> BEN RAYNER’S REASONS TO LIVE

1. Compilation No. 1 (Missed Con

nection). “We felt the Guelph music scene was long overdue for a vinyl compilation album of some of our favourite local artists,” states the jacket. And, yeah, if this fine sampling of what’s going just an hour outside the Toronto city limits these days is any indication, it probably did.

New-ish label Missed Connection Records — which has released records by Zachary Lucky, Legato Vipers and Alanna Gurr & the Greatest State (whose achy “The Light” is featured here) in the past and has a fantastic new Del Bel album on the way next month — hardly misses a beat in the song selection.

Among the goodies: Odd Years proffer nimble ’90s alt-pop in the vein of Sloan’s Twice Removed on “Way That You Were,” Gregory Pepper and his Problems purvey naive sock-hop ska-bop in the form of “Luv U 2 Deth,” the Furys introduce Rust

Never Sleeps to some Stooge-ian dirt on “Sorry Sister,” Adverteyes do spooky low-tech Rick White psych on “Down In Front” and sometime Skydigger Jessy Bell Smith countries down in heart-rending style on “Wind and Cold.”

Nathan Lawr and the ever-evolving Minotaurs, meanwhile, serve a reminder that cool tunes are nothing new to Guelph by getting all King Cobb Steelie on us for “Weird Waves.” Dig this up. 2. The Sands, Beast to Bone (Independent). Vancouver singer Julie McGeer and cellist/pianist-abouttown Peggy Lee have created a charmingly idiosyncratic little keeper in their first joint foray as the Sands.

Beast to Bone, produced with the help of West Coast violin iconoclast Jesse Zubot — who helmed Tanya Tagaq’s Polaris Music Prize-winning

Animismlast year — flutters between indie folk, jazz and experimentalism in beguiling fashion, its breathy vocals and lilting, gossamer melodies belying an undercurrent of toughness that occasionally manifests itself in knotty guitar tones and lyrical darkness.

It’s quite a unique piece of work, casting a spell that only mildly subsides when a nice, but unnecessary and slightly out-of-character cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” intrudes into the second side. Not as arty as it first seems, trust me. And “Hold On” is pure, sighing, brassy pop pleasure. 3. Dan Mangan + Blacksmith, Club Meds (Arts & Crafts). Hey, we liked Dan Mangan just fine, too, when 2009’s (very good) Nice, Nice,

Very Nice was threatening, by title alone, to pigeonhole him as a very specific sort of Canadian singer/ songwriter.

He and his band had already moved well past such amiably folksy populism onstage by the time Oh, Fortune rendered their rapid artistic growth explicit for the permanent record three years later, however, and now Mangan — with the beardy gentlemen of Blacksmith sharing full creative credit by his side — should easily shatter just about every preconception you might still hold about his music and his vision with Club Meds.

The distance between, say Robots and where Mangan is at in 2015 is obvious within exactly the 30 seconds it takes for opener “Offred” to flicker from a few bars of minor-key synth notes and halting electro-beats into the syncopated, dystopian amnesiac outtake (“I give in / I do not have the fight”) it suddenly becomes; once Club Meds’ plunge into the existential void has been irrevocably hastened by “XVI” and the numb “War Spoils” at this exceedingly bleak record’s midpoint, chipper ditties about robots needing love, too, seem a universe away.

Levity is in short supply here, then, and Club Meds can be an oppressive listen on first approach.

It’s begging for a little light to be let in by the time penultimate track “Pretty Good Joke” declares “Every- body’s dying / Already bored / Of just living / It’s not enough,” but that light never comes. Regardless, it’s a spectacularly well played, arranged and produced record, though, and the transfixing depth and detail of the mix tends to hook you even before these rather evasive songs get their hooks in you. Mangan and Blacksmith might have decided to play Radiohead a little bit this time out, but they were wise enough to bring along a producer up to the task of playing Nigel Godrich in sometime Black Mountain boardsman Colin Stewart. This one will surprise you.