April 2016 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record in April. Posting these a bit late.

Highly recommended (both are several months old, just hearing them now): Khruangbin; Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express

Well worth your while: Colin Stetson, Venetian Snares, Tim Hecker, Danny Michel (one of those is not at all like the others)

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please support your favourite artists financially.

Jean-Michel Blais – Il (Arts & Crafts)

Montreal guy plays piano in his apartment. That’s pretty much it. (April 7)

Stream: "Dada," “Nostos,” “Budapest”

PJ Harvey – The Hope Six Demolition Project (Island/Universal)

New records by the beloved PJ Harvey are a rarity. So when lead single “The Community of Hope” first appeared online, its approachable guitar pop reminiscent of Harvey’s 2000 commercial breakthrough Stories From the City Stories From the Sea, expectations were high, especially after the difficult listening (though award-winning) Let England Shake in 2011, an album largely about the First World War. Yet all that quickly dissipated after the story behind the single unravelled: the lyrics are taken almost verbatim from a Washington Post reporter who took Harvey on a cab ride around a derelict neighbourhood in his city, and residents were none too happy about the bleak portrait painted by Harvey, who didn’t bother talking to any of them. One early review said, correctly, that the song is “literally poverty tourism.” Closing track “Dollar Dollar” only reinforces that concept, with sounds from a Third World street scene underpinning Harvey’s lyrics about ignoring a street beggar.

The rest of The Hope Six Demolition Project doesn’t fare much better, lyrically. For an artist who once excelled at imagistic poetry, there’s a lot of mundane reportage: “I saw some Arabic graffiti”; “I saw a woman eat something unhealthy” (not actual quotes, but close). One song attempts to spin a chorus out of the endlessly repeated phrase, “Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.”

It’s distracting. Thankfully, the music fares much better. Harvey is in a buoyant mood, her guitars are front and centre, and she whips out her saxophone whenever she sees fit. The louder the track, the more likely she is to explore her somewhat creepy upper register. Her all-man band provides a backing choir when necessary. Long-time collaborator John Parish is, as always, a key component of the sound.

Were it not for the lyrics, this would easily be the best PJ Harvey record in at least 12 years. (April 21)

Stream: “The Ministry of Defence,” “The Orange Monkey,” “The Ministry of Social Affairs”

Tim Hecker – Love Streams (Paper Bag)

The clouds have parted in Tim Hecker’s sonic world. The Montreal ambient musician has built a career on strangely captivating sound of largely indeterminate origin. Since Ravedeath 1972, five years ago, he’s been playing a pipe organ found in an Icelandic church, and then digitally deconstructing his performance. On Love Streams, he’s back at the church and employing woodwinds and a local choir, with results that sound typically—well, glacial, to use a geographically obvious descriptor for such mysterious, slow-moving music.

Provocatively, Hecker bills this new music as “liturgical aesthetics after Yeezus.” Weird thing is, he’s not entirely off the mark. Tracks like “Voice Crack” and “Black Phase” feature a choir singing what seem like medieval dirges while crackling, distorted sounds seize control of the melody.

Love Streams also finds Hecker making clearer distinctions in his sonic choices, with sounds that obviously stem from somewhat recognizable synth sounds, as opposed to shifting washes of sound. The result is downright lively compared to the bulk of Hecker’s output; it’s certainly the most human. (April 7)

Stream: “Obisidian Counterpoint,” “Music of the Air,” “Voice Crack”

Khruangbin – The Universe Smiles Upon You (Night Time Stories)

This instrumental trio came out of nowhere—specifically Burton, Texas, a one-stoplight town between Austin and Houston—with an intoxicating mix of Motown grooves, jazzy guitar leads and psychedelic textures, with an ear open to Thai, Ethiopian, French and gospel music. Everyone’s playing here is masterful and gorgeous; it might make you feel hazy and lazy, but there’s nothing lazy about the musicianship at work here. The album was recorded in a barn, and you can easily visualize the big Texas skies influencing the vibe—this is music for cloud-gazing and starwatching, or, you know, any other time The Universe Smiles Upon You. (April 7)

Stream: “Mr. White,” “Little Joe & Mary,” “People Everywhere (Still Alive)”

Roxanne Potvin – For Dreaming (independent)

Potvin started her career as a Colin Linden-endorsed guitar slinger with a seriously soulful side. She’s still all those things, of course, but she’s taken a serious left turn on For Dreaming after becoming enchanted with the intimacy and songcraft of Afie Jurvanen’s recordings as Bahamas. That band’s Christine Bougie joins Potvin here, but despite having two guitar wizards in the same room, For Dreaming is very much a subdued folk-pop record, recorded largely in Potvin’s living room, with lovely little moments and subtle touches. Lyrically, Potvin oscillates between outright cheese (“Love makes us want to help each other out!”) and kind of sweet (“You still smile when I kiss you in your sleep”). It’d be nice to hear some of her former fireworks, which are hinted at on “Figuring It Out,” but she sounds more than comfortable in this new skin. (April 21)

Stream: “Figuring It Out,” “Prairie Sunrise,” “I Wouldn’t Tell You That”

Danny Michel – Matadora (Six Shooter)

The last time we heard from Waterloo favourite Danny Michel, on perhaps the most acclaimed album of his career, Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me, he was performing with the percussion-heavy Central American band Garifuna Collective, from Belize. It was his Paul Simon moment, and it worked. Now he’s back recording in Canada on his own, but the sunny ways are still evident in every groove here, on his 10^th album. “I had a dream that I stole the maps / erased the borders and that was that,” he sings on the sure-to-be hippie anthem “Click Click,” which also asks, “Are you too cool for love?” Michel is too old now to care about being cool, and more power to him. Not an ounce of his talent or curiosity or songwriting has faded in the least. “These are the good old days,” he sings. Doesn’t sound like they’re coming to an end any time soon. (April 21)

Stream: “Paris Las Vegas,” “Get Lost,” “Click Click”

Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajasthan Express – Junjun (Nonesuch)

Going to take a wild guess here that of the three names to whom this album is credited, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is the only one that stands out to you. His contribution to this collaboration is the least audible, but, from a marketing standpoint, it’s certainly obvious why he would get equal billing with the Israeli composer and the Indian ensemble who play Sufi devotional music. Tzur has lived in India for years, and writes in Hindi, Urdu and his native Hebrew. The Rajasthan Express is a large band with full brass and percussion. The music on Junjun blurs lines between Indian and Arabic music, between modern and traditional (there’s a heavy Brian Eno influence on many pieces, presumably Greenwood’s doing), between the meditational and the ecstatic (some of the brass and percussion arrangements here wouldn’t sound out of place in New Orleans). There’s an acclaimed, accompanying documentary by P.T. Anderson, for whom Greenwood is the soundtrack composer of choice (The Master, There Will Be Blood), but you don’t need to know the story to be moved by this powerful music. (April 21)

Stream: “Junjun,” “Roked,” “Allah Elohim”

Colin Stetson – Sorrow: A Reimagining of Gorecki’s 3^rd Symphony (52Hz)

How many rock bands set out to cover Dark Side of the Moon? How many jazz artists cover Kind of Blue? That takes a certain amount of chutzpah.

As does this move by Colin Stetson, the superhuman saxophonist of the avant-garde, in which he tackles the only modern classical composition to sell a million copies while its composer was still alive (he died in 2010). Symphony No. 3 was written in 1977 and made famous by a 1992 Nonesuch recording by the London Sinfonietta, ruling the classical charts for years. Hearing it was a revelatory experience for the young Stetson, and after his New History of Warfare trilogy snapped up spots on Polaris Prize shortlists and introduced large audiences to the concept of circular breathing and Philip Glass minimalism applied to solo saxophone performance, he felt he was up for this challenge.

Adapting it to a small ensemble—three winds, three strings (including his partner, Sarah Neufeld), two guitarists, two keyboards, drums and mezzo-soprano (his sister, Megan)—Stetson is faithful to the emotional tenor and tempo of the original, if not the instrumentation. Surely Gorecki never imagined the end of the first movement collapsing into maelstrom of white noise, or crescendo-ing guitars ala Godspeed You Black Emperor accelerating the emotional intensity, or a drummer from a death metal band called Liturgy providing some extra punch. None of this is gimmicky or irreverent; it enhances the original work, just as anything billing itself as a “reimagining” ideally should.

Stetson’s own role appears to be that of arranger; anyone expecting to hear the arpeggios or howling vocalizations that defined the New History trilogy will not find them here. For such a distinctive performer, Stetson is more than happy to surrender to his solo persona to the greater ensemble here.

Colin Stetson has never been an artist to back away from ambition—and to fulfill it. Which is exactly what he’s done here. (April 14)

Venetian Snares – Traditional Synthesizer Music (Planet Mu)

No, the album title is not a new category at the Grammys or the Junos. That’s not to say it couldn’t be some day. Winnipeg’s Aaron Funk, a.k.a. Venetian Snares, has made frenetic electronic music for almost two decades now, but this is the first time he’s made an album entirely with old analog modular synths: instruments that don’t come with preset sounds, instruments that don’t always behave in predictable manners—much like Funk himself. If we believe the man (which we shouldn’t necessarily do; he has a reputation as a prankster), it was all recorded live, complete with shifting tempos that defy the crutch of “quantizing,” the technical trick that imposed rhythmic uniformity on the world in the 1980s. As always with Venetian Snares, the avalanche of ideas can be exhausting, but there’s no denying the man’s genius, and this foray into “traditional” music could serve as a welcome entry point for the uninitiated. I’d also love to hear someone score this for a live band, perhaps the first time I’ve felt that way about a Venetian Snares record. (April 7)

Stream: “Everything About You is Special,” “Magnificent Stumble v2,” “Health Card10”

Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld – Never Were the Way She Was

Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld – Never Were the Way She Was (Constellation)

She’s a member of Arcade Fire; he sometimes plays with Arcade Fire. She founded Bell Orchestre; he joined later. He has three albums of solo saxophone performances; she has one of solo violin. They both record for Montreal’s Constellation Records. Both are fond of chugging eighth- and 16^th-note rhythms. They run yoga studios together. They’re a romantic couple. This album was inevitable.

And yet, like any collaborations, it’s often a compromise, where each performer merely adds texture to a piece that’s perfectly in keeping with the other’s normal modus operandi. There are moments here where one person is merely duplicating the other’s part, just on a different instrument, a different octave. Both these performers have their own unique style: surely they’re not suddenly going to reinvent themselves.

The best moments here are when they play off each other, trading roles, intertwining, their ghostly vocals harmonizing in the ether while their instruments wrestle with each other on Earth. As with their solo records, this was recorded live, with no overdubs, which makes the spectrum of sounds here all the more impressive. In so much of his solo work, Stetson has us asking, “How does he do that?” The sounds themselves, however, are not unfamiliar. On “With the dark hug of time,” however, it’s unclear exactly what the hell he’s doing at all: it’s completely mystifying, evocative and magical.

I’d still rather hear a new Bell Orchestre album or see Stetson follow up his New History of Warfare trilogy album with something completely different, but there’s no denying the chemistry—musical and, er, otherwise—these two have finally bottled.

Download: “Won’t Be a Thing to Become,” “In the Vespers,” “The Rest of Us”

Godspeed vs. Polaris: We all win

I have never understood why anyone would not want to have cake and also be able to eat it. Is that so wrong?

Godspeed You Black Emperor won the Polaris Prize on Monday night, which comes with a $30,000 cheque. They refused to perform. They refused to participate in the split 7” series featuring all the nominees. They did not attend the gala. The morning after, they issued a communiqué. Read it now. It’s become the most-discussed and inflammatory Polaris win since an album called He Poos Clouds, on a tiny worker’s co-op of a record label, nabbed the inaugural award in 2006. Godspeed is the first winner in Polaris history to openly question the entire point of the award itself.

The winning album opens with a drone and doesn’t witness a chord change until about seven minutes into the 20-minute track. It is music that is inherently outside the mainstream, mysterious and at times aurally offensive even to those who claim to champion alternative culture. It has nothing to do with eight of the other nine nominees; with label mate Colin Stetson, of course, there are more parallels to be drawn. But even Stetson is two degrees of separation from Kanye West, and has played on the previous two Polaris-winning albums (The Suburbs, Metals). Godspeed are, by nature, outsiders who don’t try to endear themselves to anyone.

So who among us was surprised by what they said?

I was. Pleasantly surprised—especially considering the vitriol they used to unleash on unlikely targets such as Exclaim! magazine (the subject of their last communiqué, which seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the Internet). UPDATE: Here's the link from a time when Godspeed actually were dicks. I dare you to try to read the whole thing.


Contrary to what a lot of chatter claims, Godspeed did not refuse the award. They did not turn down the money. They did not spit on the media of this country, or the people who go out of their way to champion marginal culture in a media culture that attempts to render it invisible on a daily basis. They did send two people to represent them—if not necessarily speak for them—to the gala. They did not boycott the Polaris Prize.

In their own words, they are “grateful.” And “humbled.”

And then they have a few more things to say. With a lot of rather cutting self-deprecation acting as a tonic for their righteousness. (Contrary to popular opinion, this band is not without a sense of humour. They did invite Weird Al Yankovic to play when they curated All Tomorrow’s Parties, after all.)

They’re clearly uncomfortable with the idea of awards and competition in the arts. Surely that’s not a controversial position, is it? Even I, as someone who fully embraces the idea of arts awards as a means of generating mass interest in art that all too easily slips through the cracks—and that goes for indie films that get nominated for Oscars as well as small-press publishers who get on the Giller list—recognize that the idea of “winners” and “losers” is patently ridiculous. Polaris, like any other prize, is a parlour game where predicting the results is a silly and ultimately meaningless sub-intellectual exercise. As I’ve argued before, the winner is little more than a MacGuffin, a sideshow.

Don’t like the winner? There sure were some great records on that shortlist you can propose as an alternative. Don’t like the shortlist? There sure were some even better records on the long list you can continue to champion. Don’t like the long list? There’s still plenty to talk about. Let’s all keep talking. Because if we shut up about the music we love, there’s a good chance it will no longer exist.

Rather than shutting up and smiling and shaking hands, Godspeed chose to stay in the game and speak up. In their own way, without a giant novelty cheque.

Are there contradictions between their statement and their behaviour? Of course. Complaining about a glitzy venue is a bit rich, when one member of the band owns two of Montreal’s best venues for smaller acts: does he forgo repairs in order to retain their cruddiness? And as juror Carla Gillis pointed out on Twitter, “Holding the gala in an elegant, great-sounding venue shows respect for Canadian musicians, who play cruddy halls nightly.”

Speaking of cruddy halls, yes, Godspeed are opening stadium shows for Nine Inch Nails this year, playing venues named after banks and telecom companies, so their distaste for Polaris’s car company sponsorship is a bit rich. And arguably, they could have protested earlier and dropped out; no less than Alice Munro has removed herself from the Giller process in the past. But they didn’t: they were smart enough to know that if even one Tegan and Sara fan was curious enough to check them out and discover new worlds, then the engagement—minimal though it was, on their part—was worth it.

But cries of “hypocrisy” are cheap and self-serving—not to mention belittling to anyone who dares to ask questions. As my friend Geoff Berner put it today, “It seems like any time any lefty makes any statement in the public square, it's always accused of ‘hypocrisy.’ Environmentalists who ride cars to demos are hypocrites. Musicians who participate in a flawed music biz are hypocrites when they point out flaws. Basically, it seems, the choice is, either go along with everything, or stay out of the public square completely. Otherwise, you're a hypocrite. Either be a cheerleader, or be silent. Great.” You know who else is hypocritical? Rich Christians. And music critics who get all their music for free and then complain about not getting on guest lists.

The essential website Weird Canada tweeted on Monday night: "It takes a lot of conviction to do the things that Godspeed does. It's easy to write it off or trivialize what they do. [So] don't." 

Even the naysayers cannot deny the power of Godspeed’s intention to donate the prize money to a program providing instruments for prisoners. A charity like MusicCounts, which does the same for schoolchildren, is an easy sell. I’m not going to knock it. But no one wants to think about the many ways in which we fail to rehabilitate the lowest of the low in our society, the ways in which we continue to make a bad problem worse, the ways in which the current Canadian government is adopting the knee-jerk ideology of the prison-industrial complex that even the U.S. admits no longer works—and that’s an issue that gets far less play in the media than, say, reforming marijuana laws.

Now, I wished I liked Godspeed’s record more than I do. I wished it sounded like 2013 rather than 1999. I wished Zaki Ibrahim or A Tribe Called Red or Colin Stetson could have ignited entirely different conversations than the one we’re having right now, one in which a bewildered music industry succeeds only in proving Godspeed’s points by overreacting with crybaby complaints of our own. We protest too much about the pickle we’ve stuffed up our own butt. In feeling somehow threatened, we expose our weaknesses.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Mile End, Godspeed is going to continue doing what they’ve always done, on their own terms, and giving back to the local community to which they first pledged allegiance. And I’m sure their cake tastes very, very good.

Also: Former Polaris Prize staffer Liisa Ladouceur beat me to making many of these same points today, and perhaps did it better. Please read her piece here.

And fellow juror Dave Morris, a friend with whom I frequently disagree on almost everything musical, makes more excellent points here.