Magazine

The thing with lists, especially year-end ones, is that they undercut the obsessive passion of the music lovers. There's no true way around it, as any discussion will eventually boil down to inane nitpicking. That's why CJLO, as a whole, does not have a Top Ten list based on votes or anything remotely objective. Instead, we're throwing together individual staff picks from our motley crew of DJs, not to represent anything else but their true love for this year's music (mostly).

As expected, CJLO’s third annual Staff Picks is a mixed bag of musical goodies from across the map. So much so that out of the thirty-one DJs who submitted their lists, no two #1 albums were alike. Of course, several of the year’s powerhouse releases resonated with the staff. Radiohead’s In Rainbows reigned as the most popular album, with The White Stripes’ Icky Thump, The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and High On Fire’s Death Is This Communion not too far behind.

Playing Montreal for the first time in three years for the Suoni Per Il Popolo fest, NoMeansNo are perhaps Canada's greatest still-standing punk institution, a testament to the enduring partnership of its key members, brothers Rob and John Wright (along with estimable guitarist Tom Holliston, who joined the band in the early 90s following the departure of Andy Kerr), and the singularity of their sound.

So I'm thirteen years old, chilling out to Dark Side of the Moon in my parents' basement and generally being a weird little creep. Oddly, I don't gravitate towards the 7/4 cockrockery of "Money" or even the Oz-bait wail of "The Great Gig in the Sky" nearly as much as I do the eight-minute centerpiece "Us and Them", largely due to its soaring chorus, languorous pacing, odd spoken asides and lush arrangement. The key to that arrangement, of course, is Dick Parry's mournful sax wailing throughout.