Actual Water have emerged a pop monstrosity from the mirth of fidelic ruin; their debut LP exists within an echo-chamber of guitar-laced jangle and humoured rhythm, making each stab more destructively addicting. With bludgeoned flare, The Paisley Orchard‘s euphoric clamour induces a slurred frenzy of popular distaste. The entire package is some top of the line wine for the ruinous at heart. Top 10 of the year for sure. YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Here it is: the Patron Saint of weird Canadian records. Alongside Corpusse’s Delusions and Bernard Bonnier’s Casse-Tête, Carlyle Williams’ Gotta Go For It! forms the Holy Trinity of ’80s Montreal private press beauty; each of them summing their parts and transcending with a one-man-one-wholly-formed vision possessed of unbridled id and utter disdain for the prevailing rules and praxis.

Forgotten in the usual fetishizing of the “filles du roi” cypher (1), beyond bloodlines French-royal and First Nation, is that Montreal’s women posses the ultimate sexy quality: good taste. And so it went that Leila Majeri (2) and Marie-Douce St. Jacques (3) played me Gotta Go For It! and on each separate occasion, my mind split open, the air charged, everything changed, and the damn crew hasn’t been the same since.

Released in 1988 and recorded at the Unidisc studios (4) in Montreal’s St. Henri neighbourhood, Gotta Go For It!’s qualities are many: blocky Chung King Studios drum programming, a careening non-chops guitar style that sounds like The Birthday Party minus the fireworks-display fay hairdos, and streams of vocal overdubs that make whomever Tim Buckley thought he was on Starsailor seem like a sane and well adjusted man. Some tracks have a synthetic tropical vibe that predicates the various fi’s (5) of the last half-decade like a boss, raising bloody hell in the listener’s mind, forcing one to reconsider every aesthetic category.

For all its sonic density and deistic power, Carlyle’s message, via truly inspiring vocal work, is positive: obsessive self-awareness and accompanying self-criticism can be reality forming, that the more you look INSIDE the more you will see. That, as he says on “No Reason”, “There is no reason for your next depression. And that’s the truth.” Which as an underlying vibe makes Gotta Go For It! unique amongst the great works of 20th century Canadian art.

Gotta Go For It!’s sleeve states: “The more you look – The more you see”, and like all amazing ass records, the more you listen, the more you hear.

(1) These women, who were poor and undereducated, often orphaned, and in their teens or early twenties, were sent over from France for the men of Canada. The rumour-that-won’t-die is that they were prostitutes.

(2) Screen printer extraordinaire, often using the nick Alphonze Raymond, and also the drummer in the amazing Yomul Yuk.

(3) Editor-in-chief of the awesome aMAZEzine, which lasted a few issues, came with a GYBE! 7” and generally covered a zone, Marie-Douce was also the Farfisa player and vocalist in Pas Chic Chic! I sat down with her to discuss this piece.

(4) Obviously, as the ’80s wore on and disco, particularly the French-Canadian kind, receded in popularity, Unidisc fell on hard times and started renting out their facilities cheap. They were based in the RCA building, who obviously were slowing down themselves.

(5) Lo, no, slow, glow, hi and high fidelities, be it Ariel Pink, Spencer Clark, James Ferraro and the rest, you can hear Carlyle in the faux madness. The incredible Afternoon Penis tape on Heavy Tapes is the most obvious student of Gotta Go For It!, however. Worth looking into for fans of Carlyle.

Taking their blown-out, wasted pop moves to a new level of blasted riff denial, the darlings of Lethbridge unleash another hyperbolic garage-psych monster within the Canadian ether. Spaced Out soars with wings of farfisa and splattered psychedelics, channeling enough Fred Cole and Ariel Pink to catalyze the ridiculous catch laying in concentrate within their reverberated debut. Finally, an album with enough pop-raunch to satisfy the rolling, sexual hills surrounding southern Alberta’s bleakest plateau. Grip++.

Loneliness, despite its title, is an album with a warm heart of wires and at its core is the long-term musical friendship between Don Stagg and Eric Simpson. The duo formely recorded epic home-baked prog under the name VIIth Temple, releasing one hideously rare burnt-orange LP release soaked in gentle Moog, Mellotron and Giant. On Loneliness the pair traded in their plumes, velvet and epic jam band for thin ties and a cheap drum-machine. The LP still carries a whiff of patchouli, but the sound stings of solder and electricity, and inhabits a nascent zone somewhere between krautrock and new-wave. The vocals are all clustered on the a-side, starting with an ode to the inefficiency of the T.T.C. (some things never change!). The dystopian sci-fi themes are par for the League, a highlight is love ballad “Anna King” that sounds like it could be an outtake from Trans. The instrumentals on the b-side feel decidedly more Teutonic, and have a certain CBC charm that sounds like JP Decerf recording for Parry Music. The side even opens with a slinky stoned Pink Panther. About the loneliest thing about this album is the incredible cover photo. Don Stagg told me that he climbed up on a rooftop in St. James Town to take a photo for the sleeve when he came across a young man doing crack. The man was surprisingly obliging and Don snapped this evocative photo as night fell over the cold city. Take hold of this preserved slice of Ontario sprawl if ever you get the chance, it’ll probably surprise you to know how little has changed in all these years.

Canada’s elder statesmen of ear-tickling anti-traditionalism have been a national treasure for nigh on five decades. Deriving their name and modus operandi from the found object street orchestras of New Orleans, the NSB has been tirelessly jamming (almost) every Monday since the late 1960s on a motley selection of modified noise makers. Nothing Is Forever proves definitely that they’ve dipped into the fountain of youth, as this four-song slab from Wintage finds the band sounding as mirthful as ever. The immortal foghorn of Bill Exley booms down from the pulpit, once again setting the stage for Art Pratten’s free-squealing “Pratt-A-Various” and the Sharrockified moves of guitarist Murray Favro. John Clement slides in on his fretless, three-string bass passed down by the late, great Hugh McIntyre, while John Boyle tosses in a kitchen drawer of percussion and well-timed cymbal splashes. Longtime adoptee Aya Onishi gets her time to shine on the instrumental title track, letting loose with a deluge of extraterrestrial squiggles on oversized kazoo. In the end, Exley sums it all up with a plainspoken credo: “Music is hard work. You must practice day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.”

Borne on the fever dreams of aquatic explorers, Moonwood journey fringeward through the fourth underworld. Their mesmerizing pursuit of exotic minimalism is peppered with gourd flutes, lap harps and ekatantari to give their forlorn excursions final entry within nature’s infinite drone. Music for water borne disease, indeed. Clear-blue vinyl for the pure of grip.

Deep within le Petit Québec libre, a group of stalwart jazz freaks began bridging the divide between improvised music and contemporary avant-garde. After releasing an LP on the infamous CBC Transcription service, Le Quatuor De Jazz Libre Du Quebéc began a welcomed transfiguration into a revolutionary ensemble championing the art of experimentation and revolt. This reissue, lovingly packaged by Quebec’s finest avant imprint (Tenzier), captures an unreleased session at the zenith of their creative expression (1973). Droves of intense skronk and burning percussion lace the energetic action with unfettered fire. A paragon within Quebec’s outstanding free scene. Must grip.

Thanks to the hard work of Numero Group‘s Rob Sevier, the world’s most epic soft-synth mumbler has been caught with a Canadian citizenship. What started with a chance pull in an Edmonton flea-market by one Jon Murphy, ended in a bewildering world-wide phenomenon of softness. Lewis’ lone LP from 1983 is as unusual as it is delicate; an incomprehensible whispered drawl lingers above mysts of smooth-laced synthesizers and nylon guitar as Lewis croons his way through inaudible love, suffering, and mid-afternoon bliss. The confusion accelerates as you begin to dissect the record: dedications to Christie Brinkley, an incredible facsimile on the cover (looking surprisingly like Aaron Levin), a record label named R.A.W., and a history of rip-offs and potential murders (uncovered by multiple individuals tracking members associated with Lewis’ LP). In the end there are no answers. Lewis remains a mystery, with only his name (not Lewis), citizenship (Canadian), and a PO Box in Hawaii. I once found five copies in Calgary, Alberta, which makes me believe this unidentified future softness began in the heart of wild roses. But we may only wonder. Until then, enjoy the most incomprehensible album in the universe (yes, it’s softer than THOMAS). If you can transcribe the lyrics to “I Thought The World of You” I will give you a rare record. [Special thanks for those involved in uncovering the Lewis mystery (and laughing at me when I began to champion it): Jon Murphy, Rob Sevier, Jack Fernwood, and Douglas McGowan].

Silky sleaze and a sense of humour turn Mac DeMarco (FKA Makeout Videotape) from nu-blooz deity into a self-aware rhythmic slime-rocker. Woozy tremeloed guitars mix with padded percussion to give a warm, lush backing for Mac’s grumbled, sensitive, pitch-shifted nocturnal emissions, while warped radio spoofs and an obsession with blue jeans add to the strange new world that DeMarco creates throughout this mini-LP. It’s hard to separate DeMarco the man from DeMarco the artist, and there’s a certain charming disingenuousness to these songs (I don’t think that a fresh pack of ‘Roys is the only vice of this boy), but it somehow adds to the album’s layers: parsing genuine communication from made-up slang (which exists in levels that rival a Chandler novel), figuring out honest sentiments from in-jokes, discerning artistic creation from pure entertainment. It somehow all works together in a strange mix of talented song-writing and playing, humor, invented nostalgia and infectious everything. Grip before this grip is gone – DeMarco has been unleashed onto the world and these releases will disappear fast.

If the world was right, all teenage girls would be listening to Rattail. Sonically, this clutch of Torontonian dreamers bears passing resemblance to certain excellent dream-poppers and shoegaze babes. All three bands excel at ethereal darkish rock, making songs that explode in the body like cloudy, pretty bubbles of viscera. Rattail’s sound is distinguished by Jasmyn Burke, whose voice falls somewhere in the ether between between Ruth Brown and Exene Cervenka. She keens, she wails, she snarls, she sounds like a baby or an regal dame or a monster. She observes her world with a detachment that is equally cynical and curious and it sounds great. To me, Rattail embodies the contradictions of growing older – the coolness, the calmness, the swirling confusion, the fucked-up sense of wondering.