Anohni – Hopelessness

Anohni – Hopelessness (Secretly Canadian)

If the title didn’t tip you off, this is not the feel-good record of the year. Quite the opposite. Anohni—formerly known as Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons—has a few things to get off her chest, starting with the fact that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, and it’s our own damn fault.

For an album seeped in anger and loathing, a lot of it is directed not directly at the forces of darkness, but at our own collective apathy. “4 Degrees”—about a recent report that warned that, with current carbon emission rates, global temperatures would rise by four degrees by century’s end—finds Anohni snarling that, with current carbon emission rates, “It’s only four degrees … I wanna burn the sky, I wanna burn the breeze / I wanna see animals die in the trees.”

She’s not one to mince words. Elsewhere on the album, she adopts the voice of a young girl whose family dies from American drone bombs, or mock celebrates capital punishment by exclaiming, over a beautiful melody, “Execution / it’s an American dream!” She then rattles off the not-so-esteemed company who, like the U.S., execute an unusually large number of their citizens: North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia. And in perhaps the best post-Snowden protest song, “Watch Me,” she takes a Big Brother metaphor as far as she can: “Daddy I know you love me because you’re always watching me.”

Ah, but surely the lovely, if avant-garde, torch song balladry we knew from Antony and the Johnsons lends some beauty to this madness, no? Or perhaps the disco liberation she achieved on guest spots with Hercules and Love Affair? Sorry. With her new name, Anohni also has new collaborators: abrasive electronic producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, who prefer white noise and distortion to a 4/4 beat. The music here is as discomforting as the lyrics; the only pretty moments come during contrition on the last third of the album: “Why Did You Separate Me From the Earth?”, “Crisis” (about a litany of American foreign policy atrocities, with the chorus, “I’m sorry”), and the title track, which borrows from Agent Smith in The Matrix when Anohni asks, “How did I become a virus?”

Most scathing, however, is “Obama.” The current U.S. president has had an easy ride from musicians and artists during his years in power, but Anohni isn’t having it. She remembers how the world wept tears of joy when the charming man was elected, but that same man is now responsible for surveillance, executive-ordered death by drones, and punishing whistleblowers. Much of the song is Anohni incanting Obama’s name over a distorted dirge, a lament for lost hope, an indictment of betrayed promises. 

Anohni has spent her career having people fawn over her voice; mentor Lou Reed, not known to be a sappy man, called it that of “an angel.” That it is. But there were many moments on previous records when she affected gospel-tinged melisma, sometimes to distracting ends. (And then there were her duets with Bjork, which counterintuitively seemed to bring out the worst in both incredibly talented vocalists.) Here, however, Anohni is powerful and on point and has never sounded better. Small wonder: this music, these lyrics, require a certainty and conviction that leaves no room for any ornamental excess. She sets her targets; she scores direct hits. (May 12)

Stream: “4 Degrees,” “Execution,” “Obama”

August '12 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury this month.

Antibalas - s/t (Daptone)

How many bands get recruited to back up a long-running Broadway show, and then return with the best album of their career? Antibalas spent the last several years as part of the musical theatre sensation celebrating the life of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti—which was more than apt, because it was Antibalas who almost single-handedly kickstarted the Fela revival in America 10 years ago. 

Now they’re back with a sharp, concise album that owes as much to James Brown as it does to Fela, with tight American funk grooves, organ stabs and guitar riffs intertwining with the West African polyrhythms that define their sound. Time and experience have transformed Antibalas into a band that is the equal of all their collective influences. (Aug. 23)

Download: “Dirty Money,” “Saré Kon Kon,” “The Ratcatcher”



Antony and the Johnsons – Cut the World (Secretly Canadian)

Lately Antony has become better known for appearing on tribute albums (like the new Fleetwood Mac one, reviewed below), guest roles on other people’s projects and being the most visible transgender artist within periphery of the mainstream. It’s become too easy to forget that he possesses one of the most astounding new voices of the last decade.

In part, that’s because Antony’s own material hasn’t always matched the sublime power of his voice. And yet when it does, it’s resulted in emotionally devastating performances that stop you in your tracks. Which is why this orchestral live album (recorded without applause, until the final track) is a potent reminder not only of Antony’s presence, but of his songbook. This is far from a greatest hits (“Hope There’s Someone” is absent), but it does dip back to his stunning 2000 song “Cripple and the Starfish,” and breathes new life into even a song as recent as 2010’s “Another World.” The title track is new, having been commissioned for an acclaimed documentary about the performance artist Marina Abramovic. The orchestrations are all tasteful and creative; though Antony himself can occasionally be maudlin (“You Are My Sister”), the music here isn’t in the least.

Whether he’s singing about environmental apocalypse, the Rapture, epilepsy, S&M or falling in love with dead boys, Antony maintains a state of grace throughout. Which is why his 7.5-minute spoken word interlude, “Future Feminism,” is a terrible idea—not because he’s doesn’t have interesting philosophical and spiritual ideas, but because codifying his stage banter on disc, complete with a distracting teenage uptalk, is embarrassing and distracting from the greater work being presented, even if Antony considers his philosophy and music as interdisciplinary.

One would hate to be so crass as to tell Antony to shut up and sing, but unlike the rest of this magical album, you only ever need to hear “Future Feminism” once. (Aug. 16)

Download: “Cripple and the Starfish,” “Another World,” “Epilepsy is Dancing”

Arnaldo Antunes, Edgard Scandurra and Toumani Diabaté – A Curva da Cintura (Mais un Discos)

Toumani Diabaté is a giant of Malian music, a kora player with a keen sense of collaboration that has seen him work in many genres and with everyone from Bjork to Taj Mahal. Here, he accompanies two Brazilian musicians that allow him to trade licks with guitarists in rock, bossa nova and acoustic samba settings; Diabaté’s son Sidiki adds some wah-pedal effects to his own kora playing, just for kicks. Often it’s lovely—but when it lags, it really, really drags. It’s when they try to rock that this falls flat: chugging electric guitars or American blues motifs sound clunky and grossly out of place. (Aug. 2)

Download: “A Curva da Cintura,” “Kaira,” “Que Me Continua”


Francis Bebey – African Electronic Music 1975-1982 (Born Bad)

Bebey was a Cameroonian Renaissance man who wrote novels, sculpted, wrote pop music, was a radio journalist, worked for UNESCO, played classical guitar and helped launch the career of Manu Dibango (Soul Makossa). But wait—it gets better. In the late ’70s, he dove headfirst into electronic music, mixing Moog synths and thumb pianos while programming polyrhythmic African beats into primitive drum machines, creating sounds that owed as much to German experimental Krautrock and French pop as it did West African music, retaining a warm analog feel that never dips into the sterile sounds of much African music made in Paris (Bebey’s second home) during the ’80s. Bebey’s music here sounds strange, welcoming and innocent; the fact that he narrates most of his comical, bilingual lyrics in a deep, chortling baritone also helps (“Don’t give me bananas and yam for dinner at the same time!” goes one chorus). Bebey’s music is unlike any other you’re likely to have heard from Africa, either then or now, and easily stands out from what seems like a flood of recent reissues. (Aug. 9)

Download: “Agatha,” “New Track,” “Divorce Pygmée”


Dead Can Dance – Anastasis (Pias)

“We are ancient, as ancient as the sun,” are the first words on Dead Can Dance’s first album in 16 years. Indeed, it was 31 years ago that the duo of Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard first began blending medieval European folk music with Arabic, African and gothy new wave influences. And now, on an album whose title is the Greek word for resurrection, they sound—well, old. It doesn’t sound like they’ve invested in any new synths in the interim, and while both are still in fine voice, the writing is content to drift along on uninspired grooves devoid of the enchantment that always seemed to come naturally to them. Too much of this sounds like bombastic soundtrack work (Gerrard co-composed the score for Gladiator) aiming for John Barry-ish drama and failing. Though Perry and Gerrard were never romantic partners, this is like having sex with a long-ago love, trying to remember your intimate tricks and faking orgasm to just save face. And considering how many ’90s bedrooms had a Dead Can Dance CD handy by the bedside, that makes this even sadder. (Aug. 16)

Download: “Children of the Sun,” “Agape,” “Opium”


Debo Band – s/t (Next Ambiance/Sub Pop)

When vintage Ethiopian jazz and R&B recordings of the ’70s began being reissued 10 years ago, European and North American audiences seemed content to revel in the seemingly never-ending material from the vaults—27 volumes and counting—while the large Ethiopian diaspora mostly played to its own communities.

That might change with Boston’s Debo Band, fronted by two Ethiopian-Americans and joined by nine other musicians who bring eclectic influences into the group, including klezmer, European brass bands, R&B and psychedelic guitar. Were they intending to be entirely faithful to tradition, they wouldn’t include sousaphone, accordion and electric violin; those elements immediately set it apart from the source material, and yet there’s not a whiff of self-conscious fusion or grafting incongruous elements together.

Everything on this debut album—released six years after the band formed—is seamless. Produced by Thomas “Tommy T” Gobena, the bassist of Gogol Bordello and himself of Ethiopian descent, the record moves from jazzy rave-ups to seductive songs with tango influences to rock songs in ¾ with nary a waltz element at all to devotional tracks that could be Sufi qawwali music. (Aug. 9)

Download: “Not Just a Song,” “Asha Gedawo,” “Habesha”


Divine Fits – A Thing Called Divine Fits (Merge)

Between them, Spoon’s Britt Daniel and Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs have made at least four of the best rock records of the last decade. It should shock no one, then, that when they teamed up as Divine Fits that they should make one of the greatest albums of 2012. Eleven songs in under 45 minutes: these men know how to write great pop hooks, rock riffs, leave room for experimentation and get it all over with before anyone has any time to get bored.

Spoon records are beloved in part because of their minimalism, their distillation of every production trick in the book into bare necessities—that is just as true here as on any Spoon record. Which makes one of the most interesting things about Divine Fits—where the vocals are shared equally between Daniel and Boeckner—the power dynamic: Boeckner clearly loves synths more than Daniel does (the last Handsome Furs album featured barely any guitar at all), but there’s very little else that distinguishes this from a great Spoon album, a natural follow-up to that band’s 2001 breakthrough Kill the Moonlight.

Even though both men have hardly been slouching lately—the final Handsome Furs album is a posthumous contender for the Polaris Prize—Divine Fits sounds like a creative rebirth, the sound of songwriters and studio geeks rediscovering the joy in their craft. With the dissolution of Handsome Furs, Boeckner is now a free agent, and who knows what state Spoon is in, but Divine Fits is far too good to be a temporary side project. Even if you’ve read this far without having any idea who these guys are, This is Divine Fits is essential listening. (Aug. 30)

Download: “Would That Not Be Nice,” “My Love is Real,” “For Your Heart”


Freeman Dre and the Kitchen Party – Old Town (Fedora Upside Down)

Freeman Dre lives in a Toronto neighbourhood with a large immigrant population. Not immigrants from parts of the world that would be necessarily culturally hardwired to share his love of the Pogues, Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt, but there is a universality in Dre’s songwriting that should transcend all borders. His characters have usually picked themselves up from adversity, relocated or reinvented themselves, and are trying to get through their week by blowing off steam singing along with their neighbours once a week at either a pub or, well, a kitchen party. Dre knows how to write a classic folk song, deliver it with an empathetic, raspy growl, employ some top-notch players (including mandolinist Lonny Knapp), and employ sympathetic live-off-the-floor producers like Dale Morningstar (Gord Downie’s Country of Miracles) and John Critchley (13 Engines, Dan Mangan)—all of which adds up to a gem of a record that deserves to be on jukeboxes in every local pub in the country. (Aug. 2)

Download: “Younger Brother,” “To the Lost,” “We All Fall Down”


Gonzales – Solo Piano II (Arts and Crafts)

Give the people what they want. Gonzales seems to have had a hard time doing this during his career, despite the fact that his ego desperately wants massive success. And so after one left turn after another—the latest two involved an orchestral rap album and a film about competitive chess brothers—the Toronto-via-Berlin musician revisits his lone commercial success, his 2005 album Solo Piano.

Solo Piano II is truth in advertising: no detours into ’70s soft rock, no hip-hop, no cameos from his BFF and production client Feist, just Gonzales at the piano, displaying the kind of sentimental virtuosity that he hated indie rock for destroying in the ’90s. Once again, he reveals himself to be—if not perhaps the musical genius he always professes to be—then at the very least a dynamic, romantic pianist who specializes in silent film score motifs and nods to Satie. Yes, these 17 tracks (most under three minutes) are made to go down with candlelight and wine, and they are largely indistinguishable—other than the fact that “Nero’s Nocturne” sounds like it’s riffing on part of the chorus of Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat.” But that doesn’t make them any less lovely or enchanting, even though some of the playful innocence of the first album is, understandably, not heard here.

As an artist, Gonzales thrives on surprises and subverting expectations. This may be the first time he’s done something entirely predictable, but why shouldn’t he?

Download: “Kenaston,” “Nero’s Nocturne,” “Evolving Doors”


Isaiah Toothtaker – Sea Punk Funk (Anticon)

Back when Halifax was poised to be the centre of offbeat Canadian hip-hop, Sixtoo was one of the primary architects of the scene, along with Buck 65. Later moving to Montreal and signing with British beat label Ninja Tune, he released one of the most underrated Canadian albums of the last decade, 2007’s instrumental electro-hip-hop hybrid Jackals and Vipers in Envy of Man.

Since then, Sixtoo fell completely off the radar, outside of occasional DJ gigs as Megasoid with members of Wolf Parade. But he reappears here on the outsider hip-hop label Anticon with a free download producing this EP by Tuscon, Arizona, rapper Isaiah Toothtaker. The soundscape is meticulously assembled early ’80s funk, the likes of which hasn’t been successfully resuscitated since the heyday of the Solesides crew, featuring DJ Shadow and Lyrics Born. Toothtaker himself is neither here nor there as an MC; Sixtoo, recording under the alias Prison Garde, is the real star here. He should be landing higher-profile work than this: if Diplo can be tapped by Top 40 superstars, so can Sixtoo.

Download: “Labyrinth,” “SouthWest Testament,” “LA Nights (featuring Murs)”


Joe Jackson – The Duke (Razor and Tie)

Joe Jackson has dipped into jazz several times during his prolific career: he’s done big-band soundtracks, incorporated Latin jazz into his pop music and, early on, first veered off the rock’n’roll path in 1981 with an album of Louis Jordan covers, Jumpin’ Jive. As can be expected of someone with such catholic tastes, Jackson hits as often as he misses—which is also true of this full-length tribute to Duke Ellington.

Things get off to a bad start with “Isfahan,” where syrupy synth strings and Steve Vai’s guitar ruin what could have been a lovely arrangement. It’s also unnecessary, as Jackson later uses real strings on a hokey version of “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)”—a version that’s interesting mainly because the bisexual Jackson doesn’t change the gender-specific lyrics written about a male love. And speaking of Steve Vai—the guitar hero known mostly for his work with Frank Zappa, David Lee Roth and Whitesnake—it’s unlikely anyone has ever wanted to hear him play jazz over a reggae beat, as he does here on “The Mooche/Black and Tan Fantasy.”

But elsewhere, Jackson scores with Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim singing “Caravan” in Farsi, roping in a campy Iggy Pop for “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If You Ain’t Got That Swing),” setting subsonic electronic bass to a bossa nova version of “Perdido” that dissolves into a solo piano “Satin Doll,” asking Sharon Jones to sing “I Ain’t Got Nothing But the Blues,” and inviting the Roots’ ?uestlove to provide a New Orleans backbeat to “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” which inspires some of Jackson’s finest piano playing on the album. Jackson purposely stayed away from using any horns at all here, in order to prevent these arrangements from being compared at all to the originals. Indeed, in paying tribute to such a multifaceted composer, the end result illuminates as much about Jackson as it does Ellington. (Aug. 2)

Download: “Caravan,” “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If You Ain’t Got That Swing)”


Corb Lund – Cabin Fever (New West)

It’s not an accident that storyteller Corb Lund opens his new album with a post-peak-oil apocalyptical scenario where “when the oil stops, everything stops,” with talk of “a rip in the social fabric” and rural retreat as the only salvation from a world about to go to hell.

On the surface, the rest of Cabin Fever is a collection of largely light-hearted songs about how “everything is much better with cows around,” and how “you ain’t a cowboy if you ain’t been bucked off.” But the characters here are all dealing, in their own way, with societal collapse, with escape and resilience, with history catching up with them. Even “Bible on the Dash,” a duet with Hayes Carll—about travelling musicians deceiving border patrols by claiming to “play Christian music, sir!”—is set in a theocratic country where religious allegiance is used as a barometer to suss out suspicion.

It is Lund’s gift that he has always successfully shattered stereotypes of simplistic country music, or of well-read urbanites being out of touch with rural reality. His short stories set to music have always straddled both worlds—Lund was raised in rural Alberta and resides in the liberal enclave of Edmonton—which is why he can write a song like “September” so successfully, in which the narrator laments losing his love to the glamour and charm of New York City, knowing that even the splendour of his back quarter in the Rocky Mountains can’t compete with the Big Apple. There’s no us vs. them, red-state/blue-state B.S. here, just pathos and empathy and regret—and respect.

If Lund gives you plenty to read into his music, he’s also brilliant at simple surface pleasures. Every song here is a country music classic, full of twang, swing, rowdy rock’n’roll and heartbreaking balladry. Lund’s pulled this off twice before: on 2003’s Five Dollar Bill, and 2007’s Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, with plenty of other worthy material scattered across his other albums; Cabin Fever is undoubtedly Lund at the top of his game. He may be a poet laureate of the Canadian Prairies, but he’s simply one of the best songwriters working today, anywhere, in any genre. (Aug. 23)

Download: “Gettin’ Down on the Mountain,” “Bible on the Dash,” “September”


Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes (XL)

“Farewell, American primitive,” goes the titular chorus of a new song by Ariel Pink—which sums up the appeal of this, his second album for one of the world’s largest indie labels (after years of self-released cassettes). For Pink might well be the last great American primitive left.

When indie rock and underground music went mainstream in the past decade, the real weirdoes got left out of the party. Unlike in the ’90s, when Nirvana fandom might reveal the mysteries of Daniel Johnston to an unsuspecting teenager, these days the eclecticism that once defined campus radio playlists has largely given way to homogeneity where the distinctions between Spoon and Metric are negligible.

Except for Ariel Pink. Back when Arcade Fire showed stadium-sized ambition that inspired a new generation, Pink was recording unlistenable pop songs too fuzzy even for those raised on Eric’s Trip, and playing with a new backing band in every town on his tours. It didn’t bode well that his first early champions were Animal Collective, nor did the fact that he boasted of having no musical talent or instrumental prowess at all—which was true. He recently told the New York Times, “I was dead set on toiling in obscurity. I was recording experimental music that was just designed to alienate people.”

All of which makes it shocking how much of Mature Themes manages to be, well, mature and somewhat amazing: a magical concoction of psychedelic pop music, whimsical and weird in ways rarely heard since Syd Barrett, and yet executed by a professional band and captured in vivid sonic colours and rich production.

A couple of years ago Pink toured with Brazilian tropicalia oddball legends Os Mutantes; it’s obvious why, because other than the bossa nova influence that helped define that band, they share a complete disregard for conventionality while still making very pretty pop songs. Pink occasionally loses the plot completely and veers into bad faux-Ween territory (“Symphony of the Nymph,” “Schnitzel Boogie”), appealing only to the most juvenile stoners in his small audience. Otherwise, Pink proves to be a brave, fascinating artist who easily surpasses the meagre expectations of anyone who remembers his 15 seconds of indie rock fame in 2005. (Aug. 23)

Download: “Is This the Best Spot,” “Mature Themes,” “Only In My Dreams”


Michael Rault – Whirl Pool (Pirates Blend)

Edmonton’s boy wonder of fuzzed-out retro rock’n’roll returns with a teaser EP that sounds as sonically smart as Spoon, full of the songcraft of Sloan and the soul of the Staple Singers (the latter evident on a cover of their “Two Wings”). Rault is an ace rhythm guitar player, a snarling singer who “Falls In Love With Every Girl I See” and manages to make the most out of lo-fi recording—not unlike the rock’n’roll originators that he’s clearly enamoured with. Rault gets a lot of love in his home province of Alberta, but remains a well-kept secret around these parts. That deserves to change much sooner than later, and this all-killer-no-filler EP offers seven more reasons why. (Aug. 9)

Download: “Suckcess,” “Two Wings,” “Everyone Must Cry Sometimes”


Rocket Juice & the Moon – s/t (Honest Jon’s)

Damon Albarn made headlines this year when Blur reunited for two new songs, a retrospective box set and a reunion show that coincided with the Olympics Closing Ceremonies. He also met with general derision for releasing an opera, Dr. Dee, combining Elizabethan-era instrumentation with African elements. What seems to be lost in the shuffle is this release—easily the best non-Gorillaz project this creatively hyperactive Britpop icon has unleashed in years. It’s certainly the funkiest: his two main collaborators here are the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist, Flea, and drummer Tony Allen, who played with Fela Kuti in his prime.

Unlike Albarn’s last supergroup—2007’s The Good, the Bad & the Queen, featuring Verve guitarist Simon Tong, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, and Allen—this doesn’t sound like it was thrown together. It is a casual affair, but everyone gels so easily—guests include the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Erykah Badu, and worthy African MCs and vocalists unknown on these shores—that it hardly matters.

This is not for Blur fans—though they might be pacified by the lovely ballad “Poison,” sung by Albarn, which is the closest this album comes to pop music. (His other vocal turn, “Benko,” is merely filler.) This album is, however, for people who love Flea’s bass playing, but hate the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It is for people in awe of the drumming of Afrobeat legend Allen. And it’s for people who admire Albarn as the owner of a fantastic record label (Honest Jon’s), prefer Gorillaz better in theory than in execution, and have never really warmed to anything he’s done on his own. In not trying so hard, Albarn accomplishes so much more. (Aug. 2)

Download: “1-2-3-4-5-6,” “Hey Shooter (featuring Erykah Badu),” “Lolo (featuring Fatoumata Diawara & M.anifest)”

Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac – Various Artists (Hear Music)


Compiling a tribute record to an artist is a lot easier when the artist in question has evolved through many different phases. Yes, Fleetwood Mac became one of the biggest bands in the world by selling a kajillion copies of Rumours, but they also started out as a British blues band and took post-fame detours into experimental weirdness. This is why artists as disparate as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, the New Pornographers, Marianne Faithfull and MGMT can all rally around the Fleetwood Mac flag for this album, which holds together much better than far too many similar star-studded projects do.

This crowd is more than ready to go for deep cuts instead of well-worn greatest hits. It’s telling that there are three times as many songs here from the much-maligned weirdo favourite Tusk (six) as there is from Rumours (two), though Lykke Li deserves credit for breathing life into the forgotten Rumours-era b-side “Silver Springs.” Shockingly, no one touches the group’s last big album, 1987’s Tango in the Night, whose sonic landscape sounds like it was a direct inspiration for several artists here. Only three artists dare dip back to the band’s blues period, including Black Dub’s Trixie Whiteley and a team-up of ’80s alt-rock guitar legends J Mascis and Lee Ranaldo. Groups like Washed Out and Tame Impala take Fleetwood Mac’s sun-fried Californian vibe to extremes, substituting synths for acoustic guitars to achieve otherworldly, dream-like states.

Of the more popular songs here, Best Coast turn “Rihannon” into a jaunty, hand-clappin’ ’50s number, while the Kills pull apart “Dreams” to just a lead vocal, the most minimal guitar possible, and a single drum beat every two bars in the verses. The unknown Gardens & Villa do “Gypsy,” and plenty of other second- and third-tier artists deliver fine performances and interpretations. If a tribute album is supposed to enhance your appreciation of the artist in question while bringing out the best of everyone involved, then this is a swinging success. (Aug. 16)

Download: Antony – “Landslide,” Billy Gibbons and Co. – “Oh Well,” Lykke Li – “Silver Springs”


Whitehorse - The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss (Six Shooter)

Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland have been partners in music, love and life for so long now that it made sense to bury their public identities as respected solo artists and start anew. And though Doucet is clearly the superior guitar player—he’s one of the finest six-string-slingers in this country and beyond, which is hard to compete with—they are otherwise equals as songwriters and vocalists. As Whitehorse, there’s no radical reinvention of sound from their respective solo work: they’re both big on noir-ish twang, roots rock, Mitchell Froom-era Los Lobos records, Fleetwood Mac and throwing in subtle studio tricks and electronics to maximize their miniscule recording budget. And naturally, their harmonies are glorious.

Download: “Devil’s Got a Gun,” “No Glamour in the Hammer,” “Mismatched Eyes (The Boat Song)”

Antony and the Johnsons

One of my favourite memories of working at CBC Radio's Brave New Waves was when Antony Hegarty came in for an interview, during his first club tour ever in 2005. I had met him once before in New York City the year before, when his debut album was re-released by Secretly Canadian, and he was playing their label showcase at CMJ, at a bar with live mermaids. So I knew that he was a kind, gentle and self-effacing man, who was much more goofy and humble than the magical powers of his singing voice would suggest.

When he came into the CBC studio, he brought his cellist Julia Kent with him and played a couple of songs on a grand piano (including "The Lake," which inexplicably does not appear on one of his own releases). I've been around musicians my entire adult life, in formal and informal settings, but hearing him sing from the other side of a glass was a literally breathtaking experience, and one that I still feel privileged to have witnessed. Writers trip over themselves trying to come up with adjectives to describe his presence, so I'm not even going to try. One listen and you'll know soon enough yourself.

And yet as much as I love the man, my love for his music hasn't often extended past a few certain songs ("Cripple and the Starfish," "Hope There's Someone," "Fistful of Love" among others). When it all comes together, it's spellbinding; often it doesn't, and if it wasn't for his vocal presence it would be awkward and amateurish. Sometimes that's true of his stage show as well; seeing him at a Montreal club after that radio performance was a slight letdown (reviewed here).

The new album The Crying Light is no different. As he points out in this interview, there are no climaxes or dramatic builds here; it's more "pastoral" (his word). For all its flaws, I did enjoy the diversity of 2005's I Am A Bird Now, which had room for soul songs amidst the plaintive piano ballads. When set to a groove, like on "Shake That Devil" from last fall's Another World EP, Antony's voice soars like his hero Nina Simone's. Some of those urges were satisfied by his appearances on 2008's debut album by critically acclaimed neo-disco act Hercules and Love Affair, where he sang and co-wrote five of the ten tracks.

To the best of my knowledge, this interview is the only Canadian one Antony is doing for this album. It was delayed several times over the Christmas holiday, and I wasn't convinced it was actually going to happen. Not being blown away by the new album, that was fine with me. But once we had a date and started chatting on a lazy Sunday morning--about everything other than music, it seems--it quickly became one of my favourite interviews of recent years. Not just because of the man's charm, or his occasional loopiness (see the part about butoh visualization techniques), but because he's a thoughtful, serious and articulate guy on a breadth of subjects.

Thanks to Exclaim for assigning this; my article for them appears in the new issue here. (Also recommended: Sofi Papamarko's A.C. Newman chat.)

---

Antony Hegarty
January 4, 2009
Locale: phone conversation on a Sunday morning

A lot of your songs are about escape, and often there’s an element of transformation as well. Listening to your work with Hercules and Love Affair, it strikes me that disco itself is often inherently about escape and transformation—sometimes a different kind of escape than the kind that you talk about in your songs. How do you see the aesthetic of classic disco in what you do in both Hercules and your solo stuff?

Escape and transformation mean two different things to me. Transformation is a means of escape. (long pause, stutters) I would like to think the songs work on a process of transforming something, as opposed to just getting away from something. On “Another World” I wanted to be very direct about the feelings I was having. It wasn’t about getting away, it was about acknowledging something and going through a process. That means something different to me than escape. And—sorry, what was the other question?

I was asking about escape in disco lyrics.

Actually, that prompts another tangent. There are a lot of songs on this album that are more pastoral than the last one. Last time a lot of songs had a climax or a catharsis. A lot of these songs are more like landscapes.

They don’t build to a climax.

It’s not the focus. Some of them are more observational. It has an emotional stillness to it. That’s a result of me being at a different stage of my life. But to relate to your question about disco escapism, what I liked about the Hercules songs were that they weren’t about cutting away from reality and having an escapist high. It didn’t seem like an avoidance tactic. The lyrical content of those songs is quite emotionally centred. That’s what made them interesting to me, at least [Andy Butler's] lyrics. The ones I wrote for the album were a bit more hardcore. The ones that he wrote were about being emotionally present and awake. That, in my mind, was reflective of his generation: a sweetheartedness, and open-heartedness that the generation after me came to the table with.

What’s the age difference between you two?

He’s in his 20s and I’m in my late 30s. There were a bunch of musicians coming up in New York around 2000, people like Devendra Banhart and Coco Rosie, who were willing to make themselves more vulnerable in their work than my generation had been, with a few exceptions. When people think of disco as escapism, they’re often thinking of dancing as a means to that escape, to let go of your worries and surrender to joy. Of course that’s a great thing. I’ve got to focus on integrating those things. How can we be present and acknowledge the reality of our lives today, and have a sense of wholeness? You don’t have to go into a state of denial to experience joy. I think that’s a theme for me, which is why I take issue with this notion of escapism.

Listening to “Another World,” I heard it as a lament for the current world that the narrator is mourning. In a song like “Hope There’s Someone”—there’s hope in the title, a hope that someone will be there at the end of their time on earth. Whereas “Another World” is a bit fatalistic; the narrator has already resigned him or herself to the concept of death—maybe of the planet, maybe of themselves. They could be looking for another natural world or the next stage in their own life.

I was a bit worried about that, that it would seem fatalistic. And I did get that feedback when I was first playing it. I ended up finding that it’s a feeling, it’s not a fact. Sometimes it’s important to move through your feelings to find out what’s on the other side. With that song, I was very consciously trying to write a song that placed me emotionally in this burgeoning reality of a collapsing environment. I wanted to sit with the emotional reality of that, instead of becoming overwhelmed and going into denial, which is what I do in my pedestrian life. In a weird way, I emerged with the voice of a girl from the future singing this song. I hope it’s not construed as reporting a reality, as I felt like it’s an emotional condition.

I also think about grieving. The reality is that there’s a lot lost already to grieve, in relationship to the environment and the world that created us and gave birth to us. It has suffered tremendously at our hand. The thing about grief is that you can’t start to grieve until you’re in a place of safety. If you’re still in control mode or denial, you can’t grieve. Grieving is part of the healing process. I also just wanted to go down on record that we were feeling this way in 2008. That felt really important to me. It’s something that has really become part of the collective consciousness—definitely the collective unconscious, anyway. All of us are in a state of confusion about our relationship to our environment.

The past year was such a huge year in history, not only for what happened, but for the beginnings of events that are about to happen, both positive and negative. Psychologically, there has been a lot of bridging between previous denial and an acceptance of reality, and trying to survive emotionally—both in the immediate terms of what’s coming economically, and longer terms environmentally. It’s been a year where people are examining the purpose of what we do. I’m really curious to see in the next 12 months, but also the next few years, how much that trickles down and how much re-examination we actually do about the damage we do to each other and the world.

In America, we’re still so protected from the frontier of that shift, of people that are affected environmentally. There are, obviously, millions of people who are being affected environmentally. And certainly a lot of other species. Another question is, what’s my relationship with the consciousness of other species? I was raised a Catholic, and raised to believe that we have a separation between ourselves and the animals, the mountains, the trees. Now, after studying Butoh when I was younger, I’m more open to singing a song from a lot of different perspectives. There are plenty of animals from whose perspective you could sing “Another World.” That’s just today’s reality. That’s interesting to me as a creative jumping-off point.

There’s a book called The World Without Us. Have you read that or heard of it?

Yeah, it’s been really popular. People take a lot of consolation from that book, but I think it’s a pipe dream. People love to think that nature will survive, but the fact of the matter is that by the time we’re finished here, there’s not going to much else living besides us. For sure, all the mammals will be gone. The ecosystems in the ocean will have collapsed. You pretty much have to start from scratch. It’s not like some virus will come along and kill all the humans and leave all the three-trillion-times-more-tender and vulnerable creatures to live their lives.

And to be fair, that is the premise of the book—an entirely hypothetical scenario where humans disappear for no apparent reason.

It’s a fantasy to make us feel better. In reality, the opposite is true. The rest of the earth will be gone, and we’ll be stuck here. That’s the kind of loneliness I’m talking about. In a way, that book helps people feel absolved of responsibility or guilt or having a real impact on the environment. When really, we should be referencing the opposite scene: how can we come to terms with the impact we have on the environment, and how can we digest it? It calls for a shift in all our archetypes. That book speaks to the old system of looking at God, where God was all-powerful and we were powerless. God and nature would always be present. It was the absolute.

Nature was resilient and renewable.

Yeah, and we were just minions. In reality, unconsciously or not, we’ve taken on the role of God in our influence on the environment and our influence on the destinies of every other creature on this earth.

Which we have for a long time, stemming in part from what you described as the Catholic philosophy or assumption that we have domain over the natural world.

It’s a rotten, patriarchal set-up that has led us to the point. Also, this idea that this earth is just a holding place where we can prove our goodness before heading off to heaven. Heaven is the destiny. The earth, at best, is some kind of feminine, slightly wicked presence that we’ve been trying to expunge from our spiritual views for 2000 years. The earth was always considered the feminine, and there’s no room for the feminine. I mean, look at the fucking Pope on Christmas Day, with what he was saying! It’s the same fucking shit that’s been going on—it’s a fucking joke, that this Nazi Youth Pope is belching out this idea that gay and transgender people are as much of a threat to the future of humanity as the decimation of the rainforest. What more of a disturbance could he possibly to do both the rainforest and humanity? Oh, it’s just rancid.

It’s very interesting you bring up these analogies, because I was just about to ask you about how there are environmental themes on this record and much of your previous work dealt with gender issues. What linkages do you see between the two? You were just talking about the connection between the patriarchy and the feminine earth. Is this a shift in your writing, or is it all interconnected?

Well, (sighs), I do have my own little theories. I think there’s a huge link between an emotionally, intuitively shut-down society—what I would define as the characteristics of a patriarchal society, or one with patriarchal values—and that creates the pathway that makes this outcome possible. When we’re shut down from our relationship with our mother, or the mother and child inside us, to our vulnerability—it’s from that place of vulnerability or feminine intuition that we perceive our interconnectedness with the environment…

Our empathy.

Yes. It’s all those things. With the economic model we have now, that’s not one of its values. It’s not built on compassion. What would compassionate capitalism look like? No one ever said capitalism was ethical. You read those articles about people working in Auschwitz or something, or even in more subtle ways, when people work at a huge corporation or something. They can go to work and function in ways that are so cruel, because they function as cogs in a structure that has a different value system. They participate in that, but when they go home they have a different set of values in their heart. But what we’re perpetuating is something quite virulent. Our approach to the earth at this point is virulent. We’re just consuming it and killing it. Even those of us with the best intentions, like me—I’m still flying around in planes. And I’m still struggling with it. It’s still abstract to me. But the reality is not abstract. It’s physical, a physical impact.

I was recalling Naomi Klein’s introduction to her book No Logo, where she wrote about how she spent much of the ’90s focusing on personal identity politics at university, personal and social issues, at a time when major economic decisions were being made that effected living and working conditions in every corner of the globe, not to mention environmental impacts.

That stuff drives me crazy. It’s just dawning on me, what we were talking about at the beginning about bringing an inner life to the table and finding its relation to the world around us. All these people fussing and fighting about gay marriage on the night of the election—it’s just another pathetic set-up by the right-wing. They’ve pulled that card for the last three campaigns. It’s always, “Here comes gay marriage, here comes abortion.” It’s always an election-year issue, and this crap gets put on the ballots to discourage people from voting liberal. All the gay people are in an uproar about their little piece of the pie and, I mean, there’s a time and a place. Gay rights will be useless if we’re all floating on a piece of Styrofoam in 50 years. We have to integrate our personal development and our personal conflicts with a relationship to the world around us—not just to society, but with ecology.

So it’s not picking our battles, it’s about integrating these struggles?

Well, look, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just an idiot. You can hear me struggle to put words together. In the mid-90s it was a problem, that all these academics were in their thinktanks. I remember taking a class in feminist ecology at NYU in 1991, and at most campuses I’m sure we felt that we were just so far from view. It’s only in the last five years that we really started taking it to heart, and it’s because it’s undeniable now. Everyone’s perception of the weather is that it’s changed. I think it’s interesting what you said about that lady [Naomi Klein]. I wonder about that.

And another thing about gender issues and gay identity: I think people gave away a lot of their power, especially the gay community, when they settled for a definition of what gay identity entailed. It’s become such a battle over relationships. People’s perception of what being gay could mean has really been eroded by the identity that they’ve been marked as.

Is there a static gay identity? It seems to me like there’s less of one than there is a static heterosexual identity, which still revolves around the nuclear family.

With a heterosexual, you can at least participate in a variety of different cultures. But if you’re gay, you’re sold this merchandise, this music that you have to listen to, through the cultural promoters, the magazines and whatnot. You’re sold this serious of behaviours that you’re supposed to engage in. The point is, what else does it mean to be gay? I think of sexual orientation as a secondary characteristic of a gay—or for me, transgender—identity. Sexual orientation is just another behaviour.

Maybe there’s something intuitively more different about a gay person than what they want to have sex with. Maybe there’s a consciousness or an awareness that a gay person can bring to the table. Or an ecology or a different sense of the environment, as a result of growing in a culture where you feel so alienated and so separate, you do get a different perspective of your relationship with the world. Those are tools that could be applied to having a more bird’s-eye view. Maybe gay people could be ecologists!

Maybe there’s a more spiritual basis for their difference than their orientation. It’s a bit reductive. People got short-changed when they were told that being a faggot means you’re a cocksucker.

In certain Native American spirituality, there’s the notion of being two-spirited, and it’s perceived as being a gift and not a negative thing at all, it’s a value of perception and empathy. Two-spirited people were often healers.

I am friends with some two-spirits in Vancouver, and they have a much more soulful idea of what their identity is about. It’s amazing and really empowering.

I’m curious about the song “Epilepsy is Dancing.” Disease as a metaphor appears in other songs of yours, and I’m wondering what it is about being diseased—or being perceived as being diseased—that you think creates empathy and understanding.

Having seizures is typically associated with being possessed or witchcraft. It can be seen as an ecstatic experience that makes you an untouchable; historically, people are frightened of that. For me, it presents a total loss of control; you’re definitely engaged, although not in a way that you’ve consciously chosen. You’re participating in life in a very different way. The song is a simple narrative about a person that loses that control and then reflects on it later, about the choreography of it.

Butoh provides the visual backdrop to both the EP and the new album. I’ve been reading about it lately, on a surface level, but how would you describe it to a layman?

There are two different things. There is butoh as a form that a ton of different dancers are exploring new vocabularies for. But for me, it was about Kazuo Ohno and a very particular type of dance that set him apart from the pack. The album is dedicated to him, because he is my art hero and art parent, in a way. He’s one of the co-founders of butoh.

It emerged from traditional Japanese forms of noh and kabuki, and then informed by expressionism and apocalyptic imagery after the nuclear holocaust in Japan, and Jean Genet’s writings and a lot of experimental, new ideas that were coming out of dance and performance in the early ’60s.

It’s characterized by a sense of transformation, of momentum or a spirit or an energy that reaches beyond the parameters of the human form. Often it also visualizes an aspect of the natural world. It’s almost meditational. It seeks to embody the atomic movement of a stone or a mountain, or the feeling of growing inside a tree. That’s one plane of it. It’s also metaphysical in dealing with time and space, the idea that you can reach across time in a different way, and perform propelled by the spirit of your great-great-grandmother, or dancing with the ghosts in the walls around you. With Kazuo Ono, there is a lot of exploration of a divine child and his mother. A lot of butoh focuses on issues of life and death.

What’s interesting about Kazuo Ohno is that he converted to Catholicism in his ’50s. You hear a lot about artists who convert to Eastern theologies, but you rarely hear about eastern people converting to Western theologies.

Especially Catholicism!

He did a lot of explorations of dancing from Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers. This is total speculation on my part, but he was probably drawn to the more ecstatic elements of Catholicism. Eastern religions tend to be stoic and impersonal; the idea is for the self to erase in a way. Catholics are still into mountaintop ecstasies and the crying and the blood sacrifices. There is a devotionalism that Catholics draw on, whereas Eastern religions are more about dissolving into oneness.

What elements in your own writing or work do you think tie in directly to the concepts of butoh?

Especially on stage for me, I’m always applying the vocabulary I studied in butoh, as a singer. Rarely am I mining my personal life for motivation to sing. Usually, I’m engaged in seeking a creative impulse, or a set of imagery that can propel me through the song or the moment, to unveil the present for me in a different way.

Maybe as I’m singing, a flock of flamingos are bursting out of my heart, and I ride the momentum of those birds as I sing forward. Maybe when the audience exhales it creates a green mist collects before them, as a momentum, and it dances in a circle that resolves in a huge glowing pool in the middle of the room, and we all look at it and I sing into that place. There are so many different creative flights of fancy that I can take when I’m on stage that motivate and engage me in a creative joy that makes me want to sing.

Do you think other singers could learn from dance and visualization, as opposed to mining their own emotional terrain in performance? The latter can be very crippling, I would imagine, night after night. Very draining.

(laughs). A lot of my songs come from somewhere very personal. What I just described is more of a tool in performance, to expand on the songs. It’s affected all areas of my life: my writing, my approach to lyrics, and the way I move through imagery. I think a lot of that comes through studying butoh.

I studied with this teacher named Maureen Fleming, who was amazing. Before that I went to a performing arts school, which was so focused on technique and things that were too abstract to me. Maureen would just plug me right in with a crazy image that really worked for me. Some people are very structural, and they need to know how to pull in this muscle and push out that muscle. If they get the structure of the body right, they can inhabit the form. For me, it’s totally emotional and bound to intuition and creative dreaming, this thing that makes me want to dance into space with my voice, or in relationships in general. It’s a freedom, an abandon.

I get really bound up when I get into structural, physical stuff. When I can take a flight of fancy in my creative mind, that can carry me through anything—including expressions that I would never be able to figure out how to do, if left to my own devices. It’s a communion with the world around you; it’s not just about you anymore. It’s a relationship with your creative muse, which is a gift.

The sound of your music has changed over the years. The first record was comparatively elaborate; even though there are strings all over this record, it still sounds stripped down next to the first one. I’m wondering if that’s a result of your own confidence through those processes you’re describing, finding a lot of those things in your voice as opposed to dressing up the music—and even you yourself physically, in how you present yourself onstage.

When I started performing, it was like singing into a wind machine, when you perform in night clubs at 2 a.m. You have to make a really strong, theatrical statement to get your point across to a bunch of drunk people who want to have sex. If your goal is to make them cry, you have to push. Generally speaking, I had a full-on sense of theatrics.

As it progressed and I got more involved in the music world—as opposed to presenting in these theatrical performance contexts—I realize there’s a lot more room for subtlety, and for intimacy. How to communicate that is different in the recording than it is live. The voicing is different.

It’s been a slow learning curve for me in the studio, to make a recording effective. I’m still a student of that. It’s like combing the most tangled dreadlock every time. I ended up piling everything on, and then spending a lot of time stripping it back down again. In the end, it’s a question of what’s essential.

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