Canadian songbook: Zunior, Oh Susanna, Grey Lands

Canada has always been known as a songwriters’ nation, ever since the days of Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and the rest of Yorkville scored hits via covers of their songs, even before their own careers took off. (You should read about this scene in Jason Schneider's excellent book Whispering Pines.) And yet, we rarely celebrate our modern songbook: for all the camaraderie and cross-pollination our best artists do, they rarely, if ever, cover each other’s work.

Earlier this year, Montreal songwriter Michael Feuerstack enlisted a bunch of his considerably more famous friends to cover some of his songs. Geoff Berner did the same thing, assembling a tribute album to himself to help launch his first novel. This fall, Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker, Cuff the Duke’s Wayne Petti and Oh Susanna continue the trend, covering their favourite songs and songwriters. (See reviews, below.)

Three years ago, I assembled a compilation of my favourite modern artists covering Canadian songs from 1985-95, a time period covered in my co-authored book, Have Not Been the Same. It’s an amazing record. Kevin Drew. Corb Lund. Hidden Cameras. Bry Webb. Great Lake Swimmers. Jill and Matthew Barber. The Burning Hell. Jim Bryson. Forest City Lovers. Cuff the Duke. Mark Davis. Selina Martin. Light Fires. Snailhouse. Veda Hille. Andrew Vincent. Geoff Berner. Bruce Peninsula’s Neil Haverty. Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. You should buy it. All proceeds go to CAMH.

I chose to put out that compilation via Zunior, the online record label and e-retailer run by the Inbreds’ Dave Ullrich. For 10 years now, he’s been selling independent Canadian music at decent prices (albums are $8.88), paying artists much more than they’d make through iTunes or other American outlets. All the major and minor indies are there: Arts and Crafts, Paper Bag, Constellation, Nettwerk, Kelp, Mint, Secret City, Six Shooter, Sonic Unyon, Weewerk, You’ve Changed, White Whale, Flemish Eye, and much more—even Jagjaguwar, a U.S. label with plenty of Canucks on it. If you buy indie Canadian music, you should buy it from Zunior. It’s also Stuart McLean’s preferred retailer; all his Vinyl Café products are available there.

Zunior also curates new compilations, usually around Christmas: one year featured its artists covering the Charlie Brown Christmas album in its entirety. This year, however, to celebrate its 10^th anniversary, Zunior put out a cookbook, organized a festival, and commissioned a comic book. Zunior also got their BFF Tony Dekker, of Great Lake Swimmers, to cover some of his favourite Canadian songs of the last 10 years. The result? It’s almost as good as my album. ;)

These reviews ran in the Waterloo Record last month.

Tony Dekker – Sings 10 Years of Zunior (Zunior)

Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker has always tossed out oddball covers that counter his reputation as a sad-eyed, dreamy crooner. (Perhaps you once heard him on CBC Radio covering the Dead Kennedys’ satirical classic “Kill the Poor.”) Here, he celebrates the anniversary of Zunior; their 10 years as a business happen to coincide with an incredible decade of Canadian music, and so Dekker has plenty of incredible material to choose from.

Other than Chad Van Gaalen and Martin Tielli, neither of whose work is much different than Dekker’s day job, Dekker goes for the underdogs: Christine Fellows, The Burning Hell, Rae Spoon, Old Man Luedecke, Ohbijou. He also gives two nods to Guelph, covering Jim Guthrie’s “3AM” and Jenny Omnichord’s “Growing Too.” The one WTF moment is a silly and strange cover of Cadence Weapon’s “Do I Miss My Friends”—you may not think Tony Dekker should be rapping, and maybe he shouldn’t, but it has to be heard to be believed.

Dekker could have made this record in his sleep; he didn’t. He invests the same time and care he would on one of his own records; it’s obvious this is a complete labour of love. It’s also essential listening not just for Great Lake Swimmers, but for anyone who cares about the Canadian songbook. Your favourite acts of the last 10 years didn’t, with few exceptions, rise in isolation. They came from a community, and this is one man’s version of what that community sounded like. I can’t think of a better man for the job .

Download: “At the Airport” (Old Man Luedecke), “My Sweet Relief” (Martin Tielli), “The Woods” (Ohbijou)

Oh Susanna – Namedropper (Sonic Unyon)

For her sixth album, Oh Susanna commissioned her many talented friends to write songs for her, enlisting Joel Plaskett, Jim Cuddy, Ron Sexsmith and more. How could she go wrong?

She can’t. She enlisted producer Jim Bryson—who also happens to trump everyone else here by penning the album’s highlight and opening track, “Oregon”—and some of the songwriters into her backing band (as well as Kathleen Edwards, who, sadly, doesn’t contribute a song). Perhaps it goes without saying that Plaskett writes the album’s other surefire classic, “Into My Arms.” Amelia Curran, Melissa McClelland (Whitehorse), Old Man Luedecke and Royal Wood also stand out; Jay Harris’s “1955” has one of the catchiest melodies but some of the most unfortunate lyrics (it’s a peppy love song with the chorus: “Your love’s like suicide/ the kind of love you can only buy / 1955.” What do those three things have to do with each other, and why are they set to a country-rock anthem?)

Dropping names, stacking the deck, and being shameless about it—no harm in that, especially with company like this.

Download: “Oregon,” “Into My Arms,” “Mozart for the Cat”

Grey Lands – Songs by Other People (Paper Bag)

Grey Lands is a new solo project for Cuff the Duke’s Wayne Petti; the title of the debut album is self-explanatory. Here, Petti dips into psychedelic country in ways I’d been hoping he would ever since Cuff the Duke’s still-stunning 2002 debut album. Even though he’s doing it by covering some obvious songs—Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” (with Greg Keelor) and “Girl From the North Country” (with Joel Plaskett), even Sloan’s “Coax Me” (with Mike O’Neill)—he also digs deep to find obscurity’s like Jim Sullivan’s “UFO” and Lee Hazlewood’s “Sand” (with Sarah Harmer), and puts his own distinct stamp on each one. Whether or not Grey Lands starts including Petti’s own songs or not, the sound he gets here is well worth sticking with.

Download: “Outta My Head” (feat. Hayden), “My Back Pages” (feat. Greg Keelor), “Sand” (feat. Sarah Harmer)

All three titles are available from Zunior.com

Too Cool to Live, Too Smart To Die

While revising Have Not Been the Same for the 10^th anniversary edition, it was very much on the mind of all three co-authors that the last 10 years has been incredibly fruitful in Canadian music, and left a recorded legacy even greater than the time period of 1985-1995 that we documented in the book. We also felt that it wasn’t enough to just put out a new, improved version of the book: we felt that the music we discuss had to feel alive, not out of print and hidden in a dark corner of a campus radio station’s soon-to-be-dismantled vinyl library. And so while my co-author Jason Schneider is working on Vol. 2 of this series, which will unearth out-of-print classics and make them available again—including the long-sought-after title track (!!!)—I asked current artists to pay tribute to Canadian acts that inspired them early on.


I feel blessed to know many incredible musicians personally, and so that helped narrow my scope when it came to who to invite to be a part of this. I also wanted to focus on the new, so while I could have asked some legends associated directly with the book to cover their contemporaries, I wanted people who made some of my favourite records of the last 10 years to be the first people I approached. Unbelievably, over 25 of them responded positively, and the 19 heard here managed to record a track in time. Interest was so strong that I could easily commission a second installment at a moment’s notice.


I couldn’t be happier with the end result: every single artist gave this their A-game, and it’s clearly audible what a labour of love this was all around.


All proceeds from this project will go to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the leading such facility in the country (and right across the street from me). I feel like every musician I know—including myself—has been affected either directly or indirectly (through peers) by the issues that CAMH deals with every day. And there are more than a few tragic tales in the book about artists who lost precious time, talent, or even their lives to personal demons that plagued them. The life of creative people is as complex as it is rewarding, and sadly addiction and mental health are occupational hazards.


Without further ado, here’s the track listing:

Pop Goes the World (Men Without Hats) – The Burning Hell

In Contempt of Me (Jr. Gone Wild) – Corb Lund

What Was Going Through My Head (Grapes of Wrath) – Great Lake Swimmers

Daylight (The Nils) – Owl Mountain Radar (Jim Bryson and Chris Page)

I Will Give You Everything (Skydiggers) – Bry Webb (of the Constantines)

The Lines You Amend (Sloan) – Forest City Lovers

Happens All the Time (Eric’s Trip) – Light Fires (Gentleman Reg and Ohbijou's Jamie Bunton)

Grace, Too (The Tragically Hip) – Selina Martin with the Faceless Forces of Bigness

Too Cool to Live, Too Smart to Die (Deja Voodoo) – Mark Davis and Lorrie Matheson

Your Sunshine (Hardship Post) – Jill and Matthew Barber

North Window (The Inbreds) – Cuff the Duke

Throw Silver (Mecca Normal) – Hidden Cameras

Buddah (Al Tuck) – Snailhouse

Odette (Circle C) – Veda Hille

Teenland (Northern Pikes) – Andrew Vincent

Bound for Vegas (Art Bergmann) – Geoff Berner

Shaved Head (Rheostatics) – Neil Haverty (of Bruce Peninsula)

When You Know Why You’re Happy (Mary Margaret O’Hara) – Little Scream and Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre)

We Got Time (Bob Wiseman) – Kevin Drew (Broken Social Scene)

Have Not Been the Same Vol. 1: Too Cool to Live, Too Smart To Die will be available on Zunior.com on November 15. Artwork by Nick Craine. Mastered by Andy Magoffin. Liner notes by myself and all contributing artists.

Sept 09 reviews

The following reviews appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and the Guelph Mercury.

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Scott H. Biram – Something’s Wrong/ Lost Forever (Bloodshot)

Scott H. Biram calls himself a “dirty old one-man band,” and here he’s credited in the liner notes with, among other things, “footstomp, knockin’, holler, bitch, moan, heart, liver, drive.” Such is the enormity of his presence that you barely notice that precious few of his friends show up in the studio to lend a hand.

Biram growls, grunts, hollers and has his way with blues, country and primal punk rock, less interested in any kind of tradition as he is in squeezing blood from every genre he touches. As the dual album title suggests, he sounds like a desperate and at times despondent man; on the song “Judgment Day” he’s running out of time in a world about to explode, and he’s got a few scores to settle before that happens. When he slows down for a ballad, he’s “Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue.”

Biram closes the album with a ferocious a cappella take on Leadbelly’s “Go Down Ol’ Hannah,” making it entirely his own. (Sept. 24)

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Cuff the Duke – Way Out Here (Noble)

One of Canada’s best-loved roots rock bands heads to Greg Keelor’s farm to make a largely acoustic album, marking a new maturity and laid-back vibe. Sound familiar? Comparisons to Blue Rodeo’s Five Days in July, the 1993 album that guaranteed that band’s longevity and gave their career a new lease on life, might be inevitable, even if the parallels to Cuff the Duke don’t entirely line up; for starters, Way Out Here doesn’t shy away from loud electric guitars when necessary.

But seven years after their arrival on the scene, and with the first album to take full advantage of their current line-up (witness the glorious four-part harmony on opening track “You Were Right”), Cuff the Duke are sounding less like a band who have something to prove, and more like the cozy and consistent CanRock stalwarts they were born to be, singing lyrics like “growing old with you my love is something I don’t fear.”

Not that they’re entirely in Lightfoot territory, although their songwriting continues to improve along more conventional lines. Keelor—no stranger to elongated psychedelic jams—knows well enough to let them stretch their wings and milk the mood of his idyllic rural retreat, allowing the band’s new in-house guitar wizard Dale Murray a chance to shine.

The greatest revelation here, however, is vocalist Wayne Petti, who has outgrown the nasal voice of his youth and is stretching his range in both directions, to its depths on broken and hushed lullabies, and to soaring heights everywhere else.

There are no new directions here—it’s hard to imagine this band getting more diverse than they did their classic debut album—just a sign of a great band growing old. And if the Keelor connection puts them in touch with Blue Rodeo fans wondering why their heroes don’t make albums as good as this one anymore, all the better. (Sept. 17)

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Amelia Curran – Hunter Hunter (Six Shooter)

Amelia Curran sings with the voice of a perpetual heartbreak victim—but not the kind who is willing to wallow. Instead, this Maritime songwriter sounds resilient and comforting. No matter what your pain may be, she’s felt that and more and lived to sing about it. While her Sunday morning hangover songs are her forte, her bare bones arrangements are more diverse than surface impressions. “The Mistress” has almost a hip-hop cadence to it; there’s nothing at all missing from Curran’s solo acoustic guitar accompaniment, but there’s a barnburning cover version of this song waiting to happen at festival workshop sometime next summer. The songwriting here is a step beneath her stellar 2008 album War Brides, but even when she’s not at the top of her game, Amelia Curran makes a formidable impression. (Sept. 3)

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John Fogerty – Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again (Verve)

John Fogerty may have helped invent country rock with Creedence Clearwater Revival, but he hasn’t often dressed himself entirely in fiddles, pedal steel guitars and honky-tonk rhythms. Of course, it’s a natural fit for his voice—which hasn’t aged a bit—and it’s a safe bet that many of his original fans won’t consider this album a left turn in the least.

In fact, it’s the follow-up to his very first post-CCR solo album in 1973, which was also a collection of covers. Here, Fogerty borrows from John Prine, John Denver, Buck Owens and others—yet he never goes for obvious choices, and any one of these songs could just have easily come from the pen of Fogerty himself, who is undeniably one of the great American songwriters of the last 50 years.

He gets some help from famous friends and fans: two of the Eagles sing on Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party,” and Bruce Springsteen chimes in on an Everly Brothers song. But this is John Fogerty we’re talking about—those guys are mere window dressing. This is Fogerty’s back porch party, and we’re all lucky enough to be able to eavesdrop. (Sept. 17)

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Joe Henry – Blood From Stars (Anti)

If you had happened to read Joe Henry’s self-penned liner notes before listening to his latest album, you might have serious hesitations about even removing the CD from its case. Being the hyperliterate sound geek that he is (and producer for hire), Henry attempts to wax eloquent about the snare drum used on this recording, describing it as sounding like “Fats Waller taking a fall down a flight of stairs into a damp alley, bottle caps stuck to his heels, cape flapping and late to a beginner’s flamenco lesson already in progress.” If you ever thought music critics were overwrought blowhards, musicians aren’t much better.

Needless to say, Joe Henry takes himself very seriously. And why wouldn’t he? He’s a historian and scholar of classic American music: jazz, country, blues, gospel, rock’n’roll and the folk tradition. And on too many of his recent albums, he has seemed a bit too impressed with himself: the music was overly mannered, the lyrics dense, the vocals overly affected.

On Blood From Stars, Henry learns to let go and appreciate the simpler things. After spending much of the last several years coaching comebacks from soul great Solomon Burke and New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint (see 2009’s fabulous The Bright Mississippi), Henry strips his songs down to the bare essentials. He’s still using plenty of chords lifted from early 20th-century standards, but he makes them sound as natural as a three-chord blues or gospel standard, with the help of an all-star band that includes guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch, and drummer Jay Bellerose. Henry’s saxophonist son Levon also proves himself worthy alongside such storied session greats. Henry Sr.’s singing is more powerful than ever, perhaps because this is the first batch of songs he’s written in a long time that one could actually envision other people interpreting. (Sept. 10)

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Inglourious Basterds OST – Various Artists (Warner)

Quentin Tarantino is getting a lot of slack over his latest film, for the fact that 15 years into his career, he’s still recycling old movie motifs and paying obvious homages instead of creating his own vision. That’s certainly true of his approach to soundtracks as well: it’s one thing to repurpose old pop songs for a new film, but it’s a whole other level of graverobbing to take pieces of music from other soundtracks and use them in your own movie.

Surely Tarantino can afford to hire the renowned and prolific Ennio Morricone (The Mission, Clint Eastwood’s westerns), but instead he uses four of his pieces from different films here. Throw in a couple of wildly inappropriate funk and pop songs that are out of time for this World War Two film (both of which—David Bowie’s "Cat People" and Billy Preston’s "Slaughter"—are the theme songs to other films, of course), and it’s obvious that, on top of being lazy and cheap, Tarantino is doing this just to anger purists.

Intentions aside, there is some great music here—much of it unknown to most music fans, and Tarantino deserves credit for his taste. But, like his recent films, having good taste doesn’t mean he knows how to glue everything together without it sounding/looking like a tossed-off found-object art project. Maybe that’s the point of his basterd-ization. (Sept. 3)

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Os Mutantes – Haih Or Amortecedor (Anti)

Brazil’s Tropicalia movement of the late ’60s is associated with bossa nova, psychedelic pop and folk music—but the scene’s legendary freaks Os Mutantes are first and foremost a rock band, even though they draw influences from all over the musical map. After over a decade of renewed interest in their original recordings, they reformed in 2006 and this marks their first album of original material in 35 years.

And like nearly every similar comeback album, it can’t possibly live up to expectations or retain the magic of their early records. Yet it does show that bandleader Sergio Dias Baptista is still restless and unwilling to take his music in any predictable direction. He is just as playful as ever—at times downright goofy—and working with old peers Tom Ze and Jorge Ben, who provide him with some of the stronger numbers here. Normally, comeback records with star-studded cameos are a bad idea, but there are more than a few occasions when one wishes Baptista had called on some of his many famous fans in younger generations to lend a hand.

No matter—Os Mutantes are back on the road again, and this may well be the beginning of an entirely new chapter in their storied career. (Sept. 10)

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RickWhiteAlbum – 137 (Blue Fog)

Rick White’s discography is so vast that only the certifiably insane would bother to collect from every last corner of his prolific output, which began with Eric’s Tip in the early ’90s, though to his work as Elevator, and now various solo recordings. At his best, White is a master of hazy psychedelic rock and lazy lo-fi folk, with a consistent aesthetic that’s attracted Greg Keelor and the Sadies. That association led to the collaborative project The Unintended, a band that proved how White is at his best when working with others and not left to his own devices in the studio.

That said, 137 is the most focused that his solo work has been in years. In many ways the haze has lifted, due in part to digital recording and the absence of tape hiss, but White also appears to be in a headspace where the curtains have been allowed to part, sunlight is shining into his studio, and the fog has lifted. Certainly, the spookiness is still there, but it sounds like White has crawled out of a rut—even if, at 21 songs, it’s obvious that White still hasn’t acquired editing skills. Both his acoustic and electric guitar playing—and his trippy production aesthetic—have stepped up considerably here; they survive even the more superfluous songs. (Sept. 24)

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Tinariwen – Imidiwan: Companions (Outside)

Like the Arctic Monkeys, Tinariwen also recorded their latest album in the desert. Except for Tinariwen, that’s where they actually live: in the southern Sahara, bordering Mali, Niger, and Algeria. And this, their fourth album, was recorded by setting up a generator and recording equipment outdoors in the desert and in the bush and around campfires; this is how they played all of their earliest gigs 20 years ago, and is still the way they perform for the Touareg communities that spawned them.

Their 2007 North American breakthrough Water is Life sounded, however subtly, more Western, with the connections between African guitar music, American blues, and hard rock clearly on display. Imidiwan is just as electric as its predecessor, but it is languid and with more emphasis on vocals than on guitar solos. This is desert blues for dark nights, sung by men who’ve endured 30 years of displacement and only now sound like they’ve found their home. (Sept. 3)

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Rachelle Van Zanten – Where Your Garden Grows (rachellevanzanten.com)

Rachelle Van Zanten doesn’t have much of a profile in this part of the country, but that doesn’t make her a newcomer. The B.C. native grew up playing bluegrass, fell into ’90s rock in her university years, and was seduced by the blues after moving to Edmonton. Her first serious band, Painting Daisies, was named Entertainer of the Year at the 2001 Prairie Music Awards—they beat out Nickelback and Jann Arden.

The depth of that experience all comes through on this, her second solo album, which opens with a chorus of “do you want to go steady?/ do you want to get heavy?” There’s no question that Van Zanten has slide guitar chops—which landed her an opening slot on a Derek Trucks tour—but most of Where Your Garden Grows is about her development as a songwriter and arranger. While the blues influence is strong, her melodies draw from a variety of non-Western sources, as well as some of the artier alternative songwriters of the ’90s such as Mary Timony.

Van Zanten’s talents are enough to set this album apart from much else going on in Canada right now; she also got some nice finishing touches courtesy of mixing engineer Tchad Blake (Tom Waits, Los Lobos) that make everything that much tastier. (Sept. 3)

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Rufus Wainwright – Milwaulkee At Last (Universal)

While he’s been busy working on his first opera—which gets its North American debut in Toronto at next spring’s Luminato festival—Rufus Wainwright releases this, his first official live album. Of his own material, that is; his last release was his re-creation of Judy Garland’s Live at Carnegie Hall album. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of live Wainwright material floating around; between bonus discs and iTunes EPs and DVDs and documentaries.

That said, Milwaulkee at Last starts off strong and swinging with the title track from 2007’s Release the Stars—the album that forms the bulk of this set—but after four songs, Wainwright dips into the more maudlin and plodding part of his repertoire, never to return for air. Considering what a joyous live show he usually gives, this set does a disservice to his overall body of work, failing as a stand-alone live album and looking more like a stopgap than anything else.

But that’s just the stand-alone 10-song CD version, of course. This being Rufus, you could also opt for the deluxe version with full-length concert DVD and bonus EP, or the stand-alone DVD version, or—surely there must be a picture book or documentary coming soon, no? (Sept. 17)

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The XX – s/t (Young Turks)

For a band that makes such wonderfully ghostly pop music, it’s entirely apt that The XX (not to be confused with Dutch punk band The Ex) sound like zombies struck them on the way to the studio: it’s hard to imagine a more deadpan duo than this.

Yet that’s part of their charm, and rather than detached ennui, singer/guitarist Romy Madley Croft—who bears a slight vocal resemblance to Amy Millan of Stars—sounds like she’s a recovering misanthrope who’s only just begun to seek sunlight and redemption, suddenly alive to the wonder of the world. This makes her a perfect foil for the low moans emanating from her bassist, Oliver Sim, who sounds like he recorded his vocal parts face down in a pillow.

All four members of The XX are 20 years old, which means they likely didn’t grow up with the influence of New Order (whose bass lines are echoed in Croft’s guitar lines, which are bathed in enough reverb to satisfy Daniel Lanois) or—on a more obscure note, but a reference that comes up often—the cult band Young Marble Giants (who were equally sparse and spooky). It also makes it remarkable how complete and satisfying this is, for a debut album; they’ve arrived with their own sound and 11 songs that leave you insatiable for more—especially when Croft sings: “I want to drown whenever you leave/ teach me gently/ how to breathe.” (Sept. 17)

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Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs (Matador)
The Clean – Mister Pop (Merge)

Talk about—pop music? Any artist coy enough to use Popular Songs or Mister Pop in their album title is likely too coy and knowing to actually make popular music in the literal definition of the term. Note: U2’s 1997 album Pop is widely regarded as the stinker—artistically and commercially—of their entire career.

But Yo La Tengo and The Clean—both of whom love droning organs, fuzzy guitars and deadpan vocals—aren’t under any illusions about commercial breakthroughs, even though both are writing some of the catchiest melodies of their storied careers. Yo La Tengo have been a band for 25 years; The Clean for 30. The new albums by each will be pleasant comforts to longtime fans—no radical reinventions here—and likely to each other as well, as the two acts have often collaborated and toured together.

In many respects, New Zealand’s The Clean haven’t aged a bit; Mister Pop sounds like the kind of ’80s college rock album that they never made, as they sat out most of the ’80s while their influence seeped into younger bands, including Yo La Tengo. Mister Pop recalls the heyday of Robyn Hitchcock, Lou Reed, and early R.E.M. Psychedelic excursions on tracks like “Simple Fix” and “Tensile,” or the long, slow reveal of the violin-driven “Moonjumper,” all sound perfectly at ease beside the paisley pop of “Are You Really On Drugs” and the surprisingly catchy chorus spun from the title “In the Dreamlife U Need a Rubber Soul.”

Yo La Tengo cover much of the same ground on this, their twelfth album, though they stretch further back to delve into ’60s pop more than they ever have before, either by lifting a string-section intro directly from the Four Tops, or riding a Booker T groove with some Zombies pop on top in the obtusely titled “Periodically Double or Triple.” It’s these pop songs, aptly enough, where Popular Songs succeeds the most; attempts at epic jams, of both the noisy and somnambulant varieties, are belaboured and tiresome. Thankfully, those three tracks—comprising half an hour of this 72-minute album—are tacked on to the back; if you consider them extraneous bonus material, you still have a regular album’s worth of material that stands with Yo La Tengo’s finest hours. (Sept. 10)

Eyeful of reviews, fall 07 p1

In the interest of further housecleaning, here are some reviews from Eye Weekly that I've neglected to post this past fall. Because their website is still under major construction, the full text is included here, with a link to the unGooglable original review.

More will follow tomorrow, with some live reviews after that.

In alphabetical order, today's serving includes: Bella, Mark Berube, Buck 65, Vic Chesnutt, Imani Coppola, Cuff the Duke, Dragonette, Duran Duran, Fiery Furnaces, Frightened Rabbit, Teki Latex, Bettye Lavette.

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BELLA
No One Will Know
(Mint)
**
Vancouver: the city where the 80s never die, especially new wave pop performed by excitable twentysomethings who just saw Pretty in Pink and bought their first synthesizer. To their credit, Bella do this better than most, and actually sound like they could evolve into a multi-dimensional band—as opposed to, say, The Organ, who mastered a rut and never got out of it. But unlike similar retro-miners The Rosebuds or Imperial Teen, who guest here—both of whom remember the 80s first-hand—Bella are little more than promising youngsters. After forty minutes of treading water, nothing gets much deeper here than the title track’s typically non-committal teenage lyrics: “Don’t look at me that way and I won’t look at you/ and no one will know.” Maybe once they’re comfortable enough to make eye contact, Bella will make some real connections. (October 18, 2007)

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MARK BERUBE
What the River Gave the Boat
(Kwalu)
****
Vancouver singer/songwriter Mark Berube is much more than another well-traveled dapper dude. Exhibit A: the guy can write a song called “Pretty Little Bird” that is nowhere near as naïve and nauseating as the title suggests. Instead, that track—like many on this album—contains wonderful images and narrative portraiture that suggests he’s studied closely at the feet of Mr. Waits and Mr. Cohen. Berube’s lyrical travels take him to Montreal, Berlin, Vancouver, New York City, Africa and an unnamed battleground on the poignant “War Without End,” which dodges any modern-day specifics and sounds appropriately timeless. Musically, on the other hand, he’s usually at home, parked on his piano stool and conjuring classic cabaret melodies with a rainy West Coast morning outside his door. His good luck streak continues with elegant string arrangements, sympathetic production and a soaring voice that reminds us what Rufus and Hawksley would sound like if they weren’t such drama queens. (September 13, 2007)

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BUCK 65
Situation
(Warner)
****
After years of exploring in and outside of hip-hop, Situation marks Buck 65’s return to the genre, with the ace help of Haligonian DJ/producer Skratch Bastid. Yet on the mic, Buck’s decidedly non-hip-hop hobo fogey MC persona persists, this time waxing not-so-nostalgic for the year 1957, a year that he argues defined the cultural shift in post-war America. He has a variety of reasons; many of them seem to stem directly from The Notorious Bettie Page—and not specifics of her subversion or a parade of “scum bags and cum rags,” but actual dialogue from the film. Even without this concept, an occasionally breathless Buck is on top of his lyrical and musical game, incorporating his increasingly catholic tastes with consistently bangin’ Bastid beats. Situation might be his most accessible album to date, but that’s just because he keeps getting better. This career artist continues to be in a class of his own. (October 25, 2007)

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VIC CHESNUTT
North Star Deserter
(Constellation)
**
Everything about this album works beautifully—except Chesnutt’s songs themselves. On his thirteenth studio album, the Georgia songwriter shacked up in Montreal with the Constellation Records posse, who provide tasteful and eerie backing to some of Chesnutt’s best vocal performances in years, as coaxed by engineer Howard Bilerman and producer (and Fugazi filmmaker) Jem Cohen. This makes it the best album by Constellation house band A Silver Mt. Zion, but sadly—as has been true for the last ten years or so—Chesnutt’s material doesn’t live up to his early-90s heights, leaving us with an hour of tuneless dirge. Hopefully the experience will kickstart his muse and warrant a return visit; it would be a shame to waste this opportunity. (November 22, 2007)

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IMANI COPPOLA
The Black & White Album
(Ipecac)
***
It’s unlikely anyone remembers Imani Coppola as a one-hit youngster who sang “Legend of a Cowgirl” over a Donovan sample in 1997. For those that do, she’s still a savvy eclecticist whose juvenile lyrics distract from her skills as a pop songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She’s a convincing soul singer (“Let It Kill You”), dabbles in dirty hip-hop (“Keys 2 Your Ass”) and has punk rock sass to spare on the bi-racial rant “Woke Up White.” Now that she’s been rescued from obscurity by Mike Patton—who not only signed her, but employs her as a violinist in Peeping Tom—her genre hopping will reach more receptive ears than the suits who dumped her a decade ago. (November 22, 2007)

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CUFF THE DUKE
Sidelines of the City
(Hardwood/Universal)
****
On the opening track “If I Live Or If I Die,” Cuff the Duke singer Wayne Petti clearly has mortality on his mind – both his own, and likely that of his tumultuous band as well. After Petti's refreshing solo acoustic album followed up CTD's flawed but inexplicably popular second album, he and remaining original member Paul Lowman now bounce back with a renewed sense of purpose. Sidelines sparkles with life, succeeding everywhere that the last attempt failed – especially when they merge piano pop with their penchant for guitar epics, which they nail here on “Surging Revival” and “Failure to Some.” Their rootsier leanings lose any final traces of hokiness, and the Calexico-esque horns are a nice touch on the unfortunately titled “Ballad of the Tired Old Man.” They even pull off the unthinkable by bestowing some romantic nostalgia to their hometown on “Rossland Square.” It all adds up to what could be a breakthrough – their Oshawa Tree, if you will. (October 18, 2007) (My cover story on the band in this week's paper can be found here.)

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DRAGONETTE
Galore
(Universal)
*
Pop music is never as easy as it looks. And just because ex-folkie Martina Sorbara is now dressing the part of a teen idol doesn’t mean she can blow bubblegum. Any Torontonian with prior knowledge of Sorbara’s past (and partner Dan Kurtz’s time with The New Deal) is likely to charge Dragonette with shameless popportunism. But ultimately it’s the lame material that slays Dragonette: most of these tracks are indistinguishable from Hilary Duff’s attempts to sound “edgy.” Sometimes a pop makeover can invigorate a career (see: Nelly Furtado), and Dragonette’s preliminary UK success suggests that they’re already fooling one market. The only time Sorbara sounds remotely convincing is when she sings: “Wash me/ god, I want to get this off me/ if you want to love me, stop me.” (September 20, 2007)

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DURAN DURAN
Red Carpet Massacre
(Epic/Sony BMG)
*
Ever since they reformed the original line-up, all the dough they raked in on those reunion tours probably went towards hiring the triumvirate that brought sexy back: Danjahandz, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake himself. All three men sound like they were hired just to be namedropped in the marketing material; Timberlake, for example, didn’t seem to have the guts to cut off Andy Taylor’s awful guitar solo on “Falling Down.” Timbaland’s vocal cameos might be embarrassing, but at least they distract from the fact that no one bothered to auto-tune Simon LeBon’s increasingly wretched voice. It’s not a coincidence that the best track here is a Danjahandz instrumental; unfortunately for Duran Duran, that’s not going to sell a lot of concert tickets. (November 15, 2007)

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FIERY FURNACES
Widow City
(Thrill Jockey)
***
Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger joke that they wrote this new album with the help of a Ouija board. For better and worse, it certainly sounds like it. Musically, the Friedbergers filter Wings and Zeppelin riffs and rhythms through synths and Chamberlain organs, with results that are consistently fascinating and ridiculously unpredictable, a crash course of tangential fantasies that miraculously flow together thanks in part to drummer Robert D’Amico and Eleanor’s convincing charisma. Unfortunately, Matthew uses the same scattershot approach to unleash a confounding lyrical onslaught for his sister to sing, which at times crowds out almost any pleasure to be found. When she’s denied a melody, the frantic words-per-minute rate is a waste of Eleanor’s increasingly versatile range. Thankfully, Widow City mostly sticks to the unlikely sweetness of 2006’s Bitter Tea—especially on the bonafide pop song “Ex-Guru,” which new labelmate David Byrne has already covered. (October 18, 2007)

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FRIGHTENED RABBIT
Sing the Greys
(Fat Cat)
*
These are certainly greys, all right. This timid band of Glaswegians wield beige and banal indie rock guitars that try to prop up flaccid melodies and arrangements that shouldn’t have made it past the basement. This isn’t even fey enough to be friendly for the cardigan crowd. Even the titles here will have you instantly counting sheep: “Be Less Rude,” “Music Now” and, of course, “Yawns.” More offensive than Frightened Rabbit itself is the fact that the usually reliable Fat Cat Records has been signing even more snoozers like this (Tom Brosseau, David Karsten Daniels). (November 22, 2007)

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TEKI LATEX
Party La Plasir
(EMI)
*
Teki Latex, known to some as an MC in franco hip-hop kings TTC, deserves one star for hiring Feistian producers Gonzales and Renaud Letang to navigate his foray into commercial pop music. Decked out in the most garish neon colours imaginable—as seen in the video for “Les matins de Paris”—the tone deaf Teki has zero personality as a pop singer on titles like “Disco dance with you” and “J’aime la pop music.” He enlists Feist to hide under her Peaches-sidekick alias Bitch Lap Lap, rapping in French and chanting: “The shit is the ish/ the ish is the shit.” Were it not for that stunt casting, it’s highly unlikely this would ever have been exported outside of France. (November 22, 2007)

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BETTYE LAVETTE
The Scene of the Crime
(Anti/Epitaph)
**
The crime in question here is how this ended up being such a waste of time. Bettye LaVette is a 61-year old soul singer who isn’t on a comeback trail; she’s still arriving after languishing in obscurity after scoring one teenage hit in 1962. In 1972, she would record her debut album at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio for Atlantic Records—who promptly shelved the album. (It finally surfaced on a French label in 2002.) This new album pairs her with the Drive-By Truckers, whose Patterson Hood grew up at Muscle Shoals, where his father was a co-owner and bassist. Recorded back at Muscle Shoals, LaVette herself is in killer form, snarling like a spurned sexpot (and recalling recent reissues by fellow underdog Betty Davis). Yet everyone around her is far too reserved—intimidated, even. Instead of lighting a fire under her ass, they leave her dramatic vocals hanging out to dry on top of deadly dull bed tracks. The only time they connect is on the autobiographical “Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette),” which she co-writes with Hood. Otherwise, when she sings “You Don’t Know Me At All,” you have to wonder how intently she’s looking at the band. (September 20, 2007)