March 2014 reviews

I’ve had a grumpy month. It’s March. Earlier I was blown away by Calgary upstarts 36?, and Kevin Drew’s second solo album is one of the strongest records he’s ever made. But other than being unable to resist the charm of Pharrell Williams—especially in a month devoid of anything resembling warmth, either emotionally or meteorologically—this month had some slim pickings.

Highly recommended: Pharrell Williams

Worth your while: Many people will tell you that I’m dead wrong about The War on Drugs.

These reviews appeared in the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury.

Barzin - To Live Alone in That Long Hot Summer (Monotreme)

Barzin got his start as a singer-songwriter when he was living in Guelph, back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, when his voice never rose above a whisper, when his drummer only ever played with brushes, when the other musicians accompanying him rarely played more than one note per bar. Not much has changed, except that his recordings are remarkably more confident and accomplished—especially this one, his first in five years. (Barzin’s release schedule is even slower than his tempos.)

Sympatico Toronto pals Daniela Gesundheit (Snowblink) and Tamara Lindeman (The Weather Station) lend a hand on backing vocals, as does Barzin’s most faithful champion, Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers. After more than a decade working with the exact same template, one that invokes candlelight, red wine and some tattered books of poetry, Barzin’s writing has shed the clichés and repetition of his earlier material, and he’s found some extremely sympathetic players to add accordion, cello and clarinet, as well as a subtle but extremely effective drummer.

He couldn’t have titled the album more perfectly: it’s the sound of melancholy and ache when the weather is suited for nothing more than extreme sloth. The music itself, however, is anything but lazy. (March 20)

Download: “All the While,” “In the Dark You Can Love This Place,” “Lazy Summer”

Johnny Cash – Out Among the Stars (Sony)

In the years preceding and immediately following his death in 2002, Johnny Cash seemed to have a “new” record out every couple of months: an actual album here, a reissue there, maybe a box set or two, and then the inevitable scraping of the bottom of the barrel: endless outtakes packaged as new material. So what fresh hell is this?

Out Among the Stars is a previously unreleased album, but it doesn’t come from a mythologized part of Cash’s career: this is not from his Tennessee Two days, nor from his Folsom Prison comeback period, nor from his Rick Rubin-assisted final victory lap. This was made during his lowest commercial slump: the early ’80s, when he considered himself “invisible” in his label’s eyes; they dropped him after rejecting some of the material that appears here.

Cash’s brand of country may have not been commercial in the early ’80s (despite the fact that Bruce Springsteen was going through a big Johnny Cash phase, first with Nebraska and then with the top-10 single “I’m On Fire”), but it holds up well. Cash was never one to chase trends, so you won’t find him falling prey to any of the sonic traps that shackled so many of his contemporaries. Out Among the Stars only features two Cash originals, but the rest of the track list is written by then-current songwriters, and devoid of well-known songs, with the sole exception of a cover of Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On,” as a duet with Waylon Jennings.

Considering the glut of Johnny Cash albums on the market, you could do far worse than stumbling across this one. Then again: considering the glut of Johnny Cash albums on the market, one can’t help but wonder if anyone but the most diehard completest will consider this essential. (March 27)

Download: “Out Among the Stars,” “Baby Ride Easy” (with June Carter Cash), “If I Told You Who It Was”

The Heavyweights Brass Band – Brasstronomical (Lulaworld)

This Toronto ensemble wins this year’s Most Improved Award, hands down. Simply being a New Orleans-style brass band doing covers of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber songs is a shtick that only goes so far, so the arrangements had better be whip tight, and the delivery full of verve and spark. On the debut, that wasn’t the case. Here, it most definitely is. Covering the Rush instrumental “YYZ” is not a task to be taken on lightly; completely reinventing it and owning it as your own is a whole other kettle of fish. Sousaphone player Rob Teehan tackles Geddy’s Lee’s insanely bass line with aplomb, while saxophonist Paul Metcalfe somehow captures every minute detail of Alex Lifeson’s guitar. Recasting rock songs is not their only forte here: they also take on a sensual Erykah Badu ballad, a song by Toronto jazz legend Jane Bunnett, and they invite Jamaica-to-Toronto R&B master Jay Douglas to sing one of their originals. It’s those originals that set Heavyweights apart these days: Metcalfe and trumpet player Jonathan Challoner each deliver punchy tunes that showcase the best this band is capable of. Coming soon to a summer jazz festival near you. (March 6)

Download: “YYZ,” “Booze Hounds” (featuring Jay Douglas), “Telephone”

Kalle Mattson - Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold (Parliament of Trees)

The Weakerthans, one of Canada’s most beloved bands, only put an album once in a blue moon; it’s now been seven years since Reunion Tour. Mattson, an Ottawa-via-Sault-Ste.-Marie singer-songwriter, bears a remarkable vocal resemblance to the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson, and his backing band (which includes Cuff the Duke’s Paul Lowman on most tracks here) likewise applies pop-punk drive to nerdy, wordy folk songs. And, like the Weakerthans, Mattson pulls it off far better than you would ever expect (and, although you wouldn’t guess it from this review, he does so without constantly inviting comparisons over the course of the album). He also does it with trumpeter JF Beauchamp adding majesty and melodic thrust over the raging guitars. Producer Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky) knows when to let the songs breathe, when to let the band rock out, and when a flurry of guitar feedback serves and excellent purpose. Drummer Kyle Woods also deserves a nod for his sympathetic performance. This is Mattson’ third full-length album; it’s clearly the one where he comes into his own. (March 6)

Download: “Hurt People Hurt People,” “A Love Song to the City,” “Darkness”

The Notwist - Close to the Glass (Sub Pop)

One of my favourite music writers once complained that listening to Radiohead was a joyless exercise akin to being “on the Internet reading debates about the Internet”—the implication being that the music was too impressed with itself and its importance, and devoid of actual ambition or emotional resonance. Germany’s The Notwist have garnered their share of Radiohead comparisons ever since their 2002 album Neon Golden became a sleeper cult hit, with its mix of balladry, hints of blues riffs and plenty of bleeps and blurps. Close to the Glass is only their second album since then. It would unlikely impress anyone who shared the above opinion of Radiohead. 

The stereotype of German music is that it’s emotionally detached and deadpan; The Notwist live up to that reputation, and then some. When the band is on hiatus, its members have a variety of experimental side projects. When they get back together here, they sound bored out of their minds, like they’re punching the clock with some pop songs that will fund their true labours of love. There’s something wrong when the most raucous song is about a seven-hour drive: It’s called, you guessed it, “7-Hour Drive.” The weirder they get, the better: the title track sounds like a sexless Teutonic take on Jamaican dancehall, while “Lineri” is an entrancing instrumental that benefits greatly from not having Markus Acher’s mumbling over it. (March 13)

Download: “Kong,” “Close to the Glass,” “Lineri”

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar)

Why would you burn your fire for no witness? Are you trying to hide something? Are you a recluse? Is there a deep loneliness inside of you that recoils from human contact?

The latter would seem to apply to this Asheville, N.C., singer-songwriter, whose voice alters between defeated and yearning. On the tracks where she provides the sole accompaniment, she sounds almost frightened, spooked, like Julie Doiron or Cat Power in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For at least half the record, however, she employs a Chicago garage-rock duo, Lionlimb, who give her an emotional lift and colour in the corner of her songs with surprising subtlety. Producer John Congleton, who also helmed the all-out sonic attack of St. Vincent’s new album, knows exactly when to leave Olsen alone, and never tries to dress up her arrangements. Yet even when she shows signs of extroversion, Olsen still casts a lonely figure that still sounds like a 27-year-old who’s been beat down by too many crappy retail gigs and dubious relationships. How much you enjoy this record may well depend entirely on how far away you are from your own 27-year-old’s existence. (March 6)

Download: “Forgiven/Forgotten,” “Lights Out,” “White Fire”

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)

Much like the real-life war on drugs, this War on Drugs—a Philadelphia band led by Adam Granduciel—is hopelessly lost. They packed up their van, drove it to the middle of a former industrial town in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania on a cloudy summer day, set up shop and started daydreaming while playing their instruments. That’s what it sounds like, anyway: aimless, carefree, pleasant yet melancholic and in a constant state of anticipation: surely, something is about to happen. It has to. Because nothing’s been happening now for a long, long time. Sometimes that can be its own pleasure. Others, it’s just plain tedious or, worse, imperceptible. Invisible.

For some mystifying reason, people who should know better—i.e. everybody who’s ever written about this band—compare The War on Drugs to Bruce Springsteen. Apparently the mere presence of a saxophone in a rock band gives people strange ideas. Tom Petty also pops up quite a bit. But comparisons to these greats only make sense if you imagine those artists showing up in the studio baked out of their minds, with no songs in mind, telling their ace bands to drive the same groove deep into the night—and hey, while you’re there, boys, take some time to gaze at the stars.

Granduciel is a passionate frontman, even when he’s doing a strange Bob Dylan impersonation, and he’s a guitar noodler par excellence—if you’re into noodling. This is his band; other members have come and gone. No wonder: they could all be easily replaced by machines, as the arrangements consist largely of metronomic beats devoid of dynamics.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re looking for music to ignore—like High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon does in the novel and film that most War on Drugs fans know all too well—then this is your band. Lost in the Dream is—well, dreamy. And lost, in the Chet Baker sense of “Let’s Get Lost.” Maybe it’s an album that encapsulates hollowed-out, Rust Belt America, devoid of hope and lulled into an opiate state by the distraction-industrial complex—a timely soundtrack to accompany George Packer’s book The Unwinding. Or maybe it’s just an album where not much happens at all. (March 27)

Download: “An Ocean in the Waves,” “In Reverse,” “Red Eyes”

Pharrell Williams – G I R L (Sony)

Pharrell is a happy guy. You probably knew that already, because of his 2013 smash single, “Happy,” from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack. He performed it at the Oscars last week, even getting Meryl Streep up to dance. He looked happy. He sounds happy. He should be. And you will be, too, after you hear the most joyous pop album in ages.

As a producer, Pharrell has shaped the sound of pop and hip-hop over the last 15 years, having been responsible, behind the scenes, for dozens of hits. G I R L is sunny-day funk par excellence, making Justin Timberlake’s recent records sound bloated and excessive, imagining what Michael Jackson would sound like if he fronted a tight five-piece band rather than an orchestra of rock and R&B players. 

Pharrell puts the vocals and the beats first, and fills in every other element sparingly, less they distract from the groove and melodies. Even on “Gust of Wind,” with guest robot vocals from Daft Punk and featuring a string arrangement by bombastic soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer, can barely be accused of bloat. 

"Happy" is undeniably a catchy song, but the real winner here is "Hunter," impossibly funky and deliciously libidinous, where the riff is shared by a synth clavinet and a slap bass (with another, deeper bass adding maximum effect with a minimum number of notes). Like “Get Lucky,” the chord progression never changes, but it doesn’t have to: the groove is killer, and Pharrell is full of casual swagger and seemingly improvised, ridiculous lyrics (“Duck Dynasty is cool and all / but they got nothing on a female’s call”).

Being who he is, Pharrell could easily have stuffed his album with A-list guests. He doesn’t have to: Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys show up, but they’re barely noticeable. If he’s out to teach us anything here, it’s that simplicity is the key to happiness. (March 6)

Download: “Happy,” “Hunter,” “Come Get It Bae”

June reviews 08

So much housecleaning to be done, and apologies for the delay. Much of July for me has been a build-up to the Hillside Festival last weekend--about which I'll have plenty to say very shortly--and only now does my schedule seem like it's returning to a semblance of normality.

In the meantime, I've been meaning to post these June reviews for... oh, about a month now--aka five years in the blogosphere. For whatever reason, June was fogey month... in a good way.

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Don Brownrigg – Wander Songs (Weewerk/Outside)

More than any other provincial Canadian population, Newfoundlanders can be found in every corner of the country; they know what it means to leave home, they know what it means to have your life packed in a suitcase, and they know the pull that the motherland has on their cultural consciousness.

This Newfoundland songwriter opens his astounding debut album by advising the listener: “Don’t be afraid of the world if you ain’t out there in it.” Halfway through, he covers a song written by two of his uncles, who impart similar worldly wisdom: "Remember, fights and people's wives are to be left alone/ and if all else should fail you/ please remember home." Throughout Wander Songs, Brownrigg sings about leaving home for a transient life of “bags and boxes.” He does so in an old soul’s voice that’s perfectly suited for what he calls “these A.M. times.”

Befitting a child of such a strong oral culture, Brownrigg writes melodies that barely need any ornamentation at all—and yet the expert production work of mandolin player Donald McKay allows space for subtle shadings of banjo, lap steel, spoken word interludes, guest guitar from Jim Bryson and backing vocals by Jenn Grant. Between McKay’s sonic touches and Brownrigg’s haunting voice, there’s an enchanting sense of mystery heard on every one of these 11 songs, which fall somewhere between the sparse atmospheric beauty of Daniel Lanois and the masterful storytelling of Newfoundland songwriting legend Ron Hynes.

Wander Songs was released quietly in Brownrigg’s adopted hometown of Halifax late last year; it’s now being brought to wider attention by Weewerk, the label converted the world to the Great Lake Swimmers—whose fans will find plenty to love here. (K-W Record, June 26)

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Solomon Burke – Like a Fire (Shout Factory/Warner)

On his last album, the soul survivor Solomon Burke headed to Nashville, where his towering voice was welcomed by a group of players more rustic than R&B. The experience wasn’t a one-off, it seems, as Burke is still carrying a bit of a twangover— a strong country influence can be heard loud and clear on Like A Fire, along with the blues, gospel and soul that have been his trademarks for the last 40 years. Producer/drummer Steve Jordan hooks him up with Eric Clapton, Keb’ Mo’, Jesse Harris and other guests who provide material worthy of Burke’s booming vocals, though none of them are as excellent a match as Ben Harper’s song "A Minute To Rest And A Second To Pray"; Harper’s own backing vocals and dobro playing are the one time any of the studio musicians here dare to compete with Burke’s presence. Even when Burke decamps to the hotel bar to croon "If I Gave My Heart to You," he maintains the dignity and class that he exudes in every other setting. Like a Fire is another worthy chapter in his productive comeback. (K-W Record, June 26)

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Elvis Costello and the Imposters – Momofuku (Lost Highway/Universal)

So far 2008 has been a good year for the fogies, not just Al Green. Witness R.E.M.’s miraculous resurrection to relevance, the bold comebacks from Erykah Badu and Portishead, and decent albums by James, Joe Jackson, Sheryl Crow—hell, these days even Def Leppard sound better than they have in decades.

When word got out that the ultra prolific Elvis Costello was recording a stripped-down album in six days, there were hopes that a sense of immediacy might override his tendency to overwrite and overcook, which usually leaves listeners feeling more exhausted than entertained or enriched. Sadly, that’s exactly what happens here yet again.

For a guy who normally spends too much time on his band arrangements, here he doesn’t spend enough. If he was writing three-chord rock’n’roll songs, this approach would be fine, but simplicity doesn’t come easy to Elvis. These are songs that need more than a couple of takes for even the finest studio musicians to wrap their heads around. Many of them would be better served by stripping down them even more, like the Loretta Lynn co-write "Pardon Me Adam, My Name is Eve."

Elements of Costello’s finest work are in place—namely the keyboards of Steve Nieve and Costello’s own vocals, which retain their gritty edge when he’s fronting a rock band. He’s also bolstered by female vocal harmonies courtesy of Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. The occasional song stands a slim chance of holding its own against his best work ("Drum & Bone," "Turpentine"). But for an artist of Costello’s calibre, this just doesn’t cut the mustard. (K-W Record, June 5)

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Al Green – Lay It Down (Blue Note/EMI)

Five years ago, soul fans were ecstatic to learn that the Rev. Al Green had reunited with Willie Mitchell, the producer and architect of Green’s early 70s work. And yet the two albums that resulted from that reunion (2003’s I Can’t Stop and 2005’s Everything’s OK) were little more than aesthetic pleasures: Mitchell didn’t have the material—or the willpower, it seems—to push Green to the kind of powerhouse performances he’s capable of.

Enter the new school: drummer/producer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots and keyboardist/producer James Poyser were put in charge of Green’s latest project, and it turns out that the young musicians who were probably conceived to Green’s music know him better than his old bandmates do.

Lay It Down stands as a high point in Green’s entire discography, full of the lush strings, smooth guitar licks and deep grooves that cushion his buttery bedroom vocals, which haven’t aged an iota. It opens with the slow and stately title track, but soon kicks into high gear with "You’ve Got the Love I Need," where Philly soul singer Anthony Hamilton and the Dap Kings Horns (Sharon Jones, Amy Winehouse) provide the punch that helps propel Green to one of his greatest vocal performances since "Let’s Stay Together."

Despite Thompson’s hip-hop background and Poyser’s career building the neo-soul movement through his work with Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Common, they don’t attempt to modernize Green or pair him up with incongruous duet partners (although the Corinne Bailey Rae track is suitably sleepy). They do, however, provide him with more of a backbeat than even most of his vintage work had, as the big funk drums on "I’m Wild About You" illustrate. They’re also responsible for the strength of the material: they and the rest of the backing band co-write every song here with Green. (K-W Record, June 5)

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Emmylou Harris – All I Intended To Be (Nonesuch/Warner)

The album title suggests autobiography, as if this was a work of a veteran artist reflecting on her life. Quite the contrary—throughout her storied career, Emmylou Harris has been a conduit for other people’s stories, acting best as an interpreter of other songwriters and as a harmony vocalist and duet partner. Until recent years, her own songwriting has taken a back seat; this album, however, is the first where her own compositions stand tall beside the work of masters such as Tracy Chapman, Billie Joe Shaver, Merle Haggard, and the McGarrigle sisters (she co-writes several songs with the latter).

All I Intended To Be is a classic storyteller’s album, filled with rich character narratives of love, loss, resilience and disappointment. As always, Harris’s warm vocals bring her characters to vivid life, but such is the songwriting standard here that she barely has to—even an atonal mumbler could communicate the crushing heartbreak heard in her song "Gold." In Harris’s hands, however—along with Dolly Parton and Vince Gill on backing vocals—the effect is devastating.

Musically, Harris strikes a balance between the Daniel Lanois-influenced work of her past decade and her more traditional country roots, making the aptly titled All I Intended To Be a summation of everything she’s accomplished in the past 40 years. (K-W Record, June 19)

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The Notwist – The Devil, You And Me (Domino/Outside)

This German pop group made a minor North American splash in 2002 with an understated gem called Neon Golden, wherein they merged the icy world of digital bleeps and blurps with bluesy electric guitars and melancholy pop. Part of its artistic success was the fact that The Notwist never sounded like they were trying to prove anything—unlike more ambitious albums by the likes of Radiohead and others. If anything, The Notwist were too subtle for their own good, starting with the narcoleptic vocals of singer Markus Acher.

Acher still sings like he’s sleepwalking, but that’s part of his charm—especially when delivering defeatist witticisms like, “Remember, the good lies win.” Here, over harsh guitars that sound like sirens and an avalanche of tumbling drums, Acher promises, “I won’t sing you algebra.” And yet The Devil, You And Me finds The Notwist becoming considerably more complex.

They improve considerably on Neon Golden’s template, upping the abstract beats that populated their side project 13 And God, relying less on the once-novel juxtaposition of acoustic guitars and electronic percussion, and becoming simultaneously more traditional and more experimental—maintaining the kind of admirable consistency at the core that few other acts can accomplish.

Songs like the title track and "Gone Gone Gone" are one step away from straightforward Coldplay balladry, though elsewhere they toy with textures and rhythms that draw from dreampop spawned in bedroom electronics; "On Planet Off" harkens back to the dubbed-out dropped beats of late 90s trip-hop, without sounding dated in the least.

The Notwist will never be a band that makes a huge first impression; their pleasures are best discovered slowly, if not secretly—and six years after Neon Golden, it sounds like they wouldn’t want it any other way. (K-W Record, June 26)

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James Pants – Welcome (Stones Throw/Koch)

When a man called Mr. Pants welcomes you to his party, you have every right to be suspicious. But this debut album delivers a non-stop thrill ride of electro funk that touches on hip-hop, garage rock, disco and all stops in between, with live drums and subsonic bass synthesizers giving it a low-down, raw and dirty feel that guarantees a full dance floor.

Mr. Pants keeps the vocals to a minimum, but he doesn’t need vocal hooks to keep your interest. He pulls off some impressive jazz keyboard noodling and funky drumming throughout, boasting some serious chops, the kind not normally found from basement dabblers—from Spokane, Washington, no less.

If Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters backed up Kraftwerk, it might sound something like this, although this isn’t entirely a retro ride; Pants has also clearly studied the slice-and-dice approach to electronics spawned in the last decade. And for someone who’s obviously a huge music geek and record collector, none of this sounds studied or self-conscious, no matter how much stylistic ground he covers. There’s a party in these Pants; consider yourself invited. (K-W Record, June 5)

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The Wet Secrets – Rock Fantasy (Rodeo Peanut/ Six Shooter)

Plenty of artists have proved that you do not need electric guitars to be a great rock band; few do it as well as The Wet Secrets. Singer Lyle Bell boasts a meaty bass guitar, fuzzed out to the maximum, and he's bolstered by tubas and trombones to boost the bottom end. This is the third ongoing project for this prolific Edmontonian: he also fronts the dense rock duo Whitey Houston, and is part of the Shout Out Out Out Out electro-dance army. The Wet Secrets take lessons that he learned in both bands and amps them up into a fist-pumping fury of ecstatic profanity packed into pop songs with kiss-off titles like "Get Your Own Apartment" and "Grown Your F---ing Moustache, A---hole." With their marching band uniforms and background in burlesque troupes, it's not surprising that the lyrics are little more than juvenile jokes—but that doesn't distract from the powerful arrangements, the huge hooks or the way that engineer Diego Medina brings it all to vivid life. This was released locally in Alberta a while back; the national re-release features remixes from Cadence Weapon and Nik Kozub from the Shout Outs. The Wet Secrets don’t just dream about a Rock Fantasy; they’re ready to start living it. (K-W Record, June 12)
Note: They were also the best thing I saw at this year's NXNE festival, where Bell's vocals proved to be even stronger than on the album and superceded the schtick of the outfits.