Brooklyn-based indie-rockers Bishop Allen released 12 albums in 2006–one EP every month. And what did you do with your time that year?

You probably weren’t listening to Bishop Allen–at least not if the blank looks I get whenever I mention their name to my friends is any indication of their Edmonton popularity. Which is too bad, because when it comes to effortlessly catchy, jangly melodies and winsome, well-crafted lyrics, few bands can match the scruffy, bedheaded team of Justin Rice and Christian Rudder. The Broken String consists of newly recorded versions of the best material from the band’s 2006 output, and it’s as good an introduction to their music as any.

In fact, it gets off to one of the best starts of any album so far this year: the first three songs on the disc are all sensational. "The Monitor" is a meditation on the Civil War battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack that sounds like the work of an angst-free Arcade Fire; "Rain" is an irresistible "every cloud has a silver lining" tune that sounds like Hanson’s "MMMBop" rewritten by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!; and "Click, Click, Click, Click" is a toe-tapping Cat Stevens-y tune so cheerful even Harold from Harold and Maude would have a hard time not cracking a smile at it.

MARK BIRTLES PROJECT
Art Crime
(Rectangle)
****

The Mark Birtles Project sure chose a great label to release their first full-length album–Rectangle Records’ roster includes some of the best young indie-rockers in Alberta: Woodpigeon, Jane Vain and the Dark Matter, Twin Fangs, and now, MBP.

Clocking in at less than 30 minutes, Art Crime is a quickie, but Bryan Birtles and his boys pack a lot into it, from anthemic fist-pumping ("Pyramids") to new wave ("Tick Tack Talk") to art-school punk ("A Walking Tour of Toronto", which includes a great little late-song breakdown that sounds like someone strangling a saxophone). There’s even a bilingual song, "Oh Mon Dieu," a prerequisite for any good Canadian band (and probably helps when you’re trying to secure a government arts grant).

MBP might benefit from pushing the hooks a little more front and centre, since there are some great little keyboard and guitar riffs buried under all the power chords, but it’s fine and dandy ear candy all the same–nervy, tense, trebly fun.

Great releases by local artists haven’t exactly been plentiful lately, so be glad for a gem like this.

DD/MM/YYYY
Are They Masks?
(We Are Busy Bodies)
****

I’ll say this for DD/MM/YYYY: they’re much more down-to-earth than most of their ketamine- and ecstasy-fueled contemporaries. They’re about as far away from the dark, almost Satanic No Wave sounds of AIDS Wolf or the cerebral abstraction of Black Dice as five drunken noise fiends can get.

DD/MM/YYYY are sloppy and punk, for sure: the artwork on their new disc is a shrieking Kid Pix mess of complementary colours and weird visuals, the chords they play sound like they’re being created on the spot, and the drumming occupies the middle ground between tribal and urban. And on tracks like the brilliant "White Lines," the vocals conjure a ferocity rarely heard in the noise bands hipsters generally flock to. DD/MM/YYYY balances the cacophonic with the catchy, the technical with the inebriated, and the celestial with the worldly in a way that makes Are They Masks? one of the year’s most pleasant surprises.

KELLY CLARKSON
My December
(RCA)
***1/2

Visions of Kelly Clarkson dancing on a beach, attempting (poorly) to recapture the essence of Grease while wearing that weird blue shirt-thing wrapped halfway down her left leg, are haunting. It’s true: Kelly’s 2003 movie From Justin to Kelly scarred some of us.

But perhaps it’s time to forgive and forget. Clarkson’s new album, My December, shows us another side of the Texan girl who won the first American Idol. This new version of Kelly is... dark (or at least darker than one would expect). Not in a tortured "I’m going to cut myself–watch me bleed" sort of way, but more of an "I have loved, lost, and am stronger because of it" fashion. She’s changed her look–check out her new gothic makeover on the cover–and she attempts a more mature sound to match, one similar to (but not nearly as polished as) veteran singers such as Sarah McLachlan.

But you don’t need to delve very deeply into her self-penned lyrics to discover that her songwriting hasn’t quite kept pace with her grown-up sound and look. (Lines like "Bet it sucks" read more like bathroom stall graffiti.) But hey: even graffiti can be poignant sometimes.