Pre-Polaris, day three: Jennifer Castle, Drake

The 10^th Polaris Music Prize gala is next Monday, Sept. 21, at the Carlu in Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in a room will decide which one of these 10 artists will get $50,000 and a gig with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2016. 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.

Day one is here; day two is here.

  

Jennifer Castle – Pink City (Idée Fixe)

The album:

One of two albums I’m rooting for this year (the only two from my ballot that made it). It’s also an album I almost tossed after the first time I heard it; I didn’t understand Jennifer Castle before and wasn’t sure this time would be any different. And yet, this is the Polaris album I keep returning to again and again, hearing new lyrics, new textures, appreciating her melodies and chords in new ways.  

An excerpt from my November 2014 review:

… Her voice is in full focus: every quiver, every time she slides between notes, the full body of her lower register. Castle’s music sounds like it was made in isolation, crafted in a remote Appalachian (or Algonquin) cabin (“I don’t need a home / don’t need a lover / I’ll be out on my own / come hell or high water”). Though rooted in folk forms, she doesn’t always follow familiar refrains, chord patterns or consistent tempos; many of her instrumental voicings and melodies owe more of a debt to jazz. Then there’s her voice itself: part Mary Margaret O’Hara, part Vashti Bunyan, a folkie flower child sounding alternately lost and innocent or wise and weary. In her left-field approach to folk, she also recalls Nick Drake, who used jazz players and stood far apart from his contemporaries. (She does not, however, sound like Nick Drake.) Though it was her solo performance I found so striking, Pink City is very delicately decorated with subtle touches from players careful not to tread on her unique talent.

Listening again closely now, what stands out is the judicious use of those guest players, most of whom are used to add one specific colour to a given track: one song features duelling flute solos, one song features pedal steel guitar prominently, one features harmonica, the title track features sublime saxophone work by Brodie West, fluttering around Castle’s vocal melody. Owen Pallett’s string arrangements are minimal but highly effective. Setting her apart from most folkies is Castle's use of directed tempos; this is not a click-track record, which makes the ornamentation that much more impressive. And this album also contains my favourite political lyric of the year, in a song about Canada’s oil sands: “I lift my skirt for the economy.”

I’m ecstatic this made the short list, because albums like this—mostly with regional appeal, released on a tiny indie, appealing mostly to the artist’s immediate musical community—are easily lost in the sands of time. Now it’s part of the canon. As it should be.

The chances:

Mild. Okay, maybe better than that, if jurors give this album enough time to grow on them. But I’m purposely low-balling my expectations here.

Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (Universal)

The album:

Is this an album? Or a stopgap before the much-hyped Views from the 6ix, expected in a matter of weeks now? No matter, it’s already made history: due to the ever-changing rules of what constitutes a single, Drake now holds the Billboard record for most simultaneously charting hits: all of these 17 tracks were on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as of Feb. 26. This album was also the first 2015 release to sell a million copies (it might be the only one).

I’ve spent more time listening to Drake than any other artist I continue to actively dislike, and I recognize that I will lose any argument about his artistic merit—so I’m not even going to try anymore. I will, however, grant that his voice is no longer as cloying and flat as I used to find it; dude actually sounds like he’s trying to impress us instead of expecting us to just melt at the sight of his smile. And for an album that is, by its billing as a mixtape, assumed to be tossed off quickly, tracks like “Energy,” “10 Bands” and “6 Man” are—well, not among his greatest work, but they’d hold their own beside anything on Take Care or Nothing Was the Same. Everything else here is a decent B-side.

The chances:

Good. Drake’s been shortlisted twice, and he’ll likely win eventually. Why not this year? Competition is not that fierce; there is no obvious favourite. It would be somewhat amusing if the man whose first big single boasted about how he “got rich off a mixtape” wins the Polaris for… a mixtape.

Two of the should’ve, could’ve beens:

Pierre Kwenders – Le dernier empereur Bantou (Bonsound)

The album:

This was my favourite discovery of last year, thanks to a tip from Montreal writer Erik Leijon. It was released in October, got a Juno nomination for Best World Album, and I didn’t hear it and write a review until March; he didn’t get around to playing Toronto, to my knowledge, until this summer (July on the Roy Thomson Hall patio, August at Camp Wavelength). My March review:

Montreal has Canada’s best African music scene and its best electro scene. Naturally, it’s also the city most likely to witness fusion between the two. Kwenders was born in Kinshasa and came to Canada from the Congo at 16; his fellow Montreal producers hail from Mozambique (Samito) and New Brunswick (Alexandre Bilodeau of Radio Radio, whose bizarro Acadian take on hip-hop landed them on the Polaris Prize shortlist a few years back). One track here, “Mardi Gras,” featuring a lilting, distorted violin track, is perhaps the only Cajun-Congolese electro track ever made (see below). That’s only the beginning of the successful cross-pollination happening here: dancehall, South African rhythms, cumbia, Bollywood vocals, rock guitars and hip-hop all help colour Kwenders’s tracks. If Manu Chao or Bran Van 3000 had kept pushing their sonic explorations further, they’d likely end up in a similar place to Kwenders. Whatever you do, the man who sings in four languages told the Montreal Gazette, don’t call it world music: this is polyglot pop, and it’s a matter of time before Santigold or Rihanna starts ringing him up.

Or, as it turns out, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, according to rumours. Too bad they didn’t hook up before Reflektor; I could see Kwenders making that good record even better.

Why it didn’t make the short list: 

It’s hard enough to get a francophone on the short list, never mind a guy who sings in five languages. Also, Congolese rumba is yet to be recognized as a breakout genre. (But it’s only a matter of time. See: Mbongwana Star).

Jean Leloup – A Paradis City (Grosse Boite)

The album:

Because most of Canada prefers to ignore francophone music—from Quebec or anywhere else—we know next to nothing about Jean Leloup. Our loss. Who is this wolfman, and why is he such a Quebecois hero? From my May review:

Leloup has been around since 1989; he took a brief hiatus in the mid-2000s and this is his eighth album. He’s the kind of carefree, globe-trotting troubadour who tries his hand making documentaries about monkeys in Costa Rica for six months, just because. He’s not wrapped up in rock stardom, despite his iconic status in his home province.  That’s why A Paradis City is such a refreshing, welcoming record: Leloup exudes charisma, and writes anthemic songs that never succumb to bombast or weighty instrumentation—even when he calls in the choirs or string sections. Leloup makes it sound easy—hell, he even makes it look easy, by providing chord charts in the liner notes, and there are vocal-free karaoke versions up on his website. A Paradis City is the sound of a guy who could dial up the drama if he wanted to, but prefers more subtle strengths. There are quiet folk songs here, midtempo rockers, and a triumphant title track that shows, among other things, how much Sam Roberts learned from Leloup.

  

Since falling for this record, I’ve gone back and listened to more Leloup, including his iconic ’90s album Le dome. They’re all fascinating, but this is clearly one of his best. He’s getting better with age—when he decides to engage.

Why it didn’t make the short list: 

Polaris jurors have been piss-poor at nominating francophone records lately. Only four franco acts have ever shortlisted: Malajube twice, and Karkwa won in 2010. The last one to shortlist was Galaxie, in 2011. Also slept on this year: the amazing record by Salomé Leclerc, which I discovered too late in the game. If you claimed to care about new Canadian music at all in the last 12 months, you need to hear Kwenders, Leloup and Leclerc.

May 2015 reviews

Highly recommended this merry, merry month of May:

(reviewed earlier) Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mac McCaughan, Afiara Quartet + Skratch Bastid

(reviewed below) Boogat, Jean Leloup, Siskiyou, Young Guv

And as excited as I am that Shamir’s debut full-length is finally out and getting tons of deserved attention—like, say, this article I landed in Maclean’s—only half of Ratchet hits home for me.

Boogat – Neo-Reconquista (Maisonnette)

Boogat! Why this Mexican-Montreal MC doesn’t have an exclamation mark as part of his brand, I have no idea. He should. His electro mix of cumbia, reggae and pop is a perfect soundtrack for spring thaw, with rich percussion and horn sections and killer grooves, most co-programmed with Ghislain Poirier, a man who loves music from any part of the world that emphasizes bass. Jean Massicotte (Patrick Watson, Lhasa, Arthur H) produces. Boogat raps in Spanish, so I have no idea what’s going on here lyrically, but I do appreciate the title “Los Tabernakos.”

Boogat might hail from a city renowned for the more off-beat elements of electronic music, but Neo-Reconquista is slick enough that it could be a totally mainstream album—of course, assuming the Canadian mainstream would ever embrace Latino sounds that didn’t come filtered through an American pop star singing in English. (May 7)

Download: “Los Tabernakos,” “Los Presidentes” (feat. Heavy Sounds), “Londres” (feat. Pierre Kwenders)

Leonard Cohen – Can’t Forget (Sony)

No, Leonard, you’re right: we can’t forget. BECAUSE YOU KEEP REMINDING US.

This is Cohen’s third album in the last six months—the second of two live albums, and the Juno-winning Popular Problems, a collection of new songs. Not only that, this is the fourth live album since his 2008 comeback. Leonard Cohen now has more than half as many live albums (eight) as he does studio albums (13). The 80-year-old appears to be on a mission to re-record his entire catalogue before he shuffles off this mortal coil.

So here we have him souping up “Tower of Song,” offering two new lacklustre blues songs, covering country legend George Jones and Québécois icon Georges Dor, and dipping deep into his catalogue for “Joan of Arc” and a best-forgotten track from 1992’s The Future.

At least the cover art is clever. But that alone certainly won’t give even the most diehard fan a reason to tune in here. (May 21)

Download: “Choices,” “Tower of Song,” “La Manic” 

Jean Leloup – A Paradis City (Bonsound)

I don’t have to tell you that Quebec has its own, enormously popular francophone rock stars that are largely—if not completely—unknown in The Rest of Canada. If you’ve never heard of Jean Leloup, well, then, it’s a safe bet that there are no francophones or Québécois in your social circle.

Leloup has been around since 1989; he took a brief hiatus in the mid-2000s and this is his eighth album. He’s the kind of carefree, globe-trotting troubadour who tries his hand making documentaries about monkeys in Costa Rica for six months, just because. He’s not wrapped up in rock stardom, despite his iconic status in his home province.

That’s why A Paradis City is such a refreshing, welcoming record: Leloup exudes confidence and charisma, and writes anthemic songs that never succumb to bombast or weighty instrumentation—even when he calls in the choirs or string sections. Leloup makes it sound easy—hell, he even makes it look easy, by providing chord charts in the liner notes, and there are vocal-free karaoke versions up on his website. A Paradis City is the sound of a guy who could dial up the drama if he wanted to, but prefers more subtle strengths. There are quiet folk songs here, midtempo rockers, and a triumphant title track that shows, among other things, how much Sam Roberts learned from Leloup.

Jean Leloup is only playing seven shows with his band this year, five in Montreal and two in his native Quebec City. They’re not until November, and they’re all sold out. But just because he’s not going to come here and beg for anglo attention doesn’t mean we can be excused for ignoring him. (May 28)

Download: “Zone zéro,” “Petit papillon,” “Paradis City”

My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall (Universal)

Now that we’ve heard all of My Morning Jacket’s greatest tricks—the soaring majesty of Jim James’s voice, the epic guitar jams, the detours into new wave, reggae, and odes to black metal, all wrapped up in the haunting, reverb-drenched psychedelic folk-rock that started it all off 15 years ago—what can MMJ do in 2015 to impress us? Maybe they can start by impressing themselves.

For such a creative, curious band, MMJ sound oddly bored. With precious few exceptions, there’s an audible lethargy here, even on the ostensibly up-tempo tracks. From the vocal harmonies to the guitar grooves to the stadium-rock drums, so much of The Waterfall sounds like ’70s rock clichés that this band successfully avoided, or subverted, in the past. The only songs here I ever want to hear again are the ones that are the most stripped down, the ones that might as well by Jim James solo tracks, the ones where the power and glory of his band aren’t even in play.

That doesn’t bode well—but apparently the follow-up album is already finished and scheduled to come out in the next 12 months. (May 7)

Download: “Get the Point,” “Compound Fracture,” “Only Memories Remain”

Shamir – Ratchet (XL)

Music can disguise so much about ourselves. Certainly, we never know the nationality or gender or any other identifying factor of an instrumentalist. Vocals betray much more: accents, vocal range, regional tics. Then there are singers that sound utterly alien, beyond gender or geography or sexuality. Shamir Bailey, a 20-year-old phenom from Las Vegas, is one of those lovable aliens.

He’s been picked to click in 2015 ever since his 2014 indie EP Northtown built underground buzz; he’s now signed to a big label, has flashly, colourful videos (in one of which he’s remade into a muppet), and has been profiled by every magazine that matters. It’s not just because of his songs, which are a throwback to early house music—in part because he made his tracks on ancient equipment, and all drum machines and synths are programmed manually. No, it’s because his backstory is fascinating, as is his eclectic musical taste: Nina Simone, Taylor Swift and Mac DeMarco are equal touchstones for him.

Shamir seems unstoppable, and there is plenty of ammunition here to vault him in the mainstream, not unlike the way Lorde came from nowhere with her wise-beyond-her-years appeal. Lead single “On the Regular” is incredibly catchy, and proves that Shamir oozes charisma even while goofing off by trying his hand at rapping. Vegas is a poison love letter to his hometown. “Make a Scene” and “Hot Mess” are party anthems for bored youth. “Demon, if it wasn’t draped in a synth soundscape,” could be a killer country music ballad. (Shamir covered Lindi Ortega on his EP.)

That said, Shamir is best in small doses: half of Ratchet falls a bit flat, displaying that despite all his talent, he’s still young as a songwriter. But rest assured this is only the beginning of a long, eclectic career. (May 21)

Download: “On the Regular,” “Vegas,” “Demon”

Siskiyou – Nervous (Constellation)

Sure sounds nervous. Anxious, even. Worried. And yet determined to plough through whatever weird situation we all find ourselves in, surrounded by spooky soundscapes on this, the third album by Vancouver’s Siskiyou. Fronted by former Great Lake Swimmers drummer Colin Huebert (and featuring that band’s string player, Erik Arnesen), Siskiyou maintains a tension throughout Nervous, regardless of tempo or arrangement, major key or minor.

Opening track “Deserter” begins with a haunting children’s choir, leading into a bass line borrowed from The Cure’s “Fascination Street” before Huebert’s hushed vocals begin the verses. The tune gets more animated as it proceeds, with the choir singing off-beat shots, Colin Stetson’s baritone sax taking the solo, and ending with a ghostly coda with just Huebert and electric guitar.

Nervous was written after Huebert, who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, was also diagnosed with a severe inner-ear condition. He took a songwriting workshop residency in the Yukon and crafted this material during a silent retreat. When he came back to Vancouver he rehearsed the material at low volume—even though this is not a quiet record; that explains the tension. The result sounds like an artist throwing everything they have into one final project, just in case it’s their last. He employed Stetson, Owen Pallett, Destroyer trumpeter JP Carter, and renowned producer/engineer Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Austra, Bruce Peninsula) to flesh out his grand sonic vision.

It makes for a great creation story—but the music itself is even better. (May 28)

Download: “Deserter,” “Wasted Genius,” “Violent Motion Pictures”

Patrick Watson – Love Songs for Robots (Secret City)

Fewer bells, fewer whistles, fewer bicycle wheels: that was the intention on Patrick Watson’s 2012 album Adventures In Your Own Backyard, where the Montreal singer and his band downplayed the novelty instrumentation that made them such a creative force, and focused on strong melodies, the kind Watson said he wanted to give him goosebumps every night on tour. Mission accomplished: the album was easily Watson’s finest, even if earlier works won big prizes and sold more records.

Love Songs for Robots is Watson’s first album without founding guitarist Simon Angell, who left to form Thus:Owls; newcomer Joe Grass might not conjure the otherworldly sounds Angell did, but he provides plenty of Lanois-esque texture and fluid leads. He brings the band closer to the classic Pink Floyd albums that their fellow Québécois love so much.

While that potentially disruptive lineup change has gone smoothly, Watson doesn’t meet his previous melodic standard here: much like his earlier albums, we must be content to hear his gorgeous voice and incredible band do all the heavy lifting. As a result, Love Songs For Robots is neither experimental enough to turn heads or pop enough to embed into our consciousness: it’s just there.

Five albums in, Patrick Watson is undoubtedly more compelling on stage than he is on record. But being the intensely curious fellow he is, there is always time for more mischief. (May 28)

Download: “Love Songs For Robots,” “Bollywood,” “Know That You Know”

  

Young Guv – Ripe 4 Luv (Slumberland)

Despite the fact that internationally acclaimed Toronto hardcore punk band F--ked Up has a growling frontman who rarely sings melodies with more than one note, the band’s songs are unusually catchy—no doubt a large part of their appeal outside a genre niche. So maybe it’s not that surprisingly that guitarist Ben Cook ghostwrites pop songs for mall-punk bands and mainstream pop artists—or so he says. It’s really not the least bit surprisingly when you hear these eight summery pop songs, most sung in a falsetto and with Teenage Fanclub harmonies, many of which sound like they belong on some 1982 AM-radio mix tape with Prince, Rick Springfield, Adam Ant and Lindsey Buckingham. Things take a slightly weirder turn on closing track Wrong Crowd, with its meandering saxophone and someone mumbling in French over a pseudo-Sade groove. Whether or not Cook does write songs for Taylor Swift, Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson—his claims don’t stand up to a cursory fact-check—Ripe 4 Luv shows that he most definitely should be, if he isn’t already. (May 28)

Download: “Crushing Sensation,” “Ripe For Love,” “Crawling Back to You”

Polaris pondering, prior to the 2015 long list

Siskiyou - Nervous

It's almost time to submit my five-album ballot for the 2015 Polaris Music Prize. It's always hard to whittle diverse genres of music down to five albums that I'd place over all others: usually there are two or maybe three albums I think are near-perfect: encapsulations of an artist's (assumed) intent, reflecting the zeitgeist and/or something I keep coming back to again and again and hearing new delights. Then there's a bunch of very good albums that fill out the rest of my ballot. 

These are by no means all the good Canadian records released between June 1, 2014 and May 30, 2015, but these are the ones that I found completely captivating, and the ones I'm considering for my ballot. Of course, I'd love it if these 20 records composed half the long list, but my track record suggests that's not going to happen. 

And of course there are records I haven't heard: procrastinating Polaris jurors suggested no fewer than 20 albums in the last week. Frankly, I'm not going to listen to any of them I hadn't heard already—or at least not for Polaris purposes. With three exceptions (all May releases), I've been sitting with the records below for many months now. No matter what shakes down between now and the Sept. 21 gala, you should get to know them, too.

Here's my dance card, in alphabetical order:

Afiara Quartet + Skratch Bastid – Spin City (Centrediscs)

Lydia Ainsworth – Right From Real (Arbutus)

Bahamas – Is Afie (Brushfire)

Boogat – Neo-Reconquista (Maisonnette)

Jennifer Castle – Pink City (Idée Fixe)

Leonard Cohen – Popular Problems (Sony)

Ian William Craig – A Turn of Breath (Recital)

Amelia Curran – They Promised You Mercy (Six Shooter)

Keita Juma – Chaos Theory (independent)

Pierre Kwenders – Le dernier empereur bantou (Bonsound)

Daniel Lanois – Flesh and Machine (Anti)

Lee Harvey Osmond – Beautiful Scars (Latent)

Jean Leloup – A Paradis City (Grosse Boite)

Terra Lightfoot – Every Time My Mind Runs Wild (Sonic Unyon)

Native North America – Various Artists (Light in the Attic)

Sagot – Valse 333 (Simone)

Buffy Sainte-Marie – Power in the Blood (True North)

Siskiyou – Nervous (Constellation)

Tre Mission – Stigmata (Big Dada)

Whitehorse – Leave No Bridge Unburned (Six Shooter)