Music

Calgary alt-weekly calls Canadian music boring, picks fight with entire Canadian music industry

by Sam Sutherland

In a cover story titled “Canadian music is boring: Living in the age of enforced mediocrity,” Calgary’s alternative weekly FFWD has succeeded in, most likely, pissing off vast swathes of the Canadian music industry (and, probably not unintentionally, driving some curious clicks to its website).

Beginning with the soft targets of the Arcade Fire, Polaris Music Prize, and its recently announced Short List, the feature moves into a full-on critique of the entire music industry’s approach to making, marketing, and writing about Canadian music. Some of its most on-point jabs come at the expense of writers Josiah Hughes (an occasional AUX contributor) and Mark Teo’s journo peers:

When everything is “good,” everything basically sucks. No one breaks the rules, no one pushes the envelope, no one even tries. The Canadian critics, working hand in hand with other facets of the national music industry, have become the equivalent of over-encouraging parents. Everything Canada produces runs the gamut from good to great. “We’re proud of you just for trying. Also we cleaned your room for you and made you some punch.”

Right? It gets better, and it gets worse. Check out two guys calling out everything from MAPL certification to the indistinguishable sounds of “Hey Rosetta and Hey Ocean, We Are the City and City and Colour, Young Galaxy and Young Liars, Woodpigeon and The Wooden Sky, Wintersleep and Winter Gloves, Mother Mother and I Mother Earth”, and, most cruelly, “Library Voices and an actual trip to the library.”