Every
year I attempt to predict the Polaris Music Prize long list, based on past juror
behaviour, current conversations among jurors, and entirely subjective
intuition. Usually I get about 30/40 correct. This year I won’t bother with the
longest end of the tail and focus on the 35 I’m almost
certain we’ll see when the list is announced next Thursday, June 20. These are
records I believe have broad juror appeal beyond the usual confines of genre
and geography.
There's about 20 records that might fill the five empty spots I've omitted below; I won't bore you with those, I will say only three of them have any real name recognition—and none of them are the Arkells. I expect that, for most people, this year's Polaris pool will be rich for discovery.
(Apologies
in advance to anyone who sees themselves on this list and not the real one next
week.)
In
alphabetical order, by artist:
Akua – Them Spirits
Black Mountain – Destroyer
Tanika Charles – The Gumption
Clairmont the Second – Do You Drive?
Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman
Digawolf – Yellowstone
Elisapie – The Ballad of the Runaway Girl
Fet.Nat – Le Mal
Dominique Fils-Aimé – Stay Tuned
Fucked Up – Dose Your Dreams
Haviah Mighty – 13th Floor
Yves Jarvis – The Same But By Different Means
Jayda G – Significant Changes
Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated
Kaia Kater – Grenades
Kimmortal – X Marks the Swirl
La Force – s/t
LAL – Dark Beings
Laurence-Anne – Premiere Apparition
Salomé Leclerc – Les choses exterieures
Lee Harvey Osmond – Mohawk
Murray Lightburn – Hear Me Out
Les Louanges – Le nuit est une panthere
Loud – Tout ça pour ça
Motherhood – Dear Bongo
Doug Paisley – Starter Home
Orville Peck – Pony
Pup – Morbid Stuff
Jesse Reyez – Being Human in Public
Shad – A Short Story About War
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – Trapline
Alexandra Stréliski – Inscape
Sydanie – 999
Voivod – The Wake
Hawksley Workman – Median Age Wasteland
Prediction
for eventual shortlist, assuming all of the above make the longlist:
Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman
Fucked Up – Dose Your Dreams
Haviah Mighty – 13th Floor
Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated
Kimmortal – X Marks the Swirl
Orville Peck – Pony
Pup – Morbid Stuff
Shad – A Short Story About War
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – Trapline
Alexandra Stréliski – Inscape
Not that
I want to jinx anything, but prediction for eventual winner:
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – Trapline
This
record is as musically and lyrically strong as it is timely. It gets better
every time I put it on. Prime Polaris bait, right here. If they do win, they’d
be the first straight-up hip-hop act to do so (some heads questioned Kaytranada),
and the Kitimaat duo would be the first Polaris champ from west of… Cambridge
Bay, Nunavut. (Unless you count Saskatchewan-born, Boston-raised Hawaii resident Buffy Sainte-Marie.)
The long list will be announced in Winnipeg on Thursday, June 20, at 11 a.m. local time (noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Atlantic), and broadcast on the official FB page.
The 11th Polaris Music Prize gala is six days
from now, Sept. 19, at the Carlu in
Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in a room will decide which one of these 10
artists will get $50,000. All other nominees receive $3,000.
Every day this week I’ll look at two of the shortlisted albums,
assess their chances, and celebrate two albums that didn’t make the short list—or, in some cases,
even the long list. Yesterday we
talked about Black Mountain and Basia Bulat.
Art Angels was the
most-anticipated Canadian release of 2015. Which is a bit weird.
Yes, Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes, is in every magazine—from Pitchfork to the New Yorker to Vogue—and
she’s managed by Jay Z’s company. But until now, she’s been a musical outlier:
her early, experimental records would be considered unlistenable to 99 per cent
of her current audience; 2012’s Visions—my
personal favourite album of that year—was a huge leap forward in terms of
production and melody, but was still far left of Lorde in terms of mainstream
appeal. In between then and now, Grimes recorded a full album and scrapped it,
leaked one track that was apparently intended for Rihanna, and played coy about
the arrival of Art Angels.
Art Angels is Grimes’s big bid,
her grab for the gold, her moonshot. (Note: she refutes this assumption.) There
are giant pop anthems with chugging electric guitars. There are EDM disco
rave-ups. There’s an acoustic ballad. There’s a song with just voice, a string
section, and electronics. It all puts her in the company of Katy Perry and
Tegan and Sara and Haim. Not, as we expected, Bjork or FKA Twigs or M.I.A.—even
if there is a track with a spaghetti Western guitar riff, a Taiwanese rapper,
an avalanche of electronic percussion, heavy-metal riffage and plenty of
screaming. It’s called “SCREAM” (emphasis is hers).
In pop, only the singles matter, and there she’s completely
succeeded. “California,” “Flesh Without Blood,” “Belly of the Beat” and the
peppy (and insipid) title track all sound huge and radio-ready. Aggressive club
tracks like “SCREAM,” “Kill vs. Maim” and “Venus Fly”—featuring Janelle Monae,
one of only two guest spots on this one-woman show—display a much more butch
side of Boucher, whose girlish upper range led many to infantilize her in the
past.
And yet for every pop triumph found here, the rest sounds like
Boucher dulling her edges and shoehorning herself into someone else’s
perception of herself, and ending up sounding like rejects from an ’80s teen
movie soundtrack. She’s much, much better than that—as she proves on the other
half of this album, and on every track on Visions,
for that matter.
Of course, assigning intent to any artist in any review is
ridiculous, and every Grimes album has been so drastically different from the
last that there’s no reason to expect anything in her future to be based on
what we already think we know about her. Grimes will always keep us
guessing—and second-guessing. In the meantime, she’s scored enough hits here to
make the rest of the world pay attention.
The world paid attention. The Junos didn’t, which is part of
what prompted the #JunosSoMale tempest earlier this year. Part of that debate
was why, among other categories, Grimes was not nominated for producer of the
year. As one of the rare female producers of any prominence, giving her a nod
would be ground-breaking.
But is her snub in the producer category that odd? How many
artists get points for producing or engineering themselves, as opposed to
facilitating someone else’s vision? (This year’s Juno nominees had two: Dallas
Green of City and Colour, and Emilie-Claire Barlow—a woman!—for co-producing
her own work. It’s the first of Barlow’s 11 albums on which she’s shared
producing duties.) Then there’s also the fact that weirdos like Grimes,
regardless of gender, don’t usually get anywhere near those categories, usually
reserved for conformists and hitmakers, not rule-breakers.
Women are seldom seen behind the boards in studios, either home
or professional, and when they share credit—like Bjork, or Beyoncé—everyone
assumes the men do all the heavy lifting. Neo-pop fans feel Grimes deserves
credit for doing it all herself and not turning to a team of all-star helpers
like (ahem) certain other Polaris shortlisters (who may or may not be part of
this same blog post). But isn’t it also a bit patronizing to be somehow amazed
that a woman does it all herself? I’m not amazed; it’s what I’d expect from an
artist of Grimes’ talent.
I just wish the record was as daring and genre-busting and
forward-thinking as she—and everyone else, including me—wants it to be. She has
it in her.
But you know what? Don’t listen to anything I say in a random
blog post. I implore you to read the esteemed Anwen Crawford in Australia’s The Monthly diving deep into her ambivalence toward Grimes, and how that relates
peripherally to Carly Rae Jepsen. I’ve been waiting to read a piece like this
for almost year, sorry to have only stumbled across it now.
The chances: Strong. For many
critics, this lived up to the hype that preceded it. Many feel she was robbed
for the Polaris back in 2013, when Feist’s Metals
blinded Visions. This could easily be
Grimes’ time. However, Grimes is also nothing if not divisive: if you’re
anything less than impressed with her music, chances are you actively hate it.
And curiously, for all the talk of sexism, the most virulent reactions to
Grimes I’ve witnessed have been from women.
Carly Rae Jepsen – E*MO*TION (Universal)
The most overrated underrated record of the year.
For more than a year now, I’ve seen this album showered with
laurels, while fretting about how the early release date in Japan impacting
North American sales (why this is of interest to critics, or anyone outside
Jepsen’s management team, is baffling to me) to lamenting her shut-out from the
Juno Awards (she didn’t sell enough records to qualify in the pop category,
which is sales-based), to its appearance on many year-end lists. “Carly Rae Jepsen
is so underrated!” my peers claim. “E*MO*TION is a pure pop masterpiece! It
only failed because she doesn’t work her social media as effectively as Taylor
Swift!” I mean: really?! Maybe it’s just not that good, people.
Look, some of my best friends are… wait, I mean some of my
favourite records are built on bubblegum, from ABBA to Ariana Grande, from
Ronnie Spector to Robyn. I’m happy that this music finally has a place in the
Polaris discussion, ever since Tegan and Sara broke the barrier a few years
back. Even if I secretly want Polaris to prioritize artists marginalized in the
mainstream, I still think we should consider pop music worthy of serious
discussion.
Except that I have a lot of trouble believing that we’re talking
about an album whose lead single had the chorus, “I really, really, really,
really, really, really like you.” The song is incredibly insipid, juvenile and,
well, unlikeable. The opening bars of “Boy Problems” are a direct nod to
Madonna’s “Holiday”—and a reminder that I’d rather be listening to that than
this teenage trifle, which makes the 30-year-old singer sound like a pedophile.
That said, aside from those two songs (which fill me with rage),
I don’t dislike this record. When it’s great, this is what I want to hear while
binging on cotton candy at the CNE (or PNE, as the case may be). I love the title track. “Your Type” is a great
pop single. “LA Hallucinations,” the only track here with Canadian producers,
sounds like a watered-down version of the 2102 Major Lazer/Dirty Projectors collaboration. The digitally
spliced saxophone on “Run Away With Me” is the “Baker Street” of this
generation—a generation whose primary exposure to sax in pop music is the
current Hall and Oates revival. But the hiccupping slap bass line on the ballad
“All That” is one ’80s joke too many.
Yes, she has a lot of great producers here, from the guy who did
Haim to the guy from Vampire Weekend to the guy from Blood Orange to the guy
from the Cardigans. But part of the problem for me is that I just don’t find
Jepsen interesting as a vocalist. She’s no Alessia Cara (see below). She’s a
cipher, replaceable, secondary to the music behind her. Which makes her move to
Broadway a sound decision.
The chances: Good. I don’t doubt
that people genuinely love this record, but at the same time so much discussion
of it seems to be predicated on its underdog status. I dare you to find an
article about Jepsen that doesn’t mention how poorly this sold, how her
management bungled a formula for her that worked for Justin Bieber mere months
later, or how the unwashed masses don’t know good pop music when they hear it.
What better Hollywood ending could one ask for than Jepsen winning the Polaris?
Could’ve, should’ve beens:
Alessia Cara – Know-it-All (Universal)
Lorde-y, Lorde-y. This 19-year-old (now 20) from Brampton, Ont.,
wowed the world with her hit “Here,” and managed to follow it up with a solid
album that showcased the depths of her vocal talent, her (not that uncanny)
ability to mine teen angst, and went gold in the U.S. (I also seemed to hear it
everywhere I went on my vacation in France this year.)
Cara is a walking We Day rally, with inspirational messages for
the misfits and the wallflowers: “You should know you’re beautiful just the way
you are / you don’t have to change a thing / the world can change its heart.”
Her hit, “Here,” has her hanging back from the action at a lame party full of vomiting
potheads, realizing she has better things to do with her time—like hanging with
friends she actually likes, kicking back and listening to “music with a
message.”
There’s more than a little bit of Lorde here: the nerdy outcast
who embraces big pop music to make a point about the vapidity of pop culture.
Opening track “Seventeen” has a huge hook and beat worthy of Katy Perry. “Here”
rides the same Isaac Hayes sample that underscored Portishead’s “Glory Box,”
which is a much less obvious pop bid, but one that’s clearly worked. She
channels Amy Winehouse on “Outlaws,” the torchy timbre of her voice belying her
actual age.
I’ll admit I hadn’t listened to this album in full since then (I hear the singles on the radio all the time, of course).
But returning to it now, it’s remarkably consistent and strong; it’s not just
three hit singles and some filler from a not-ready-for-prime-time player.
Cara’s the real deal. I can’t wait to hear what she does next.
Why it didn’t even
make the long list: This was a shocker, unless the presence of Jepsen, Bieber, the
Weeknd and Grimes meant there simply wasn’t space on people’s ballots for yet
another chart-pop record. And yet of all those, I’d say Cara’s voice is second
only to the Weeknd, her songs are better than any of them, and her production doesn’t
give this old man a headache.
Coeur de Pirate – Roses (Dare to Care)
Polaris has not had a francophone artist on the shortlist since
2011. In the 11-year history of the prize, only four francos have ever made the
shortlist: Karkwa (who won), Malajube (shortlisted twice), Radio Radio and
Galaxie. I thought this would be the year Coeur de Pirate finally got English
Canada’s attention, especially because more than half of Roses is in English.
She did make the long list—which she’s done twice before. But I’d argue this is
an even better pop record than those by Jepsen, Grimes or Bulat.
My review from last September:
Beatrice Martin is related to neither Swedish hitmaker Max
Martin nor Coldplay’s Chris Martin. But Beatrice, a.k.a. Coeur de Pirate, has
just made an album full of songs that those men would kill to have in their own
repertoire. The Québécois artist has sold a million records in her own province
and France, and is the only francophone artist in recent memory to attract any
significant notice in English Canada (she sold out Massey Hall in Toronto last
year—you can watch that here).
Now, with her first album of original music featuring songs in
English—seven of 10 here—Coeur de Pirate is poised for a major crossover.Martin is all of 25 years old, but writes like she’s studied Brill
Building and Broadway and pop masters for decades. Everything here sounds
enormous, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound updated for 21st-century
fireworks displays. Traces of modern R&B form the rhythm tracks, where
Martin nods to her love of The Weeknd (she once covered “Wicked Game”) and
Rihanna (replicating the “Umbrella” beat on “I Don’t Want to Break Your
Heart”). Meanwhile, tracks like “Undone” are the kind of stadium pop that Bono
has been trying to chase for the last 20 years, the kind that Katy Perry might
make if her songs weren’t stuffed with sonic steroids. Even the sparse ballads
(“Oceans Brawl,” “Cast Away,” “Tu oublieras mon nom”) boast melodies meant to
be sung by thousands in unison.
Why it didn’t make the
shortlist: Maybe it’s too slick? Too top-40ish? Too girlish? That might
fly any other year, but not one where we’re seriously discussing Jepsen,
Bieber, Bulat, Grimes et al. So: Distinct society. You’d have better luck
getting most English Canadian music writers to pull their own teeth than to get
them to listen to a francophone record (which this isn’t, but whatever). I get
it; I used to be that guy, too. I don’t want to be that guy anymore.
As always, the following reviews ran in September in the Waterloo Record.
Battles – La Di Da Di
(Warp)
When Battles made their full-length debut back in 2007, they
were the rare prog rock band you could dance to, the rare rock band that
successfully incorporated innovative electronics, the rare band whose superior
technical skill is matched by their ability to engage and form cohesion from
chaos. That album also came out at the height of the George W. Bush era, and
more than any actual protest music seemed to embody the infuriating zeitgeist.
Eight years later, La Di
Da Di is just as effective. In between there was a transition album where
they coped with losing an intergral founding member, but here the trio come out
swinging—through trippy time signatures, of course, with the monstrous drumming
of John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) holding down the kit. Guitarist Ian Williams
and bassist Dave Konopka rarely conjure any sounds their instruments are
supposed to. Together, it sounds a bit like a heavy metal drummer playing
Afrobeat while an Indonesian gamelan band wrestle with a German electronic
group on top of him—less entertaining, perhaps, but a fascinating flurry of
sound, rhythm and melody that functions far better than you might expect.
Zach Condon is a happier man, and it sounds like it. He’s been making
music professional since his late teens, when his debut, 2006’s Gulag Orkestar, became an unlikely
underground hit, marrying Eastern European brass melodies to plaintive ukulele
folk songs. Ten years down the road, he’s been divorced, collapsed on the road
from exhaustion, and about a year decided his creative well had run dry.
Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story. With the help of
his bandmates, he started to take himself less seriously and lighten up, and
his fifth album is more upbeat, hopeful and playful than anything he’s ever
done. There’s more electric piano than accordion, more—wait for it—funk in the
backbeat, and rich vocal harmonies backing up Condon’s sad-sack croon. (Sept.
24)
Beirut play the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on Nov. 13.
Download: “Gibraltar,” “No No No,” “Perth”
Coeur de Pirate – Roses (Dare to Care)
Beatrice Martin is related to neither Swedish hitmaker Max
Martin Coldplay’s Chris Martin. But Beatrice, a.k.a. Coeur de Pirate, has just
made an album full of songs that those men would kill to have in their own
repertoire. The Quebecois artist has sold a million records in her own province
and France, and is the only Francophone artist in recent memory to attract any
significant notice in English Canada (she sold out Massey Hall in Toronto last
year). Now, with her first album of original music featuring songs in
English—seven of 10 here—Coeur de Pirate is poised for a major crossover.
Approximately 95 per cent of what you read every week in this
column is the entirely subjective opinion of some guy who’s had a pathological
addiction to new music for 35 years. But this is an objective fact: Roses is
packed with future hits.
Martin is all of 25 years old, but writes like she’s studied
Brill Building and Broadway and pop masters for decades. Everything here sounds
enormous, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound updated for 21st-century
fireworks displays. Traces of modern R&B form the rhythm tracks, where
Martin nods to her love of The Weeknd (she once covered his “Wicked Game”) and
Rihanna (replicating the “Umbrella” beat on “I Don’t Want to Break Your Heart”).
Meanwhile, tracks like “Undone” are the kind of stadium pop that Bono has been
trying to chase for the last 20 years, the kind that Katy Perry might make if
her songs weren’t stuffed with sonic steroids. Even the sparse ballads (“Oceans
Brawl,” “Cast Away,” “Tu oublieras mon nom”) boast melodies meant to be sung by
thousands in unison.
For many of my favourite Quebecois artists, I can usually
understand that their music itself, not just the language, sounds slightly
foreign to English Canadians. That’s no excuse this time. (Sept. 3)
Couer de Pirate play the Phoenix in Toronto on Oct. 7.
Download: “Carry On,” “I Don’t Want to Break Your Heart,” “Drapeau
blanc”
Concealer - Feted: fetid (Coax)
Cowboy goth? Sure, why not. Edmonton’s Mark Davis and
MissMannered call their new project “heavy wave.” Davis comes from a country
rock background, having spent the better part of a decade in acclaimed roots
band Old Reliable, and with three most excellent solo albums under his belt,
all of them as melodic as they are morose. That tone continues here, but synth
player Missmannered (Sean Picard) amps up the atmosphere, until it sounds like
Townes Van Zandt being produced by the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The duo behind Concealer admit they’re an odd couple. As Davis
told the Calgary Herald, “I’m the older,
stoic, stay-at-home roots-rock guy, and Sean is more of a young, flamboyant,
gay socialite DJ/makeup artist.” But that’s only in person. What we hear here
is an entirely natural synthesis, one that finally takes Davis out of the
alt-country ghetto where he’s been pigeonholed.
Concealer’s only real fault is that
the sonic palette is limited: Davis plays mainly bass and drum machine, Missmannered
plays synths, and the tone is—shall we say—consistent, and rather dreary.
Davis’s melodies carry the day, however, as they always do. It’s exciting to
hear him trying on different clothes, but I hope he throws them in the laundry once
in a while. (Sept. 24)
Download: “Horns and Crown,” “Your Master’s Wishes,” “Throw Me
to the Lions”
Carly Rae Jepsen – E.MO.TION (Universal)
Guilt free! That’s what Carly Rae Jepsen offers fans of
bubblegum who find Katy Perry too tacky, Taylor Swift too cloying. Jepsen
scored a massive hit a few years back with “Call Me Maybe,” and here the
30-year-old B.C. singer is out to prove that she has staying power. She most
certainly does: there’s at least four or five songs here likely to linger around
the charts for the next year, with the help of collaborators Sia, Vampire
Weekend, and the producers behind Haim, Solange Knowles and, yes, Katy Perry
and Taylor Swift. It’s a sugar rush, and it’s a good one. But the new Robyn EP
that dropped last month is a much better bet. (Sept. 10)
Download: “E.MO.TION,” “Run Away With Me,” “Gimmie Love”
Lianne La Havas – Blood (Warner)
“Unstoppable”? You bet. That’s the name of the lead single from
this British singer’s second album, produced with predictable class and bombast
by Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence and the Machine, U2). On it, she rides a
slinky, seductive groove while harps and strings swirl around her and she
unleashes her unbelievable voice, a set of pipes that wows everyone within
earshot.
This 25-year-old has made a modern R&B record that’s
completely out of step: she’s not retro enough to be lumped in with Leon
Bridges or Sharon Jones; she’s not weird enough to join Miguel and The Weeknd.
Her music is as slick as Sade and delicate as Feist’s Let It Die, but she can belt it out Broadway-style, like Janelle
Monae.
Most important, she’s (almost) as fantastic a songwriter as she
is a singer. That title track could be the next great James Bond theme (for
which Sam Smith has been tapped instead, alas), while the ballad “Wonderful” is
one of the most sensual songs in recent memory (“electricity lingers in our fingers”).
Mary J. Blige should be covering “Grow” on her next album. R&B and
ornamental pop songs are balanced by songs based around just her guitar, while “Never
Get Enough” alternates between verses with acoustic guitar playing bossa nova,
and heavy choruses rich with distorted vocals and industrial synths.
Is there anything this woman can’t do? No wonder Prince is such
a huge and vocal fan. Soon you will be, too. (Sept. 17)
Lianne La Havas plays the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on Oct.
2.
Download: “Unstoppable,” “Tokyo,” “Wonderful”
Katie Moore – Fooled by the Fun (Club Roll)
Outside of Montreal, where she’s been a musical MVP for a decade
now, few people know Katie Moore unless they’ve seen her sing with Socalled’s
raucous live show, always go to Pop Montreal every September, are acutely tuned
into that city’s roots scene, or closely follow Patrick Watson, Plants and
Animals, or the Barr Brothers. To be fair, her heartbreaking voice has always
been better than any record on which she’s put her own name—until now.
Fooled by the Fun was recorded live in a studio, and an all-star
cast of Montreal musicians—including Socalled on electric piano, which casts a
warm and earthy early ’70s vibe over the whole affair—bring the best game to
Moore’s songs, which have improved so much over the years that a Tracy Chapman
classic (“Baby Can I Hold You”) fits in seamlessly with the original material.
Moore’s voice is still the primary selling point, however, a perfect balance of
humility and confidence, not unlike Emmylou Harris. Montreal may be a big city,
but it’s not big enough to contain a voice like Moore’s. (Sept. 3)
Download: “Talked All Night,” “Leaving,” “Find You Near”
Tami Neilson – Dynamite! (Outside)
The hottest country artist from New Zealand is Canadian. Tami
Neilson grew up playing in her family band—that would be the Neilsons—in Canada
in the 1990s, before moving to New Zealand to start her adult career. There,
she’s won no fewer than five nods for Country Album of the Year at that
nation’s equivalent of the Junos or Grammys, among other laurels. This,
however, is the first time one of her solo records is getting a Canadian
release. It couldn’t possibly be a better introduction.
Nielsen is a throwback; everything here is steeped in ’50s
rockabilly and Nashville, and she’s got it down pat: the bare-bones production,
the ace band, and a showstopper of a voice that could fill any room without a
microphone. Her lyrics might be well-worn tropes—songs about a heart the size
of Texas and lipstick on your collar—but the melodies, arrangements, and
especially her vocals are all fantastic.
Let’s hope for a 2016 summer tour with Lindi Ortega, to see two
of this country’s best belters duke it out. (Sept. 17)
Download: “Walk (Back to Your Arms),” “Dynamite,” “Running to
You”
Peaches – Rub (XL)
When this provocative performer debuted with The Teaches of Peaches in 2000, it was a
fascinating feminist art project dressed up in a libidinous electro sheen. Yet
everything about it seemed destined to be dated: the minimalist production, the
songs consisting of little more than one-joke catchphrases, the fact that it
arrived in the midst of the short-lived electroclash movement.
And yet: 15 years later, The
Teaches of Peaches has just been nominated in the 2000s category for the Polaris Heritage Prize;
it remains beloved and respected and influential. That same week, Peaches
released this, her fifth album, which proves—six years after her last album, I Feel Cream—that she’s still more than
relevant, still pushing herself, still pushing buttons. And still, of course,
NSFW.
She’s still tossing off silly jokes like “Dick in the Air” and “Vaginoplasty”
(“Catch the whiff coming off my midriff!”), but she also turns up the heat on
the title track (“whistleblow my clit”), and gets downright dark on “Free Drink
Ticket” and “Dumb F--k,” tracks where her lyrics take more disturbing turns.
Even on the lighter tracks, though, her lurid bathhouse soundtrack is always
fuelled by an empowered female gaze and increasingly clever—though never
subtle—turns of phrase. Part of the reason Peaches continues to endure is that
she’s improved as an MC. “Use a thumb, or take a fist / Roll with it, Sisyphus
/ no hissy fit”; “Take it like a real woman, not Ayn Rand.” Feist and Kim
Gordon show up as guests, but Peaches is more than juicy enough on her own.
(Sept. 24)
Peaches plays the Phoenix in Toronto on Oct. 20.
Download: “Close Up,” “Dick in the Air,” “Free Drink Ticket”
Robyn & La
Bagatelle Magique – Love is Free EP
(Universal)
It’s been five long years since Robyn dropped her pure pop
masterpiece Body Talk. Her somewhat
abstract 2014 EP with Rokysopp was interesting, but the intention was not to
deliver any of the club hits she’s known for. Now comes this new collaborative
EP, with her touring keyboardist and the Swedish producer Christian Falk, best
known for producing the 1994 hit for Neneh Cherry and Youssou N’Dour, “7
Seconds.”
There are five tracks here, each aiming for maximum punch, each
designed specifically for the dancefloor. “Got To Work It Out,” with its dabs
of Daft Punk and ABBA, could easily have fit onto Body Talk; the title track echoes vintage house and boasts a
strange Spanish rap interlude; a previously released, faithful cover of Arthur
Russell’s “Tell You (Today)” (it appeared on a Russell tribute album for the
Red Hot organization last October) dabbles in jazzy Latino disco with a big
brass section. And if Canadian opposition parties were remotely hip, they’d
license “Lose Control” for an anti-Harper ad this election season: “If you
can’t control it, you just don’t like it.”
The only complaint here is that it’s too short—but with the
passing of Falk, who died during recording, this is the last we’ll hear of this
trio. He certainly leaves on a high note. (Sept. 3)
Download: “Lose Control,” “Tell You (Today),” “Love is Free”
Telekinesis – Ad Infinitum (Merge)
Practically nobody knows Seattle songwriter and drummer Michael
Lerner or his band, Telekinesis; his third album, 2013’s Dormarion, was all but ignored, despite the fact it’s a power-pop
masterpiece, the kind that all those people whining about new records by Weezer
or Sloan or Ben Folds or Spoon or whomever would be wise to pick up sooner than
later.
And so few people will notice or care that Lerner has put his
drumsticks down and built a home studio of synths and drum machines. The songs
are still there, even if they lack some of the punch of earlier Telekinesis
records; you can tell he’s been listening to a lot of Giorgio Moroder and
Angelo Badalamenti soundtracks. It’s odd to hear such a great drummer
programming Linn drums instead—think of just about any big ’80s hit: “Maniac,” “Take
On Me,” “Love is a Battlefield”—but Lerner is clearly out to reinvent himself
as a man of many moods, not just a quick sugar rush. (Sept. 17)
Telekinesis plays Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on Oct. 25.
Download: “Sylvia,” “In a Future World,” “Farmers Road”
Yo La Tengo – Stuff Like That There (Matador)
This year marks Yo La Tengo’s 30th year as a band;
this album, featuring the return of original guitarist Dave Schramm, is a nod
to their 25-year-old album Fakebook,
a collection of covers. Of course a band at this stage in their career runs the
risk of repeating themselves—and that’s more than the case here. Every one of
these songs—by the likes of Hank Williams, The Cure, the Lovin’ Spoonful and
obscurities by Antietam, the Parliaments, and the Cosmic Rays—is rendered
acoustically, at mostly the same tempo, with the same whispered harmonies. Yo
La Tengo have succeeded making full-on mood records before, like 2000’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out,
but oddly enough they material they choose here—which includes two new songs,
and three reworking of earlier material—doesn’t suit the task at hand. It’s all
lovely and pleasant, but not particularly revelatory, nor an essential part of
their long discography. (Sept. 24)
Yo La Tengo play the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto on Sept.
30. There is a dinner package catered by Fat Pasha available.
Download: “Somebody’s in Love,” “Friday I’m in Love,” “The
Ballad of Red Buckets”
