20)
Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
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Released during my nearly half dozen years as a full Eminem stan this was absolutely pinnacle. I've shared elsewhere about hearing
The Slim Shady EP well before he hit the mainstream thanks to the magic of RealPlayer and I was hooked – for a few years I tried to get my hands on absolutely anything of his that was available in Canada. This album officially cemented Em's place in the tip lyricists of hip hop canon. Hell it spawned the now mainstream term "stan!" And while it didn't shy away from the absolute shock value he reveled in on his debut, there was much more nuance and introspection here — some maturity to his immaturity. Love it or hate it, it's an absolute beast of an album!
25)
Geoff Berner – Whiskey Rabbi
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Here we enter the era where I listened to far more local music than industry stuff, and Geoff Berner became an instant favourite the first time I saw him a few months before the release of this album. He is officially the musician I have seen the most live (that I haven't toured with, anyway), and holds the hilarious and dubious honour of being the only person I've ever skipped my own set at a festival to see (only one person, a friend I'd not seen in a year or two, showed up for my set and she was fully game to join me in going to watch Geoff instead!) This album was the first of a trio of Trio albums that really did a great job of capturing the live energy you could expect from a live set, and to this day he remains to many The Whiskey Rabbi.
30)
Fish & Bird – Left Brain Blues
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Full disclosure: I performed at the album release show for this and it remains a favourite gig of mine. This marked the beginning of the end of Fish & Bird as an Indie/Trad Folk duo and the beginning of the beginning of Fish & Bird as a 5-piece Indie Folk band. If I recall correctly all 3 future band members appear at points on this release, which contains some of my all-time favourite lyrics from Taylor Ashton, most notably on "Mark My Grave" and "My Garden." Adam Iredale-Gray's instrumental "Road To Mortlach" also holds a place in my heart as I was in the van with him and our other friends' band he was touring with when we all visited Mortlach, Saskatchewan (a village with population between 250 and 275) for the first time at the invitation of fans of the band who did not think they would be able to make the show in Regina the next night. Over the next couple of years Adam I would both return to Mortlach a few times on separate tours. If I were ever to start a record club or label, this would be an album I'd love to put out.
35)
Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free
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I ran into a friend at another friend's show in Vancouver shortly before this was released. He'd hitchhiker all the way from Winnipeg just to be at the show. When we were catching up outside over a smoke we got to talking music and he mentioned he was loving the last couple of things Jason Isbell had put out. I told him I was unfamiliar and he mentioned he'd been in Drive-By Truckers – in fact, he'd written and sung one of my absolute favourite DBT tunes ("Danko/Manuel" - by this point I'd only ever listened to DBT on torrented mp3s and wasn't yet richly familiar with the band's history or members.) The next day I nursed my hangover watching Isbell videos. When this album came out a week or two later it pretty much instantly became my favourite release of the year, and Isbell has stayed firmly at the top end of my favourite artists since.
40)
Shabaka & The Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History
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Another game changer moment for me. Also, this makes me miss Google Play Music, which I still think had better algorithms than Stupify, and introduced me to some amazing stuff. Case in point. A single for this showed up in my feed shortly before release. With absolutely zero context, but figuring the name and art were awesome I checked it out and quite enjoyed it. A few weeks later the album dropped and tore my world wide open again — I fell in love with not only this album, but all things Shabaka and, by extension, the South London scene. I'd just started buying records a few weeks before this came out, and my quest to get any and everything Shabaka played on strongly guided the first year and a half or so of my collection, while simultaneously introducing me to a whole ton of other players and albums I've come to love along the way. I'm sad I've missed the opportunity to see him play saxophone live, but I'll be forever grateful for so many doors of sound he helped open for me!
