October 2015 reviews

Highly recommended this month: Ben Caplan, Majical Cloudz

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: Geoff Berner

Worth your while: Evening Hymns, John Grant, Low, Michelle McAdorey

These reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Bryan Adams – Get Up (Universal)

Bryan Adams is 56 years old. Is that too young to make Viagra jokes when he puts out an album called Get Up?

  

After a couple of albums recorded in hotel rooms while on tour, and following a 30^th anniversary re-release of Reckless, Get Up is touted as a return to form for Adams, the album he should have made in 1990 before he got sidetracked into being a sappy (and phenomenally successful) balladeer. Producer Jeff Lynne and co-writer Jim Vallance were enlisted. All the songs are around three minutes long. What could go wrong?

Get Up is like watching your old high school principal try and restart his old rock band with maximum enthusiasm and minimal effort. Adams writes lyrics dripping in nostalgia, as if to remind everyone that he used to wear leather jackets and torn blue jeans and dammit, he’s still the same dude today. Only now Adams writes with way more exclamation points. “If I’m going to go down, I’m gonna go down rockin’!” “We did it all, and we’d do it all again in a heartbeat!” “That’s rock’n’roll! You have to live it or you’ll never know!” “Get up! It’s a brand new day!” Thanks, grandpa, but if this is rock’n’roll, I’d rather stay in bed.

Get down. (Oct. 29)

Download: “You Belong to Me,” “Don’t Even Try,” “Do What You Gotta Do”

Blue Rodeo – Live at Massey Hall (Warner)

Thirty years together, 14 studio albums, and this marks Blue Rodeo’s fourth live album, recorded in one of Canada’s most hallowed halls.

Why do we need this? Another live album should contain some surprises, some reason to supplant 1999’s excellent Just Like a Vacation. Instead, we have predictable versions of old favourites—though thankfully not the obvious singles, with the exception of three well-worn songs from 5 Days in May and Bogulski’s chance to try and make “Diamond Mine” his own (an admirable attempt, but it will always be impossible to reach the standard set by Bob Wiseman). What’s another word for consistent? Rote. Inexplicably, there are five tracks from 2013’s In Our Nature—a record I totally forgot even existed—and who wants to hear those? Granted, they’re from the album they were promoting on this tour, but no one buys a live album that gives you time for obvious bathroom breaks. There’s also no reason to ignore 2009’s The Things We Left Behind, their most critically successful album of the last 20 years.

The only real revelation here is a resurrection of the underrated 1997 track “Disappear,” from Tremolo, which is given an extended piano solo. There are more than enough hidden gems in Blue Rodeo’s catalogue that a new live album shouldn’t be a sleepwalk. (Oct. 29)

Download: “Disappear,” “Diamond Mine,” “Lost Together”

The Boxcar Boys – Cicada Ball (Independent)

Sometimes music in the hustle and bustle of Toronto all seems like rock bands, pop singers and hip-hop artists. Then there’s a sextet like the Boxcar Boys, led by clarinetist John David Williams (Lemon Bucket Orchestra) and violinist Laura C. Bates (Del Bel, Fresh Snow), who play New Orleans jazz, European folk music, North American country, and anything else that sounds good with accordions, tubas, trombones and washboards. Williams is the standout player here, but everyone else rises to his level and is accorded equal space. Together, there’s a chemistry here that casual dabblers could never replicate. (Oct. 1)

Download: “Scrammy Jammy,” “Wah Dat Dah,” “The Busker”

Ben Caplan – Birds With Broken Wings (Warner)

A gregarious tenor who sings cabaret songs, country music and fiery folk music from several traditions, the Hamilton-born Caplan is a carny barker whose ringmaster—Montreal’s klezmer hip-hop maestro Socalled—conducts the violins, accordions, darboukas, cimbaloms and horns arranged by former James Brown sideman Fred Wesley. Caplan usually hollers like he’s unamplified under the big top; rarely does he feel like underplaying his material, which includes plenty of fantastic songs that—here on his second album, and first with wide distribution—are bound to turn heads even without Caplan and the potential cacophony that surrounds him.

This album could well have been a well-intentioned mess. It’s a credit to Socalled that it sounds as cohesive and powerful as it does; you feel like you’re eavesdropping on the most magical gathering of old-world freaks in the basement of a 400-year-old tavern. And then, just to throw you a curveball, right near the end Caplan gives us an uncharacteristically straight-up, strings-laden jazz song, “Night Like Tonight,” that he could probably sell to Michael Bublé—and then follows it with a Halloweenie cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Devil Town.” (Oct. 1)

Download: “Bird With Broken Wings,” “Ride On,” “Under Control”

Jesse Cook – One World (eOne)

Yes, listening to the new Jesse Cook album feels like being on hold on a helpline. In this case, however, I feel slightly more confident that my call is, in fact, somewhat important. It’s that good.

I’ll admit I have never followed Cook’s career. Maybe it was the hair. Maybe because it seemed like it was soundtracking a soft porn film late at night on Bravo. Maybe I’m an insufferable snob (wait—don’t answer that). But it’s impossible to deny the guy’s technical skill, nor—now that I’m listening closely for the first time—the soulfulness in his playing. Nine albums in, he’s clearly doing something right—and I’m a dick.

He’s capable of flamenco fireworks, but he’s a judicious player—and a generous one, considering how much time he shares here with violinist Chris Church. Here (I’m told) there are more electronics and loops than before, as well as Turkish and Brazilian and Cuban percussion; the synth bass, programmed by Cook, is rich and resonant. Maybe Cook’s entire discography is up to this standard. Or maybe this is the one to get. Or maybe it’s just me. (Oct. 22)

Download: “Shake,” “Taxi Brazil,” “Tommy and Me”

Emilie & Ogden – 10,000 (Secret City)

Montrealer Emilie Kahn plays a harp—yes, the 38-stringed classical instrument played by Joanna Newsom and, um, nobody else. Nobody, that is, except Sarah Pagé of the Barr Brothers, who appeared at Kahn’s high school as an accompanist to the choir. Young Kahn was hooked, and a few years later, we have her debut album as a singer-songwriter. The harp is, indeed, novelty and a lovely touch. But would we care about these songs if she played piano or acoustic guitar? Likely. Just like any arty singer-songwriter from her hometown, Kahn lives in the shadow of Patrick Watson, and she waltzes her way through these 11 tracks (several are, in fact, waltzes) with delicate aplomb. Producer/guitarist Jesse McCormack and drummer Francis Ledoux are her sympathetic backing band, anchors that ensure everything doesn’t drift away on waves of twee. (Oct. 1)

Download: “Ten Thousand,” “Long Gone,” “What Happened”

Evening Hymns – Quiet Energies (Outside)

“All my life I’ve been running and trying to break free,” sings Jonas Bonnetta on his new record as Evening Hymns. It sounds like it: this is the kind of open-road, driving record one plays during a trip home for Thanksgiving, where those old streets don’t feel the same, where some faces have faded away, where you reckon with how much your past informs your present and your future.

The last time we heard from this rural Ontario band (now located somewhere between Kingston and Ottawa), Bonnetta was mourning the death of his father. It was—well, a bit of a bummer (although widely acclaimed). Ghosts still haunt this record, but Bonnetta is no longer hanging his head: his chin is up, the guitars are plugged in, there’s a rollicking rhythm section behind him (who sound like they’ve been listening to The War on Drugs), and The Wooden Sky’s Gavin Gardiner, a fellow purveyor of Canadian Shield roots rock (a lineage stretching back to Crash Vegas, Kathleen Edwards and others). Timber Timbre’s Mika Posen contributes strings; former bassist Sylvie Smith returns to sing harmony. The production by James Bunton (Ohbijou) is wide-screen and wonderful, meaty and majestic. (Oct. 8)

Download: “If I Was a Portal,” “House of Mirrors,” “Oh Man You’ll Walk Again and Again”

John Grant – Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (Nevado)

What kind of a man begins an album with the lyric, “I did not think I was the one being addressed / by hemorrhoid commercials on the TV set”?

John Grant. Such a simple name, such a complex man. He’s a 48-year-old, ex-Coloradan gay man living in Iceland, making synth-pop songs that are sardonic and sometimes sentimental, sometimes silly, and sung in an arch baritone. It’s as if Stephin Merritt and Buck 65 decided to sit around and listen to old Depeche Mode records before writing songs for Iggy Pop to sing. Only better.

Grant lobs more zingers at you than an episode of 30 Rock. “You seem like someone they should chemically castrate,” he croons. On a duet with Tracey Thorn (Everything But the Girl), he rattles off a litany of supposedly sacred cows—ocelot babies, Francis Bacon, harvest moons, Rachmaninoff, and… Rachel Dratch?!—before declaring that “all these things are just disappointing compared to you.” And in perhaps the oddest chorus of 2015, he sets the following phrase to a beautiful melody: “Global warming encourages slack-jawed troglodytes to leave their homes with guns and knives in search of refreshments and some homicide.” No, really. It works. As does, for that matter, the bass clarinet solo on the new wave folk song “Down Here.”

It could all easily add up to a novelty record, or outtakes from Flight of the Conchords. But it’s not all witty one-liners. Grant himself describes himself as “moodier and angrier” this time out. The two-part title comes from the literal translations of the Icelandic phrase for midlife crisis, and the Turkish word for nightmare. Like most middle-aged people, Grant is both baffled and ticked off at modern mores and what passes for societal interaction. He’s HIV positive. He doesn’t have time for people who have “a black belt in BS,” as he sang on his last album, 2013’s excellent Pale Green Ghosts. He might be a funny guy, but he’s also deadly sincere—and he sings like it, whether he’s emoting over squiggly synths or string-laden piano ballads that sounds as big as Pink Floyd, thanks to producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Spoon).

Sometimes a lot of John Grant is far too much, but a little John Grant goes a long, long way. (Oct. 8)

Download: “Voodoo Doll,” “Global Warming,” “Disappointing”

Low – Ones and Sixes (Sub Pop)

“What part of me don’t you know?” ask Low on their 11^th album. Fair question. The trio anchored by husband-and-wife duo Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker have played most of their cards by now: the ultra-sparse, hushed and dead-slow early records, the explosive dynamics (and ever-so-slightly snappier tempos) heard on 2005’s The Great Destroyer, the electronic textures of 2007’s Drums and Guns. Every shift has maintained a focus on Sparkhawk and Parker’s eerie harmonies, rich guitar tones and minimalist percussion. An all-star list of producers and engineers—Steve Albini, Tchad Blake, Dave Fridmann, Jeff Tweedy—have helped their evolution along the way.

Ones and Sixes, helmed by the band themselves and Bon Iver’s engineer, doesn’t break any new mould. Does it have to? It’s a fine Low album, not quite a late-career highlight as 2013’s The Invisible Way was. For a band with such a history, it’s a worthy and easy entry point for newcomers. But if you’re a Low fan with at least three of their records on your shelf, save your money for a concert ticket. (Oct. 22)

Download: “No Comprende,” “What Part of Me,” “Lies”

Corb Lund – Things That Can’t Be Undone (New West)

Is Western Canada’s favourite songwriter entering his Blue Rodeo years? Where he just falls into old formulas, makes interchangeable records and switches producers to try and pretend he’s going for a new sound?

This is the eighth album for Corb Lund, following the 2014 victory lap Counterfeit Blues, which featured his band of Hurtin’ Albertans re-recording some of his greatest hits (and non-hits) live in Sun Studio in Memphis, for the benefit of new American fans who are discovering him after Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley became big champions, and NPR and the Washington Post finally got on board.

Those Albertans are still a crackin’ live band, notably guitarist Grant Siemens, who’s given plenty of room here. But Lund himself has his own high songwriting standards to live up to—and he comes up a bit short. It’s not entirely out of character: ever since 2003’s classic Five Dollar Bill, Lund usually follows up his strongest work by coasting a bit—so this might have been expected after 2011’s extremely strong Cabin Fever.

Even when Lund is coasting, of course, he’s still better than most. Which is why “Sadr City,” about a soldier serving in Iraq, is another one of Lund’s fine character portraits, as is “S Lazy H,” about generations of Alberta farmers (which Lund, a sixth-generation rancher, knows a few things about). His playful side shows up on “Washed-Up Rock Star Factory Blues,” about a has-been who suddenly has to show up for a real job: “Well I done a lot of singing about stickin’ it to the man / today’s the day he’s going to stick it right back, if he can.”

That’s unlikely to be a problem for Lund. (Oct. 22)

Download: “Sadr City,” “Run This Town,” “S Lazy H”

Majical Cloudz – Are You Alone? (Arts and Crafts)

“What’s the point of a sad, sad song?” asks Devon Welsh, the man with the odd inclination to call his musical project Majical Cloudz. The point, young man, is as old as the blues itself—and though Welsh’s music owes more to Brian Eno and Blade Runner than it does Robert Johnson or Howlin’ Wolf. 


Yet Welsh’s incantations are as ghostly and haunting as any blues, though his lyrics are very 21^st-century confessional, a mix of maudlin moroseness and emo earnestness, populated by “red wine and sleeping pills … cheap sex and sad films.” Welsh is the kind of guy who thinks dying in a car crash with your lover is romantic—and he’s the first guy since Morrissey to make it seem remotely possible (“I want to kiss you in a car that’s crashing / and we will both die laughing / because there is nothing left to do”).

On paper, this could come across like the worst record of the year. (The name doesn’t help.) But Welsh has a natural magnetism, a voice strong enough to sell the material—which consistently conjures feelings of a 3 a.m. soul-baring session with some stranger with whom you just bonded at a bar. The vocals are uncomfortably bare against a sparse sonic backdrop of droning organs, swooshing synths and arrhythmic electronic beats. In his videos, Welsh likes to stare directly into the camera for three straight minutes; his record achieves the same effect aurally.

Just like Dan Hill, the honesty’s too much. Or is it? Maybe it’s what you need when it feels like nobody else is speaking to you, nobody else hears you, nobody else is willing to say something as painfully sincere as: “I am your friend until the end of your life.” Nobody else except a guy who calls himself Majical Cloudz. (Oct. 15)

Download: “Disappear,” “Are You Alone,” “Silver Car Crash”

Michelle McAdorey – Into Her Future (DWR)

Fans of Crash Vegas—a brilliant and oft-overlooked Toronto band who released three classic albums between 1989 and 1995—might well have been wondering what the future might hold for singer Michelle McAdorey. This is the first new music from her in 10 years, following two very low-key and experimental records in the early 2000s. Into Her Future finds her teaming up once again with Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor—with whom she founded Crash Vegas in 1988; he left when they became too busy—and returning from her more experimental forays back toward the dusky, psychedelic country ballads that comprised some of Crash Vegas’s most compelling moments. This is a record as quiet as it is sleepy—in good ways—with one or two exceptions. McAdorey and Keelor get as trippy as they wanna be. If it wasn’t all so well-executed, you might think it was made over a lost weekend on Keelor’s farm under a haze of smoke. She’s no longer a steely-eyed rocker, but her voice is as riveting as ever. McAdorey has been dearly missed. (Oct. 29)

Download: “Into Her Future,” “Disappearing Things,” “Run Into Me”

Princess Century – Progress (Paper Bag)

Princess Century is a techno project for Austra drummer Maya Postepski, who readily admits that Austra’s Katie Stelmanis takes her pick of Postepski’s beats. Those must be the ones that work better as pop songs; as Princess Century, Postepski lets loose with longer, trance-like tracks filled with analog synth patches and shades of ’80s soundtracks. She told Vice magazine, “Princess Century is the project where I take the most risks with because I don’t care; I’m not trying to necessarily have a huge audience. It’s where I can indulge all of my f--ked up ideas and sometimes they work.” In fact, they almost always work here in this soundscape of decaying neon, even the hypnotic solo percussion pieces (she studied music at the University of Toronto) that would work better in a mix beside Moondog and Olatunji than Kraftwerk or Adult. Much of Progress sounds spontaneous and raw; you can tell Postepski goes with a first-idea-best-idea approach, not unlike Dan Snaith’s Daphni project. Isn’t it high time Cronenberg made another dystopian sci-fi flick? If so, he’s found his composer. (Oct. 22)

Download: “Bros vs. UFOs,” “Tokyo Hands,” “Domestic”

Rah Rah – Vessels (Hidden Pony)

This Regina quintet has been together for seven years; this is their fourth album; and yet the members are barely over 25 and write nostalgic songs about the early 2000s, “before my band broke up” (when they were, what, 14?!). The language can be earnest and polite; is that a Prairies thing? “There were some quiet years there / I courted a few girls.” Drake, it’s not. There’s also a song about feeling sore after a night of tobogganing. Gotta admit: have not heard that one before.

Rah Rah came of age during the last great explosion of Canadian music, and you can hear them as direct descendants of the Weakerthans, Stars, the New Pornographers and others: alternating male/female vocalists, a punk energy driving power pop melodies, tempered with sincere romanticism. There are, of course, plenty of bands like this across this country. Rah Rah, though, have that extra spark, have better songs than most, and the personalities of the singers shine through. The two women in the band, keyboardist Erin Passmore and violinist Kristina Hedlund, play a greater role than before; their harmonies are front and centre even when Marshall Burns takes the lead on half the dozen songs here. Producer Gus Van Go—who already this year has been responsible for incredible albums by Whitehorse and Terra Lightfoot—amplifies the band’s strengths and makes it impossible for radio programmers to ignore them. (Oct. 8)

Download: “Be Your Man,” “Wolf Eyes,” “Love That Sticks”

Keith Richards – Crosseyed Heart (Universal)

As someone who wishes the Rolling Stones had retired 35 years ago, as someone who enjoyed Richards’s autobiography but still refuses to find stories of parenting while strung out on heroin amusing, as someone with next to no time for side project by Baby Boomer icons—I’m shocked at how good this record sounds to these ears.

Away from the need to pander to legacy or superstar producers or a long-lost quest for relevance, Richards lets loose with whatever the hell he wants: blues, country, reggae, dirty rock’n’roll—hell, even “Goodnight Irene.” His vocals sound uncannily like Bob Dylan of recent years, but his guitar tone is unmistakable—and it sounds better here than it probably has since his last solo record, 23 long years ago.

Drummer and co-writer Steve Jordan’s production is fantastic: live and raw with just the right doses of atmosphere and reverb. The duet with Norah Jones, "Illusion," is an obvious highlight, but Richards surrounds himself with such a wealth of talent here—veteran session players Waddy Wachtel, Ivan Neville, Bernard Fowler, Spooner Oldham, the late Bobby Keys—that it would be hard for him to go wrong.

For decades now, Richards usually gets unwarranted adulation just for showing up and making it look effortless—but, as heard here, sometimes that’s all he has to do. (Oct. 1)

Download: “Trouble,” “Suspicious,” “Illusion” (feat. Norah Jones)

October 2013 reviews

Are you headed to a record store today to buy Reflektor? Some other good records came out this month too. (And last month, too, of course.)

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Highly recommended: Willis Earl Beal, Darkside. I had to stop myself, when writing about such a sexy record, not to say: “Come to the Darkside!”

Recommended: Basia Bulat, Dirtbombs, Haim, Tim Hecker, Jordan Klassen, Lindi Ortega, Shad

Willis Earl Beal – Nobody Knows (XL)

This man debuted in 2012 with an album of extremely primitive home recordings, in which his stunning voice detailed a life of despair and hardship as sung into a hand-held device. On stage, he could silence large rooms with just his a cappella voice, or accompanied by a reel-to-reel tape machine. Beal may look and sing like a modern-day Sam Cooke, but he doesn’t fit any particular mould, from soul music or anywhere else. On his first proper recording, Beal—who never wanted his demos released in the first place—takes advantage of his new resources and colours in his sketches, albeit sparingly: rarely does he employ a full band, and a mournful string quartet evokes loneliness rather than sounding lush. Beal is a guy who wrote his first songs while riding his bicycle through deserted city streets at night; his music still suits those solitary, nocturne environs. No matter how you dress him up, he’s still the wallflower who fixes you with a steely glare and a commanding voice, drawing you into his slightly unstable mind. Don’t look away. (Oct. 3)

Download: “Wavering Lines,” “Coming Through” (featuring Cat Power), “Too Dry to Cry”

Blue Rodeo – In Our Nature (Warner)

In the last two years, Blue Rodeo officially welcomed long-time shadow member and guitar wizard Colin Cripps into their lineup, and released a revelatory box set covering their first five albums, each of them a classic in their own right. Their last studio album garnered their best reviews and sales in over a decade. And on top of that, Jim Cuddy put out his finest solo album to date, Skyscraper Soul. So why is this album so flat and uninspired and perhaps the dullest of their entire career? We had reason to expect so much more. (Oct. 31)

Download: “Wondering,” “When the Truth Comes Out,” “Paradise”

Basia Bulat - Tall Tall Shadow (Secret City)

The third album is key: after the surprise of the debut, after the expected letdown of the follow-up, it’s then that you really have to step up or step off. Toronto singer/songwriter (and one-woman autoharp revival society) Basia Bulat rings in Arcade Fire’s Tim Kingsbury (with accompanying engineer Mark Lawson) and sets her mind to writing the best songs of her career, and letting her voice shine against sparse backdrops—“It Can’t Be You” gives instant goosebumps, as does any other track where she strips the arrangements down to two or three instruments. “Never Let Me Go” finds her reaching for big, Celine Dion-style high notes; thankfully the Brian Eno-ish soundscape behind her is devoid of bluster. The bigger songs don’t disappoint, however, as befitting an album produced by a member of Arcade Fire; the title track is a slow build of a gospel number with a rousing payoff. (Oct. 10)

Download: “Tall Tall Shadow,” “It Can’t Be You,” “Someone”

Darkside – Psychic (Matador)

You know a band can successfully create a mood when the 11-minute opening track of their debut album whizzes by in no time. Darkside is a duo started by Nicolas Jaar, a French electronic musician, and his touring guitarist Dave Harrington. They’ve both spent time making minimal techno and jazz and experimental rock, and together they create something not unlike a 21^st-century Pink Floyd: pre-, um, Dark Side of the Moon (they deny they’re named after the album), or a collaboration between Caribou and Thom Yorke. The sound is sparse and yet huge, and for an album based on house music, it seems almost frightened of repetition; every track is constantly evolving, and the smallest guitar lick or live percussion passage can alter the entire song. When it comes to seriously sexy records of 2013, there is really no contest. The Darkside beckons. (Oct. 24)

Download: “Golden Arrow,” “Paper Trails,” “Freak Go Home”

The Dirtbombs – Ooey Gooey Chewie Ka-blooey! (In the Red)

This album has some of the stupidest songs ever written. Did the album title give it away? In this case, though, that’s a good thing. Detroit’s finest garage rock band tackle ’60s bubblegum with complete reverence, lots of fuzzy guitars and a helluva lot more funk than these songs deserve (there are two drummers here). This is the band, after all, whose last album (Party Store) brilliantly applied a garage rock aesthetic to covers of Detroit techno classics.

These aren’t covers—there are no Archies or Banana Splits classics, although one song blatantly rips off the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” And so bandleader Mick Collins, a man in his 40s, is writing new songs about yummy food and girls on carousels and playing in the sunshine—and succeeding brilliantly, just as the original bubblegum songs had been calculated by older men to appeal to a teen market. Rich with vocal harmonies and slightly psychedelic effects, the Dirtbombs take this silly idea very seriously, as craftsmen of any genre should.

Most importantly, however, it’s the sound of a hot, sticky summer that never ends. (Oct. 10)

Download: “Sugar on Top,” “Hot Sour Salty Sweet,” “Jump and Shout”

Haim – Days Are Gone (Sony)

I’ve been reading about Haim in Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone months before this, their debut album, arrived. The advance buzz from the mainstream media elite—not a term I use lightly, but come on, Vanity Fair?—is completely understandable. This album sounds like a million bucks: three sisters with impeccable harmonies singing sunny California pop seeped in Fleetwood Mac and Sheryl Crow, with a bit of the ’80s (Hall & Oates, Bananarama) thrown in for good measure. One track, “The Wire,” even opens with drums cribbed directly from the Eagles’ "Heartache Tonight."

Their big-tent appeal is aimed at Millenials and their grandparents and everyone in between, therefore Haim’s sole weakness is occasional bouts of blandness. But between the solid songwriting and the occasional sonic surprise—like the ersatz dubstep of “My Song 5,” which sounds a bit like Tom Waits producing Beyoncé—Haim actually live up to the hype. Move over, Adele. Call off the Grammys right now and give most of them to Haim. (Oct. 10)

Download: “Falling,” “If I Could Change Your Mind,” “My Song 5”

Tim Hecker – Virgins (Paper Bag)

Tim Hecker does not make ambient music, although at times his heavily processed and reprocessed approach to abstract soundscaping can be soothing enough—if you’re not paying attention. For Hecker is the rare ambient artist that demands to be played at maximum volume—not simply to appreciate the enveloping, subtle layers in his music, but because, despite the lack of beats or easily identifiable musical motifs, Hecker’s music is aggressive and unsettling. To patronize it as aural wallpaper is to entirely miss the point—especially when the cover of Virgins is an image meant to emulate one of the infamous torture photos from Abu Ghraib. The music inside is often just as disturbing.

Hecker, who self-identifies as a “middle-brow brutalist,” started his career creating with sonic manipulations that seemed adrift in a digital world. On his last album, Ravedeath 1972, he employed a pipe organ to achieve a much more ominous sound than anything possible with computers alone, and ended up with the most popular album of his (albeit obscure) career; messing audibly with the real world paid artistic and commercial dividends.

Here, he uses pianos and clarinets and flutes and god knows what else—it’s often hard to tell—to create music as terrifying as The Exorcist, and as awe-inspiring as Sigur Ros at their best (they invited him to open for them at Madison Square Gardens, which must have been both an incredible and incredibly strange venue). It’s haunting, intriguing yet almost completely opaque; as Jackson Pollock was to Georgia O’Keeffe, Hecker is to his fans like Godspeed You Black Emperor and The National: similar in intent, radically different in construction. And—unlike many of his peers at this end of abstraction—nothing about this could ever be accused of being lazy, for Hecker is a maximalist, constantly mutating and transforming his sounds and composition to keep the listener on their toes.

Because Hecker refuses to give you any easy answers, engaging with his music is a two-way exchange. He only gives you half the story, if that; in doing so, he’s more than stimulated your imagination to fill in the rest. (Oct. 17)

Download: “Live Room,” “Black Refraction,” “Virginal II”

Elton John – The Diving Board (Universal)

Paul McCartney – New (Universal)

Every few years, it seems, Elton John claims he’s had an artistic rebirth and is getting back to his roots and setting aside the Disney schlock he’s been peddling for decades now. The Diving Board, the 31^st album of his career, follows up his two-piano collaboration with his formative idol, Leon Russell; producer T-Bone Burnett returns to make this equally bare bones record, made with mostly just a rhythm section.

John finished most of it in a matter of days—and then kept coming back to it and adding more. He should have left it alone. The woodshedding didn’t improve the album; the 15-track albums seems interminable—the fault solely of the perfunctory songs, because his piano playing and singing are top notch.

He opens the album by singing, “I hung out with the old folks / with the hope that I’d get wise”—this from a 66-year-old man who has said this is his “most adult album” ever. It’s nice to hear him trying, but it’s unlikely to be more than a curiosity for most fans.

Much like Elton John, Paul McCartney has spent decades lowering our expectations—offstage, anyway. And for a 71-year-old to title his new album, um, New doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up. Here, however, he sounds inspired in ways he hasn’t for years, sounding exactly the way you’d always hoped this Beatle would. It’s the kind of album precious few of his peers are still making, one with modern production that successfully references every point of his career. (Oct. 24)

Download Elton John: “Oceans Away,” “Oscar Wilde Gets Out,” “The Ballad of Blind Tom”

Download Paul McCartney: “Save Us,” “Early Days,” “New”

Jordan Klassen – Repentance (Nevado)

Ah, 2003. It was the year of Arcade Fire’s first EP and Sufjan Stevens’s Michigan album and the Dears’ No Cities Left and the Hidden Cameras’ The Smell of Our Own. Vancouver songwriter Jordan Klassen was 18 at the time, right at the age when we fall most deeply in love with the music that shapes the rest of our lives. And so it is that his first proper full-length draws heavily from those records, filled with plaintive guitar, banjo and gentle singing as well as rousing choruses, choirs of friends and decorative strings. And yes, a glockenspiel or two. While pleasant and soothing and perfectly suited to soundtrack a trailer for a quirky indie film, Repentance  also shows a strong new songwriter with an uncanny ear for melody. Don’t be surprised if this becomes a word-of-mouth favourite in the coming months; it has all the hallmarks of a quiet classic—at the very least, Klassen is the most promising new songwriter from Canada’s West Coast in far too long. (Oct. 31)

Download: “Ranchero,” “Piano Brother,” “Go To Me”

Moonface – Julia With Blue Jeans On (Paper Bag)

“There’s a pseudo-intellectual inside of me / oh, but luckily, there’s something else,” sings Moonface, a.k.a. Spencer Krug, formerly of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade. Thank god.

What is that something else, exactly? “A frog with its tongue stuck to the inside of my chest / a crow that keeps banging up against the glass / a well-intentioned demon somewhere within / maybe that last one’s not so bad / maybe that last one’s the main attraction.”

Yep. Krug is a confounding figure, an acquired taste who seemed to be diving off the deep end once he retired the Sunset Rubdown band and reinvented himself as Moonface, which until now has mostly focused on experimental instrumental music. This, however, is a solo piano and vocal collection of confessional cabaret music. Even as a fair-weather fan of Krug’s, I was worried this raw approach would not suit him. I was dead wrong.

His singing is stronger than ever, his youthful yelp having mellowed into an odd but compelling croon. His piano playing is alternately delicate and strangely ham-handed; one has to assume the latter is for effect, distracting at times yet adding to the emotional heft of the performance: he’s demanding your attention. This is not piano-bar music.

Although it’s hard to tell with someone as poetic as Krug, this also sounds like a remarkably personal album about his recent move to Helsinki, and it’s to his credit as a performer that he can turn prose like this into a plausible melody: “If I am an animal I am one of the few that is self-destructive / I have chewed through my beautiful muscle / I have chewed through my beautiful narrative to get out of Canada / and into your door.” (Oct. 31)

Download: “November 2011,” “Everyone is Noah Everyone is the Ark,” “Julia With the Blue Jeans On”

Lindi Ortega – Tin Star (Last Gang)

There are lots of good country singers; precious few great ones. Toronto-to-Tennessee transplant Lindi Ortega is, simply, one of the best. She’s a hollering heartbreaker who sounds schooled in gospel and loves vintage Johnny Cash, and now has some Nashville cats to colour in her noir-ish balladry and occasional shitkicker. If you’re already hip to Ortega, there’s not much new on her third album: just 11 more reasons to be floored by her voice, one that would make Dolly Parton proud. (Oct. 10)

Download: “Gypsy Child,” “Tin Star,” “All These Cats”

Shad – Flying Colours (Black Box)

If anyone tries to knock Shad, they usually complain that he’s too nice. After all, who doesn’t love Shad? Born to Kenyan/Rwandan parents, raised in London, Ont., educated in Kitchener-Waterloo, and now calling Vancouver home, he’s dropped three albums full of intricate but clear wordplay, rocked stages with his winning charisma, and acted as a rap ambassador as a clean-cut, conscious alternative to audiences who didn’t think they liked hip-hop.

That last tag obviously irks him a bit, and it’s one he addresses directly on lead single “Stylin’,” while he also makes fun of people who exoticize his background. But “Stylin’ ” is the kind of song sure to silence any critics, as he spits dense, brilliant and often hilarious lyrics, playing with his flow, while the backing track alternates between a fuzzy bass and John Bonham beat that recalls the Beastie Boys, while the chorus switches to a low-riding Dr. Dre beat with Saukrates on the hook.

He’s even better on the joyous African-tinged “Fam Jam,” a tribute to the immigrant experience in Canada, while throwing in injustice against Aboriginals and refugees, Big Oil, and how it feels “when you’re Third World born but First World formed / sometimes you feel pride / sometimes you feel torn.”

Shad’s free-association and triple-entendres are where he’s at his best, but on “He Say She Say” he takes a turn into straight-up love-gone-wrong storytelling, a tale of a Peter Pan manchild who loses his love, with a chorus that simply repeats, “I wanted to do a verse about how they worked it out, but…”

Conversely, he goes all epic on “Progress,” a song ostensibly about—what exactly?—Don McLean’s “American Pie,” the death of Biggie and Tupac, Hurricane Katrina, the history of slavery, and how “America don’t need Jesus / the future is here.” That one’s going to take some time to process.

Shad’s Achilles heel has always been his backing tracks. The production here has stepped up considerably, though it does seem to be stuck in middle gear—following the Drakeification of hip-hop in 2013, most tracks here are mid-tempo and reflective. The difference, of course, between Shad and Drake—and Shad fans usually posit him as the anti-Drake, something he admits on “Long Jawn”—is that Shad has a helluva lot more to talk about. (Oct. 24)

Download: “Fam Jam (Fe Sum Immigrins),” “Stylin’ ” (feat. Saukrates), “He Say She Say”

Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience (Sony)

It’s not 20/20 vision if you’re blind in one eye.

Earlier this year: I couldn’t believe how good the new Justin Timberlake was. This month, I can’t believe how hideous the new Justin Timberlake is.

Ostensibly the second half of an album with the same name he released back in March, this companion piece has none of the swagger, soul or the magic that made the earlier installment one of the most joyous pop pleasures of 2013. Never mind that he borrows a slogan from anti-rape campaigns (“Take Back the Night”) and sets it to a seduction number, one that recalls late-period Lionel Richie, of all things. Ignore the lame Jay Z rap on “Murder,” in which he attacks Yoko Ono, of all people (“the pussy that broke up the Beatles”—really, that misogynist myth still exists?).

Granted, both albums are guilty of unintentionally hilarious, unsexy lyrics (“I got you saying Jesus so much it’s like we’re laying in the manger”), but the music here is half-baked, tracks that obviously didn’t meet a quality control that was intact last time. Worse, he ventures into guitar territory on “Drink You Away” and “Only When I Walk Away,” a sonic suit that’s particularly ill-fitting on an otherwise well-dressed man.

If he hadn’t set his own bar so high, none of this would matter. But everything about this looks like a cheap cash grab from an artist who’s worked hard to finally earn our respect. (Oct. 10)