Recommended this month: The Both, Doomsquad
The following reviews appeared, as always, in the Waterloo
Record and Guelph Mercury.
Aimee Mann almost never makes a bad album—even if they all
pretty much sound identical: same impeccable production, same mid-tempo pace.
If her lyrics weren’t so smart and incisive and even biting, you could accuse
her records of being too polite.
Which is why it’s a tad shocking here, on a full-length
collaboration with punk songwriter Ted Leo, that the first time we hear her
voice it’s accompanied by a shriek of feedback underneath it. Leo, who is 10
years Mann’s junior, shakes her out of a rut—and not just because of his dirty
guitar tone. Unlike a lot of high-profile pairings, The Both sounds like a
50/50 partnership that plays to both artists’ strengths. Even if you didn’t
know anything about each performer’s history, it’s evident when every song
features not just perfect harmony, but vocals traded off like actual duets—the
likes of which barely any pop act other than Stars bothers to write anymore.
Both Mann and Leo sound like they’re having fun, discovering the magic they
share and raising each other’s game. (April 17)
Download: “Milwaukee,” “Volunteers of America,” “The Hummingbird”
Mac DeMarco - Salad Days (Captured Tracks)
The term “salad days” goes back to Shakespeare’s Antony and
Cleopatra, where the heroine says, “My salad
days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood.” The 24-year-old Mac
DeMarco—an Edmonton native who bounced around Vancouver and Montreal before
landing in Brooklyn and becoming a buzz act—is definitely in his salad days.
His blood, though, is anything but cold. On this, his third full-length (second
under his own name), he sounds like nothing at all could possibly raise his
blood pressure: indeed, one imagines him sprawled out on a couch, guitar in
hand, microphone stand carefully arranged to reach his reclined position, his
rhythm section craning their necks to try and intuit changes.
Basing this book on its cover, I
had every reason to hate Mac DeMarco. Go ahead: do a Google image search. He
comes off as a slacker dressed for a day at the beach in ironic retro-ugly
fashion—which seems to go hand in hand with his ’80s guitar chorus pedals that
make a god-awful approximation of Pat Metheny slumming with the lo-fi home
recording crowd. At times it sounds like the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie trying to
play with Pavement, or the British cloudgazing band The Clientele detuning
their guitars in the middle of a song. He almost seems to intentionally be
going for the weirdo vote by replicating those strange but beautiful
private-press albums from the ’70s, obscurities that existed only in runs of
500 before being reissued in the 2000s with extensively researched liner notes
(see: Donnie & Joe Emerson’s album Dreamin’ Wild, on Light in the Attic
Records).
If you can get past that—and it might take a while—it becomes
clear that DeMarco puts a lot of effort into making music that sounds this
effortless, if not, well, bad. He’s a much better guitar player than his crappy
sound would suggest, and he occasionally employs unconventional harmonies (or dissonance)
in otherwise dreamy (albeit slight) melodies. Every song sounds more or less
the same—does that make him lazy or consistent? (April 10)
Download: “Salad Days,” “Brother,” “Johnny’s Odyssey”
Doomsquad – Kalaboogie (Hand Drawn Dracula)
Bewitching beatsmithery from the dark woods of Algonquin Park,
created by three siblings who like to filter their worldly influences through a
dark haze: sludgy guitars burble up from underneath electronic pulses and
looped marimbas, with haunting female vocals chanting throughout. Sometimes a
funk groove or a pop song might emerge; sometimes it sounds like you’ve
stumbled into a rural rave with a bunch of hippie goths. Kalaboogie isn’t just
a silly name for an album; it’s named after Calabogie Lake, just west of
Ottawa, where much of this album was recorded with engineer Leon Taheny (Owen
Pallett, Bruce Peninsula). Fever Ray meets King Cobb Steelie? Stranger things
have happened—and many of them do, here. (April 17)
Download: “When the Dead Become Infants,” “Waka Waka,” “Eternal
Return”
Eccodek – Singing in Tongues (Black Swan Sounds)
This is the fifth original album by Guelph’s Andrew McPherson as
Eccodek, and never has his global reach sounded so coherent. He’s long dabbled
in African and Indian grooves; the fusion of the two is seamless here, even
with Balkan vocals and Mediterranean oud and an American hip-hop MC entering
into the mix. It sounds much better on headphones than it does on paper. McPherson
built the tracks from raw material by his occasional collaborator, Jah Youssef,
recorded by Lewis Melville in Youssef’s native Mali. Many other artists try to
make music like this, thinking if they throw enough ingredients in the pot and
slap a beat underneath it, that they’ll magically achieve musical nirvana.
That’s not McPherson. There’s a good reason why this small-town guy has built a
formidable international reputation: one listen to Singing in Tongues will
reveal what that is. (April 17)
Download: “In Confidence,” “Singing in Tongues,” “In My Tribe”
Michael Feuerstack & Associates – Singer Songer (Headless
Owl)
Montreal “singer/songer” Mike Feuerstack is easily an MVP of
Canada’s musical underground. He plays or has played with the Wooden Stars,
Bell Orchestre, the Luyas, Bry Webb (Constantines), Julie Doiron, Islands, and
more. Here, he calls in some favours, writing nine songs for his peers to sing;
the guest list includes the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson, Bry Webb, Jim Bryson,
reclusive Montreal country singer Angela Desveaux, Mathias Kom (The Burning
Hell), Jessie Stein (the Luyas), Little Scream, and Llewyn Davis—whoops, I
mean, Leif Vollebekk. Longtime Feuerstack fan and collaborator Jeremy Gara, of
Arcade Fire, is on drums. What could go wrong? Nothing, of course. Granted, it
doesn’t pack the same wallop that these same singers might have covering the
greatest non-hits of Feuerstack’s entire career, as opposed to entirely new
material. There’s plenty of time for that—and no shortage of admirers likely to
step up to the plate. (April 10)
Download: “Did I?” (feat. Bry Webb), “Stories” (feat. Jessie
Stein), “Lost & Found” (feat. Jim Bryson)
Ibibio Sound Machine – s/t (Soundway)
The number of record labels devoted to reissuing African music
from the ’70s has recently discovered a rich treasure of contemporary African
acts in London, notably KonKoma and Owiny Sigoma Band. Ibibio Sound Machine is
fronted by British-Nigerian vocalist Eno Williams, singing in her mother’s
native tongue, backed by three producers and KonKoma’s Ghanaian guitarist
Alfred Bannerman. They have more in common with early ’80s post-disco dance
music than they do ’70s Afrobeat or highlife, favouring synth bass and modern
digital production, albeit with a real horn section; at times there is also the
distorted kalimba, a futuristic ghetto sound popularized by the Congolese
Konono No. 1. Ibibio Sound Machine’s drumming is anything but straight-ahead,
filled with tricky syncopation; between that and Williams’s non-English lyrics,
it’s clear this is a band thoroughly enjoying itself straddled between two
times, two places. (April 3)
Download: “Let’s Dance,” “Prodigal Son,” “I’m Running”
Justin Rutledge - Daredevil (Outside)
What a disappointing month for Tragically Hip fans. First Gord
Downie’s much anticipated collaboration with the Sadies turned out largely to
be a letdown, and now Justin Rutledge shows up to dump on the legacy of one of
the greatest rock bands this country has ever produced.
Sure, The Tragically Hip are songwriters responsible for
venerable favourites that deserve to be reinterpreted and rediscovered, and
Downie’s lyrics leap off the page as poetry independent of the music. But The
Tragically Hip are also a rock band first and foremost, one whose power depends
largely on their internal chemistry. Here, the songs are stripped beyond bare
by Rutledge, a sad-sack supreme whose music is hard to appreciate from anything
but a horizontal position. Even then it can be a cumbersome chore (unusual for
easy listening music), despite the high calibre of players he consistently manages
to attract.
It’s not impossible to cover the Hip, but it requires
imagination: compare Selina Martin’s 2011 electronic reimagining of “Grace Too”
and compare it to Rutledge’s limp, somnambulant rendition heard here. Taking
one Hip song and dragging it to a dead stop is not a terrible idea—once. And
Sarah Polley (of all people) already did that with “Courage,” for The Sweet
Hereafter soundtrack more than 15 years ago. Gord Downie’s melodies on their
own rarely provide hooks: the Hip’s success has everything to do with his
snarling delivery and the riffs and energy behind him. Obviously, none of that
is here; oddly enough, Rutledge even seems to avoid the more melodic material
available in the catalogue, and gives the best song here, “Fiddler’s Green,” to
Jenn Grant to sing.
Nothing about these versions make me rethink the originals or
shed new light on their merits; everything about these versions make me want to
listen to the originals—or, in fact, anything else at all.
Is there an Anti-Polaris Music Prize for worst Canadian album of
the year? If so, there’s no contest. I’ll grant Rutledge this about Daredevil:
it’s daring, all right. (April 24)
Download: “Looking For a Place to Happen,” “Escape is at Hand
For the Travellin’ Man,” “Fiddler’s Green”
Thus Owls – Turning Rocks (Secret City)
Canada and Sweden: two countries that punch above their global
weight when it comes to musical talent. Surely, however, Thus Owls is the first
half-Canadian, half-Swede collaboration. Singer Erika Angell (née Alexandersson) met
Patrick Watson’s delightfully unconventional guitarist, Simon Angell, on tour
in Europe; shortly after, they got married and started Thus Owls, with Swedish
bassist Martin
Höper and endlessly inventive Montreal drummer Stefan Schneider (Bell
Orchestre, Luyas); organist Parker Shper rounds out the lineup. Together, they
exist outside of genre or easy comparisons—even to Watson’s particular brand of
art-rock. Vocal harmonies recall early Joni Mitchell, while the fearless
songwriting, which plays with structure and meter, rarely ventures toward
obvious hooks. The music works better on an intellectual level than on a gut
one, though Erika’s vocals are more than capable of holding anyone’s attention. (April 10)
Download: “As Long As We Try a Little,” “Bloody War,” “A Windful
of Screams”
Tycho – Awake (Ghostly International)
It’s amazing the difference it makes to electronic musicians
when they actually form a live band and hit the road. Just ask Nicholas Jaar,
who hired guitarist Dave Harrington to help him tour Jaar’s solo project, and
their chemistry together led to the collaboration Darkside, arguably the best
electronic record of 2013. Here, Tycho, aka San Francisco artist Scott Hansen,
invites the live band he toured with to promote 2011’s Dive to join him in the
studio. Dive had featured guitar and bass helping to colour the synth-drenched,
dreamy, washed-out beats; with a seasoned band in the studio this time,
however, Hansen taps into a live energy that steps up his game. Bassist Zac
Brown (no, not that Zac Brown, of the Zac Brown Band) is just as melodic as
Hansen’s U2-ish guitar lines, while drummer Rory O’Connor ensures that no one
will ever again accuse Tycho of being an ambient electronic act. (April 3)
Download: “Awake,” “Plains,” “See”
Whoop-Szo – Qallunaat/Odemin (Out of Sound)
Here’s the pitch: a bunch of freaky noisemakers from Guelph
travel to the second-northernmost community in Quebec to run a screen-printing
program for Inuit youth, and wind up recording a double album there full of
psychedelic jams, field recordings, hushed pop songs, raging prog-rock
monstrosities, and anything else the landscape and the -50 temperatures
inspired them to do. Even without the backstory, the music itself would inspire
you to play it at your next basement party, field rave—or maybe your five-day
festival of independent music and arts programming with a special focus on the
weird and wonderful (i.e. Guelph’s magnificent Kazoo fest, which took place April
9-13). (April 10)
Download: “Dark Light,” “Has It Been So Long,” “Whale Songs”
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