Digging for Something with Jim Di Gioia of the act of just being [t]here
Overlooked, underrated, over-hated or regionally specific gems.
I’m reaching out and asking writers, band members and music curators to tip us all off to their favourite underrated albums, overlooked or unfairly obscure gems… even the downright over-hated. Hopefully it’s another fun way for you to find some new-to-you music to love.
Joining me today is Jim Di Gioia of the act of just being [t]here, a Substack devoted to music criticism, nostalgic over-analysis and Canadian indie evangelism.
They’ve provided some context for their picks today:
All of my recommendations come from musicians who are constantly creating, evolving, and exploring sound. They are artists I have been following for quite some time. They are also all Canadian, and most I discovered while I was heading up the two music blogs I ran from 2006 to 2018 (Quick Before it Melts from 2006-2026, and DOMINIONATED, from 2016 to 2025). I’ve also championed many of these artists and their work in my role as a jurist for the Polaris Music Prize, which crowns the best Canadian album every year based solely on artistic merit. Some of these albums had physical releases, most should be available on Bandcamp and the DSPs, but all will forever hold a special place in my collection, and I hope they will find a home with those out there discovering them for the first time.
And now, let’s get to their album recommendations:
Rae Spoon - Superioryouareinferior (2008)
Genres: Indie Folk
Jim says:
Superioryouareinferior opens with “Great Lakes,” a song that sets the tone for a record both gentle and quietly radical. Rae Spoon’s folk-pop musings shimmer with bleeps and glitches, but it’s the emotional clarity of these songs that lingers long after the music stops.
Released in 2008 (and long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize that year), Superioryouareinferior is the sound of an artist pushing beyond the boxes of genre and the gender binary, even then. Spoon’s roots were in country and folk, but this album felt like a watershed moment where they transcended what those two genre signifiers could mean. Since that time, Spoon has continued to evolve, moving between electronic, country, and indie pop, while also founding a record label devoted to marginalized voices. They’ve survived personal health crises and a system ill-equipped to care for non-binary people, and come through as one of Canada’s most steadfast and necessary artists.
Spoon is more than just a hidden gem. In my books, they’re a national treasure, still writing, recording, and reshaping the Canadian landscape, and I am looking forward to their next album, which they say is a return to their country roots.
Dan says:
Love to see submissions highlighting Canadian music, and equally as happy to see these records are all entirely new to me. Listening to this album reminded me that there’s something really special about Canadian folk music that I can’t put my finger on, so I’ll let Jim’s words do the heavy lifting. “Come On Forest Fire Burn The Disco Down” really stood out to me here as well.
Vivek Shraya & Queer Songbook Orchestra - Part-Time Woman (2018)
Genres: Canadian Indie, Canadian Singer-Songwriter
Jim says:
Vivek Shraya’s Part-Time Woman, created in collaboration with the Toronto-based ensemble Queer Songbook Orchestra and long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize in 2018, is a concise and affecting song cycle on gender, recognition, and belonging.
Across its orchestral pop arrangements, Shraya, a trans woman of South Asian heritage, asks what it means to be seen as a woman, and who gets to decide. I love how the lush, orchestral arrangements give weight and grandeur to Sharya’s lyrics, turning vulnerability into something operatic and inspirational. I’ve long admired Shraya as a musician, author, and activist for her tenacity, tenderness, and grace, and Part-Time Woman distills all of that into one compelling, compact package. With a new album on the way this fall, there’s no better time to revisit this bold, beautiful statement from one of Canada’s most fearless voices.
Dan says:
This is incredibly beautiful, particularly how wonderfully the music and storytelling fuse, or sometimes juxtapose, with one another. Very powerful stuff.
Expwy - Little Hand Fighter (2012)
Genres: Canadian Indie, Bossa Nova
Jim says:
Matt LeGroulx has released a staggering amount of music under various guises over the years, but 2012’s Little Hand Fighter, his fifth album under the moniker Expwy, remains one I return to often. There’s a quirky charm in how it reimagines bossa nova through a lo-fi indie lens, full of breezy percussion, warped strings, and unexpected melodic turns. Tracks like “Warm and Stricken by Lashes” and “Cultivate a Classic Sky” are highlights, and they show off LeGroulx’s knack for detail and killer off-kilter hooks. Since 2012, LeGroulx has continued to build a vast, unpredictable catalogue (including recent work with Quinton Barnes as part of the Black Noise Ensemble featured on his album, Black Noise). LeGroulx is a consummate artist, endlessly curious and committed to the act of making.
Dan says:
Something about this (“No state can survive me”) reminds me of stuff like early The Ruby Suns; very bedroom, echoy stuff where the melodies feel like they’re bouncing around inside someone’s head and spilling out of your speakers. I love that kind of lo-fi bric-a-brac indie folk (here augmented with bossa nova guitar and rhythms) and it’s another little corner of music that I find Canadians are often the best at.
Devours - Iconoclast (2019)
Genres: Synthpop, Electropop
Jim says:
Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I’m championing Devours on this list. But where my previous written work about the Vancouver-based electronic “gaylien” (aka musician/producer Jeff Cancade) has focused on their run of stellar releases since 2021 (all available on vinyl), I’ll stick to the idea of digging for something out of the ordinary and point you to Devours’ debut LP, 2016’s Late Bloomer.
Like Expwy’s Matt LeGroulx, music feels like a matter of life and death for Cancade, and his alter-ego Devours is a pure and very personal expression of his lived experiences. Late Bloomer explores the anxieties and uncertainties of coming out later in life and navigating the intersection of artistic and queer communities, which don’t always align in ways that allow for someone to express themselves fully. That continues to be a thematic arc in Devours’ work to this day.
As someone who came to discover them halfway through, it’s been refreshing to go back and familiarize myself with Late Bloomer and its follow-up, Iconoclast, to see this evolution of Devours’ 8-Bit-influenced, hyper-pop sound in action. It’s also worth noting that Cancade is a tireless community builder and champion on the current Vancouver music scene.
Dan says:
And anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised that a synthpop album with the lyric “Find me a man / who’s willing to watch / Basic Instinct and Candyman on VHS” would win me over immediately.
Little Kid - Logic Songs (2011)
Genres: Indie Folk, Indie Rock, Slacker Rock
Jim says:
Like Devours, I discovered Little Kid later in their career and have found a back catalogue that’s just as compelling as their more recent work. Logic Songs, their debut originally released in 2011 and reissued in 2023, is a fragile and beautifully fractured collection of lo-fi folk songs that sketches out the spiritual and sonic terrain they’d explore more fully in later work.
There’s a rawness to Logic Songs that feels both unpolished and precise. It’s humble, almost apologetic for how much feeling and emotional depth it packs. The main little kid in Little Kid is Kenny Boothby, whose songwriting on this album is already full of the kind of quiet, unflinching honesty that would come to define Little Kid’s music over their seven subsequent releases, the last being 2024’s A Million Easy Payments.
Dan says:
Damn, “You May Not Be Right” is a banger of a lo-fi pop tune. This is giving some Eric's Trip vibes to me now and again in how it contrasts light and airy bedroom folk with slacker rock songs (only deconstructed into simpler percussionless forms.) Really neat stuff.
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.
Thank you so much for having me, Dan!