So Andy bringing up Rush a few days ago got me to thinking about the great white north and, in time, to that World Beat series I started a while back. Why not tackle some Canuck stylee, thought I—and, well, here we are. As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up with 89X, the alt-rock station out of Detroit/Windsor, so Canadian exports were always a huge part of my radio experience. Band’s like the Tragically Hip, Sloan, and Bran Van 3000 received almost as many spins as more typical nineties fare a la Pumpkins, PJ, Nirvana, etc.

Looking back, I’m struck by just how difficult it is to pinpoint any distinctly Canadian sound to describe here, though—some correlative to America’s grunge movement or the UK’s Madchester and Brit-pop scenes. The Canadian bands of my youth were all over the proverbial map (see what I did there?): there was the Gandharvas, dangerously close to a Perry Farrell rip, but catchy enough to make that easily overlooked; the Grapes of Wrath, a last stand of the Paisley Underground residing north of the border; and 24 Gone, a band Matt would likely call the dreamy side of shoegaze. Really, apart from their common origins, perhaps what most unites these groups is their shared fate to be written off as “The Canadian [insert popular non-Canadian band here]”—essentially the emo effect on a smaller but just as damaging scale. Given mainstream radio’s insatiable desire for more of a good thing (see Bush, Candlebox, Days of the New, Fuel, Live, Seven Mary Three, etc.), you’d think this would translate to a bit more stateside success. In nearly all cases, it did not. But anyhoo, here’s a sampling of my own private Canada.

“The First Day of Spring” – The Gandharvas, off A Soap Bubble and Inertia (1994)

“Underwhelmed” – Sloan, off Smeared (1994)

“Drinking in LA” – Bran Van 3000, off Glee (1993)

“Grace, Too” – The Tragically Hip, off Day for Night (1995)

“Girl of Colours” – 24 Gone, off Spin (1991)

“I Am Here” – The Grapes of Wrath, off These Days (1991)