One of the greatest new female country singers of the last 20
years was ready to give it all up. Lindi Ortega lost her record label, had an
album shelved, and had anxiety and depression to deal with on top of that.
Living in Nashville was wearing the Torontonian down: as one can imagine, for
musicians there’s no downtime from your day job in that town. So she packed up
and moved to Calgary, but not before making a record of her resilience with the
help of some of the best players and co-writers that Nashville has to
offer—including the band Steelism and harmonica player Charlie McCoy.
Ortega has always mined a decidedly old-school sound, one that
sounded a bit like Patsy Cline fronting a rockabilly band. Here, however, the
Mexican-Irish Canadian heads deep into minor-key Morricone territory, with
several songs here sounding like Spaghetti Western soundtracks, complete with
castanets and mariachi horns. Ortega has always had a knack for melodies that
serve the range of her voice, and here she stretches them across languid,
melancholy songs that let her linger as long as she likes on any given note.
Lyrically, she structured the record to start out as a downer
and conclude with daylight. The last song is a cover of Chilean songwriter
Violetta Para’s “Gracias a la Vida (Thank You to Life),” which despite its
sentiment of uplift, is still set to a plaintive, minor-key folk song. Maybe
because, as Ortega has always known, it’s the blues that makes you feel so
good. (March 30)
Stream: “Til My Dying Day,” “The Comeback Kid,” “Liberty”
Well worth your while: Gypsophilia, Kalle Mattson, Lindi Ortega,
Tony Wilson 6tet
Mac DeMarco – Another One (Captured Tracks)
If Tom Waits’s piano has been drinking, Mac DeMarco’s guitar is
totally wasted, dude. Of course, Waits is actually a fantastic piano player,
and DeMarco, behind his goofball image, is an accomplished guitar player. It
takes skill to sound that bad. No, just kidding—the guy can play, it’s just
that he chooses to play in a way that sounds like his guitar is being detuned
on every note, and play through guitar pedals unearthed in a closet that’s been
sealed shut since 1988. This eight-song album is DeMarco’s 10th
release in the last six years, and as the title suggests, sounds like it was
written and recorded in a week—which it was. There’s something to be said for
immediacy and consistency, but one can’t help but wonder what delights DeMarco
will conjure if and when he branches out and hunkers down. (Aug. 13)
Download: “The Way You’d Love Her,” “A Heart Like Hers,” “No
Other Heart”
Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge)
Vancouver’s Dan Bejar has now put out 10 albums as Destroyer.
The last one, Kaputt, was a
commercial breakthrough of sorts, which led to bigger venues and audiences for
the often-reluctant performer. But that came out four years ago—an entire
“indie rock generation,” in Bejar’s words. "I assume people who listened to Kaputt have completely
stopped listening to music, if I'm familiar with how things work,” he told
Canadian Press. "So I've almost arranged it so I cannot bank on any
previous success."
Poison Season, then, sounds like Destroyer’s
Greatest Hits—though surely unconsciously for such a contrarian. Every stage of
his ever-evolving sound is here: the glam rock of 2001’s classic Streethawk or his work with New
Pornographers (“Midnight Meet the Rain”), the smooth, saxophone-inflected new
wave of Kaputt (“Archer on the Beach”),
the loose, rambling folk rock of Rubies
(“Solace’s Bride,” “Times Square”). The band Bejar assembled for Kaputt and took on the road for two
years is on fire here: trumpeter JP Carter (Dan Mangan), saxophonist Joseph
Shabason (Diana), Black Mountain drummer Josh Wells and long-time collaborators
Nick Bragg (guitar), David Carswell (guitar), Ted Bois (keys) and John Collins
(bass). This band got booked into jazz festivals for a reason: each is a
remarkably expressive player, and Bejar’s songs give them plenty of room to
provide delicate splashes of colour—or a full-on assault, as on the three-chord
stomper “Dream Lover.”
Primarily,
however, Bejar revisits the lush orchestrations of 2004’s Your Blues—only that time he was utilizing only MIDI synths. Now he
employs live orchestration, and it works beautifully, particularly when paired
with just piano and percussion, as on “Forces From Above,” proving that Poison Season is hardly just a journey
to the past: it’s about Bejar—an artist who muses openly, on and off his
records, about the frivolity of the music business and insecurity about his own
muse—being completely comfortable in his own skin, finessing the finest points
from his discography and pushing toward the future without changing the core of
what has made him so compelling for the last 15 years.
(Aug. 27)
Download: “Dream Lover,” “Archer on the Beach,” “Girl in a Sling”
Gypsophilia – Night Swimming (Forward)
As the name would suggest, this Halifax seven-piece has a thing
for Django Reinhardt and Roma melodies in a jazz context. But there’s a lot
more than that going on here than some of the finest players on the East Coast
engaging in a genre exercise: there are Latin rhythms, distorted electric
guitar and violin leads, torchy blues that would impress Timber Timbre,
cinematic textures and other elements that make this a thoroughly modern
recording. Made at Joel Plaskett’s studio by producer Joshua Van Tassel (Great
Lake Swimmers, Amelia Curran), this is their fourth and most accomplished. They
have four ECMAs under their belt, but it’s time the rest of the country caught
on. (Aug.
20)
Download: Boo Doo Down, Insomniac’s Dream, Night Falls and You
Need Company
Hudson Mohawke – Lantern (Warp/Maple)
Ratatat – Magnifique (XL/Beggars)
Subjectivity is everything, but especially in music. We all have
singers whose talent we can recognize but whose actual voice drives us crazy,
whether it’s Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits or Drake or anyone in between. We don’t
talk as often about the timbre of instrumentation as being our breaking
point—except when I run screaming from the sound of Elliott Randall’s guitar on
Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”
That sound in particular comes to mind on Ratatat’s fifth album,
one that doesn’t stray from their modus operandi of melding ’70s classic rock
guitar with modern electronics to make zippy, danceable, instrumental pop
songs. But that tone, that one guitar tone, the automatically harmonized guitar
lead, threatens to distract an otherwise decent collection, one almost as
strong as their third and best album, LP3.
They bounce from slamming electro a la early Daft Punk to dreamy Hawaiian
interludes and a lot of it works. But as soon as they hit autopilot and turn on
that guitar harmonizer, it’s game over.
I have a similar reaction to the frequency of the synths on this
second album by Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke, which appear to be all
treble, no mids, and minimal bass. (Yes, I checked my stereo and tried
different headphones.) Think of the most garish sounds employed by Eurotrash
EDM—and then turn up the treble some more. Surely this cannot be the future of
electronic music, or of Warp Records. Which is too bad, because Mr. Mohawke
(real name Ross Birchard) is full of intriguing ideas that even his terrible
equipment can’t hide, which is why he’s been tapped by Kanye West, Drake, Pusha
T and Azealia Banks for beats in the five years since his debut album. None of
those artists return favours here, but he does land Miguel, Antony Hegarty and
Jhené Aiko—even though those are among the least interesting tracks here. (Aug.
6)
Download Ratatat: “Cream on Chrome,” “Drift,” “Nightclub Amnesia”
Now that even Tom Cruise is excited about the new Weekend album,
here’s a Toronto R&B artist who’s been overlooked in the past year, when
Drake and his crew continue to define the city to the rest of North America.
Rochelle Jordan relocated to L.A. with her long-time collaborator KLSH, but she
still sings about cruising down the 401, and has a faithful cadre of critics
from her hometown hyping her every release. She has a stronger voice than this
downtempo material would suggest; one senses that she’s dialling back her
powerhouse capabilities to focus on a hushed, late-night, chilled-out vibe,
even when hip-hop producer Rich Kidd enters the equation. The production owes a
debt to ’90s R&B but also today’s next wave; Jordan has as much in common with
FKA Twigs as she does Aaliyah (the most common comparison point). The next time
someone talks up “the 6ix” without mentioning anyone outside the OVO
crew—especially ladies like Jordan and the equally underrated Merna—they’re
only telling half the story. (Aug. 6)
Download: “What the Fuss,” “Day Ones,” “Ease Your Mind”
Kalle Mattson – Avalanche (Home Music Co. Records)
Earlier this summer, beloved Winnipeg veterans the Weakerthans
announced that they had formally split (no surprise, really—it had been eight
years since the release of their last album). Soon enough, the new EP by
25-year-old Ottawa-via-Sault Ste. Marie songwriter Kalle Mattson arrived, and
the vocal, lyrical and melodic resemblance between him and the Weakerthans’
John K. Samson is uncanny—so strong that the last time I reviewed a Mattson
record I spent most of the review talking about it. And yet here I am again,
writing a review that Mattson will most likely want to crumple up and throw
across the room. But I mean it only as a compliment, especially when the
arrangements surrounding his songs here occasionally aim for synth-driven,
anthemic bombast and Coldplay choruses. (There’s even a song called New
Romantics. It does not, thankfully, nod to Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran). When
he dials it down for an acoustic ballad with harmonicas and pianos, Mattson and
his backing band—which includes Drake collaborator Colin Munroe and Kathleen
Edwards sideman Jim Bryson (who once made an album with, um, the Weakerthans)
conjure tasteful atmospherics and percussion that pull his folk-pop into the 21st
century. With only six songs on this EP, Mattson doesn’t waste any time: every
one’s a winner, every one should be on the radio, and it buys him a lot of
time. With an EP this good, he can take as long as he wants to put out a
full-length. And I swear that next time I’ll no longer be talking about that
band from Winnipeg. (Aug. 20)
Download: “Avalanche,” “Lost Love,” “Baby Blue”
Lindi Ortega – Faded Gloryville (Last Gang)
Lindi Ortega is all of 35 years old, And yet, in the liner
notes to this, her fourth album, she admits to having a mid-life crisis and
wondering whether she should soldier on.
Ortega has faced tough times before: she struggled for 10 years
on the Toronto scene, playing traditional country music and singing her guts
out—Ortega possesses one of the most remarkable voices, in country music or
otherwise, to come out of this country in a long time. She started getting some
lucky breaks about five years ago, is now living in Nashville, and Faded Gloryville was recorded with some of
the finest producers that friendships can buy: fellow Torontonian Colin Linden
(Bruce Cockburn, the TV show Nashville), the Alabama duo of Ben Tanner (Alabama
Shakes) and John Paul White (the Civil Wars), and Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, the
upcoming Corb Lund record).
For a woman who burst on the scene with rockabilly drive and a
helluva holler, Faded Gloryville is
unusually subdued and downtempo. “I will not forget the good old days when I
was driven by my will / and I won’t get back all the dues I paid here in Faded
Gloryville,” she sings on the title track, the sound of an older, wiser woman
taking stock. She still has swagger, of course, and the last third of the
album, the songs recorded with Cobb, revisits the hard-living, bad-ass
characters in which Ortega specializes. A cover of the oft-covered Bee Gees
song “To Love Somebody,” recorded in Muscle Shoals with Tanner and White,
brings some R&B to the table, but hardly seems necessary when the rest of
the record enhances everything Ortega already does so well. (Aug. 27)
Download: “I Ain’t the Girl,” “Faded Gloryville,” “Run-Down
Neighbourhood”
Slime – Company (Weird World/Domino)
Will Archer started playing music as a teenager as a drummer in
a Rage Against the Machine cover band; he thought all electronic music was
bogus and fake. He’s obviously come around; his work as Slime fits easily
alongside the likes of Jaime XX or Caribou or James Blake or FourTet, with whom
he shares a love of live instrumentation and found-sound samples. The word
“organic” is one of the most overused terms of the last 10 years, rendering it
virtually meaningless, and yet Slime’s intersection of traditional
instrumentation and electronic manipulation, though hardly novel—Nicolas Jaar’s
2013 album as Darkside is another kindred spirit—still sounds fresh in Archer’s
hands. (Aug. 13)
It seems odd that Vancouver, the most expensive city in Canada,
one which most aspiring rock musicians have fled, boasts such an impressive
jazz and improv scene—and most of the key players can be found in this band.
Guitarist Tony Wilson has been a bandleader for more than 25 years, and here he
rounds up trumpeter JP Carter (Fond of Tigers), violinist Jesse Zubot (Tanya
Tagaq), jazz superstar cellist Peggy Lee, Russell Sholberg on bass and drummer
Skye Brooks for a walk through the wild side—or more specifically, Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside, a troubled neighbourhood of beauty and despair and lost
dreams, where Wilson once lived; the (non-autobiograhpical) album is meant to
be the tale of a crack-addicted musician busking on East Hastings, based on a
2012 Wilson novella. Not that you’d infer that by just listening, necessarily,
but no matter. The songs here boast strong melodic leads, delicate textures,
occasional bursts of noise and strong composition to which these sensitive
players bring their top game. Zubot and Lee in particular shine, partly because
it’s unusual to hear both violin and cello together in a jazz band where
they’re lead players, not texture, but also partly because those two are
capable of anything. Carter, too, stands out by not only being the sole wind
player, but by running his trumpet through distortion and effects, as he does
with Destroyer and Dan Mangan and myriad other projects. Wilson himself is the
consummate bandleader, setting the stage and letting everyone shine equally.
The guitarist is incredibly prolific, and this humble reviewer can’t lay claim
to knowing even a fraction of his oeuvre. But it’s hard to imagine a better
introduction than this. (Aug. 6)
Download: “A Day’s Life,” “The Morn’ in Blues,” “The Long Walk”
I didn’t mention there that I had predicted 29/40 in my previous post.
Here are the 11 I got wrong:
36? – This is the one I’m most disappointed in. It was on my ballot.
More people should hear it. But as a direct result of this discussion, one
programmer at a major Canadian festival told me he put the band “at the top of
the pile.” (Aside: What does that mean in 2014? He still listens to discs? He
puts their MP3s at the top of his playlist?)
Braids – Slightly shocking, considering their last record was
shortlisted in 2011—and this one is better.
Kevin Drew – Kind of shocking, considering Drew’s profile and
the strength of this record. Yet his last solo album didn’t make a long list
either. Did “Mexican Aftershow Party” kill any buzz this time?
Duck Sauce – Seeing how this album follows up a hit single three
years ago, not that shocking.
Egyptrixx – Not surprising; honestly, I had it as a long shot.
Hidden Cameras – I thought this was their strongest album in
many moons; clearly I was one of the only ones.
Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra – Again, a long shot; jazz
doesn’t travel far in Polaris circles—or at least, a consensus jazz pick is hard
to find.
Jordan Klassen – An admitted longshot. But a lovely record.
Lindi Ortega – I didn’t hear half as much chatter about her
latest record as I did the long-listed one that preceded it, so perhaps not
surprising.
Doug Paisley – Many people were shocked Paisley didn’t make it,
considering his increased profile. Yet, as a big fan of the guy myself, I
didn’t find Strong Feelings anywhere near as compelling as Constant Companion,
so this didn’t surprise me.
Slakah the Beatchild – This is an unfortunate omission; there’s
never enough hip-hop and R&B on the list, and this is one of the stronger
Canadian releases of either genre I’ve heard in a while. Now if Shad had beats
like this, he’d be unstoppable. Can someone please put those two together?
Other albums I would have loved to see get some Polaris recognition, but didn't: Nick Buzz, Shane Abram Nelken, Adrian Raso and Fanfare Ciocarlia. But hey, my #1 pick, AroarA, made the list.
2014 long-listers that surprised me:
Chromeo – This album is rather new; I hadn’t heard it at the
time I voted, and I falsely assumed most jurors didn’t take this band seriously.
Cousins – I’m allergic to most things that remind me of lo-fi
’90s indie rock; I’ll admit I didn’t pay any attention to this band after
hearing the record once or twice.
Cowboy Junkies’ Kennedy Suite – This is a shocker, considering
what a squandering of talent is involved. So many great people involved; maybe
one or two songs worthy of them to sing.
Frog Eyes – I’m really excited to see this on the list, as Frog
Eyes is a unique force in Canadian music. That said, I hadn’t heard the album
at the time of voting; it was released several months ago to extremely low
profile, and put out properly by Paper Bag merely a few weeks ago.
Mounties – I did not think Polaris jurors still
followed the careers of Hawksley Workman and Hot Hot Heat.
Odonis Odonis – Not that surprising, as this record has had good
buzz. But it is surprising when you actually listen to it. Really? I also thought it
might just have Toronto appeal.
Philippe B – I wasn’t sure who else other than Jimmy Hunt and
Dead Obie$ would rep franco Quebec, so this was a pleasant surprise.
Solids – I honestly had no idea who this band was.
The Darcys – I wish I honestly had no idea who this band was.
[Aside:
Why do Polaris folks alphabetize “the” bands by the letter T? Oh, iTunes, you’ve
ruined us all.]
Thus Owls – The Toronto Star’s Ben Rayner firmly believes this
band is the second coming. I wasn’t sure who else agreed with him. Was he
allowed to fill in all five slots on his ballot with Thus Owls?
Tim Hecker – Not at all surprising, considering he’s been
long-listed twice before. But I didn’t sense that this had the same momentum as
either An Imaginary Country or Ravedeath 1972.
And the unexpected bonus round this year goes to Winnipeg’s Greg
McPherson, who got left off the long list due to some kind of computer glitch
in voting. Polaris is not removing anything from the list—for obvious reasons
of optics, logistics and politics—so there is, in fact, 41 albums on this year’s
long list.
