This week!! (May 15th)

Rose Cousins – I believe in Love (and it’s very hard)

Kooks – Never Know

Art d’Ecco – The Traveller

Leftover Salmon –  Big Wheel

Basia Bulat – Baby

The Amazons – Love is a Dog From Hell

HORSEBATH – Hard to Love

Frank Turner – You’re Mine  

CJ Wiley – Adelaide

so this week, I wanted to focus on Canadian artists again, this time through the lense of Exclaim Magazine. All my choices come from their article on the most anticipated albums of 2025 – early 2025 I think. I have left in the text from Exclaim and I am sure I will be adding my own notes, especially where I don’t know the artist.

Exclaim!’s 28 Most Anticipated Canadian Albums of 2025

BY Exclaim! StaffPublished Jan 6, 2025

It’s been said every year since we hit 2020, but 2025 truly feels like maybe we’re not meant to be here. Twenty twenty five? That’s a sci-fi number! That’s a poorly received Chris Pratt-starring space movie year! And yet, here we are, breathing and eating and working and listening to music in 2025.

If we’re gonna be here (and it certainly seems like we are), we might as well make the best of it. To help with that noble goal, Exclaim! has gathered our 28 most anticipated Canadian albums of the new year. From scrappy fresh faces to longstanding favourites, every artist on this list has something exciting — maybe even life-changing — to share with us in the coming months.

Rose Cousins – I believe in love (and its very hard)
Conditions of Love – Vol. 1
(Old Farm Pony Records)
Release date: March 14

Nova Scotia’s Rose Cousins is here to tell us about love; in her own words, she’s come to explore the ways it “feels great and makes us ridiculous. It’s tiring and intense, joyful and devastating.” Vol. 1 of that treatise promises more of Cousins’s deftly rendered, soul-inflected pop music. Light as air but deep as space, lead single “I Believe in Love (and it’s very hard)” makes a simple declaration sound like the bravest thing you could ever admit.

We know something about Rose Cousins. Hers was the last concert we saw before COVID. We also used to go to her family’s beach in PEI – Cousins Beach. A really wonderful area!

Art d’Ecco – The Traveller
Serene Demon
(Paper Bag Records)
Release date: February 14

Art d’Ecco’s music has never been short on ambition, but Serene Demon finds the Victoria-based artist climbing new heights. With a keen ear for playful pastiche and unfamiliar territories, d’Ecco imbues Serene Demon with an alien quality that never pushes one away — instead, it pulls you in and asks that you acclimatize to its strange weather. Squelchy synth pop, wily post-punk and luxurious prog collide in d’Ecco’s neon-smeared underworld; it’s easy to get lost in.

I have a soft spot for Art d’Ecco. The story seems to be that he moved to Vancouver Island to help out his grandmother and from this move he started creating great music. You can hear him regularly on The Verge, but I don’t know if he has made the leap to mainstream CBC Radio yet, but he was interviewed by Tom Power on Q here.

This is a beautiful song Serene Deon that they talk about in the interview.

Basia Bulat – Baby
Basia’s Palace
(Secret City Records)
Release date: February 21

You can always count on Basia Bulat. The Etobicoke legend is a steady boat in the rough waters of time, always returning just when you need her with a new record of affirming, illuminating songs. Basia’s Palace welcomes us deeper into her kingdom than we’ve been before, tackling age and mortality and parenthood and place with Bulat’s reliably clear eye. If the rich, glimmering “Baby” is any indication, Basia’s Palace will continue her reign. 

Never been a fan, but this is an interesting one. I found a piece that writes about the song Baby. She has an interesting quoute here that encapsulates the meaning behind the song:

We keep making the same mistakes until we notice a pattern repeating, and even then, change is hard when we have to fully surrender to it. Could I make that predicament something I wanted to dance to? Could I sing the lyrics with joy instead of the sorrow I was channeling in the past? Nothing in my life has made me want to evolve faster, better, stronger than parenthood and the universe keeps throwing that desire back at me with a laugh and a wink, reminding me that things take time and to just love myself for being human.

Various Small Flames

These next two are totally new to me, but I like their sound and the featured songs on Exclaim!

HORSEBATH – Hard to Love
Another Farewell
(Strolling Bones Records)
Release date: February 7

The worlds of alternative and pop music (are these even separate worlds anymore?) have been overrun with country music as of late. As such, you’ve gotta be pretty special to make an impression anymore. HORSEBATH — the Halifax-and-Montreal based country rock band that boasts constantly rotating, instrument-swapping lead vocalists — are that kind of special. Throwback, camp-lite outlaw country that shimmers like oil on water, Another Farewell is dead-serious about not taking things too seriously.

So, I need more here and went with Pitchfork

It might sound presumptuous or even aspirational for a band to fill its debut with songs about rootlessness and the road, as though the quintet might actually be looking forward to all those good-byes and all those long drives. But Horsebath has been rambling around Canada for a few years now, putting thousands of miles on the odometer as they’ve defined a distinctive balance of rambunctious barroom energy and rootsy, open-plains melodicism. Another Farewell is an album whose outsize musical palette—weird cowboy songs, streamlined saloon rockers, big-hearted folk tracks, pastoral psychedelia—is rooted in their wanderlust.

Pitchfork

CJ Wiley – Adelaide
So Brand New
(Tiny Kingdom)
Release date: February 28

CJ Wiley keeps things simple in order to get complex. Warm guitars, steady drums and lively bass — sometimes that’s all you need to start a fire. Wiley’s Boy Golden-produced debut lights all kinds of fires, an ever-shifting document of change and renewal that finds Wiley working in a meat-and-potatoes country mode that touches on throwback pop rock and gentle folk. Latest single “Adelaide” is a pick-me-up that feels like it’s been around forever — some truths never truly lose their lustre. 

Killbeat Music does a great job of promoting its artists

(and there are more)

From another press release she writes about the song Adelaide, mentioning bell hooks, which is interesting.

Having already released album singles “Cheap Therapy” and “No One Like U”, Wiley is also sharing the new track, “Adelaide”, a heartfelt tribute to chosen family and the conscious choice to love and grow together instead of growing apart. “When I was writing songs for my album, Boy Golden introduced me to the writer Bell Hooks, who has many beautiful perspectives on love,” says Wiley of the track. “The quote, ‘Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action,’ really resonates with me. It reminded me of the relationship I have with my best friend.

“I wrote ‘Adelaide’ for my best friend during a tough time she was going through. I wanted it to serve as a reminder that no matter what happens, I’ll always be there for her. We met in high school in grade 10 drama class—she was the ‘good kid,’ and I was the stoner kid always getting into trouble. As adults, we lead very different lives; I’m constantly on the road while she has a 9-to-5 job that keeps her anchored in Toronto. Despite our separate paths, we talk almost every day and go on adventures whenever we get the chance.

Kooks –  “Never Know” –    Never/Know

The Kooks  are an English band formed in 2004 in Brighton. Yes, they took their name from the David Bowie song from my favourite Bowie album. 

Never/Know is their 7th album.  Only Luke Pritchard on vocals and guitar, and Hugh Harris on bass, guitar, and synthesiser are left from the original line up.    Their music is primarily influenced by the 1960s British Invasion movement and post-punk revival of the early 2000’s.  They have always been a fairly big deal in the UK where they have sold millions of copies of their music.  The new one was highly anticipated.

The official video for Never/Know is kinda fun.  Although almost an hour and in a festival setting.  This gives you an idea how popularThe Kooks are. 

From 2019:    

Leftover Salmon – “Big Wheel” –  Let’s Party About It

Leftover Salmon is an jam band from Boulder, Colorado.  They have been around for almost 36 years and this is the first I have heard of them.   The band labels their style  “Polyethnic Slamgrass” as it incorporates a multitude of influences such a bluegrass , rock, country, and zydeco.  You can hear that in the track Big Wheel.  

They are touring extensively this summer.  

The Amazons – “Love is a Dog From Hell” –  21st Century Fiction

The Amazons are a British rock trio band from the  UK, formed in 2014. The band’s debut album rose to number 8 on the UK Albums Chart.  The  AllMusic  website describes them as an indie rock group known for crafting catchy and melodic arena rock anthems suitable for singing along.  The 2 main influences for the selected song are “gutter poet” Charles Bukowski,   

and Dolly Parton, 

Their seems to be two distinct videos for this song so I’m including both.

   

Frank Turner – “You’re Mine” –  Songs from the Gang  

Several podcast’s back I did Frank Turner and Paul chose The Arkell’s track from  the album Songs from the Gang — A Celebration of Joel Plaskett.  This track is so damn good I’m dipping in that well again.