Perfume Genius - No Shape

Perfume Genius – No Shape (Matador)

Mike Hadreas is the man who calls himself Perfume Genius, but that’s not even the most audacious thing about him. He writes with candour about disease, addiction, queer identity and other topics often avoided in pop songs. On his breakthrough record, 2014’s Too Bright, the single “Queen” contained the proudly defiant chorus: “No family is safe / when I sashay.”

This time, however, he’s not just writing about pain or revenge; he’s writing about finally reaching the other side of sobriety and domesticity and true love. (“Did you notice we sleep through the night? / Did you notice, babe, everything is all right? / You need me / Rest easy / I’m here / How weird.”)

Sound boring? Not in these hands. Not in the least.

First of all, no matter what he might choose to sing about, Hadreas’s voice will send shivers up any spine; the only white North American man he could remotely be compared to would be Roy Orbison, for that unique combination of strength, fragility, intensity and emotional depth that precious few can even begin to emulate. Hadreas has that. He’s a big fan of Mary Margaret O’Hara, whom he’s covered often live, and tracks here like “Every Night” share the majesty of her best ballads.

Everything about his fourth album is incredibly intense and rendered in explosions of auditory colour, in part thanks to producer Blake Mills and engineer Shawn Everett (both were behind Alabama Shakes’ Sound and Color). Perfume Genius can do glam cabaret or art-damaged R&B or stripped-down piano ballads, but there is an ever-present tension and slight discomfort beneath even the prettiest moments. He knows he can slay with just piano and voice—which is what we heard on his first two records—and he’s not interested in that anymore. Instead, the surrounding sonic world is just as, if not more, important than the songs at the core. The combination of cocksure confidence and avant-garde exploration also makes him perhaps the only person to ever reference both Bruce Springsteen and filmmaker Peter Greenaway in his bio—alongside Prince’s Black Album and Kate Bush’s The Dreaming, neither of which are unfair reference points. (May 11, 2017)

  

Stream: “Slip Away,” “Just Like Love,” “Every Night”

  

Beatles vs. Prince: reissues of decade-defining albums

Still cleaning up some 2017 reviews here, including these from last summer: reissues of albums that defined their respective decades. One was much more revelatory than the other.

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (EMI)

It’s 2017. Why are we talking about Sgt. Pepper’s? In case you’ve been living under a rock, the Beatles’ most acclaimed album turned 50 on June 1. Which meant yet another occasion to trot out the tired cliché that it is somehow the single greatest album of the rock era—even if, as many fans have pointed out for years, it’s not even the best Beatles record.

The marketing ploy clearly works: It’s the third bestselling album ever in Britain, behind only greatest hits collections by ABBA and Queen. And it returned to the charts this week, selling more than 100,000 copies in the U.S. and U.K. in the past seven days. Who’s still buying this album?

For all the praise that continues to be heaped upon it, there is much to blame Sgt. Pepper’s for. For starters, there’s the notion that it is somehow a “concept album”—despite the fact there is absolutely no musical or lyrical coherence to the 13 songs here, and anyone who tells you otherwise is clearly grasping at straws (or really, really high). Since Sgt. Pepper’s, music critics have been trying to bestow undue significance on no end of albums that merely sound important, from Dark Side of the Moon to OK Computer to Funeral. And for better and worse, it gave countless rock bands the idea that strings, brass and exotic instruments instantly make you seem like a better band than you actually are.

The legacy and the legend are problematic, and should be ignored in favour of the sheer pleasure of actually listening to it. Sgt. Pepper’s is, of course, a great album. The question is: do you need to buy it again?

Of course it’s been remastered yet again, and for those who notice subtle differences, yes, it sounds great. For those same fans who study the studio notes to discover recording minutiae, it might be somewhat interesting to hear the alternate takes, instrumental versions, and unadorned basic tracks that peel back the curtain on the making of what we’re told is a masterpiece. It is admittedly interesting to hear, without the string section, the 24-bar dissonant transition between the two sections of “A Day in the Life” (and the one leading to the final chord). But overall they’re really dragging the ditch here: anything that didn’t already surface on 1995’s Anthology is likely not worth your time. (June 8, 2017)

Stream: “Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 26),” “A Day in the Life (Take 1 with Hummed Chord),” “Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise (Take 8)”

Prince and the Revolution – Purple Rain: Deluxe Edition (Warner)

The Vault is open. Yes, Vault with a capital V, long a source of wonderment among Prince fans for what be held in an actual vault inside his Paisley Park complex, which apparently holds enough outtakes that it will take decades for archivists to wade through them. Glimpses into the Vault have been rare: some tracks surfaced on his online-only fan club release Crystal Ball in 1998; he also released a subpar contractual fulfillment album called The Vault in 1999.

But this is the gold mine: unreleased material and outtakes from the Purple Rain sessions, right in the middle of an astounding five years of creative output (1982-87) that rivals only the Beatles. The reason none of this surfaced at the time was that Prince had already moved on, recording almost any day he wasn’t on the road (or shooting a movie). So here we have unreleased pop throwaways like “Velvet Kitty Kat” (not to be confused with, um, “Scarlet Pussy”), showcases for Revolution members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman (“Our Destiny”), and falsetto ballads that rival “The Beautiful Ones” (“Electric Intercourse”). Then there are repurposed takes on songs we already know, but drastically different and worth the attention of even the most casual fan: there’s a 12-minute version of “Computer Blue” with some of the best guitar sounds Prince (and/or Wendy) ever put to tape, or the piano and synth version of “Father’s Song,” which was repurposed for the outro of “Computer Blue.” Then there’s “We Can F—k,” a track he worked on for seven years before a very different version emerged on 1990’s Graffiti Bridge, featuring George Clinton. Or extended funk workouts like “The Dance Electric” or “Possessed,” which, as usually the case with Prince, are light years ahead of tracks that most ’80s R&B and pop acts would release as lead singles.

You’d be forgiven this was a total posthumous cash grab from his label and estate. It’s not. The artist who once shaved the word “slave” on his face signed a new deal with Warner in 2014 in which he regained ownership of all his recordings for the label; Prince oversaw this project before his death last April. Which is obvious once you hear the attention to detail in bringing these tracks to life; hissy cassette dubs had circulated for years among fans, but everything here is pristine and perfect. And even if you think you never need to hear the Purple Rain album proper again, this is one of the rare remastering jobs that warrants attention. (Unlike, say, [cough] Sgt. Pepper’s.)

A “deluxe expanded” edition includes the well-known B-sides (“Erotic City,” “17 Day” and more) and extended mixes (like the version of “Let’s Go Crazy” that appears in the film) as well as the considerably more superfluous “single edits” of the album’s most popular songs. It also tacks on a long-bootlegged full-length live show from 1985 in Syracuse, N.Y.

Not enough? Rest assured there’s still enough in the Vault to warrant some kind of five-disc 40^th-anniversary Super Mondo Extra Deluxe version in 2024. And it will probably be just as great. (July 6, 2017)

Stream: “Computer Blue (Hallway Speech version),” “Father’s Song,” “Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden”

Bjork - Utopia

Bjork – Utopia (One Little Indian)

For the birds, this one is. Or at least, it sure features a lot of birds and birdsongs. Which befits Bjork, whose melodies always had more in common with the sounds of the natural world than anything codified in human behaviour. And yet while that’s what fans have always loved about her, Bjork is now even less interested in “organizing freedom” and, on Utopia, lets her melodies be led astray by every passing breeze.

In the past 15 years, Bjork’s records have been easier to admire than to enjoy, and Utopia is no different. 2015’s Vulnicura fell prey to one of pop music’s well-worn clichés: the breakup record. On Utopia, Bjork, who once boasted that she “definitely enjoys solitude,” is re-examining what that means later in life, and how that plays out in relationships with her ex and her children. She’s wading into deep waters, and the music she’s writing doesn’t make it easier.

Collaborator Arca is incredibly inventive, as always, but wanders astray as often as Bjork’s melodies: both could use a framework onto which they could hinge these songs. Instead, it sounds like Bjork’s entire discography being tossed into a blender. That’s a standard record-reviewer cliché, but in this case it’s quite literally true. Plunderphonicist John Oswald would have made a better record than this.

The novelty this time out—and this will really be the breaking point for many—is that she’s fallen in love with flutes. Yes, flocks of flutes—a 12-piece female orchestra of flutes, naturally—are scattered throughout Utopia in ways that strings and choral voices were on 1997’s Homogenic and 2001’s Vespertine, respectively. Her use of harpsichords, accordions, bells, and other arcane instrumentation has always been one of the most intriguing things about Bjork’s musical palette, but surely one must draw the line at flutes—plural.

Utopia is largely insufferable because it’s interminable: it’s 71 minutes long, with nary a memorable melody or beat. As a collection of curious sounds that Bjork happens to be singing over, it’s interesting at best, intolerable at worst. Some of the better moments are the most minimal, when Arca either comes down or clears out, leaving just Bjork and those f’n flutes alone, on tracks like “Claimstaker” or “Saint.” By the time those songs appear in the back half of the record, however, most will have dashed out on the dystopia of Utopia.  (Nov. 30, 2017)

Stream: “The Gate,” “Courtship,” “Claimstaker”

Bird City - Winnowing

Bird City – Winnowing (Label Fantastic/Coax)

If you’re a Guelph music fan, you know Jenny Mitchell. But you haven’t really known Mitchell at all until you hear this album, a crowning achievement for the musician after almost two decades on the scene, featuring many songs that were given years to mature before committing to tape. Mitchell has been a pillar of Guelph’s music scene since the early 2000s: as a musician, as a promoter (at the late Family Thrift Store), as a label owner (Label Fantastic), as a community radio DJ, a karaoke host and as the driver of “the Golden Bus,” a school bus that doubles as a mobile music venue, a spot for film screenings, and as a travel agency shepherding music fans to Sappyfest in Sackville, N.B. Though she’s recorded as Jenny Omnichord and a member of the then-teenage Barmitzvah Brothers, Winnowing is her debut as Bird City, her most musically traditional solo project.

Three years in the making and made with local hero Scott Merritt (whose 2015 album Of was a quiet masterpiece), it features many of the city’s finest, including drummers Nathan Lawr and Steph Yates, lap steel guitarist Rich Burnett, bassist Scott Haynes, former Barmitzvah Brother Tristan O’Malley, and the Constantines’ Bry Webb, whose hushed harmonies blend perfectly with Mitchell’s understated vocals. Merritt keeps the arrangements sparse and lovely, the focus set on Mitchell’s storytelling and her delicate accompaniment on banjo and tenor guitar.

Much of Mitchell’s earlier work, dating back to the band she formed when she was 16, could have been dismissed as “quirky,” both in her choice of subject matter and instrumentation. But Bird City is decidedly mature and melancholy, the work of an arts activist, entrepreneur and mother of two who still lives in the town that nurtured her creativity and spirit, a work made with a musical veteran who also happens to be the father of her first drummer. It’s a record where the many threads of Mitchell’s life come full circle, a deeply personal record rooted in the local that manages to transcend all of that and resonate on a larger level. Winnowing is a tiny triumph that opens up the second chapter of her rich and rewarding artistic pursuit. (Jan. 5, 2018)

Stream: “Hours,” “A Band End,” “Salvage Diver”