Favourite Fifty of 2022

Pink Tiger should feel like two separate albums – the first half reaches deep with raw, Mount Eerie-esque acoustic tracks until it opens up cathartically into a back half full of the jangle-pop we know and love from Apollo Ghosts. It is the stark difference between these two parts that make for a beautiful whole. • Matt Hertendy

Aquakulture’s sophomore release, Don’t Trip, was initially conceived as a 5-track EP about the honeymoon phase of the relationship between Aquaculture’s Lance Sampson and his partner, Julia. The inspiration didn’t stop there, though. Don’t Trip’s thirteen songs are inviting, nostalgic, and community-oriented. It is a celebration of Black Nova Scotian culture, set to a 90s house party backdrop, and everybody’s invited. You won’t want to miss this one. • Sophie Noel

On Clouds of Joy, Badge Époque Ensemble — an undeniably groovy group — burst through the stratus with an album alive to the glory of collaboration and harmony. Featuring choral vocals arranged by Dorothea Paas and sung by a crew of some of Toronto’s best singers (Paas, James Baley, Robin Dann, Alex Samaras, Alanna Stewart), Max Turnbull fully realizes the “ensemble” portion of his latest musical project. • Mackenzie Cameron

Between the heaviest and most terrifying tracks on For the Love of Drugs are some truly euphoric and smooth breaks. This is the command that Quinton Barnes has on his production and storytelling. From the minute you set eyes on the striking album artwork, you know you are in for something next level, and Barnes’ latest set of songs delivers on that promise. • Matt Hertendy

On their debut release, Vancouver band Big Rig plays easy-listening bops that are, at the same time, deeply sensitive. Jen Twynn Payne’s lyrics are no-frills yet introspective and somehow manage to make the familiar twang of banjo and guitar sound fresh and new with lines that feel especially hopeful and personal. “Everything will turn out fine if you want it to.” • Daisy Swain

Idée Fixe Records had one heck of a year, a highlight of which is the subtle yet surprising jazz-tinged debut by the Weather Station and U.S Girls collaborator Evan J Cartwright. His unique voice rings out clearly over an eclectic array of strings, keys and field recordings. Whether you listen from top to tail or bit by bit, there are always new sounds and surprises to pick up on. • Matt Hertendy

Daniel Romano and his ever-ambitious Outfit set their course for the heavens with La Luna, a record that consists of one long song in twelve parts. Surprising, progressive, masterfully arranged and performed, this cinematic addition fits in with Romano’s cannon like a puzzle piece nobody knew it needed. Once again, Romano is stepping through doors nobody else saw and taking his repertoire to new heights. • Sophie Noel

While ambient music is often treated as background noise, something to drown out your thoughts so you can finally focus on work or a book, Michael Scott Dawson’s (Library Voices, Peace Flag Ensemble) Music for Listening has a different purpose. These twelve ambient guitar works—that also incorporate piano, tape loops, and, most engagingly, the sounds of birds—are best consumed with your whole heart and brain. It is a beautiful escape. • Laura Stanley

I believe every word DijahSB raps. Their music is evidence of how much groove can come of not looking away at what’s scary but instead being straightforward about what you do and don’t know. • Tia Julien

Fresh Pepper takes the trauma of working in kitchens and sublimates it into an auditory feast for the masses. Drifting seamlessly from smooth adult alternative about chopping onions to jagged and percussive jazz-fusion and racing electronica, Fresh Pepper serves up one hell of an eight-course delight. • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

Producers like Jacques Greene so often play the role of shepherds on the road towards self-forgetting. The night services they conduct create space for people to let go, turn outward, and escape. On Fantasy, the ripples of melancholy that create such compelling tension in his music find space to grow into full-on waves. With dance floors and clubs shuttered during the pandemic, Greene turned inward to create music that grapples with feelings of isolation, anxiety, and longing. But rather than sour the music, this introspection leads to Greene’s most focused, immersive, and liberated music yet. • Geoff Parent

For the April edition of Exclaim!’s New Faves list, I wrote that Richard Inman is one of Canada’s best country artists and it bears repeating: Richard Inman is one of Canada’s best country artists. Inman’s Come Back Through is a timeless record full of relatable songs that will touch every listener. • Laura Stanley

How rare to find a band that sounds so familiar, unpretentious and welcoming in 2022. Occupying the middle ground between Dave Matthews Band and Against Me!, Toronto-based four-piece John’s Cottage plays arena-sized campfire rock that begs you to strap on your acoustic and sing along. • Mackenize Cameron

Like planting a flag on the moon, naming an album after oneself can sometimes be like claiming an undiscovered world. On his self-titled third album, Jonathan Personne (Jonathan Robert or Corridor) handily asserts his mastery at building a musical universe full of familiar guitar terrain that’s textured and nuanced in ways that feel foreign and alien. • Jim Di Gioia

From their New Brunswick home, Julie Doiron and Dany Placard transcended the walls and borders of their homestead to make domestic tales about planting tomatoes sound epic and songs about mayo into sludgy post-punk anthems. It was never in doubt that artists all over the world were using their lockdown time to make evocative and affecting art, and yet Doiron and Placard still managed to surprise and delight us with their unique pandemic document. • Jim Di Gioia

Avec Depuis, Lydia Képinski nous emmène dans les profondeurs du discothèque le plus sombre de Montréal. Her voice soars melodically above grimy beats and bone-shaking synths on this alt-pop odyssey. • Matt Hertendy

Now is the dawn of Dark Kiwi. Chopper lands in familiar territory for the Toronto band, with their trademark characters, relatable references and millennial gripes, and the odd deliciously cryptic passage. Still, Chopper reaches new sonic depths to create a truly satisfying addition to Kiwi Jr.’s catalogue. • Matt Hertendy

Korea Town Acid’s Jessica Cho is continuing a masterful run of genre-defying electronic music that is equal parts mellow and abrasive yet always charming. On Elephant in the Room, she delves deep into her synths, samplers, and drum machines and comes out with some of her best tracks yet. • Daniel Field

With man Like Me, Lan’do hits that sweet spot, feeling both sentimental and combative, rapping about being the exception over playful but hard-hitting beats: “Most don’t make it out.” • Tia Julien

For singer-songwriter Bells Larsen, the sudden death of their first love at a very young age has led to a deeply moving exploration of what it means to experience profound sorrow as a young queer person. Good Grief doesn’t strive to answer the unanswerable questions that death leaves in its wake but serves as a reminder that even in those bleakest moments when our heart aches for our departed, we are not alone. • Jim Di Gioia

Disco is alive and well and works in a Tim Hortons cafe in Rosaireville, New Brunswick. I never took the death of disco all that seriously, but Lisa LeBlanc’s Chiac Disco restored my faith in the much-maligned genre with its sincerity, seamless instrumentation and ridiculously catchy hooks that dare you not to dance. • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

Being Somewhere captures the slippery phenomenon of belonging to a world in peril. With themes of political unrest, anxiety, and isolation, Dan Mangan gleans beauty and revelation in existing “somewhere between here and nowhere at all.” • Tia Julien

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti’s Memory’s Fool feels so familiar yet brand new, an amalgam of retro influences, crisp production, and the artist’s laconic yet warm drawl. His long and beautiful tracks sail by as easily as the jazz-rock sound he creates. • Daniel Field

With his debut record, MorMor blends himself into the groves of our imagination. Semblance is embedded with his familiar reverbing loops and is nothing less than a focused yet gentle attempt to gather his once-scattered reflections. • Weajue Mombo

Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Eliza Niemi reaches out and touches your shoulder on her charming pop LP Staying Mellow Blows. Niemi’s songs are affable, funny, warm, and honest—all of the same qualities of friends who help you through your sad winters. • Laura Stanley

P’tit Belliveau displays a truly impressive range of sounds, effortlessly blending pop and bluegrass, French and English, humour and sincerity. Quelle que soit langue que vous parlez, cet album est un bonafide good time. • Matt Hertendy

With Bronco, masked mystery Orville Peck once again demonstrates a keen ear for classic country and a lyrical sensibility deeply rooted in the tradition of folk storytelling. Peck’s characteristic wavering baritone bounces across richly textured and dynamic arrangements, affirming his spot as a leading innovator and steward of Canadian country songwriting. • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

2022 saw the return of Ottawa/Hull-based band Pony Girl after an extended absence with the charming and quirkily-named Enny One Wil Love You. While the band describes the time since their last release (2015’s Foreign Life) as being chaotic and fraught with peril, Pony Girl channels any lingering negative energy into complex, articulate pop songs about some decidedly un-pop themes. • Jim Di Gioia

If this is what unravelling sounds like, then I wish I was a little less put together. PUP‘s The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND is self-deprecation in four chords, electrified and distorted to levels previously unimagined. Speaking from experience, however, only the feeling of coming undone could produce something so earnest. And what could be more punk than that? • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

Proving that epic and awe-inspiring songs don’t always need to exceed the three-minute-mark (or 5 on the volume dial), Montreal’s River (aka River Wilson) makes the absolute most from the precious little he shares with listeners on his debut, The Kingdom Within. From the stirring acapella Ballad “In My Arms” to the haunting drone of “Either/Or,” The Kingdom Within is an enthralling introduction to a fascinating new voice. • Jim Di Gioia

It is tempting to quote the late Dallas Good’s assertion that Colder Streams is “the best record that has ever been made by anyone” and leave it there—but that would be lazy music journalism. Good makes my job here difficult in a way that the album itself does not. He has made me self-conscious of my role in perpetuating some grand exaggerated narrative. Suffice it to say, this is a very good album that first-time, long-time, and some-time listeners of the Sadies will be eminently satisfied with. The Sadies embody excellence, consistency, and class. Colder Streams is by the Sadies. I will let readers do the math on this one. • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

A euphoric collection of funk, disco, indie rock, and enough synths to score a season of Stranger Things, Sauna‘s Dose Yourself was the most fun I had listening to music this year, and it wasn’t even close. After the last few years of paranoia, introspection, and solitude, Dose Yourself is an album that makes it easier to give in, get strange, let go, and feel alive. • Geoff Parent

Sex is kickin’ it, cuz fuck you. On their debut EP, Nanaimo BC’s Max Pittet and Chris Thompson make a strong case that they are the year’s best new band. The dual vocalist approach is the magic here, as they trade off and harmonize à la the XX or early TV on the Radio. While Textin’ Yr Exes sounds minimal and a bit lo-fi, the wide-screen nature of these songs often breaks through, like on the epic climax of “Garden/Garden/Garden” or from the jump on “Solidarity.” “Thank you come again, for you, I won’t come again,” Pittet sings on the catchy and anthemic “Come Again.”  Who better to lead the so-called “indie sleaze” revival than a band this good called Sex? • Mackenzie Cameron

The music of Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich has always felt like being caught between sleep and waking life. It’s liminal, candlelit, nodding off by the fire-type stuff. On At Scaramouche, these feelings and sensations linger (as do the sublime instrumentation and poetics), but they are punctuated by thrilling moments of groove, pop, and propulsion that make it their most rewarding record to date. • Geoff Parent

Sister Ray‘s Communion doesn’t shy away from being a deeply personal and intricate record. It was no surprise to hear the same graceful elegance when we spoke to her for 20 or 20 that gave me another touch of understanding. • Weadee Mombo

Rarely, if ever, has an album had such an immediate impact on me and remained so indelibly imprinted upon my psyche as Communion. Seeing Ella Coyes live is a near-spiritual experience, which might sound like hyperbole, but be assured it is no such thing. • Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay

A self-proclaimed “boom-bap-ologist,” Tarik Robinson weaves a personal narrative on Rotations (his first album under his own name) that translates into the universal search for joy and acceptance. It’s an album whose beats are at once nostalgic, infectious, and affecting. • Jim Di Gioia

2022 came in on a near-perfect (albeit thematically apocalyptic) high-concept album that unexpectedly made Jim Carrey a pop star (kind of). Dawn FM bettered Abel Tesfaye’s finest work as the Weeknd by a traffic-jam-packed highway-to-hell mile. Other later-year big league releases may have pulled focus away from the Weeknd, but classics like Dawn FM will endure in the long run. •  Jim Di Gioia 

On Heaven’s Mini Mart, drummer and improvisor Jen Yakamovich’s debut release as Troll Dolly, Yakamovich arranges a bounty of sonic treats. While supply chain issues have been a serious concern over the last couple of years, fear not, the supply of joyful experimental-folk sounds at Heaven’s Mini Mart never wanes. • Laura Stanley

Flush with a fundamental lightness, the Weather Station‘s How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is as delicate as glass and flows as gently as a moonlit river. This album becomes a celestial object in itself, standing on its own and drawing us into orbit. Each listen reveals another layer of breathtaking heartbreak, outnumbering the stars themselves. • Weadee Mombo

A chilly yet inviting slice of ambient IDM, with growling bass synths amongst sparse percussion and glassy synths, wihtikow’s first of two albums this year (he followed up February’s ᐃᐧᐦᑎᑯᐤ with the album ᒌ​ᐸ​ᕀ in September) is an excellent winter soundtrack. • Daniel Field