May '11 reviews

The following reviews appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury.

Austra – Feel It Break (Paper Bag)

Toronto singer Katie Stelmanis has been an opera student, a feminist punk (Galaxy), a member of a folkie choir (Bruce Peninsula) and a solo artist struggling to navigate harsh electronic sounds with her songwriting vision.

Now that she’s emerged on the international stage leading the band Austra, Stelmanis delivers a fully formed, confident album wrapped up in ’80s goth and new wave. Her aesthetic doesn’t succumb to cheap irony or a fashion statement: Stelmanis is deadly serious, and except for the piano heard on closing track “The Beast,” she constructs an entirely artificial, evocative soundscape for her haunting songs. As an opera kid, she doesn’t hesitate to unleash her full vocal power; she’s a much more dynamic and less shrill singer than she was on her 2008 solo album she released under her own name.

Even though there’s no escaping the onslaught of synths, the input of percussionist Maya Postepski and bassist Dorian Wolf (formerly of Spiral Beach) animates the music beyond the icy exterior, especially on the surefire single “Beat and the Pulse,” and at times Stelmanis even sounds playful with her vocal arrangements. The lyrics are best avoided (“Sign! The! Consent forms!”; “I want your blood / I want to eat my hair”), but with a voice like Stelmanis’s and the sound world she creates around it, they’re barely noticeable. (May 26)

Download: “Lose It,” “Beat and the Pulse,” “Spellwork”

Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (EMI)

Once a hip-hop group plateaus, rarely, if ever, do they step back on their game. So after a decade that included a spinning-wheels hip-hop album, a lacklustre instrumental album, Adam Yauch’s battle with cancer, and a two-year-old scrapped release date for an album called Hot Sauce Committee Part One, there was little reason to expect that they’d come back swinging with an album that’s easily their best since the 1992 classic Check Your Head.

As on that album, the Beasties sound hungry here: they’ve got something to prove, and there’s no time to mess around. No two tracks here sound alike. When they strap on their punk rock guitars (“Lee Majors Come Again”), they sound like bratty 20-year-olds again. When they detour into Jamaican rock steady with singer Santigold (“Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win”), they’re confident and capable genre jumpers who feel right at home in a new suit. When they drop an instrumental track (“Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament”), their funk sounds futuristic rather than retro. When they get wiggy on “Tadlock’s Glasses,” they take their abstract psychedelic hip-hop to places that their many previous journeys into abstract psychedelic hip-hop—and there have been quite a few, making a genre they have almost entirely to themselves—had yet to go.

The Beasties aren’t revisiting past glories, nor are they trying to play catch-up with acts more than half their age. Instead, they openly cop to their grandpa status and rap about sipping Persecco, while musically they borrow from the best and invent the rest, solidifying their status as iconoclasts. (May 5)

Download: “Make Some Noise,” “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win,” “Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament”

The Cars – Move Like This (Universal)

The worst thing you can say about the new album by the Cars—the first album in 23 years by the new wave pop band of the late ’70s—is that it sounds too much like the Cars. To name but one example, “Sad Song” has the same guitar sound, the same handclaps, the same drum beat, the same synthesizer, and the same laconic vocals as many of their greatest hits from the first three albums. The ballad “Soon” is as good, if not better, than their mid-’80s smash hit “Drive.”

Singer Ric Ocasek might be in his mid-60s, but he still sounds like a disaffected young punk. The songs he crafted for this comeback are a distillation of every hit he’s ever written—or even produced, for that matter, as fans of Weezer will attest (Ocasek produced that band’s “blue” and “green” self-titled albums). Getting these Cars on the road again, it’s obvious what an influence they’ve had on every kind of power pop in the last 30 years—even on artists as different as No Doubt (which Ocasek also produced) and LCD Soundsystem (which he did not), as the opening track "Blue Tip" illustrates.

Ocasek throws everything he has into 10 concise pop songs that easily rival the group’s classic 1978 debut. There are no attempts to update their sound or do something different. Why should there be? Everyone loves vintage Cars. (May 12)

Download: “Blue Tip,” “Soon,” “Sad Song”

Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi – Rome (EMI)

Perhaps it’s fitting that for an album posing as a soundtrack to a non-existent film, appearances are everything. Here we have a superstar American producer, Danger Mouse (Broken Bells, Gnarls Barkley), teaming up with an Italian film composer, Daniele Luppi, along with A-list cameos from Jack White and Norah Jones, all setting up camp in the same studio in Rome where master composer Ennio Morricone recorded many of his greatest scores.

That all looks good on paper, and Rome sounds fantastic from a purely aesthetic standpoint: the production is impeccable, the orchestration and use of choral voices is delicate and lovely. But compared to what is trying to be achieved here, the music on Rome doesn’t really measure up to its points of inspiration or even, say, a half-decent record by Air, or Beck doing one of his homages to Serge Gainsbourg’s Ballade de Melodie Nelson.

Jones and White provide pleasant distractions, offering a few anchor moments to an album that otherwise fades easily into the background (which, arguably, a great soundtrack should do anyway). White is clearly having some fun with the role-playing—especially when his lyrics for “The Rose With the Broken Neck” contain so many non-sequitur metaphors that one wonders if he was intentionally trying to write English lyrics like an ESL Italian writer might.

Rome might make me want to go out and rent a Fellini movie or buy a Morricone record or book a plane ticket—or maybe just savour a fine espresso—but I’m not sure I need to hear it again. (May 26)

Download: “Theme of ‘Rome,’ ” “The Rose With the Broken Neck,” “Problem Queen”

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)

If you fell in love with Fleet Foxes’ flawless debut, Helplessness Blues offers mostly diminishing returns. Bandleader Robin Pecknold has been quoted extensively talking about how laborious the writing and recording was, in part because the band’s unexpected popularity kept skyrocketing and delaying the process. As a result, the songs often sound second-guessed and overcooked, not the naturally flowing magic that was so present the first time around. The only time they sound like they’re stretching out a bit is when free jazz saxophones start skronking in “Blue-Spotted Tail”; it’s a nice touch, if not a bit bewildering. It’s a quick distraction from the fact that as lovely as those harmonies are, they can’t carry an album on their own. (May 12)

Download: “Helplessness Blues,” “Montezuma,” “Lorelei”

Gorillaz – The Fall (EMI)

Damon Albarn doesn’t do anything small—or does he?

Most Gorillaz albums involve all sorts of stunt casting of superstars, and their 2010 arena tour featured upwards of 30 people on stage, from hip-hop MCs to African musicians to two members of The Clash to a full New Orleans brass band. Yet this album, released online last Christmas and getting a physical release now, finds Albarn alone in his hotel room or in the back of the tour bus, with only his tablet computer and some synthesizers. Most tracks were made in one day, each at a different tour stop, and the album unfolds in the order of recording during the month of October 2010.

And so the most popular project among Albarn’s many tangential pursuits—Gorillaz have sold millions of albums and scored several Grammys—delivers a low-key, downtempo, 2 a.m. album that sounds like Albarn’s personal post-adrenalin dreamstate as he cruises the highways of North America. It’s a consistently weird, disembodied experience. But that consistency works in its favour, whereas the three previous Gorillaz albums suffered from too many ideas competing to make a pastiche of pop music based in the kind of borderless utopia that Albarn promotes outside the band with his impeccably curated record label, Honest Jon’s.

The Fall is content to exist in its own world, a Zooropean vision of America filtered through an entirely digital lens. The gospel-tinged trip-hop track “Revolving Doors” is the closest Albarn gets to a pop song here; everything else is a fleeting snippet of a synth squiggle, a disembodied country song, or eerily robotic Muzak. The one acoustic song, featuring just legendary soul singer Bobby Womack and an acoustic guitar, somehow fits in seamlessly, despite its apparent incongruity—the kind of trick that Gorillaz keep trying on all their other albums, yet for the first time there’s nothing here that sounds remotely self-conscious.

The Fall is what it is, and it’s a lovely, curious little thing. (May 5)

Download: “Revolving Doors,” “Little Pink Plastic Bags,” “Bobby in Phoenix”

Man Man – Life Fantastic (Anti)

“If you gotta smash some plates to relax, do it, do it, do it!”

The members of Man Man (yes, they’re all men) no doubt take their own advice, judging by the joyous delerium of their live show, which finds frontman Honus Honus leaping off his seat to pound on his piano, while his bandmates assault various percussion instruments. It’s a cathartic experience for band and audience alike, though it would be a stretch to call it relaxing.

On past albums, like the excellent 2006 release Six Demon Bag, Man Man were manic, with their more violent tendencies tempered by tango, Balkan and cabaret influences. It could get a bit cartoonish; 2008’s Rabbit Habits—their first release on a high-profile label—started to sound like a parody of themselves.

Which is why Life Fantastic sounds so glorious: it takes all the madness and kitchen-sink approach of their early albums and brings it down several notches. Producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) helps them focus and find the beauty that’s always lurked on the edge of their rough and raw approach. But if some of their edges have softened somewhat, Man Man remains a unique and powerful band brimming with personality and originality. Clarinets, marimbas, banjos, string sections and the insanely inventive drumming of the man known only as Pow Pow all collide and coalesce in unexpected arrangements that, even in their occasional dissonance, never hit a wrong note. With a new Man Man album this good to behold, life is fantastic indeed. (May 12)

Download: “Shameless,” “Piranhas Club,” “Dark Arts”

Moby – Destroyed (EMI)

His mainstream success now a distant memory, Moby’s albums have become more personal and intimate; 2009’s lovely Wait For Me was a surprisingly strong return to form after years of pandering. Likewise, Destroyed is Moby’s ode to what Bruce Springsteen calls “the wee, wee hours” when the rest of the world sleeps, where those doomed to be awake find themselves witnessing a disembodied, alienating and occasionally magical vision of the world. The soundtrack to that existence, in Moby’s hands, is full of ghostly synths, vocoders and beats that sound pillowy even at accelerated tempos.

But it also sounds like Moby dusted off some tracks he found from 1993; he’s done all of this before, and better—and so have dozens of innovative new producers working similar territory who are biting at his heels (2010 albums by Pantha du Prince and Trentemoller spring immediately to mind). The vocal tracks try too hard to tie together his insomnia theme far too literally, whether it’s Moby himself singing or one of the four female vocalists here.

If he’s trying to replicate the monotonous experience of homogenous hotel rooms around the world: mission accomplished. Why he thought anyone would want to experience that in their own carefully curated home—or anywhere else but one of those hotels—is anyone’s guess. (May 26)

Download: “Be the One,” “Rockets,” “Lie Down in Darkness”

Sam Roberts Band– Collider (Secret Brain/Universal)

Sam Roberts is a mensch among Canadian musicians: all-around good guy, a good-looking guy at that, and creator of some of the breeziest CanRock singles of the last decade. And initial news of this, his fourth album, sounded promising: his band decamped to Chicago to work with producer Brian Deck, known for his inventive work with Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse and Califone. First single “The Last Crusade,” which features a punchy horn section, suggested that Roberts had been listening to some vintage West African funk that had crept into his sound in a supple and subtle way.

But there is no serious reinvention here; sadly, there’s not much inventiveness at all. Even at his weakest moments, Roberts can usually deliver decent pop songs, but over half of the tracks here fall flat. Then again, that’s about the usual ratio for Roberts—even his smash hit debut album didn’t contain more than an EP’s worth of solid material. Whenever Roberts is ripe enough for a greatest hits album, it will no doubt be his defining artistic statement, and several tracks here may well be on it; until then, minor tweaks of his sound can’t carry a full album. (May 26)

Download: “The Last Crusade,” “Without a Map,” “Streets of Heaven”

J. Rocc – Some Cold Rock Stuff (Stones Throw)

Before DJ Shadow’s 1998 classic Endtroducing, turntablist albums were mostly showboating affairs stuffed with scratch-happy pyrotechnics—like Yngwie Malmsteen albums for hip-hop heads. Endtroducing was the game-changer, a cinematic masterpiece. Since then—what? Some Kid Koala albums that are easier to respect than to love, and a grossly underrated avant-garde tour-de-force by Toronto’s Insideamind, 2008’s Scatterpopia. That’s why this debut solo album by J. Rocc sounds like such a breath of fresh air.

J. Rocc came up in the ’90s as part of the Beat Junkies, a turntablist crew who helped keep the art alive, but as a solo artist he’s less interested in showing off scratch technique or elaborate construction. Instead, Some Cold Rock Stuff is an original hip-hop blend of Bollywood funk, Brazilian tropicalia, jazz, disco, downtempo and anything else he wants to throw into the mix, all the while sounding refreshing and original. He’s neither a retro throwback nor a forward-thinking futurist; instead, he’s a craftsman, a master instrumentalist creating a well-rounded album for every mood and taste. (May 5)

Download: “Don’t Sell Your Dream (Tonight),” “Party,” “Play This (Also)”

Raphael Saddiq – Stone Rollin’ (Sony)

At this year’s Grammy Awards, a tribute to the late great soul singer Solomon Burke was led by Raphael Saddiq, a wickedly talented singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer whose career has evolved from ’80s teen idol in Tony Toni Tone to a hip-hop hybrid in Lucy Pearl to a retro soul man. Unfortunately, the Grammy organizers not only didn’t introduce Saddiq by name, they relegated him to second banana status while Mick Jagger strutted out and made it all about himself instead.

But never mind the Rolling Stone; focus instead on Stone Rollin’. Saddiq opens his latest solo album with “Heart Attack,” a garage-y rave-up that sounds like a hybrid of Sly Stone and CCR, and the rest of the album is just as raw and refreshing. Saddiq is normally a slick guy; this sounds like he’s loosened up considerably, turned up his guitar amps, and whipped a band into shape to knock out one live take after another in the studio.

Though Stax-era soul music is the prime inspiration here, Saddiq dips back deeper to ’50s rock’n’roll and Chicago blues. His voice—and what a voice it is—is laced with a tiny bit of distortion here, and he’s more than happy to grunt, snort and whoop it up everywhere he can; this a side of the usually smooth Saddiq that we haven’t heard before. Stone Rollin’ is not all rough and tumble, though; there are some string sections and softer moments that make this more than just a lost weekend in the garage.

Raphael Saddiq may be one of the last great soul men alive. And because he’s at least 20 years younger than the soul greats of the ’60s, he may hold that title for a long, long time. (May 19)

Download: “Heart Attack,” “Daydreams,” “Stone Rollin’”

Sloan – The Double Cross (Murder)

When celebrating your 20^th anniversary, the last thing you want is people wondering: are they still around? Or worse: why are they still around? Sloan provide definitive answers to both by coming out swinging on their tenth album.

For a band that has always prided itself on being a four-way democracy, there have always been albums where someone isn’t pulling their weight. This is not one of them: every member brings their best game to the table, not just individually—they’ve had a tendency to retreat to their silos in the past—but together, as on the Chris Murphy/Andrew Scott song “She’s Slowing Down Again,” or the way some songs cross-pollinate, inserting a chorus of one into the coda of another. Jay Ferguson, the most consistent Sloan songwriter of the last decade, once again scores the album’s sweetest spots, and Patrick Pentland’s rockers sound much more inspired here than he has lately.

If anniversaries are a moment for self-examination, this band’s 20th proved to be a rallying point to give them a raison d’etre. There’s no point sitting around and waiting for radio royalties and festival paycheques to roll in, and so The Double Cross sounds like they’re proving something to themselves as much as their fairweather fans. There isn’t a wasted moment in any of these 12 songs: it’s the sound of a band that is still very much alive and fighting, not resting on a recorded legacy but continuing to make it. (May 12)

Download: “Shadow of Love,” “Unkind,” “Green Gardens Cold Montreal”

Socalled – Sleepover (Dare to Care)

Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, has always been more talented than his music—a novelty mix of klezmer and hip-hop and jazz—would suggest. Which is why it’s such a joyous relief that he finally has an album that fulfills all of his potential as a songwriter, a keyboardist and, most importantly, as a producer, a conduit capable of building bridges between disparate communities. Sometimes it’s silly—which was the primary problem with previous Socalled recordings—but generally Dolgin creates an inclusive party where anything and everything happens. “Work With What You Got” is an inspirational pop song featuring hip-hop pioneer Roxanne Shante, calypso king The Mighty Sparrow, sawing cellos, Serbian brass master Boban Markovic, a children’s chorus, jazz piano and country singer Katie Moore—which is followed immediately by a straight-up Canadiana folk rendition of Peggy Seeger’s “Springhill Mine Disaster.”

Amid all the guest stars—which include James Brown’s trombone player Fred Wesley, Algerian pop star Enrico Macias, Warren Spicer of Plants and Animals, Gonzales, house music pioneer Derrick Carter, and dozens more—it’s Katie Moore whose star shines the brightest here. Though her solo material outside of Socalled situates her in folkie mode, Dolgin puts her to work on disco, funk and torch songs, where she conveys a haunting intimacy even when she’s belting it out. Her ballad showcase, the downtempo torch song “Told Me So,” is an absolute show-stopper.

If earlier Socalled albums seemed a bit forced, a bit too self-conscious, Dolgin’s playful curiosity pays off here with an album that’s as exciting and culturally diverse as his hometown of Montreal: it’s the sound of a St. Laurent street party come to life. (May 19)

Download: “UNLVD,” “Told Me So,” “Richi”

Amon Tobin – ISAM (Ninja Tune)

Amon Tobin built his reputation in electronic music on jazzy samples sliced and diced microscopically and refitted for the dance floor. But on his eighth album, there is neither dancing nor jazz to be found. Continuing to develop the sound world heard on his intriguing 2007 album Foley Room, ISAM sounds more like film composer Ennio Morricone scoring a spooky video game with field recordings of aquatic insects. There’s something creeping around every corner of this album. Tobin toys with tension and release, rarely ever falling into a metronomical meter. Sure, that means that most of ISAM sounds like your iPod is melting before your ears, but digital deconstruction rarely tastes this delicious. (May 5)

Download: “Journeyman,” “Lost & Found,” “Bedtime Stories”

Chad Van Gaalen – Diaper Island (Flemish Eye)

Sometimes you have to judge an album by its title, and this is one of the most disappointing releases of 2011. This Calgary singer/songwriter is one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from the Canadian underground in the last 10 years, and his last album, 2009’s Soft Airplane, was a perfect marriage of his fractured folk, grungy guitars, broken electronics, and fragile kitchen-sink arrangements. At his best, Van Gaalen’s work sounds like a simple three-chord song is the only thing keeping everything in his world from falling apart, that his warbling falsetto is the only light leading you through sonic and emotional wreckage.

Here, however, it just sounds like wreckage, period. There’s a fine line between making your music sound effortless and sounding like you couldn’t be bothered. On Diaper Island, Van Gaalen dumps material that sounds unfinished and half-baked. Or a little too baked, as the case may be—this sounds very much like a stoner slacker party that you’re not invited to.

Certainly there are minor moments of invention: small sonic treats and strange sounds that Van Gaalen conjures out of seemingly nothing on this characteristically lo-fi recording. He’s also more upbeat than usual, with a few tracks recalling the punk side of Eric’s Trip. But it’s largely devoid of Van Gaalen’s usual charm, and the songwriting largely just sounds lazy.

Van Gaalen is a great artist who’s not the type to bow to anyone’s expectations, and more power to him—but in a career of hits and misses, this one is definitely off target. (May 19)

Download: “Sara,” “Do Not Fear,” “Replace Me”

Doc soup

I've filed a few reviews of documentaries on DVD for Exclaim! magazine in the past month:

- The Oscar-winning takedown on the financial crisis: Inside Job

- The NFB profile of Canada's best known eco-terrorist, Wiebo Ludwig: Wiebo's War

- Spike Lee's second documentary about post-Katrina New Orleans, which comes across like a real-life cross between The Wire and Treme: If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise

TuneYards live

TuneYards

May 12, 2011

Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto

A friend of mine, who I saw for a fleeting second at the end of last night’s TuneYards show, just emailed me to ask me what I thought. My response, verbatim, was: “FUCKING HELL YEAH OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD YEAH BABY YEAH WOOOOOOOOOOOO!” What follows is an only slightly more measured response.

TuneYards is Merrill Garbus.

Merrill Garbus, on the other hand, is Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Miriam Makeba, Bjork, Owen Pallett, Terminator X and Ani DiFranco all rolled up into one. And despite that roll call, Merrill Garbus sounds like nobody else you’ve ever heard in your life. Not even all those other yodelling ukulele players who are into African music. (There must be a few out there somewhere.)

I’d seen her previous band, Sister Suvi, on two occasions, and it was a curious, creative combo that only hinted at what Garbus would later do. I’ve spent a lot of time with the two TuneYards records, 2009’s BirdBrains and 2011’s Whokill, and loved them both; the latter in particular is flawless, joyous and viscerally exciting (and you need to own it immediately). Yet all that still didn’t prepare me for what Garbus does live these days.

I’ve seen performers use loop pedals before—who hasn’t? The list of people who use them inventively is increasingly rare; too often, it’s a crutch for a solo performer who can’t afford to bring a band on the road with them. We’ve all seen people painstaking create their symphonies of sound one or two bars at a time. Colour me impressed—once.

Garbus, on the other hand, creates massive, yodelling choirs while seemingly sustaining a single note; it appears as if she’s looping one or two seconds at a time while you don’t even notice. The same approach applies to her drumming, which is not just a couple of floor toms and a snare in front of her, but the click of drumsticks and the clank of hitting the mic stand. And yet despite all this careful construction, she’s still very much fronting a live band—a bassist and two horn players, each amazing and perfectly complementary—who stop and start on cue, wait for pregnant pauses and follow her wherever she goes when the pedals are turned off and it’s just her and her ukulele.

But the technique is for the academic chin-strokers at the back of the venue (or the front row, which is really the only place you could properly see the not-so-towering Garbus at work). Garbus’s appeal is far from technical. It’s animal, primal, sexual, all about release. It’s all id. That was evident from every corner of the venue, whether you could see her hands at work or not.

Just as refreshing as her performance was seeing the sold-out audience dive right in with her. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the Horseshoe roar like it did last night, and not just at the end of songs, but at every astounding trick Garbus pulled out of her hat mid-song—like the stratospheric high notes she hits at the end of the pseudo-R&B jam “Powa,” the kind that could even make Prince jealous.

The look on her own face suggested she was as lost in the music as the rest of us: holy crap, is this happening? Though fully in control and bristling with the necessary confidence to pull this all off, she still looks like she’s discovering all of this for the first time, with open-eyed awe and joy and humility, surrendering to greater forces than we understand. Of course, unlike the rest of us schleps, Garbus is no naïf: she’s somehow capable of controlling the gods and commanding them to dance both for and with us. How does she do it? Who cares? The world is a better place with Merrill Garbus in it.

In other words: FUCKING HELL YEAH OMIGOD OMIGOD OMIGOD YEAH BABY YEAH WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Geoff Berner's Victory Party

Geoff Berner, the “avenging angel of klezmer,” is an old friend of Radio Free Canuckistan, and one of my favourite interviews. Though I’m obviously a big fan of his songwriting—his pitch-black humour, his wit, his empathy, his punk attitude and ability to write timeless folk melodies—his albums have been spotty at best. Since the Vancouver performer started embracing klezmer music, Berner’s touring band—percussionist Wayne Adams and violinist Diona Davies—were certainly capable of tearing it up on stage, yet never seemed adequate to flesh out the studio recordings. And though there are amazing songs on every Berner release, his best work is spread out over his discography.

His new album, Victory Party, however, is aptly named and rock solid from start to finish. Berner enlisted Montreal genre-jumper Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, to helm the production, and it’s a perfect match. [Full review here.] Dolgin gets exactly where Berner is coming from and pushes him to be his best, while bringing in auxiliary players (and switching Adams to a drum kit) to colour in all the corners.

I wrote about both Berner and Dolgin for a piece in a recent Maclean’s. Because the editor was more interested in Berner’s klezmer conversion—which took place in 2004—than the details of his new album, the only quotes used in the article came from a previous conversation I had with Berner in 2006. In other words, this entire conversation is a “deleted scene.”

Geoff Berner

Phone call for tour stop in Bochum, Germany

March 28, 2011

In your ongoing mission to be the avenging angel of klezmer, this record made me think that much of modern klezmer that I’m aware of is not only apolitical but largely instrumental. Is that true?

A lot of it is instrumental. Michael Alpert and Brave Old World have a lot of singing. There are a lot of vocals in a lot of the revival bands like Beyond the Pale, or the Klezmatics, who have an amazing singer. Music that is Ashkenazi Jewish music rooted in Yiddish has all been lumped in as klezmer. You have songs from the massive vibrant Yiddish musical theatre world are lumped in with the wedding tunes that have been played for a couple of hundred years, and even with Israeli folk songs. And they get lumped in with the street political rallying songs of the Russian revolution [one Victory Party track, "Daloy Polizei," is adapted from the latter]. It all gets put under the rubric of klezmer. It’s really just Yiddish culture.

Your mission to write the new drinking songs for the canon—do you feel like you’ve found more peers recently?

Yes. Dan Kahn is doing some great stuff. What Josh Dolgin does is different from me, but I feel it’s on a similar wavelength. There are some other people coming up, and a lot of kids learning klezmer at klez camp and stuff like that who are into what we’re doing. It seems like it’s working. People are requesting songs that I wrote some time ago at the shows and they know the words and are asking for the chords. That was the hope: if I’m lucky, if you have a good run at it, by the end you get a couple of songs into the canon, into the repertoire. You don’t know if you’re going to get there or not.

Would you say that a lot of it is apolitical?

Dan Kahn is even more aggressively political than me in some ways. I don’t know if Josh Dolgin is expressly political, but he refers to political issues in his songs, and his identity as an out gay man is significantly political. The Klezmatics, who are the old guard now, they did an entire album of Woody Guthrie songs. Woody Guthrie’s mother-in-law was a prominent Yiddish poet, and he lived across the street from her in Coney Island in a Jewish neighbourhood. He wrote tons of Jewish political stuff that didn’t really see the light of day because of his illness. They did a whole record of that. There’s always something political about Jewish culture, even if it’s conservative.

You write in your bio that your music is a vision of Jewish culture that is a “reaction to the conservative, knee-jerk pro-Israel, judgmental bullshit that has developed in recent decades.” Is that something you have in common with Josh and your other collaborators on this record?

It’s not something we discuss, because for us it goes without saying. We’re all on the same page. We all have stuff about us that those people hate. Some of us have people in our own families who don’t talk to us, or don’t consider us to be real Jews anymore. We all have that experience. That’s why we bond together.

There’s a song on the record where you take aim at ambiguous lyrics on “hipster radio,” but could that not be applied to any genre of music? The accusation that people aren’t writing about their surroundings or their times?

That’s true, but there’s something particularly irritating about the knowing emotionally distant tone of much of indie rock, because you get vague notions that somebody knows something about the world that they’re not sharing with you, and it’s some kind of weird social capital.

That by holding it back they’re maintaining that social capital?

In a way. Maybe that’s part of why there aren’t any overt expressions of political ideas in those songs, because it would blow the mystique. It’s mysterious.

The Dan Bejars of the world?

Are you asking me to take a shot at Dan Bejar [of Destroyer]?

No, because I’m a huge fan despite feeling that way about him.

There’s something oddly compelling about the new Dan Bejar record [Kaputt]. It has an aggressive decadence that evokes Thatcher’s England from the other side of the fence. He’s making this weird wine-bar music and yet there’s something just off enough about it. It’s like what Agatha Christie said about the nature of horror: you take the familiar and you make it just different enough that it’s uncanny and strange.

I await your record review of that album.

(whispers) The saxophones. The saxophones!

What do you have against saxophones?

Sorry, I was just trying to do my Apocalypse Now routine.

I was watching the surprisingly watchable Juno Awards last night…

Did the good guys win?

Many did, actually. Neil Young was given the Humanitarian Award, and one of the things he said in his speech was that musicians should focus on their art first, that the songs are the most important thing, and from that you can do other things. It made me think of a lot more didactic artists who don’t last, or who give a visceral thrill in the moment. You put down the newspaper and put on their record and you get the same immediate sensation, but you’ll never put that record on again two years later. Which is the challenge with political writing.

It’s tricky, but that’s also the challenge with all songwriting, to not to write a shitty one—because most of them are shitty. There’s a spectrum of goodness. Neil Young wrote his share of really crap songs, and some very of-the-moment songs—some of which turned out to be classics, and some were totally forgettable. But he keeps working, that’s the great thing about him. He goes to work.

How do you approach editing yourself or assessing what’s working?

It’s usually good with political stuff to have an element of humour to it. I don’t like slogan shoutiness. If you can pull off a purely political song like “Just Deportees” by Woody Guthrie or “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll” by Bob Dylan, or even “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” by Billy Bragg, that’s pretty good. But I like the dark humour songs. I grew up listening to Tom Lehrer and his satirical songs. They have a laughing-at-the-horror thing about them that I’ve always liked.

You finally revealed your religious agenda, which took you a while [on the track “Rabbi Berner Finally Reveals His True Religious Agenda,” which argues that the Bible is a test, that God wants you to do the exact opposite of what He prescribes there].

Yes, I’ve been working on that.

What was your aim with that track?

It’s more or less historically accurate depiction of the Frankish heresy. Here’s a funny thing: some people say [the heresy] was a harbinger of the Reformation, the beginning of the end of respect for the Church and powers that be and God at the centre of the universe. There was a large movement of people saying, “What if it’s all bullshit? What if we just did whatever the hell we want?” And it influenced Christians who witnessed this. “Oh, running around in the forest eating bacon—that doesn’t sound so bad. Why can’t we do that?”

Purification through transgression.

I’m always trying to relate Jewish culture to the general culture, and there’s a reason why they call it Judeo-Christian values: most of the shit you goyim think, we made it up!

Wasn’t Frank open to elements of Christianity as well? Didn’t he borrow parts that he thought were appropriate?

I’m not aware of all the aspects of Frank’s crazy, Jim Jones-esque religious plan, but the key to Christianity’s appeal—according to Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—is that it is Judaism unchained. You take the fanatic zeal of the Jews and you say, “Actually you don’t have to follow these dietary rules or do that thing to your dick or any of that other stuff and you still get into heaven.” And Frank was an unchainer.

Don’t the Hussites predate Frank?

Did they do that too?

Centuries before Luther, they were the Czechs who rejected the Catholic Church and in many ways were the first Protestants.

Right. Then there were the Gnostics. There’s a lot of fun stuff there. I like the vibe, and it’s just so funny.

What does the Golem mean to you? [A Victory Party track is called “Oh My Golem!”]

In different versions of the Golem story, it gets out of hand. Frankenstein was clearly a descendent of the Golem. In my song, the Golem is Israel. The whole idea of modern Zionism was invented by left-wing European Jewish intellectuals. Now those guys don’t give a shit what we think about them.

The Golem track sounds unlike anything else you’ve ever done, and you’re obviously stepping outside your comfort zone here. I love the way this record sounds compared to your others, and I assume it’s Josh’s doing. Sonically it’s much better, but the arrangements have more space. In some ways it reminds me of your first record, when you were primarily a solo performer, and the arrangements there weren’t just a replication of a live band.

We could bring things in, cut them out, try things out. Josh would muck around a lot and try things different ways. A lot of it is the quality of that studio, which was amazing and the engineer was killer. Bringing in the bass and clarinet and the piano, there’s less accordion on it, but it comes in when it’s supposed to. I’m glad you heard it that way; that’s what I was hoping Josh would do.

My impression is that it would have been easier for Josh to dig deep into klezmer, living in Montreal, compared to you in Vancouver. Is that true?

I went to Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah. Klezmer and sacred music and Israeli folk songs were played there. I had a grandfather and great aunts and uncles who spoke Yiddish with each other. There is enough of a community in Vancouver; if you want to learn Yiddish, you could do it in Vancouver. A lot of what Josh knows, he learned picking through record stores or finding stuff on the Internet. And he’s been to the klez camps and hung with old people in Montreal and New York. I just started buying CDs and listening to them, buying songbooks and looking them over. I got some immersion from hanging out with Bob Cohen and driving him around Romania in 2004. But there were only one or two Jewish musicians there; these were elderly gypsies who played in the pick-up bands. Now I hang out with Dan Kahn and Josh and Daniel Blacksberg out of Philadelphia; I’m getting more and more immersed in it. Being on the road and doing this has been an invitation for other people to reach out.

Are you doing Germany extensively on this tour?

I do well here. The money is good. The anchor date is a four-city festival that happens once every few years. It’s a Jewish culture festival in the Ruhr valley.

Why do you think Germany in particular is so receptive?

I do well in Northern Europe where I opened for Kaizers Orchestra; I did two major tours with them. Now I do well in Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Scandanavia is really good. That’s what really broke things open, how I got an agent and stuff like that, when those guys took me on board. The climax of this European tour is their 10^th anniversary spectacular show at the Oslo Spectrum Arena, capacity 9,000, and I’m opening for that.

How long have you been going to Europe and how often? Twice a year for 10 years?

That’s about right. Sometimes more.

Musically, obviously there’s a strong connection, but for me half the appeal is the lyrics and double entendres and satire. Why do you think that plays so well there?

Anybody under 45 is English proficient, especially anyone who is a music fan. The Norwegians speak better English than we do. The rest of them are really pretty good. It might be tougher in some of the smaller towns in Germany or Austria, but in the centres, it’s embarrassing because you laze out and don’t learn the local language because you don’t have to.

Right now politics in North America seems more polarized than ever. Do you think the climate is different than it was 10 years ago when you’re performing?

It’s hard to say, because 10 years ago I was trying to win over strangers in little bars, where they had their arms crossed and were wondering why the hockey game got shut off. Now people show up and they know all the words—and for some of them it’s their second language! I’m in a weird satire bubble of people who are totally into it. But the culture in general? I don’t know. When I pissed off the sponsors at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the audience loved it.

What did you do?

I did that thing where I was playing “Maginot Line” [a song about a key strategic military loss by the French in WWII] and I had a giant VW sign behind me, so it just occurred to me in the middle of it to say, “You remember Mr. Hitler, don’t you? He’s the one who brought you—the Volkswagen!” Which is true, he did. He ordered it into being. But apparently that was a no-no.

But surely that didn’t stop anyone from buying a Volkswagen.

I think people were already annoyed with Volkswagen, because they had paid to have a special parking lot closer to the campground, where if you owned a Volkswagen you didn’t have to schlep your gear as far. Everybody was pretty mad already.

So you do still play festivals where strangers don’t know what to make of you.

I think the culture in the past 10 years has moved somewhat to the right. The success of the American Idol stuff has reinforced the idea for some people in mainstream culture the idea that if you’re not No. 1, then you suck. And when you’re not No. 1 anymore, you’re ripe for the trash heap. Now that the brass ring—except for Arcade Fire, and the weird parallel universe they live in—the brass ring has been removed and less and less people care about going after it, which is good.

Moral lessons from Election '11

Five months ago I became a father for the first time, which has led to the requisite musing about what kind of morality—if any—I can instill in my child. I was raised Catholic, was a pious child, and conducted myself as if an omnipresent, scolding deity was watching my every move. The rules were simple. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And so on.

But this recent federal election got me thinking a lot more about morality, in ways that other cultural events of the last 10 years have: 9/11, The Sopranos, George W. Bush, The Wire, the collapse of Wall Street, 24 and more. Now an agnostic, I’ve come to realize that morality ain’t what it used to be, and my son might have to adapt to the times.

I grew up admiring political leaders, even ones I didn't agree with. During this last election, I learned 12 key lessons from Dear Leader Stephen Harper (and some from Rob Ford) that I think will serve my son well in life. These are things my parents never taught me, but those were different times. My son will learn to be a Machiavellian with the best of them.

Here they are, son:

Don’t hesitate to ask for it all. Don’t bother sharing; it won’t make you happy and it won’t make anyone else happy, either. There’s only room for one boss, and that might as well be you. Act this way, and you will get what you want.

If a game is not going the way you want it to, take your toys (and maybe a few extra) and go home. As long as you’re the boss, people will always play with you, because they have no choice. So always make sure you’re the boss.

If someone accuses you of doing something dastardly, simply say that it’s not true. When they come back with facts, simply say: “Let me be clear. That is simply not true.” As long as you continue to insist that it is not true, no one will even remember why anybody might have thought it was true in the first place.

If you’re trying to convince somebody of something, say the exact same thing each time. Leave no room for ambiguity or nuance. Do not improvise. Stick to your script. Your critics will say you lack subtlety, but the only thing you lack is weakness. Simplicity is strength.

If someone like a judge or a teacher decides that you are breaking the rules—rules that have long applied to everyone else who’s ever done your job or been in your position—you then tell everyone that it’s merely a matter of opinion and that you’re merely being persecuted because the accusers are jealous. Remember, you are the boss. The other guys just want to be you.

If someone you hired to do a job and/or represent you then in some way turns out to be unreliable, make up vicious stories about them to explain why you fired them. If the person is indeed unreliable, whether or not they’re innocent of your accusations will be irrelevant. Just make sure to spread the rumour through other people. Even if investigators find no evidence of your accusations, simply shrug and let the insinuation continue to define the story.

If you want people to do something that benefits you, convince them that a sea of chaos will soon be lapping upon their shores unless they give you what you want. Don’t bother promising them puppy dogs and roses; promise them a world of pain should things not turn out your way.

Always be happy, even when you’re talking about the world of pain that will ensue if people don’t agree with your decisions. No one likes an angry person, so always smile and talk about what a positive person you are, even while suggesting that your enemy is Satan incarnate.

If you have a solution that you think will make people happy, even if the problem that would normally require such a solution doesn’t even exist, then pretend the problem exists and people will be ecstatic that you have the solution.

If you disagree with something, make up some statistics that prove you right. If someone else’s statistics prove you wrong, make sure no one else finds out about them.

Always take credit for other people’s work, especially people who did the work before you showed up.

Finally, should you ever venture beyond the borders of this great country we call Canada, never, ever return except for family vacations or to receive an award. Canadians will be proud of you and treat you like a novelty, but if you come back here for good you will forever be under a cloud of suspicion. People of all political stripes will wonder things like, “Why did he leave? Why did he come back? What does he think he knows that I don’t? Does this mean there’s something wrong with me because I never left? Is he trying to take advantage of me somehow? Is he taking away a Canadian job? Does he think we’re all chumps?” They may or may not say this to your face, but they will definitely be thinking it. Canada is a weird country. If you’re going to leave, leave early and don’t come back.

Except for those awards. And family dinners.

Love,

Dad

Updated postscript: And always be thankful you didn't grow up in a totalitarian Communist society, like your maternal grandparents.

Hauschka live

Hauschka

The Music Gallery, Toronto

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Forgive the opening tangent, but I have to admit right off the top that, until very recently, I was predisposed to dislike all German music that didn’t have something to do with the Cabaret soundtrack (which I love unabashedly).

There were few exceptions, of course: Kraftwerk and The Notwist, to name two, perhaps because both incorporate characteristic emotional repression into their entire raison d’etre. Beyond that, bad childhood memories of Nina Hagen and the oppressive boredom of the minimal techno crowd led to my racist belief that German music was either a) ridiculous or b) terminally uptight.

It was the latter that I expected from the German pianist and composer Hauschka (born Volker Bertelmann), whose discography features lovely, orchestrated piano pieces. His latest album, Salon des Amateurs, focuses on his prepared piano technique, and finds him collaborating with two drummers: Calexico’s John Convertino and Mum’s Samuli Kosminen, with the latter joining him on tour. While the record is lovely, with lilting melodies and a percussive propulsion that is somewhat related to club culture (though only peripherally, not explicitly, as this reviewer seems to think), it’s also a bit repetitive, reserved and, well, uptight.

Hauschka’s live show, on the other hand, is anything but. Here, he uses looping pedals, his prepared piano technique, and live mixing to give the compositions plenty of room to breathe. Kosminen is a percussionist, not a drummer: he rarely, if ever, played four on the floor, and no cymbal ever rang out for more than a microsecond. Such was his intimate role in the arrangements that he may as well have been inside Bertelmann’s piano, moving around the metallic objects inserted between the strings himself. Bertelmann could probably have pulled off a show like this himself, but Kosminen elevated it to a whole other level by introducing playful exchange.

Most of the material from Salon des Amateurs, which Bertelmann introduced with amusing anecdotes, was barely recognizable, other than fleeting motifs. A few songs took on subtle reggae rhythms; one was more overt, and juxtaposed a minor-key vamp with a major-key melody. By layering the textures bit by bit, there was more room for the listener to be drawn in; when presented all at once on the albums, the effect is lessened. Not that the process is the point here; the music simply sounds better as its being unravelled.

Why Hauschka albums don’t capture the magic of his live experience is a mystery. Furthering my gross cultural stereotypes from the opening, maybe we should chalk it up to German engineering. Next time, maybe Bertelmann should join Convertino in the Arizona desert and get his hands dirtier.

CanRock Spectacular, class of '95

Radio Free Canuckistan and Heartbreak Trail are proud to present:

Friday, June 10 at Lee’s Palace, Toronto

Book re-launch for Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995, 10^th anniversary edition

Featuring:

Weeping Tile (feat. Sarah Harmer and the Cold Snap line-up) (video)

King Cobb Steelie (hot off their recent 20^th anniversary shows) (video)

Kevin Kane (of the Grapes of Wrath, with his solo band) (video)

Ticket information available shortly. Proceeds will benefit the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Have Not Been the Same, written by myself, Jason Schneider and Ian A.D. Jack, was first published in 2001. Ten years later it remains the only book examining Canadian music between 1985 and 1995, a decade that spawned the likes of The Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, Sloan, NoMeansNo, Daniel Lanois, Rheostatics, Change of Heart, Doughboys, Eric’s Trip, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Grapes of Wrath, Skinny Puppy, k.d. lang and others. It was also the dawn of MuchMusic, campus radio and entrepreneurial indie labels, all of which fuelled this creatively fertile time.

Before Canadian music conquered the world in the age of the Internet, it had to convince Canadians first. During the decade covered in this book, an explosion of Canadian artists redefined the way the country’s music sounded and its relationship with its audience. Musicians became more adventurous, lyricists celebrated their country in song, and there was no shortage of colourful characters who helped build the country’s tower of song. Together, they made music that defined a generation—a generation often ignored by baby boomers and cultural commentators understandably swept up in the giant gains Canadian music has made in recent years.

The original version of Have Not Been the Same sold out of its print run and has been unavailable for at least the last six years. We had always wanted to see it back in print again, but we were bolstered by many requests from younger fans and musicians who wanted to find a copy and learn more about this scarcely documented part of recent Canadian musical history. (On top of that, original copies were commanding three-digit figures on eBay and Amazon.)

The book has been revised to include new interviews, new edits, new context and new information about artists who passed away (the Nils), broke up (Rheostatics), reunited (Eric’s Trip), or went on to greater career heights (Joel Plaskett). Though mention is made of more recent history, the book’s original time frame remains intact, as does much of the original text.

The original launch took place on September 29, 2001, also at Lee’s Palace, and a line-up that featured Neko Case, Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, Blurtonia, Carolyn Mark, Michele Gould, John Borra Band, Dinner is Ruined and Groovy Religion.

This time we decided to focus on three key acts, and we’re absolutely thrilled that these three artists—all very different from each other, and each a personal favourite for entirely different reasons—have agreed to perform.

I look forward to seeing you there.