Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music 2000-2005

by Michael Barclay

Overview

An authoritative, unprecedented account of how in the early 2000s Canadian music finally became cool

Hearts on Fire is about the creative explosion in Canadian music of the early 2000s, which captured the world’s attention in entirely new ways. The Canadian wave didn’t just sweep over one genre or one city, it stretched from coast to coast, affecting large bands and solo performers, rock bands and DJs, and it connected to international scenes by capitalizing on new technology and old-school DIY methods.

Arcade Fire, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Feist, Tegan and Sara, Alexisonfire: those were just the tip of the iceberg. This is also the story of hippie chicks, turntablists, poetic punks, absurdist pranksters, queer orchestras, obtuse wordsmiths, electronic psychedelic jazz, power-pop supergroups, sexually bold electro queens, cowboys who used to play speed metal, garage rock evangelists, classically trained solo violinists, and the hip-hop scene that preceded Drake. This is Canada like it had never sounded before. This is the Canada that soundtracked the dawn of a new century.

Featuring more than 100 exclusive interviews and two decades of research, Hearts on Fire is the music book every Canadian music fan will want on their shelf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770415874
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Pages:	616
Sales rank:	315,258
Product dimensions:	6.44(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.77(d)
Lexile:	1050L (what's this?)

About the Author

Michael Barclay is the author of the 2018 national bestseller The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip. He is also a co-author of Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985–95, to which this book could be considered a sequel. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Get In or Get Out ix

1 Visualize Success: That Night in Toronto 1

2 National Hum: Setting the Stage 7

3 Dead Flag Blues: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Constellation Records 44

4 Don't Be Crushed: The Cautionary Ballad of Hawksley Workman 68

5 Second Acts and '90s Survivors: The Weakerthans, Sarah Mariner, Joel Plaskett, Danko Jones 78

6 From Blown Speakers: The New Pornographers, Destroyer, Tegan and Sara, the Organ 124

7 First We Take Berlin: Feist, Peaches, Gonzales 171

8 Don't Mess with Our Love: The Dears, Sam Roberts 213

9 Now More Than Ever: Royal City, the Hidden Cameras, Constantines, Jim Guthrie, Owen Pallett, Three Gut Records 239

10 Country in the City: Corb Lund, the Be Good Tanyas, Kathleen Edwards, the Sadies 297

11 Your Ex-Lover Is in the Band: Broken Social Scene, Stars, Metric 344

12 Ain't Nobody Can Hang with Us: Kardinal Offishall, k-os, Swollen Members, Saukrates 391

13 Must You Always Remind Me?: Nickelback 422

14 Baiting the Public: Alexisonfire, Billy Talent, Fucked Up 425

15 Weirdo Magnets: Kid Koala, Buck 65, Caribou, Cadence Weapon 470

16 Drunk Clowns of the Victorian Era: Hot Hot Heat, Wolf Parade, the Unicorns, Black Mountain 508

17 Crown of Love: Arcade Fire 555

Conclusion: We Built Another World 588

Acknowledgements 597

Selected Sources 600

Editorial Reviews

Hearts on Fire is a love letter to a seminal time in our country’s collective music history sometimes forgotten. At nearly 600 pages, ample space is devoted to revealing the rich sonic landscapes these artists created and painting a vivid picture of their divergent paths to success.” — Toronto Star

“This book is catnip for me. There is no Arkells if not for so many of the artists chronicled here. I was a teenager when I started going to clubs to see all of these acts, and it informed so much of the way I think about being in a band. This era of Canadian music is revered in my mind, so it is amazing to have the curtain pulled back to reveal the goals, temperaments, and egos of my heroes. A must-read for anyone who wants to celebrate the golden age of Canadian indie rock music.” — Max Kerman, Arkells

“A thorough and intriguing history made no less appealing by its length. For pop music historians and fans, particularly of Canadian bands from 2000 to 2005, whether they know it or not.” — Library Journal

“Sets out the when, why, how and magnitude of the change, with reams of granular details and an eye for practicalities.” — Maclean’s

“Hearts on Fire is an ambitious project from an accomplished journalist, a wellspring of anecdotes and testimony wrought from more than 100 exclusive interviews and two decades of research … While Hearts on Fire spends a portion of its vast length looking at industry trends, the majority is made up of seventeen thematic chapters, each of which displays the research and scope of a master’s thesis, but with better storytelling … This is a bible: an extensive catalogue of who worked in which bar, who slept on whose shabby couch, or which chance encounter ultimately resulted in a generational classic … a time capsule of optimism and creativity, and a reminder of what’s possible.” — Literary Review of Canada

From the Publisher

02/04/2022

To make it in Canada, so conventional wisdom went, you had to make it somewhere else first—especially if you were Canadian. Barclay (The Never-Ending Present: The Story of Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip) chronicles how, in the early 2000s, a wave of bands from Montreal, Toronto, and other cities across Canada put paid to that notion, though their fans in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere might not have initially realized that they were Canadian. His recounting of this remarkable explosion of creativity makes for a weighty tome indeed, his profiles of 40-plus artists taking up more than 600 pages. Bands such as Tegan and Sara, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Broken Social Scene, and Arcade Fire benefited from both the pre-monetized infancy of digital music sharing and what turned out to be the last gasp of commercial physical music distribution; the book concludes on a somewhat uncertain note, as escalating costs (rent not least among them) and declining album sales made pursuing a music career an increasingly uncertain enterprise even before COVID took out the live concert industry at the knees. What emerges from Barclay's narrative is five years of capturing lightning in a bottle that yielded some of the most remarkable music of the early 21st century. VERDICT A thorough and intriguing history made no less appealing by its length. For pop music historians and fans, particularly of Canadian bands from 2000 to 2005, whether they know it or not.—Genevieve Williams

Library Journal