Tomboyfriend is a collective of “nonmusicians” led by Ryan Kamstra who just happen to make some of the most emotionally relevant, lyrically poignant music you’ll find this side of just about anywhere—and that’s rare. It’s unusual to find a band so fully formed, so direct and developed in their songwriting and so absolutely heartbreaking in their delivery.

Think of them as a bittersweet Venn diagram where joy, despair, and hope all connect under an umbrella of sinister punk-rock fairytales—part Jim Carroll and Patti Smith, part Island of Misfit Toys.

Stand out tracks like “Almost Always” and “Lovesickness” have this desperate urgency that enters through the ears and just swells in your chest until you find yourself clutching your heart for no reason at all. They’re songs that make you grin uncontrollably because despite all the despair they are ultimately songs of hope and humanity that bring us increasingly closer to that point of holiness. It’s precious, brave and beautiful and seriously worth the listen.

Bruce Peninsula. Photos by Kari Peddle.

The Journal of Behavioral Medicine tells us what humans have always known—singing in groups is good for you. Sing and immune-boosting proteins come flooding through your bloodstream. Psychophysiological changes take hold. Your mood is elevated.

Bruce Peninsula knows this intuitively. The band, which can swell to more than a dozen, mixes gospel, folk, and prog rock into music for a choir of passionate bellowers. On a warm spring night in Sarnia last year, I saw them use the science of singing to create havoc in a small-town bar. With the gravelly voiced Neil Haverty leading the call-and-response, the band spread out across the small stage—hooting and hollering, leaning into shared microphones, throwing their heads back, and clasping their hands. The Sarnians didn’t know what hit them.

The band captures the force of their live show on their album A Mountain Is a Mouth. Critics have called it “religious” or “spiritual,” which seems to miss something more elemental; just because religions were quick to figure out the ecstatic power of group singing doesn’t mean they should get all the credit.

The band has a new album now, recorded and ready to go, but we’ll have to wait until the fall to hear it. Last December, frontman Haverty was diagnosed with leukemia. It is, fortunately, the good kind of leukemia, if such a thing exists. Doctors say he has a 95 percent chance of recovery. So Haverty will be back onstage soon enough. The album will find new ears, the choir will reassemble, and the singers will open their throats to create that pleasing racket once again, their bloodstreams quickening to the sound.

Industry Minister Tony Clement’s iPod contains 10,452 songs, he told reporters on May 26, most of them transferred from CDs he bought. It’s a widespread practice generally known as “format shifting,” and in Canada, it’s illegal.

The minister didn’t shamefacedly admit his crime in an embarrassing gaffe; he called a press conference and announced it in order to make a point. Copyright law in Canada has lagged behind social and technological reality for years now, impotently policing an extinct world of mimeographs and cassette tapes while the rest of us got on with things. Ever ripped a CD to your computer or MP3 player like Minister Clement did? Ever taped a TV show to watch later? Had a cellphone unlocked? All are currently illegal in Canada, even as they happen every day. So on June 2, Heritage Minister James Moore introduced the Conservatives’ latest attempt to update Canadian copyright, Bill C-32.

There is some good news. The bill proposes new freedoms for people to make copies of protected material in non-commercial ways: transferring that bought-and-paid-for CD to your iPod would be legalized, as will taping a TV show to watch later. There is a new provision for artists to use copyrighted material in parody and satire. And the bill would legalize the use of protected works in many educational contexts. These new rules will finally bring the law into some sort of alignment with reality.

But there is a glaring problem: all these new freedoms are overridden by the government’s total surrender on the matter of “digital rights management,” restrictive types of software that control our use of the e-books, DVDs, or video games we purchase—what devices we may use, who we may share with, and how many times. No one would stand for a shirt that self-destructed unless worn with a certain brand of jeans, but that is the essence of DRM—the things you purchase never belong to you. Under C-32 as currently written, circumventing any digital lock would be a crime, even if the purpose were legal. With this measure, the bill legitimizes the sinister notion that large corporate interests are entitled to broad, intrusive powers to control how individuals consume culture. That idea is dangerous.

Yes, artists need legal protections to ensure they are compensated for their work. But it is not in the interest of any Canadian—including Canadian artists—to shackle artworks to technology that invades our privacy and criminalizes the normal exchange of ideas that constitutes all culture. It may still be possible to reopen the digital lock provision; a strong and unambiguous public response is the key.

In some corners of the web, piracy is a form of curation. Illustration by Matt Daley.

In the summer of 1999, a terrifying rumour began circulating on the then-young internet, gluing millions to their screens: Napster, the illegal music service, was about to be shut down. It seemed like the party with an endless soundtrack was coming to an end.

The site, which famously provided access to millions of illicitly copied songs, introduced internet piracy to the masses. Once people had a taste for a web that was a unending cultural smorgasbord, there was no going back: piracy has now become as central to web culture as celebrity news and porn.

But though the greedy rush to download anything and everything remains, a new and surprisingly widespread breed of piracy has been quietly simmering in the corners of the internet. Rather than encouraging users to grab as much pop culture as they can, these sites are about quality, not quantity. Instead of an anarchic free-for-all, they’re more like a curated exchange amongst aficionados. By most definitions, it’s still stealing, but stealing with a “Robin Hood” twist: the ultimate goal is to spread good art and challenging ideas—for free. That may be controversial, but as principles go, it’s a pretty noble one.

Today, the most common way to download copyrighted material might be a site called The Pirate Bay. It’s just one of the sites that index content scattered across the internet rather than housing it, making them harder to shut down. Every day, millions of films, songs and books are downloaded; unsurprisingly, the most commercially successful entertainment is also the most pirated. A perhaps unintended consequence of the entertainment industry’s hype for the new and popular is that it also drives those who steal from it.

But another approach to piracy has been evolving, too. Rather than an all-you-can-eat buffet, these sites are more akin to an underground dinner club for foodies. Instead of an array of popular, everyday items, one is presented with the crème de la crème of culture, whether a pristine copy of a Fellini film or that Ella Fitzgerald recording few have ever heard.

It was perhaps a music community named OiNK.cd that was the most prominent of these more rigorous sites. This go-to place for quality tunes was shut down by a legal challenge in 2007, though the site’s owner was recently cleared of charges. Nonetheless, What.cd and Waffles.fm (which, for visitors to its homepage, pretends to be a site about recipes), quickly took the place of OiNK. cd. In function, these sites work much like The Pirate Bay. In philosophy, they differ significantly. Many users take time to find and upload obscure tracks of smart, Scandinavian electronica rather than something by Beyoncé. Discussion on the sites’ forums often reflects this commitment to hidden gems, and those who share obscure or difficult works often gain credibility. Instead of mirroring the behaviour of the populist industries they seek to undercut, the sites are unapologetically elitist.

But to characterize these sites as a paradise for thieves with highbrow tastes would be to miss part of the picture. The original material might have been pirated, but these sites make members share amongst themselves. Ratios of uploads to downloads are enforced. Download every available bit of Spanish jazz without sharing in kind and you will be ruthlessly and quickly ejected. What’s more, rather than the populist grab-whatyou-can ethos of The Pirate Bay, you have a community of invested, informed people to guide your wanderings, introducing you to the innovative and new as you return the favour with your own obscure treasures.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to movies and music. AAAARG.org, a site that stores hundreds of academic articles, has electrified cultural theory geeks by finally putting some of that anti-establishment Marxist thinking into practice. When an academic publisher recently requested an article be taken down, it was met with angry and erudite responses about “the exploitative forces of capital.” To the publisher, a copyrighted work was being distributed without compensation; to the sites’ users, ideas were being shared for the greater good.

From the start, we knew the web was going to change things. What we possibly didn’t realize was, unbeknownst to many, new modes of cultural exchange were being born that replaced blind consumption with careful curation, often by simply removing the costly barriers erected around “the good stuff.” As a result, those who adhere to the letter of the law, and the spirit of copyright and ownership that underpin it, believe these sites are simply dens of theft.

But such a view is short-sighted. What these services let us see is that when the exchange of ideas, rather than the exchange of dollars, is the controlling principle, communities will form around the best and most challenging of what culture has to offer. Call me a naive idealist, but I think that’s a good thing. And when history looks back on this moment, rather than maintain the status quo, I’d rather it be known I was in Robin Hood’s band of merry thieves.

Woodpigeon may very well be the biggest Canadian band you’ve never heard of — literally and figuratively. The eight-member Calgary collective’s wistful, lyrical alt-folk has been drawing capacity crowds and garnering deafening buzz in the U.K. and Europe over the past year, though homegrown listeners have been slower to discover the group’s charms.

Listen to Knock Knock by Woodpigeon

Woodpigeon's sophomore album, Treasury Library Canada. Available from Boompa Records

Mark Hamilton, a linchpin of the burgeoning Calgary indie scene, began the band while living in Edinburgh several years ago. Once back at home, he called upon a rotating roster of musical pals to flesh out his delicate melodies with strings and cherubic harmonies.

Since the release of Songbook, the band’s quietly stunning 2006 debut, Woodpigeon has amassed a devoted following, particularly in Europe. Their second full-length, Treasury Library Canada, sold out its entire initial run last fall in mere weeks before being reissued this February at home and in the U.K, where the band has received raves from the august likes of the Guardian.

“We’ve always felt deep down that people would begin to take notice, and we’ve always treated that as something that would grow naturally,” Hamilton says. “We’ve got some beautiful friends in Canada, indeed, but I’ve no problem admitting it’s definitely been a strange experience heading overseas and seeing the reaction we’re receiving over there versus here.”

Woodpigeon hopes to woo North American audiences with an upcoming volley of releases; they’ve finished their next album, Die Stadt Muzikanten, due out this fall, and have already begun work on a subsequent record, Thumbtacks + Glue, scheduled for 2010. The prolific output is in anticipation of a possible hiatus — Hamilton, who’s currently finishing up his Film Studies degree at the University of Calgary, is keen to start work on a master’s degree.

“If Joel Gibb can keep The Hidden Cameras going in Toronto while living in Berlin, and Rivers Cuomo can finish degrees off between Weezer albums, I don’t think it’s going to be much of a struggle,” Hamilton quips. “Even while I’m drowning in my thesis, there’ll be new Woodpigeon music coming out.”

Seeing Toronto-based art-folk band The Hidden Cameras perform is a lot like having sex. You never forget your first time. The band’s shows include tighty-whitey clad go-go dancers, unconventional performance venues (churches, porn theatres) and a revolving roster of members whose numbers rival the Polyphonic Spree. And while it’s hard to imagine an album better than their critically acclaimed debut, The Smell of Our Own, with its much-hyped “gay folk church music” sound, Mississauga Goddam is. The album features more of the indie-folk-poetic-pop fans of the debut album fell in love with, and frontman Joel Gibb has returned with more cheeky, sunny songs about sexuality, spirituality, oh, and enemas. You could be having your worst day ever and this album would soon lift your spirits.

Stirling, Northern Light (popguru)

I was lucky enough to catch Toronto-based quartet Stirling’s performance at this year’s NXNE festival. There was definitely a buzz about the band—and there should be. With their Brit-pop influenced sound, Stirling should get some of those column inches NME keeps devoting to the same old Canadian bands. With their debut album, Northern Light, Stirling continues to build on the swirling atmospheric sound found on their two previous EPs, The View From Here and The Idea and The Deed. Standout tracks like “The Art of Burning Bridges” and “Turn up the Dark” perfectly highlight frontman Matt Booi’s expressive voice and the band’s unique melodic sound.

CBC Radio 3 Sessions Vol. 1 (CBC Records)

I have to confess that I’m addicted to all things CBC Radio, so I was happy to have my habit fed with this compilation featuring some of the best CBC Radio 3 sessions from the past few years. The Can-con compilation is like a who’s who mixed-tape of Canadian indie rock royalty. It starts strong with the guitar rock of Sloan’s 1999 song “Losing California” and ends with the folkie twang of Oh Susanna’s “King’s Road.” In between, there’s plenty of good ground covered, including great tracks from the likes of The New Pornographers, Kid Koala, John K. Samson, Buck 65 and Hot Hot Heat.

CHEAP TRICK

It’s quick, hot, cheap and dirty—and you’ll love it. Cheaper Than A One Night Stand is a series of one-day art shows that creates a venue for up-and-coming, under-appreciated artists. The series is run by the Vancouver-based artists’ collective Fracture Industries, which makes it its business to challenge the methods in which art is displayed and to shake up the Vancouver art world. The Cheaper series allows artists to sell their work in a vibrant atmosphere at prices affordable to even the most underemployed hipster.

The series began in the fall of 2001 and started out at bars and restaurants such as the legendary, now defunct, Sugar Refinery. After the huge success of Cheaper Part 5 in November 2003, however, the prominent Elliott Louis Gallery approached Fracture with an offer of wall space. Despite the cachet of a respectable gallery, Cheaper Part 6, held at the beginning of May, maintained a firm grip on its punk art ethic with booming, eclectic music and a distinctly non-stuffy crowd of more than 1,000 tossing back pints in the garden outside.

Cheaper Part 6 was the largest yet, featuring the work of 80 artists—300 pieces in a wide variety of media from photography to watercolour to tattoo art. The show earned about $13,000 by midnight—impressive, considering every piece cost just $150. In the end, however, the money made at each show barely covers its expenses. Any small profits go directly into the next Fracture project.

Graeme from Fracture maintains, however, that the months of work needed to organize each event are well worthwhile. “The rewards of our labour have come in so many other forms,” he says. “The artists and patrons we’ve met, the artwork that we get to see, the response from the public at our events, the connections people have made through us. We’ve helped to change people’s lives and by offering them exposure they could not get elsewhere. We have made some artists believe that they can have a future in art. This payoff easily surpasses any financial gains.” For more information on Fracture projects, see www.fractureindustries.com.
By Rachel Sanders

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Tangiers, Never Bring You Pleasure (Sonic Unyon)

When Toronto garage-rock darlings Tangiers released their debut album Hot New Spirits last March it seemed like the almighty hype machine was working overtime. It would be an understatement to say the band was everywhere. Since then, Tangiers have lost two members, including their founding guitarist and drummer. With Never Bring You Pleasure their line-up is back to four members, including drummer Jon McCann who previously played in a little band called Guided By Voices (no stranger themselves to line-up changes). And while your band falling apart after your first release would drive most musicians to simply call it quits, Tangiers have matured with their sophomore effort, and their punk pop sound is better than ever. Plus, the album’s title is sure to inspire music writers everywhere to craft embarrassingly bad puns to work into to their reviews.

Bob Wiseman, It’s True (Blocks Recording Club)

It’s True marks Bob Wiseman’s first album since 1995. Produced by blocks recording club co-founder and Hidden Cameras/Barcelona Pavilion member Steve Kado, the album is an odd little combination of quiet folk songs and quirky electronic tracks. Wiseman’s strength lies in his storytelling and ability to craft interesting tales. This certainly includes album opener “Cousin Dave,” an old song about David Geffen, corn on the cob and Guns N’ Roses.

The Organ, Grab That Gun (Mint Records/604)

I liked The Organ even before I heard their 2002 EP Sinking Hearts. The Vancouver all-girl quintet recruited members not on the basis of musical ability, but instead on an appreciation of the sound the band was going for. Listening to their debut full-length release Grab That Gun the first thing you notice is that members have gotten better in the musical ability department, however, that doesn’t mean they have lost any of the ’80s morose post-punk sound that made Sinking Hearts so good. And yes, much has been made about the fact that vocalist Katie Sketch sounds like the love child of Morrissey and Kristin Hersh. It’s true, she really does.
By Lisa Whittington-Hill

Rachel Sanders lives in Vancouver. She has written for Terminal City and CBC Radio 3. She also studies photography.

Lisa Whittington-Hill wants Fox to create a reality dating show called Who Wants to Marry an Indie Rawk Boy? However, she fears that, as with all reality dating shows, there’ll be a trick at the end and the boy will turn out to be a Matchbox 20 fan who bathes regularly.

Alas, we were already infected with unhappiness. We were a miserable, whiny group. The musicians got it started, with Laura Doyle, a singer-songwriter, bitterly complaining that even though songs from her new recording were featured on the thankfully defunct teen drama Dawson’s Creek, the majority of her prospective buyers downloaded her tunes for free—without buying the disc. This set off a torrent of commiseration. Apparently, songs are being traded, paintings are being scanned and slapped on covers and books are being photocopied, while artists go broke.

It’s a desperate situation, one that everyone from Rob Baker (The Tragically Hip guitarist) to André Cornellier (Montreal-based photographer) to Pat Durr (spokesperson for a national visual artists’ group) were pleased to bemoan at length. Every once in a while, Minister Copps would weigh in and commiserate. At one point, she compared culture to a loaf of bread—we don’t expect to get our bread for free now, do we?

Since I only agreed to attend for the complimentary sandwiches and the weekend stay in a luxury hotel (and didn’t bargain on cpac), I sat back and waited for someone else to elevate this discussion. But my peers were unanimous: the nasty consumer was getting one over on the increasingly desperate Canadian artist; the solution was simply a matter of tough-love copyright laws and more technologies to prevent unlicensed copying.

Quickly smoothing my uncombed hair through my fingers in an attempt to go telegenic, I found myself breaking into yet another Copps soliloquy with one of my own. It went something like: Yes, artists need to be compensated for their work. But, at the same time, the free and unfettered exchange made possible by the internet is the best way for Canadian creators to get their work out to Canada and the world. Because we live in a highly commercialized society where all the cultural distribution nodes are tightly controlled to maximize profit, the vast majority of Canadian cultural creations have extreme difficulty finding an audience. A song that does not fall into an accepted pop category and appear on an album sanctioned by a multinational label? You won’t hear it on any commercial radio station. A book by a first author published by a small press? Good luck finding it in the bookstore. A Canadian film not deemed marketable enough by the handful of distributors who control access to our movie screens? You will never have the chance to see it. So, I argued, internet conduits offering unmediated connections between cultural producers and a potential audience are actually a giant step forward, a way to take culture out of the capitalist system and return it to the community where it belongs. Finally, I said, though artists need to be compensated when their works are traded online, if I had to choose between having the opportunity to get my books out to a large, non-paying public or permanently shutting that conduit down, I would choose door number one.

My thoughts went over like stockwell in a wetsuit. Minister Copps peered at me with annoyance. The high-priced moderator—an aggressively bilingual former Miss Canada—was momentarily stunned. She quickly regained her senses and led a lengthy round of Hal-bashing that culminated with the minister patiently explaining to me that culture is like Aspirin—you don’t expect to walk into a drugstore and walk out with free Aspirin, now do you?

Only fellow writer Susan Crean stood up for me, noting that what we need in our copyright policy is balance, balance between the needs of the users and the needs of the creators. This idea, that the culture consumer also has rights and needs, that culture is not just a commodity artists make in order to gain fame and riches, was clearly a new one to most of the meeting’s attendees.

“But,” noted Baker of The Hip, “they’re stealing our music!”

Baker has little to gain from internet distribution, of course. His band’s albums are in every record store, played on every station. Laura Doyle, on the other hand, seems to be missing the point. Outside of her homebase Vancouver, where, exactly, are the Dawson faithful supposed to buy her self-released indie CD? None of the record stores I called in Toronto (including indie great Soundscapes and hmv’s giant flagship on Yonge) carried it.

This is not a commentary on the CD’s worth or Doyle’s talent; it is a reflection of the way the production side of any cultural industry colludes with the retail side. Supposedly, it is only through record stores and sanctioned online venues that the system can recoup the royalties we rightfully owe the artists. But this also means it is easy for publishers, production companies and retailers to control what we are exposed to. For every album that does gangbuster business in the Canadian record store, there are 100 just-as-good albums that are totally excluded from radio, video and store racks.

Online file-sharing threatens the large for-profit cultural industries with irrelevance—which is why the Hollywood studios and big five record companies react so virulently against it. But for an artist like Laura Doyle, it is the only way that she can reasonably expect fans to find her music.

It is not hard to imagine moving from a copyright-violating free exchange of music on the net to the complete redundancy of the entire corporate-controlled system. What is really interesting is not how many people ignore copyright to get access to free music, but what systems like Kazaa and Morpheus represent: total unfettered equal access for anyone with access to a computer. The flouting of copyright is the beginning of the end for a business model that has always depended on its ability to control what we hear, see—and find on our shelves.

And yet, I still want to make a living as a cultural creator. Can we have a system that cuts out the middleman while still finding a way to remunerate artists? I believe we can. Unfortunately, the copyright forum was never really about instituting meaningful solutions. Twenty artists were flown in from around the country for consultation, but when we got there, we discovered that the forum was scheduled to span a whole two hours. One singer-songwriter barely said a single word. Jane Siberry had a few interesting things to say about running her own record company, but she also digressed in order to make a point about the relationship between the arts and the heavens. Others, like Mad Child (a rapper from Vancouver’s Swollen Members) who, as a representative of the hip-hop set, might have had something to say about the way copyright laws restrict those who seek to borrow snippets from other songs in the spirit of creativity, seemed to think that the gathering was a perfunctory PR stop. “Canada’s a great country,” Mad Child told the gathering. “We feel really supported.”

Buoyed by such sentiments, the two hours flew by without any talk of solutions. An opportunity lost? Well, at the next night’s official government Juno party attended by 1,000 or so bureaucrats rubbernecking absent celebs (all at private parties with their record company pals), the minister’s assistant pulled me aside and invited me to put my comments down on paper.

So here they are.