FUCKED UP
The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)
The monoculture seems increasingly quaint these days, like members of a royal family who haven’t abdicated the throne. If consensus ain’t coalescing, give me discord. The Chemistry of Common Life never skimps on decibels and Fucked Up singer Pink Eyes bellows as though he’s slaying hoary frost giants, but the band’s playful experiments fight against the atomization of the culture better than any token year-end music critic exercises: this monumental hardcore album gives integral roles to both opera-trained Katie Stelmanis and a solo flute. Even the disc’s epic themes share their anthemic choruses with lyrics that offer a laudable appreciation of drug-altered fucking.

A Year in the Life of Fucked Up

Jan: The media are still abuzz with the late-’07 story that Fucked Up have joined Xiu Xiu in a lawsuit against Rolling Stone and Camel Cigarettes in response to the latter’s “Indie Rock Universe” advertorial.

March: There’s nothing like a hardcore punk show on a bridge at 4am to rouse the riot police. Another monumental SXSW performance for Fucked Up. Also, Toronto country darlings One Hundred Dollars cover “Blaze of Glory” for Exclaim! TV.

June: Matador Records sign Fucked Up. Slate magazine writes about expletive-laden band names.

July: “No Epiphany” single and CD version of Year of the Pig EP are released — fans begin counting down the days to Oct 7.

Aug: Fucked Up open for the Stooges! At Massey Hall!

Sep: A shirtless and bloody (obviously) Pink Eyes graces the cover of NME.

Oct: Busy, busy, busy: The Chemistry of Common Life comes out; the band play a 12-hour show in a Brooklyn storefront; destroy the bathroom at MTV Canada and curate an entire weekend of gigs in their home town.

Nov: During their Euro tour, the band record at BBC1 in London and catch a glimpse of Beyoncé.

Dec: Chemistry charts high on many year-end lists: Exclaim!’s No Future column (1); Onion AV Club (2); Spin (4), Pitchfork (17). CHRIS BILTON

VEDA HILLE
This Riot Life (Ape House)
This veteran Vancouver singer/songwriter sings about how “this spring is the one other seasons aim to be,” and “ridiculous abundance” — she may well be singing about her “Lucklucky” eleventh album, which is rich with simple hymnal melodies, raging piano prog-rock and chamber-music arrangements, with dashes of klezmer and Japanese cabaret. And though the disc sounds deadly serious, Hille is full of levity and irreverence towards her spiritual subjects, like those “sacred hearts that bleed all over everywhere” and the “kid of god [who] stays up all night long.” No wonder The Weakerthans slid her some of their songwriting prize money. MICHAEL BARCLAY

PORTISHEAD
Third (Universal)
Reunions by aging alt-rock acts after decade-plus absences have become so commonplace, you’d think they were actually written into the artists’ original contracts. As the band who mainstreamed the trip-hop sound that dominated cafés, lounges and chill-out rooms in the mid-’90s, it wouldn’t be presumptuous to think that a Portishead reunion would yield reheated variations on that style to sate the ever-expanding demographic of iPod Nano-rocking indie yuppies. But on Third, Portishead re-emerge as a band that’s quite literally risen from the dead — that is, an uglier, mutated, more haunted version of their former selves. The smooth, controlled breaks of their signature work are scrapped for a percussive clatter that drives Beth Gibbons’ unsettled voice to even more desperate depths, while the film-noir ambience of old is refashioned as pure, post-apocalyptic dread. In other words: a soundtrack tailor-made for these sour times. STUART BERMAN

DEERHOOF
Offend Maggie (Kill Rock Stars)
How is it that Deerhoof actually sound weirder when they gravitate towards accessibility? Offend Maggie, their first album since returning to the quartet format (now with guitarist Ed Rodriguez) combines the pop appeal of Friend Opportunity and the live-sounding production of The Runners Four for the most cohesive Deerhoofian offering to date. Their two-guitar attack is both weighty — with ample riffage on “My Purple Past” and “The Tears and Music of Love”— and pensive, as songs like “Fresh Born” and “Snoopy Waves” drift along on intertwined melodies. Drummer Greg Saunier channels his rhythmic spasticity into some nimble-yet-noddable beats and the dudes even occasionally harmonize with Satomi Matsuzaki’s impossibly high-pitched vocals. For all their tangents, Deerhoof manage to keep the abstract noodling to a minimum; even the album’s most irritating song (“Basketball Get Your Groove Back”) is kind of endearing. Few bands improve upon a wholly original sound with such consistency. CHRIS BILTON

TOXIC HOLOCAUST
An Overdose Of Death (Relapse)
Most modern thrash-metal bands are content to stay in simplistic revelry mode. Toxic Holocaust isn’t one of them. Shrouded in a sinister, apocalyptic atmosphere, there’s an urgency and desperation that pervades An Overdose Of Death, which provides plenty of the forthright, rabid vocals, rousing low-end riffs and expedient rhythms essential to speed/thrash metal. Commanding and mystifying with its ravenous approach and overall theme of universal devastation via nuclear war on tracks such as “Wild Dogs,” “City Of A Million Graves” and “Nuke The Cross,” An Overdose Of Death instantly establishes itself as one of the genre’s crucial efforts, and an essential for any self-respecting ’banger. KEITH CARMAN

INVINCIBLE
Shapeshifters (Emergence Music)
2008 was a banner year for Detroit hip-hop — eLZhi, Guilty Simpson and the ubiquitous Black Milk were among those who definitely left indelible marks. But ex-carpenter Ilana Weaver, a.k.a. Invincible, hammered the point home, if you’ll excuse the pun. While lacking the profile of Michigan’s other Big Three, Invincible convincingly made the case that she deserves more attention, inventively welding her community activism to her music. Tackling gentrification, the war on terror and cultural intolerance may sound a tad didactic to some, but her unquestionable rhyme skills —anchored by inimitable gritty Midwestern production from the aforementioned Black Milk, among others — rendered her urgent and hard-hitting missives undeniable. DEL F. COWIE

DUBMATIX
Renegade Rocker (7 Arts)
Having drunk from the this city’s deep well of reggae for nearly two decades, Dubmatix hit a career peak with Renegade Rocker; his flawless yet stylish execution of Jamaican musical forms resulted in one of Toronto’s all-time great reggae records. Though Dubmatix’s uptempo and urbane dub is plenty convincing over a sound system, it’s his pop sensibility that raises these tracks from good beats to great songs. Every last one of the vocalists (especially Alton Ellis, RIP) turn in superior performances over the hook-laden riddimscapes. No screwfaces are allowed while listening to this disc. DAVID DACKS

VAMPIRE WEEKEND
(XL)
Vampire Weekend aren’t the first bunch of privileged white boys to use indie-rock as a plaything or to cop African influences to their advantage, and they surely won’t be the last. But it’s hard to fault them when the result is a debut album as catchy and self-assured as this. Fresh from having completed their degrees at Columbia, this disc finds singer Ezra Koenig and his bandmates doing the instructing, delivering an introductory lecture in Afropop for a generation of kids too young to remember Paul Simon’s Graceland. The obscure global references and bright, galloping hooks of “A-Punk” and “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” stick like glue, and provided the basis for a year that saw the band conquer North America in the dead of winter and European festivals at the height of summer. In a year that will be remembered for heavy, sombre moments, Vampire Weekend was a simple, weightless pleasure. ROB DUFFY

OPETH
Watershed (Roadrunner)
The fact that Opeth are usually classified as death metal might cause many an upturned nose, but this mesmerizing, panoramic pièce de résistance is nothing to sneeze at. Watershed displays the Swedish prog troubadours at their most schizophrenic: devastating double-kick attacks, lush pastoral interludes, Pink Floydian solo passages and mellotron-driven funk breakdowns drift along within the songs’ labyrinthian structures. With arrangements as rustic and harmony-laden as Fleet Foxes yet as brutal as Meshuggah, it’s a wonder that these eight-minute opuses don’t fall apart. Yet each song is brilliantly cohesive without sounding hyper-precise; the acoustic outro to “Burden” is finger-picked while the guitar is gradually detuned. Watershed breathes fluidly, beautifully and organically. ALEX NINO GHECIU

DAVID BYRNE AND BRIAN ENO
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Todomundo)
There have been many David Byrnes in David Byrne’s career — from the CBGB new waver to the Brazilian crooner to the modern-day art blogger — but my favourite David Byrne has always been David Byrne the sellout. He’s the guy who sang on “And She Was” and “Girls on My Mind,” who dipped his band in chocolate for MTV, and wrote a fart joke into his screenplay for True Stories. And, most recently, he’s the guy who made Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with Brian Eno, a gorgeous swoon of a pop record — easily his best since 1997’s Feelings. No fart gags, though. PAUL ISAACS

NOAH23
Rock Paper Scissors (Legendary)
He hyped his new songs for years and word is bond; Guelph hip-hop phenom Noah23 just killed it with Rock Paper Scissors, a heart-and-soul hip-hop masterwork. Obscure and prolific, with numerous collaborative projects on the go (Bourgeois Cyborgs, Weird Apples), Noah spent four years creating a solo record — his 18th release — that perfectly encapsulates his varied pop-culture obsessions. Featuring a star-studded guest list (Cadence Weapon, Jim Guthrie, Josh Martinez and Ceschi, among many others), witty, unpredictable wordplay and eclectic production, Rock Paper Scissors bridges hip-hop and indie-rock like nobody’s business. A must-have! VISH KHANNA

ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS
Forest Of Tears (Blue Fog)
Describing battles against cancer, heartbreak and the TTC at rush hour, Toronto’s One Hundred Dollars portray authentic alt-country through tear-stained transfers. With pedal steel and sighing organs, singer Simone Schmidt’s broken croon tells stories with the humanity of a Raymond Carver tale. A dissatisfied lover counts ceiling tiles during “Careless Love,” as an early morning commute becomes working class poetry on “No Great Leap.” With a cover of Fucked Up’s “Blaze Of Glory” commissioned by the band, One Hundred Dollars transform the hardcore anthem into a wistful lament on “small town hucksters and big city thieves.” “Hell’s a place for our love,” Schmidt concludes. Like, Parkdale? CHANDLER LEVACK

NINE INCH NAILS
The Slip (The Null Corporation)
At last, Trent Reznor doesn’t want you to tremble before his empire of dirt, or bow to his crown of shit; he just wants to be at peace with himself. Instead of his usual overwrought declarations of self-pity, The Slip finds Reznor fighting an army of his own demons on a battlefield made of minimalist, utilitarian though still nakedly aggressive industrial squall. The disc’s 10 tracks see him struggling with inadequacy (“Am I still tough enough?”), addiction (“she’s mostly gone some other place / I’m getting by in other ways”) and anhedonia (“I don’t feel anything at all”) by throwing blunt jabs that hit the listener uncomfortably hard — though never as hard as they hit Reznor. It’s too bad he went indie and gave The Slip away on the internet right when he could have used the majors’ promo muscle; if only to let the world know that, having long since inherited Kurt Cobain’s role as alt-rock’s poet laureate of depression, Reznor has finally earned it. DAVE MORRIS

BLACK MOUNTAIN
In the Future (Scratch/Jagjaguwar)
Somehow these west coasters stewed all their favorite prog, folk-rock and proto-metal influences into a cohesive whole that sounds somewhat retro, yet utterly contemporary. Vintage mellotrons feature heavily on “Stormy High,” krautrock rhythms pulse through “Wucan” and the vocal interplay between Stephen McBean and Amber Webber is beguiling on tracks like “Angels.” To walk the tightrope between musicality and overindulgence is no easy task, but Black Mountain even succeed on “Bright Lights,” where a multitude of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and Pink Floydisms are jammed into a 17-minute opus. Really, there’s not much more you can ask of an album than to be pretty, heavy and hypnotic all at once. CHRIS ROLFE

JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN
To Survive (cheap lullaby)
It was an Angie Dickinson–inspired 1970s pantsuit that transformed Joan Wasser from punk-rock violinist to brooding alt.torch singer Joan As Police Woman. Having apprenticed with the likes of Rufus Wainwright and Antony & The Johnsons, she emerged two years ago as a solo artist, fully formed. Her debut was stunning — if self-consciously so — but the follow-up, To Survive, is more introspective, nuanced and ultimately more comfortable in its skin. Written during a time of enormous loss (as her mother struggled with cancer), the songs leave room for Wasser’s voice to wander, unearthing surprising stories from the hidden corners of the soul. HELEN SPITZER

BLACK MILK
Tronic (Fat Beats)
Gone almost three years, J Dilla still casts that long shadow; Curtis Cross spent his early career struggling to emerge from it. But 2008 saw Dilla’s fellow Slum Village associate and Detroiter come into his own. Though he was behind the boards for two of the year’s other standout albums — eLZhi’s The Preface and The Set Up with Fat Ray — it’s on his second solo LP that Cross, better known as Black Milk, best defines his own sound. Live instruments, hard breaks, Gary Numan samples and a few electronic trappings, plus his improved mic skills, let Cross hold his own amid guest spots from Pharoahe Monche and Royce Da 5’9”, all mixed down boot-camp-bedsheet tight. No filler. JORDAN TIMM

See also: our critics' personal Top 5 Best Album lists