"Your favourite artist's favourite artist" has become a nickname for Chappell Roan in the last couple years — a description indicating that musicians have particularly refined tastes when it comes to their listening habits.
With that in mind, we asked some Canadian artists for their recommendations about albums they're excited about at the moment. Nobody mentioned Roan, but these musicians shouted out classics like Bob Marley and Amy Winehouse, up-and-coming Canadian talent, and a couple of long-list underground faves from decades past.
Read past editions of Show & Tell here.
Aysanabee
Kaya by Bob Marley and the Wailers
Photo courtesy of the artist
"I grew up in a house without electricity, and when my brother moved to the city, he left Bob Marley albums behind," Aysanabee tells Exclaim! "When the generator was turned on at night, I would put on the album and be taken to another world." Now, Aysanabee's own music has taken him to another world — specifically Tasmania, where he was touring when he took this photo after rooting through a pro surfer's record collection.
Bonnie Trash
Basic by Divide and Dissolve and In This Year: Hierophant by Praises
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Bonnie Trash are known for their darkly cinematic take on gothic post-punk, as heard on the recent Mourning You — so it's no surprise that twin sisters Emmalia and Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor have similarly shadowy listening habits.
Emmalia picked the 2007 album Basic from Australian doom project Divide and Dissolve, noting, "Takiaya Reed's art will save the world. This is what hope sounds like. Turn off the lights, turn it up."
Sarafina, on the other hand, chose Hand Drawn Dracula labelmate Praises, noting that 2022's In This Year: Hierophant is "dark, beautiful, gothic, and wonderfully theatrical. Go give it a listen!"
Art d'Ecco
Epsilon in Malaysian Pale by Edgar Froese
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David Bowie has long been a stylistic reference point for glammy post-punk Art d'Ecco, so it's only fitting that his pick has a connection to the Thin White Duke. "I once read that Bowie was obsessed with this album when he was living in Berlin — you can hear its influence all over Low and "Heroes" — so naturally I was a moth to the flame on this record," d'Ecco says of the two-song Epsilon in Malaysian Pale. "An incredible album to travel back in time to 1975, to hear what the future sounds like…" Catch another glimpse of the future in d'Ecco's new album Serene Demon.
Featurette's Lexie Jay
WHEN IT'S ALL OVER by Cam Kahin
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Featurette's Lexie Jay first heard Cam Kahin's music when the two artists both performed at Germany's Reeperbahn Festival, the impact was immediate. "I haven't felt this way about a record since I discovered some of my favourite Radiohead and NIN albums," Jay says of 2023's WHEN IT'S ALL OVER. "Cam Kahin's raw emotion is visceral and pulls you right in." Speaking of visceral emotions, Featurette's raw-nerved alt-pop album Panic Pills landed earlier this year.
Jonah Falco of Fucked Up and Jade Hairpins
Raxola by Raxola
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"I seem to really enjoy music that falls between the cracks," Jonah Falco explains of this record from pioneering Belgian punks Raxola. He describes it like so: Anthemic chord progressions and huge choruses peppered into sputtering rhythms and dirge-y salves, all with the arrogance/confidence of a very quirky and colloquial budding Belgian 1970s subculture." When Jade Hairpins named their 2024 album Get Me the Good Stuff, maybe bands like Roxola were what they were referring to!
Sari Lightman of Lightman & Lightman
The Roches by the Roches
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The Roches aren't one of the best-known folk groups formed in the '70s, but Sari Lightman notes that "they are cherished within the musicians' fold." She describes the band's 1979 debut as featuring "familial myth and cyclical curses sung with such fervour and the casual shrug of surrender, you will weep before the outro." If anyone is qualified to speak on "familiar myth," it's surely Sari Lightma, who recently launched a new project with twin sister Romy Lightman called Lightman & Lightman, following their previous stints in Tasseomancy and Austra.
Marlaena Moore
I Want to Grow Up by Colleen Green
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According to Marlaena Moore, Colleen Green's music was "BRAT before BRAT in terms of really laying it all out there lyrically." She explains, "Colleen's music really helped me through a tough time in my life where she was singing some of the only truly relatable lyrics," which helped Moore to "redefine what it meant to be a woman playing music under your own name. You can be vulnerable and put yourself out there, but you're not confined to play fragile folk." Her Moore continue that tradition with her raw, rocking and hook-forward new album Because You Love Everything.
NIA NADURATA
Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
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NIA NADURATA cites Amy Winehouse's Black to Black cut "Tears Dry on Their Own" as the first song she learned to sing. "Amy has so many karaoke hits, so naturally the Filipinos love Amy, so I'm just sticking to my roots," she jokes. Much like Winehouse before her, NADURATA puts her very own spin on pop and R&B with the recent debut EP Still Living With My Parents.
Louie Sanchez
Brown by Ivana Santilli
Photo: Joanna Delos Reyes
On Louie Sanchez's self-titled EP, released back in the fall, Pantayo's Eirene Cloma put their own spin on acoustic troubadour music. When they're looking for something "familiar and playful," however, they turn to a "Canadian R&B time capsule" from 1999: Ivana Santilli's Brown. They recall, "In true millennial teenage fashion, I started with a burned CD lifted from a library copy. I bought the limited edition vinyl in 2015, likely from Play De Record."
Shiv Scott of Shiv and the Carvers
Lex Hives by the Hives
Photo: Annie Jane Marie
The Hives maybe be "the champagne of bands," as Shiv Scott puts it, but their 2012 album Lex Hives was absent from streaming services for a few years until being reissued in 2024. Scott owned the CD, but didn't have a CD player, so picked up the vinyl last year. Scott notes, "LH rides the line between classic rock 'n' roll and punk, with grand flourishes. Huge riffs and great lyrics" — all apt ways to describe the Carvers' recent Tell Me You Love Me Again EP.