1: Allah-Las - LAHS

Allah-las secure their position as righteous ambassadors of the sounds of summer. On their fourth album LAHS , their songs read like postcards collected over the course of the band’s ever expanding reach, musically as well as geographically. Since the self titled debut, their music has drifted away from the sixties leaning, surf indebted garage pop for more exploratory waters. The music remains unquestionably Allah-las, although years of international travels and exotic lands have pulled a hazy veil across the songs on LAHS. The album’s seductive lure lies in the band’s ever growing strength at creating mood and atmosphere within their songs, managing to ensure each song on LAHS shines like it’s own ocean pearl. Prazer Em Te Conhecer is sung entirely in Portuguese further enhancing the listener’s escape to the songs swaying heat. Instrumental Roco Ono could have fit nicely on this past summer’s Self Discovery For Social Survival, a surf documentary that the band would write and compose five songs for the soundtrack. Album center-piece Star, hypnotizes with it’s slinking shuffle and exceptionally sleek guitar work.

2: Chocolat

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 12 years since Chocolat released their self-titled debut EP and picked up the reigns of local rock royalty. It was a garage rock document that seamlessly integrated Chocolat within the tapestry and legacy of Quebecois rock n’ roll. The band’s first full-length album, Piano élégant arrived in 2008 and built off the foundation from the previous release, adding a more singer-songwriter pop sensibility and ambitious arrangements to their craft. Following a hiatus where Jimmy Hunt would pursue a solo career, recording three excellent albums and various singles, the band returned in 2014 with TssTss. Trading in the band’s former sounds for a more progressive one, incorporating Krautrock elements, chugging rhythms and more psychedelic tendencies, re-birthed this local rock n’ roll institution into an entirely new beast. The sonic explorations would continue through to 2017’s Rencontrez Looloo revealing a slinky and sexy satin sheen.

Chocolat’s new album Jazz engagé (Dare To Care) has arrived just in time to be put at the top of many a year’s end list and teases that perhaps for Chocolat, there is no end in sight. With Jazz engagé, Chocolat delivers a double album that once again lays new sonic charms to their ever-expanding catalogue while maintaining the band’s root qualities that make Chocolat so thrilling. Jimmy Hunt’s lyrics have always leaned towards poetic haiku dioramas dressed with foul language and bawdy humour, tales of women and romantic trysts. The humour and haiku imagery remain intact and Hunt’s use of modern Québec vernacular lends these new tales a certain authenticity. Over the course of Jazz engagé’s twenty-one tracks Jimmy, Emmanuel, Ysael, Guillaume and Christophe, armed as one of the tightest band’s going, create a seamless musical ride that incorporates an almost “Greatest Hits” listening experience for the listener while remaining a unique sounding entry into Chocolat’s flawless catalogue. The production sounds loose in comparison to the more motorik leaning TssTss or the AM glam of Looloo, yet the album shares a little bit of every previous effort’s DNA, from Piano élegant’s gentler touches to later era freak outs. The production eases the listener into a fly on the wall experience, as though the Chocolat are all laying it down in one room, blurring the lines or breaking the barriers of experience versus document. This is also evident as well in some of the album’s self-referential lyrics. Album opener, L’album, literally lists the songs on the album in its verse and the chorus introduces the title of the album as well as declaring the album “C’est fucking contemporain” and “J’suis totally mind blown”. The ebb and flow between moods throughout the album is commendable. Never does the experience feel overcooked or lulling in any way, each song segue reveals how well the sequencing on Jazz engaé works.

From the cheekily titled late-night scorcher “Une introduction inutilement complexe” to the chugging guitar and piano no-frills rock n roll of “Cette fois c’est la bonne” to “Cest nice ton produit” and its return to more progressive pursuits recalling TssTss or Looloo, but with more menace, the album never rests in one place for too long and with most songs under three minutes long, new hook arrive with every spin. In “Devil c’t’à tout le monde” guitars shred metal and new age synths wrap around Hunt’s demonic snarl, touching upon a new direction for Chocolat but one that fits them well. Album closer “Merci” had been teased sometime last year on the Allah-la’s Reverberation Radio podcast and within that context, raised many questions about what Chocolat was up to. It’s a fitting end, a late-night postcard that extinguishes the album, but not before the band gives thanks to the listener and questions where would they be without them, the band locks in, horns squeal and celebrate and the sounds of an audience applauding rises before we are given one more thank you. No Chocolat, thank-you.

3: Luxury Rides- The Last Nerves

Those itching to go back more than a decade, musically speaking, should check out a recently resurfaced punk rock nugget from Montreal’s Luxury Rides available now on KYB Records. Featuring members of Clone Defects, The Dirtys & Pypy/CPC Gangbans, this track will have you yearning for 2005 all over again. Featuring Screamin' Joe Burdick on guitar and vocal, Nick Lloyd on drums, Choyce on bass and Wesley "Wes" Kerstens on guitar. It’s the kind of garage punk that you used to chip your teeth on, pogoing the ceiling tiles loose and always in the red.

4: Michael Stipe - Your Capricious Soul

Rock n’ Roll icon, former R.E.M. frontman and a personal hero, Michael Stipe broke an eight-year hiatus from releasing music in September, with his new single Your Capricious Soul. In the time since the members of R.E.M. laid the band to rest, Michael Stipe has been busy working on various visual arts projects and installations, co-writing and producing Fischerspooner’s most recent album Sir (2018) as well as performing various opening sets for Patti Smith and taking part in the David Bowie Tribute concerts at Carnegie Hall as well as Radio City Music Hall. With more songs already recorded, Stipe decided to release Your Capricious Soul early to help benefit Extinction Rebellion and their effort to combat governmental inaction to climate change through non-violent protest. For the next year, all proceeds from the song will go directly to Extinction Rebellion and i, as of now only available at Michael Stipe’s website here.

The song features Stipe with a lilting vocal delivery over a throb of electronic pulses and stabs of horns. Lyrically the song is a return to form, with cut and paste observations of “birds dying” and “changing fashions” from the artist who penned some of the most enigmatic pop lyrics of the last forty years. A vocal bridge in the middle sees the singer hit a new register, sounding resolute in this new musical rebirth.

5: Susil Sharma- Inception 2

Montreal musician Susil Sharma returns with a shiny new EP titled Inception 2 and with it brings the heat. Puns aside, with Inception 2, Susil Sharma continues his pop induced voyage towards melodic bliss with five songs that continue from the trajectory laid down by his band Heat and their last album Overnight (2017) but with more electronic textures taking the reigns. Whether this was a choice of recording economics or wanting to lean towards a truly solo creative experience, this EP shines an early morning sunbeam straight to the core, doused in syrup, electronics bubble, wash in and out, hazy guitars ring bright over rubber band beats. End to end, Inception 2 presents pop laced meditations (Shakedown 98), breathy J&MC worthy confessional (Wait For You), transcendental soundscapes (Thousand Yard Stare) and album gem, Streets Of Fire lays down various compelling, intertwining elements with relentlessly satisfying results, hitting all receptors. The fine production and mixing work from Sharma and local wizard Adrian Popovich and mastering by Harris Newman make Inception 2 all the sweeter.