July 2016 reviews

Highly recommended this month: Badbadnotgood, Michael Kiwanuka

Well worth your while: Aaron Neville, Billy Talent

As always, these reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

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Thanks to everyone I ran into at last weekend's Hillside Festival who told me they read this blog faithfully. It's always nice to know I'm not writing into a total void.

Badbadnotgood – IV (Arts and Crafts)

From Led Zeppelin IV to Black Mountain IV—hell, even Foreigner 4—and now the fourth album from Toronto hip-hop/jazz band Badbadnotgood, putting the number four in a title suggests you’re saving your best ideas for the music, not the marketing, and the fourth album is the ideal time to crystallize the myriad directions the band had taken up until now.

For Badbadnotgood—who, after starting out with jazz covers of hip-hop tracks, came into their own on a full-length collaboration with Ghostface Killah (Sour Soul) and their 2014 album III—this finds them stepping up their game once again, moving away from hip-hop slightly (collaborations with Kaytranada and Mick Jenkins notwithstanding) and toward the funk of Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and the cinematic esoterica of space-age bachelor pad music a la Esquivel or Broadcast. They also dip into sultry soul music, with pop songs sung by Charlotte Day Wilson and a particularly surprising turn by Future Islands’ Sam Herring, on which he channels the late Bobby Womack.

Part of IV’s success is the natural evolution of these young players, but also the permanent addition of saxophonist Leland Whitty, whose guest spots on III were a highlight. Nonetheless, they enlist avant jazz star Colin Stetson to lend a beefy, baritone bottom end to “Confessions Pt. II,” where he trades leads with Whitty while the band vamps on what could be a ’70s action film soundtrack underneath.

Exciting as it is, even better is anticipating where this band will venture next. Just please, whatever you do, don't judge this album by the album cover. (July 7)

Stream: “Time Moves Slow” (feat. Sam Herring), “Lavender” (feat. Kaytranada), “And That, Too”

Billy Talent – Afraid of Heights (Warner)

Against most odds, Billy Talent is still standing. The Mississauga band who first broke through in 2003 are now on the other side of 40; you’d think it’d be getting hard to tap into the energy of their bestselling debut—surely it’s time for the synth experiments or the pseudo-country ballads, no? Well, there are apparently some synths hiding here somewhere (underneath the wall of guitars on “Horses and Chariots”), but after the more “mature” Dead Silence in 2012, the band revisited their debut album for live dates celebrating its 10^th anniversary, and releasing a hits compilation that served as a reminder of just how hook-filled and durable all those shout-y singles have proven to be. A comeback record could well be a bunch of old men trying to recapture old glories; the lyrics of “Louder Than the DJ” (“Those glory days aren’t over yet”) suggest a bunch of leather-clad grandpas squeezing into skinny jeans and yelling at rave kids; thankfully the song is much better than that.

Afraid of Heights is very much a sonic throwback of sorts, with only a few clunky spots (“The Clutch”) and one poor attempt at power ballad (“Rabbit Down the Hole”), which is helped only slightly by Ian D’Sa’s lyrical lead guitar. Otherwise, the fact that D’Sa has always had more complex pop songwriting skills than most of his peers continues to set the band apart; once the title track runs its course at rock radio, look for the anthemic “Leave Them All Behind” to dominate the rest of the year.

The sad news for fans is that drummer Aaron Solowoniuk’s MS has finally forced him to resign; he’s been replaced by Jordan Hastings of Alexisonfire, though Solowoniuk helped the band arrange in the studio and appears beside Hastings in the press photos. It’s not age that’s taken a toll on this band, it’s the disease they’ve been fighting since the beginning. (July 28)

Stream: "Afraid of Heights," "Louder Than the DJ," "Leave Them All Behind"

Blood Orange – Freetown Sound (Domino)

Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes plays well with others: in addition to his prolific and eclectic career as an artist (recording under several different monikers), he’s written and produced records by Carly Rae Jepsen, Solange Knowles, and Florence and the Machine. Here, on his highly anticipated third album, he enlists the likes of Jepsen, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Nelly Furtado—even bestselling social critic Ta-Nehisi Coates and Bob Marley’s granddaughter, because, why not?

Blood Orange’s sound leans heavily on ’80s iconoclasts like Michael Jackson, Prince and Terence Trent D’Arby—though only the more outré moments from any of those artists, filtered through shades of ’90s trip-hop like Tricky. Though Hynes obviously loves pop music, he doesn’t write particularly catchy melodies himself. Instead, he offers languid, lush, sometimes experimental R&B, where the tiny details—a bass squibble here, a subtle jazz piano turn there—usually trump anything in the foreground. The parade of guest vocalists lend a diversity to a record that could easily fade into the background, but they’re not necessarily enough to stave off overall ennui. (July 7)

Stream: “E.V.P.” (feat. Debbie Harry), “Desirée,” “Better Than Me”

Michael Kiwanuka – Love and Hate (Universal)

The U.S. hasn’t felt this politically divided and tumultuous since the late ’60s and early ’70s. And while Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé provide fiery anthems and reflection as a soundtrack of the times, British folk-soul singer Michael Kiwanuka has delivered a comedown tonic for the end of each anguished day. His second album—four long years after his acclaimed 2012 debut, Home Again— is a rich and languid masterpiece, steeped in psychedelic blues, string-drenched soul, gospel vocals and more than a few nods to Marvin Gaye’s 1971 classic What’s Going On, as if it were reimagined by Portishead.

Co-produced by Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, Black Keys, Broken Bells), Love and Hate strikes a perfectly consistent mood and tone: unhurried, gentle, yet feeling the weight of the world in every note. Kiwanuka himself is neither a showy singer nor one who retreats into whispers: his calm confidence is what glues this record together. So much of Love and Hate sounds like the flip side of Alabama Shakes’ 2015 summer soundtrack, Sound and Color: can someone put Kiwanuka and Brittany Howard in a room together, please? (July 21)

Stream: “Cold Little Heart,” “Rule the World,” “I’ll Never Love”

Aaron Neville – Apache (Sony)

Aaron Neville is best known as the singer who NPR describes as “an angel who swallowed a wah-wah pedal,” a man best known for a series of hit duets with Linda Ronstadt in 1989-90. Despite his vocal gifts, his solo work is almost uniformly cheesy and lightweight—unlike, by comparison, his incredible work with his siblings in the Neville Brother in the ’80s (start with the Daniel Lanois-produced Yellow Moon).

Apache, on the other hand, might well be the funkiest record of Neville’s solo career. Recorded in New York City, his adopted home, with local musicians—including the Daptone horns—you’d never know he wasn’t still in New Orleans. But maybe absence makes the 75-year-old’s heart grow fonder: he’s clearly in a nostalgic mood, as “Stompin’ Ground” and other tracks illustrate.

No surprise here, but he’s also in a romantic mood. He remarried in 2010 after losing his wife of 47 years to cancer in 2008, and several tracks here—his first album to feature original material in 13 years—mine his mushy side, while avoiding the adult-contemporary trap of his ’90s hits.

Of course, there’s that voice, which hasn’t changed a bit since his first hit single 50 years ago. Rather than showing a scrap of age, it sounds better than it ever did—hard as that may be to believe. (July 21)

Stream: "Be Your Man," "Orchid in the Storm," “Stompin’ Ground”

Pup – The Dream is Over (Royal Mountain)

This Toronto punk band themselves describe their second album as a “rowdy, noisy clusterf--k.” Yes, it’s rowdy and noisy, but it’s a lot more coherent (monotonous?) than that comment would imply. It’s an all-guns-blazing response to the end of one’s twenties, wondering if playing 200 shows a year is taking a toll on your domestic life, having to hear your doctor look at your vocal cords and tell you, “The dream is over.” A song called “Doubts” features the chorus, “What am I supposed to do now?” On “DVP,” friends chime in: “She says I drink too much / she says I need to grow up.” These are common rock’n’roll themes, and there’s no doubt that time logged on the road has made Pup a lean, mean rock’n’roll machine. But the best thing I can say about this record is that it makes me want to listen to Japandroids’ 2013 classic Celebration Rock: same theme, same punch, same raw power, much better songs. (July 21)

Stream: “DVP,” “My Life is Over and I Couldn’t Be Happier,” “Familiar Patterns”

Wake Up You! The Rise and Fall of Nigerian Rock, Vols. 1 & 2: 1972-1977 – Various Artists (Now Again)

Every retro reissue trend dries up eventually, right? Surely there are no more hidden gems from the golden age of American soul music in the ’60s and ’70s left to uncover? Hasn’t every punk band who had five minutes of fame in the ’80s been unearthed? Even the 30-volume Ethiopiques collections of East African jazz and soul have finally trickled to a crawl. And so while the Fela Kuti revival in the early 2000s sparked an interest in Nigerian and West African music, which opened the floodgates to seemingly hundreds of quality reissues—of which at least a dozen could be considered essential to anyone remotely interested in the scene—even that treasure trove appears to be running dry. I mean, after the elusive William Onyeabor was discovered, what great mysteries were left?

So here comes a two-volume set, 10 years in the making, accompanying two 100+ page books written by Onyeabor biographer Uchenna Ikonne, chronicling the Nigerian psychedelic rock scene in the wake of the country’s civil war and the rise of Fela Kuti. Some of these names will be familiar to followers—namely the Funkees, who had their own anthology on Soundway Records in 2012—but the pleasure here is finding even more new names that haven’t been featured on comps like Nigeria 70 (Strut, 2001) or The World Ends (Soundway, 2010). Like that latter comp, the guitars here are raunchy and louder and more psychedelic than heard on the straight-up funk comps.

It’s a lot to wade through, but it’s a testament to just how musically fertile Funky Lagos was during this pivotal time. Rest assured it won’t be the final word on the subject, either. (July 7)

Stream: “Everybody Likes Something Good” by Ify Jerry Krusade, “Graceful Bird” by War-Head Constriction, “Never Too Late” by the Apostles

December '13 reviews

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

Highly recommended: Mark Berube, Jimmy Hunt, Kae Sun.

Recommended: Howe Gelb, Kashka, Shearwater.

Berliner Philharmoniker – Centenary Edition (Deutsche Grammophon)

For the classical music fan on your holiday shopping list, this should get you in their good books for the next, oh, I don’t know, century. The Berlin Philharmonic has been making recordings since 1913. What better way to commemorate that occasion than with a 50-CD box set encompassing the Western canon, much of it conducted by the iconic Herbert von Karajan (who led the philharmonic for 35 years), only slight nods to 20^th-century compositions, and very little that would ever be performed in a symphony orchestra’s “Pops” series of light classical concerts.

Needless to say, the fidelity of the recordings increases considerably over the course of a century. The only knock against this comprehensive set is that no amount of digital mastering technique can compensate for the primitive recordings of the first decade: folk, blues and jazz music of that time still sounds decent, but the power and majesty of an orchestra this size is entirely lost. That all changed by the time Karajan took charge: he was a vocal champion of stereo recordings in the ’60s and the shift to compact discs in the early ’80s.

Obviously the Berlin Philharmonic’s output is even greater than what is here—for starters, they recorded for labels other than Deutsche Grammophon. But they’ve cherry-picked the best for this set, which sells for $110—just over $2 a CD (it’s actually more expensive to buy it digitally). Stuff that in your stocking. (Dec. 12)

Mark Berube – Russian Dolls (Bonsound)

This Montreal-via-Vancouver-via Brandon songwriter came out of the gate with a very promising debut, 2008’s What the River Gave the Boat, that set him up as a classically trained cabaret pop singer whose boho beauty seemed destined to soundtrack Montreal tourism ads. His records since have been interesting, at least, but here he seriously steps up his game. His bandmates—cellist Kristina Koropecki, bassist Amélie Mandeville and drummer Tonio Morin-Vargas—are integral parts of every song’s arrangement, and producer Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes lets his clients run rampant with ancient synths and gives the material the widescreen berth it deserves. Berube belongs in the same ballpark as Patrick Watson and Rufus Wainwright, but there’s nothing on Russian Dolls that sounds like he’s anything but a complete original. Now that he has one of Quebec’s most successful indie labels behind him and an album more than worthy of his many talents. (Dec. 5)

Download: “Carnival,” “Ethiopia,” “Queen and Country”

Blood Orange – Cupid Deluxe (Domino)

Listening to the underrated Kae Sun and the overrated Blood Orange in the same week is depressing. There’s no question that Devonté Hynes is a talented producer: his work on Solange’s breakthrough EP and his dead-on impression of early ’80s Prince and Hall & Oates records on this, his second album as Blood Orange. He’s not the only one mining that territory in 2013: Haim, for one, do it far better—though Blood Orange does trump the even worse Twin Shadow in this same genre. For Hynes, production values don’t compensate for limp songs; everything here is puddle-deep, every smooth sax solo a reminder of what we’ve all tried to forget about the ’80s (Destroyer somehow pulled off  sax-cheese thing. Throwing in James Brown’s once-ubiquitous “Funky Drummer” sample on "Clipped On" is not only retro, it speaks to how unnecessary this entire album feels. (Dec. 12)

Download: “Chamakay,” “Uncle Ace,” “You’re Not Good Enough”

Howe Gelb – The Coincidentalist (New West)

Howe Gelb has legions of disciples across North America and Europe, all drawn to the mysterious musician and his scattershot approach to recording and performing, constantly veering the steering wheel onto yet another dusty back road, not giving a damn who’s following him. “How did I get so lucky?” he asks on one song here, his umpteenth album in the past 30 years (and second this year alone). Well, because for every five albums full of genius hidden underneath throwaway, improvised sketches of half-baked songs, he’ll pull something like The Coincidentalist out of his hat (see also: The Listener, Sno Angel Like You, Chore of Enchantment).

Some of his high-profile comrades show up here: M. Ward (She and Him), KT Tunstall, Bonnie Prince Billy, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. But they are all minor players in Gelb’s domain; his charisma fills every track on this concise and oddly focused—for Gelb—album of Leonard Cohen-esque balladry, heat-baked Arizona Americana, jazz flourishes and weirdo piano bar blues with titles like “An Extended Plane of Existence.” Gelb is self-aware enough to know what friends and foes think of him, in both the title track and on “Pichacho Peak,” where he sings: “I got one hand on the wheel / one’s holding my coffee / and I’m still holding the phone talking to you / I hope to remain so severely talented / least for another mile or two.”

That’s never in question. Whether it all coalesces into a cohesive album is always a crapshoot; The Coincidentalist is one of those glorious, rare moments when Howe Gelb hits a home run. (Dec. 5)

Download: “Vortexas,” “Triangulate,” “Pichacho Peak”

Jimmy Hunt – Maladie d’amour (Grosse Boite)

For a francophone artist from Quebec, Jimmy Hunt sounds incredibly British: particularly, the lazy, hazy dreampop tradition that weaves through early Pink Floyd to Roxy Music to Talk Talk to the Stones Roses to Stereolab. Maladie d’amour is rich with languorous late-night grooves: not surprisingly when you find out Hunt wrote and recorded the skeletons of these songs while on mushrooms in a studio on a lake in La Mauricie National Park, and fleshed out the arrangements during 12-hour nighttime sessions in Montreal a year later. Hunt’s songs are decent, but it’s the last-minute overhaul he subjected them to that elevates the material from the merely nice to the epic and occasionally transcendent. Things get really weird on “Christian Bobin,” which sounds like an Air/Daft Punk collab with Thurston Moore on guitar. Montreal is known for being a city of dreamers; this sounds like that dream. No wonder Hunt has a song called "Rever souvent." (Dec. 12)

Download: “Nos Corps,” “Marie-Marthe,” “Christian Bobin”

Kae Sun – Afriyie (Urbnet)

This album came out in May—where was I hiding?—but clearly it’s never too late to champion this grossly underrated Toronto singer. Born in Ghana, raised in Canada, Kae Sun may well be the best male R&B singer in Canada. Sure, The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye has a lot of Michael Jackson in him, but Kae Sun—who’s more of a Sam Cooke guy—has a three-dimensional range. His music is thoroughly modern, rich with electronic textures and borrowing from soul, reggae and pop grooves, but that voice could sell you an entire a cappella album should he so choose. Opening track “Blackstar Rising” is nothing short of stunning; should this make it on to radio, it would literally stop you in your tracks were you to hear it in public. Sometimes he’s as poppy as Miguel, sometimes as dark and dubby as Massive Attack, and on only one occasion does he fully embrace his African roots. Production values throughout are top-notch; nothing about Afriyie sounds like an independent release. Kae Sun is an enormous talent: it’s literally incredible that this record didn’t make huge waves in 2013, either in Toronto, Canada or beyond. (Dec. 12)

Download: “Blackstar Rising,” “Ship and the Globe,” “Weh-Weh”

Kashka – Bound (Independent)

When Kat Burns disbanded her long-running Forest City Lovers earlier this year, it closed a chapter on one of the most underrated acts to emerge from the fertile southwestern Ontario scene of the 2000s. Burns had already kickstarted her solo project, Kashka, as an all-electronic project with Jamie Bunton of Ohbijou. Their debut recordings didn’t hold a candle to the spellbinding, understated magic of Forest City Lovers: was Burns making a tragic mistake?

Chalk that debut up to growing pains, because Bound recaptures Burns’s strengths as a singer and songwriter, with electronics only one part of her new palette, and her musical horizons having been expanded considerably wider than anything else she’s done to date would suggest. Beneath Burns’s pleasant voice is often a harsh lyrical truth; as welcoming as the music is, everything is hardly hunky dory under the surface. It’s typical of Burns to set her most buoyant pop song to lyrics about a relationship full of nothing but regret, with lyrics like, “Maybe I was a fool to think that I could fight off my denial,” followed by a chorus of: “Maybe we never had it anyway.”

Burns is not a powerhouse vocalist; she doesn’t write obvious hooks; there’s no intriguing backstory. All of which is to her disadvantage when trying to separate herself from every other indie act trying to carve out space in the crowded Toronto scene. And yet we underestimate her at our own peril. (Dec. 5)

Download: “Never Had It,” “We Let the Shadow In” (feat. Neil Haverty of Bruce Peninsula), “Maybe It’s Time”

Shearwater - Fellow Travelers (Sub Pop)

Let’s say you’re a respected but generally underrated band who often tours with other respected but generally underrated bands—and occasionally the totally overrated superstar band that offers you a hand up by taking you on as an opening act. Wouldn’t it be frustrating to hear so many great songs every night on said tours, knowing that only fans of Obscure Band X would ever hear them?

Fellow Travelers is a love letter from Texas band Shearwater to their many peers they’ve toured with over the past 12 years. By covering those artists’ songs, it doesn’t sound that much different than any other Shearwater album—somewhere between histrionic agit-art-rockers Xiu Xiu and Coldplay and esoteric post-grunge indie rockers Wye Oak, with shades of ’70s British folk (a tradition continued here by David Thomas Broughton). It speaks to Shearwater’s strengths that they make the disparate source material work as a coherent whole: with the possible exception of Folk Implosion’s freak ’90s dance pop hit “Natural One” (which is perhaps too faithful to the original), singer Jonathan Meiburg owns all of this material: the fact that the Coldplay cover doesn’t sound at all out of place with the Xiu Xiu song speaks volumes.

It’s a total win-win situation—bringing out the best in Shearwater, and highlighting their peers—and kind of remarkable that more people don’t do this instead of obvious gimmickry (hey, let’s cover Dark Side of the Moon!) or, God forbid, yet another Christmas album (which, as a matter of policy, this column refuses to review). (Dec. 5)

Download: “Natural One” (Folk Implosion), “I Luv the Valley OH!” (Xiu Xiu), “Fucked Up Life” (Baptist Generals)