MySpace

I dreamed of being a food critic. But being born without a sense of smell or taste I had to settle for being a music fan. The prep time for recipe number four from Metric took four years. They started with fresh organic ingredients, added a little dabble from the spice rack, simmered in a traditional old school manner, gave it a cutting edge presentation, then sat back and let the big, bold flavours do their thing. And Fantasies became reality.

Dave Bookman, 102.1 The Edge, Toronto

Artist: Joel Plaskett
Album: Three
From: Halifax
Links: Website | MySpace

Triple vinyl, triple CD, songs with three-way titles recorded when he was 33, Joel Plaskett’s Three could be dismissed as a vanity concept album if it wasn’t so uniformly strong: 27 songs of heartfelt country, Celtic-tinged folk, freewheeling rock and horn-driven soul, featuring the best lyrics in Plaskett’s fabled career.

Nicholas Jennings, freelance journalist, Toronto

Artist: Chad VanGaalen
Album: Soft Airplane
From: Calgary
Links: Website | MySpace

Soft Airplane clawed its way to the surface from deep inside Chad VanGaalen. With metronomic banjo plucks giving way to unabashed rock anthems and spastic electronics collapsing into passionate, pulsating climaxes, the album seamlessly melds all of his favourite musical tricks, making for an engaging trip through a curious, beautiful labyrinth of sounds.

Patrick Boyle, ffwd, Calgary

Artist: Patrick Watson
Album: Wooden Arms
From: Montréal
Links: Website | MySpace

Some say this album was recorded in Iceland, France, and Montreal, others that it was crafted in a secret workshop where mechanical peacocks flutter, cartoons come to life, and miniature rockets burst through the ceiling to let stardust filter in. Watson and the Wooden Arms ignore the grown-up dullards, the common-sense men; they aim for the impossible and deliver magic.

Mike Doherty, National Post, Toronto