Members of the Canadian rock band Billy Talent. From left: Aaron Solowoniuk, Jonathan Gallant, Benjamin Kowalewicz and Ian D'Sa. (Dustin Rabin/Warner Music Canada)

Like the cadaverous figures of ‘60s icons still stalking amphitheatre stages, rock has seen healthier days. It has apparently reached such an enfeebled state that it needs defending by Kelly Clarkson.

Billy Talent and Alexisonfire may just be hardy enough to thrive in today’s trying conditions for mainstream rock.

In a recent edition of the New York Times weekly Playlist column, the former American Idol champ celebrated Nashville’s Kings of Leon for being keepers of the flame. “The rock category is not rock any more, so I love that they’re a rock band,” she said about Kings of Leon, who broke through on the American charts with their fourth album, Only by the Night (2008). According to Clarkson, “Nothing about them is not rock.”

One irony here is that the perky pop star’s own hits (Since U Been Gone, My Life Would Suck Without U) are more convincingly “rock” than Kings of Leon’s slick and perfunctory Use Somebody, which could be Bryan Adams’ Run to You as covered by Coldplay. The fact that Clarkson felt moved to define and defend rock suggests just how much confusion exists within the category. Given the seemingly infinite sub-genres derived from the original blueprints of blues rock, hard rock, psychedelia, heavy metal and punk — to name only the most basic varieties — it’s hard to get any agreement on what counts as rock any more.

Members of the band Alexisonfire perform in Toronto. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

The current SoundScan list of Canada’s hard-rock bestsellers is dominated by aging warhorses (AC/DC, Iron Maiden) and one not-so-super supergroup (Chickenfoot). Alt-rock radio emits a steady stream of emo-punk and post-grunge that’s big on aggression but often limited in terms of everything else. Thankfully, this is not true of two Canadian bands that are bound to dominate the same charts and playlists this summer. With burly, bruising new albums and full-throttle live shows, Billy Talent and Alexisonfire are bona-fide rock acts still capable of reaching (and exciting) a wide audience.

In his 1995 study The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, Donald Clarke analyzed how popular forms prior to the 1950s – e.g., Tin Pan Alley pop, ragtime, big band jazz – typically experienced a brief but intense lifespan before giving way to the next sensation. The same initially appeared to be true of rock ‘n’ roll after its first impact in the mid-‘50s, an era famously capped off by Elvis Presley’s army induction and arrests for Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. But the unprecedented size of the baby-boom demographic meant that the music was here to stay.

While subsequent generations haven’t abandoned it, the last two decades have been rocky in another sense of the word. In 1990, not a single rock band hit No. 1 on Billboard’s album charts — the first year that had occurred since 1963. With Guns N’ Roses and hair-metal on the wane and hip-hop and dance music on the ascent, they were dark days for wearers of denim. The arrival of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Metallica’s “black album” – released within a month of each other in the fall of 1991 – ushered in another resurgence, giving mainstream exposure to punk, thrash metal and other aggressive sounds that had festered at the margins.

Chad Kroeger of Nickelback performs at the 2009 MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

But as previously underground sounds went mainstream, rock as a recognizable form underwent countless deviations and dilutions. Thus did Pearl Jam beget copyists like Staind and Creed. Meanwhile, Green Day’s breakthrough in 1994 inspired innumerable imitators to repeat the punk-pop blueprint pioneered by the Ramones. A tentative alliance between metal and hip hop would eventually give us Linkin Park, America’s biggest-selling and possibly least-rocking rock act of the last 10 years. Then there’s the immense influence of American Idol — after an initial flirtation with retro-rockers like Taylor Hicks, the show’s voters now express a penchant for bellowing power-balladeers like Daughtry and David Cook.

Amid all the lumpen bellowing on rock radio, the music of Nickelback is actually a respite. Frontman Chad Kroeger famously boasted of analyzing hit songs in order to figure out how best to replicate them. While a tune like Gotta Be Somebody could be dismissed as formulaic, at least Kroeger understands there’s a formula worth using.

Billy Talent knows it, too. That’s why the Canadian band might be hardy enough to thrive in today’s trying conditions for mainstream rock. A four-piece from Streetsville, Ont., that slugged it out for years on the Toronto rock scene under the name of Pezz, the group fared better after borrowing the name of the fictional guitarist in Hard Core Logo. In 2003, Billy Talent’s self-titled major-label debut established its willingness to apply some traditional pop savvy to the velocity and aggression of the third-generation punk variant known as emo. They were amply rewarded with Juno awards and multi-platinum sales while enduring far fewer critical potshots than Nickelback.

Jonathan Gallant of Billy Talent performs in Montreal. (Dustin Rabin/Warner Music Canada)

Billy Talent III, out July 14, shows the same degree of savvy, as they integrate more tried-and-true elements of rock’s yesteryear – like the greasy, Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque guitar solo in opener Devil on My Shoulder and the Police-like skanking rhythm of Diamond on a Landmine – into songs that retain the drive and shape demanded by radio programmers of our age. The familiarity of the various components means that Billy Talent’s music seldom boasts any novelty factor, but it also boasts superior construction and hardier materials than most of what passes for rock in the age of Daughtry.

Alexisonfire also builds on its considerable strengths with its new album, Old Crows/Young Cardinals (2009), released this week. A five-piece from St. Catharines, Ont. that has often toured with Billy Talent – they recently shared stages at Edgefest in Toronto and the MuchMusic Video Awards – the band has an edge over its pals when it comes to indie cred. But Alexisonfire uses much the same game plan, combining hardcore-punk bluster with more radio-friendly elements.

As before, Alexisonfire’s debt to post-hardcore touchstone discs like Drive Like Jehu’s Yank Crime (1994) and The Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come (1998) will be clear to miscreants of a certain generation. Nor is the sing-and-scream/call-and-response strategy of co-vocalists George Pettit and Dallas Green as exciting as it was before countless dire American acts adopted the same tactic. But there’s no lack of new fury in Emerald Street or the exhilarating opening one-two punch of the album’s two title tracks.

Like Billy Talent III, Old Crows/Young Cardinals is the sound of a rock band that displays great strength and confidence while retaining a keen awareness of the category’s prevailing precepts. Surely, that’s more than enough to meet Kelly Clarkson’s exacting standards.

Old Crows/Young Cardinals is in stores now. Billy Talent III will be out July 14.

Jason Anderson is a writer based in Toronto.