April 2013 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record and the Guelph Mercury last month. Highly, highly, highly recommended: AroarA. Merely highly recommended: Rokia Traoré, Joshua Van Tassel.

AroarA – In the Pines EP (Club Roll)


Someone old, something new. You know Andrew Whiteman from Broken Social Scene, Apostle of Hustle and many other projects. You don’t know his new collaborator Ariel Engel, who sings the bulk of this material and brings out the best in Whiteman. The lyrics on AroarA’s debut EP are by American poet Alice Notley, from her 2007 book of the same name, set here to original music made with primitive cigar-box banjos and drum machines. Notley’s poems themselves reference old folk songs, and even a Bob Dylan lyric about Blind Willie McTell, so repurposing Notley’s words for modern avant-garde pop music taps into a natural continuum. If that doesn’t intrigue you enough and you need a big namedrop, it was recorded at Feist’s house.

Concept and pedigree aside, it’s the music of AroarA that compels. Like the Los Lobos side project Latin Playboys, AroarA takes traditional elements—Spanish pop, American blues, Asian melodies, PJ Harvey—and tosses them in a digital kaleidoscope that defies easy description. Engel’s compelling voice is the anchor: a confident calm presence not unlike Feist or Daniela Gesundheit of Snowblink (who all performed together at the 2012 Polaris Prize gala). The sonic density that marked Whiteman’s last album as Apostle of Hustle has been stripped back; each track contains only a few elements: sampler, two guitars and percussion, either electronic, hand-played or of unknown origin.

These five songs are as fulfilling as a full-length album, but they’re just the beginning: nine more are due on AroarA’s debut album in June. (April 4)

Download (tracks only have numbers as titles, as per the original poems; they don’t refer to running order): “#11,” “#6,” “#2”

Arts and Crafts: 2003-2013 – Various Artists (Arts and Crafts)

Many people and many artists across the country contributed to the explosion of great Canadian music in the last decade, but it’s safe to say that Toronto label Arts and Crafts were at the forefront of taking it all to the mainstream: first with Broken Social Scene, whose Kevin Drew is a cofounder, then with Feist and many others. Arts and Crafts has released many classic Canadian records, and it’s a safe bet that a decade retrospective would be a worthy time capsule.

Sadly, it’s not. The selection here appears to have been selected from a shuffle playlist, albeit one that favours Broken Social Scene, Feist and Stars, with three tracks each—odd for Stars, who have released just as many albums off the label as they have on. Many artists are relegated to the “rarities” disc, hence people like the Constantines, Hidden Cameras, Cold Specks, the Dears, Gonzales and Snowblink are not necessarily on their A game. Bell Orchestre, who put out one of the best albums in the label’s entire discography, is not found anywhere here.

Listening to the main disc gives further credence to the notion that the label has faltered the most when it recruits from outside its immediate family: The Most Serene Republic? Los Campesinos? New Buffalo? Dan Mangan? Well, at least Mangan sells a lot of records and deserves to be here. The compiler does deserve some credit, at least, for finding a listenable song by the Stills.

You probably own the best Arts and Crafts albums already, and this compilation won’t shed much light on the rest of the roster. Save your money and buy a ticket for their June 8 anniversary show in Toronto featuring a one-off Broken Social Scene reunion, Feist, Stars, Zeus, Cold Specks, Jason Collett and more—including Hayden and Bloc Party, who are also absent from the comp. (April 18)

Download: “Islands in the Stream” – Feist and the Constantines; “I Want a New Drug” – Apostle of Hustle; “Apology” – Kevin Drew

The Bicycles - Stop Thinking So Much (Aporia)

This Toronto pop band was beloved but underrated during their run in the 2000s; after a four-year hiatus, they remind us what we’ve been missing by returning from various other projects sounding entirely rejuvenated and more eclectic than ever, not unlike a ’70s K-Tel collection where the only real through line is an abundance of sunny California harmonies. Twee pop, country balladry, glam rock, even some Rolling Stones swagger weave their way through these two- and three-minute miracles, where each member brings their own songs to the table—and drummer Dana Snell nearly steals the whole show with her opening track, the lovely “Appalachian Mountain Station.” (April 25)

Download: “Appalachian Mountain Station,” “Bandana Cat,” “Goldeneye”

James Blake – Overgrown (Polydor)

This young Brit wowed plenty with his 2011 debut, with its blend of innovative electronics, live performance and Blake’s androgynous croon, as well as a dreamy Feist cover.  And yet anyone who heard Blake’s earlier instrumental EPs may well have wondered why he appeared to have dropped the ball for his coming-out party, with a collection of tracks that were neither great songs nor particularly cutting edge: clearly this man had more potential than just a great voice.

Blake more than makes up for that on Overgrown, which is both as sonically stunning and seductive as what is ostensibly a pop album could possibly be. He’s obvious invested more time into the songwriting process instead of coasting on his studio wizardry, and yet he’s not about to embrace clichés. What would have happened had Joni Mitchell fled California in the early ’70s and moved to Berlin to work with Brian Eno? They would have spawned James Blake. (April 18)

Download: “Overgrown,” “Retrograde,” “Digital Lion”

The Burning Hell - People (weewerk)

“Inside everyone one of us is a comedian, a cult leader and an amateur rapper.” So says Mathias Kom, singer and songwriter at the core of The Burning Hell. He should know: he’s all three. His band is an open invitational depending on what city he’s living in at the moment (Peterborough, Whitehorse, now St. John’s); he’s a verbose wordsmith who claims he writes songs while listening to the Wu-Tang Clan; and he’s wry, witty, and occasionally hilarious.

Kom writes songs that ask questions no one else dares to ask—never mind set to music. Why aren’t cults ever any fun? Why, as teenagers, were we prematurely nostalgic for the age we actually were at the time? Why not set the legend of Loki to a seven-minute rock epic? When Lionel Richie wrote “Hello,” was it you he was looking for and not the blind girl in the video?

As Kom has shifted from ukulele-wielding folk singer to stream-of-consciousness rock bandleader, he’s less concerned with writing songs than he is using the music as a vehicle for observational ramblings. It can be a recipe for disaster—his last album, overburdened with pop culture references, was proof of this—but here he’s a raconteur par excellence, holding court while his band keeps the party going behind him. (April 25)

Download: “Grown-ups,” “Amateur Rappers,” “Industrialists”

Dusted – Total Dust (Hand Drawn Dracula)

Pick a Piper – s/t (Mint)

Canadians seem to excel at albums tailor-made for long-haul late-night drives: spooky enough to suit the occasion, but with enough volume and pulse to keep the driver awake. And why wouldn’t we? We, especially our touring musicians, spend an inordinate amount of time in the wee hours travelling from town to faraway town. Brian Borcherdt, a rock’n’roll lifer who’s spent almost 20 years on the road, is no different, hence the sound of his new project, Dusted, made during a rare time when he was standing still.

While his all-live electronic band Holy Fuck was touring the world in the last eight years and hailed as one of the best live acts in Canada, Borcherdt was busy releasing quiet solo albums under his own name. When his bandmates took some time off to raise babies, Borcherdt threw himself into Dusted, a collaboration with producer/drummer Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Bruce Peninsula, Austra).

Taheny brings out the best in Borcherdt’s songwriting; while his solo work was often lovely but aimless, Taheny tightens everything up with minimal percussion and dropping in ukulele, violin and minimal keyboards when necessary. Borcherdt, who’s also in fine vocal form, plays chugging rhythm guitar with a steady hand and both feet on effects pedals, looping it and running it through various decaying levels of distortion. The result sounds unlike Borcherdt’s good pal Chad Van Gaalen (especially in a live setting), but the album successfully creates its own world, one where the late-night radio is your guiding light.

A similar vibe prevails for K-W’s Pick a Piper, though further astray from the indie rock singer/songwriter genre Dusted is working in. Waterloo drummer Brad Weber has been performing with psychedelic electronica group Caribou for the last decade, and that band’s sound inevitably bleeds through on Weber’s first full-length as Pick a Piper. Comparisons are inevitable not only because of the direct connection, but because very few, if any, other acts working today successfully merge those elements, other than Atoms for Peace, the new band from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (who is a big Caribou fan). Like Caribou’s Dan Snaith, Weber employs lovely melodies and Beach Boys harmonies, sets them to club beats on both acoustic and electronic drums, and layers in various percussive and jazz elements—and then lets you sit back and zone out. Vocalists from Braids, Ruby Suns and Enon also show up to provide additional scenery along the way, though they easily fade into the blurry background of a fascinating journey. (April 4)

Download Pick a Piper: “Cinders and Dust,” “Once Were Leaves,” “South to Polynesia”

Download Dusted: “All Comes Down,” “(Into the) Atmosphere,” “Pale Light”

Iron and Wine – Ghost on Ghost (Nonesuch)

Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam introduced himself to us many years ago as a solo, fingerpicking singer/songwriter. As his popularity grew, his arrangements swelled and he slowly shifted into swampy, New Orleans psychedelic funk that owed a few debts to Dr. John’s more outré output. Here, however, it sounds like he took a more marked left turn: by getting happy.

Ghost on Ghost is notable for sounding much sunnier than any other Iron and Wine album; the preponderance of major keys helps. For an album with “ghost” in its title, Beam has shifted from spookier sonics into opiated bliss, California soft rock that could be a funkier Fleetwood Mac. Longtime producer Brian Deck continues to provide plenty of tasty tricks underneath the steady calm of Beam’s voice; just because the music is pleasant doesn’t mean it can’t be multi-layered and sophisticated. The other key difference is the increased role of a horn section, providing not just soul shots but even embarking on bebop jazz breakdowns on tracks like “Lover’s Revolution”—didn’t see that coming.

It’s easy to underestimate Iron and Wine, but Sam Beam has just given us yet another reason why we never should. (April 18)

Download: “Joy,” “Low Light Buddy of Mine,” “Winter Prayers”

Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer, Different Park (Universal)

This 24-year-old Texas artist is notable most for what she is not: she’s far removed from the gloss of new country—no crunching guitars or synths here—yet conventional enough to target the same market; a year older than Taylor Swift, she writes poignant, homespun and youthful observations without sounding like a 15-year-old Twilight fan. Musgraves has a sweet enough voice, though unremarkable; the appeal is her songwriting. Her first single features the opening line, “If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably going to die alone / at least that’s what tradition told you.” That, and her love of minor chords, makes you wonder how she ever wound up a contestant on Nashville Star (where she placed seventh). This, her fourth album but major-label debut, sounds like the love child of Lucinda Williams and Fred Eaglesmith, with trace elements of teen angst found in a line like, “It’s a fine line between telling a joke and twisting the knife.” The album has already topped the U.S. country charts and sold half a million copies in three weeks, and it sounds like this well is just going to get deeper. (April 11)

Download: “Merry Go ’Round,” “My House,” “Dandelion”

New Country Rehab - Ghost of Your Charms (Kelp) 

The name of this band suggests that they’re tried and true traditionalists bucking against the slick new country scene. Well, they do replace gloss with grit, but the muscular, modern arrangements here aren’t all that far off from stadium-size country music—or Bruce Springsteen circa The Rising. This ain’t no Hank Williams revival act (see: Daniel Romano). Frontman John Showman is not only a convincing belter, but he’s a fine fiddler player, and its those textures that set this band apart from every other roots rock act in Canada. Producer Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre, Snowblink) captures the live energy effectively: this is a record that demands to be played loud. Too bad the performances and the production outshine the songwriting, something that matters a whole lot less on stage, which is obviously this band’s forte. (April 25)

Download: “Rollin’,” “Lizzy Dying of a Broken Heart,” “Midnight Cargo”

The Ford Pier Vengeance Trio – Huzzah! (independent)

Ford Pier is one of Canada’s musical MVPs, playing with members of the Rheostatics, NoMeansNo, backing up arty singer/songwriters Veda Hille and Christine Fellows, and serving time in punk legends D.O.A., cowpunk pioneers Jr. Gone Wild and reggae band Roots Roundup. What does Pier get up to on his own terms? Tightly controlled jazz-punk chaos in a power-trio setting that celebrates “the gift of life” one minute while decrying destruction and banality the next. Pier doesn’t do anything simply: every track here twists and turns inside out and yet never spirals out of control, thanks in part to a phenomenal rhythm section that seem to understand every synapse in Pier’s brain. It’s all overwhelming on first listen; sometimes you wish Pier didn’t feel the need to change chords every two beats. But Pier’s invention and magnetism—and brevity—carry the day. Huzzah, indeed. (April 11)

Download: “When We Were Poor,” “The Gift of Life,” “Newton and the Counterfeiters”

Cam Penner – To Build a Fire (Rawlco Radio)

Cam Penner is the kind of guy who wanders up to your folk-festival campfire and casually starts playing a few songs that sound like howling winds set to blues stomps that suddenly shut up all the drunks, until everyone is spellbound wondering exactly who this travelling stranger is. That’s just how he rolls: Penner is a wandering troubadour who has lived and worked all over the continent (“sometimes I wonder if I’m running or being chased”), performing songs with choruses like “may the good Lord take you in self-defence.” He opens this, his fifth album, with a brass instrumental; the Everlast-esque single “Memphis” drops a drum machine into the rhythm. But for the most part, Penner stays true to his cabin-in-the-woods aesthetic, drawing you in with tales of travel and dollops of inspiration for tough times. (April 25)

Download: “Whiskey Lips,” “No Consequence,” “Memphis”

The Sapphires – Various Artists (Sony)

It’s been over 20 years since The Commitments, one of the finest and funniest movies about rock’n’roll ever made, in which a band of ragged Irish misfits attempt to make American soul music. And unlike 1990, classic R&B is back in style in full force, so the idea of a new film soundtrack stacked with actors singing faithful versions of Motown and Stax classics won’t seem an overworked concept for anyone too young to remember either The Commitments or The Blues Brothers. Plus, this time the artists doing the reappropriation of African-American culture are Australian Aborigines.

But do we need yet another version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” or “Land of 1,000 Dances”? (Supplementary question: does CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle” need to appear on yet another soundtrack of a Vietnam film?) The cinematic twist this time is the ’60s story of Australian Aborgine women, who had only recently been granted political and legal rights, who were recruited to form an R&B band to entertain American troops in Vietnam. The story sells the movie, but all you really need to hear is actress Jessica Mauboy open her mouth: she is every bit the equal of Diana Ross, Carla Thomas, Gladys Knight and Mavis Staples, and she even pulls off Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” and Arthur Lyman’s “Yellow Bird.” On the one modern-sounding track here, “Gotcha,” she enters Beyoncé territory, signalling that she’s poised for much more than a fluke film role. (April 11)

Download: “Gotcha,” “What a Man,” “I’ll Take You There”

Telekinesis – Dormarion (Merge)

People continue to whine about lacklustre new Weezer albums, while young Michael Benjamin Lerner, a.k.a. Telekinesis, is now on his third flawless record of anthemic power pop. What gives? Lerner is a master of melancholic lyrics set to sunny melodies, crushing guitars, fuzzy bass and new wave keyboards, to say nothing of his own buoyant drumming. He gets production help this time out from Spoon drummer Jim Eno, like Lerner himself a multi-tasking percussionist. Eno not only brings out Lerner’s pre-existing strengths, he also drops a drum machine on him and plays up an ’80s influence on several tracks. And majestic closing track “You Take It Slowly” is the song you keep hoping the reunite Pixies would get around to writing. (April 4)

Download: “Power Lines,” “Laissez-Faire,” “Ever True”

Rokia Traoré – Beautiful Africa (Nonesuch)

This Malian musician has collaborated with novelist Toni Morrison, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, and toured with Blur’s Damon Albarn. She’s the daughter of a diplomat who was posted to the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. She studied sociology in Brussels. This, her fifth album, is produced by PJ Harvey sideman John Parish. And yet after Beautiful Africa, it’s unlikely she’ll need such name-dropping to be remembered.

She’s a stunning guitar player, steeped in Malian blues (and one of the few female instrumentalists from that scene), but it’s her voice that’s entirely captivating: though she’s capable of projecting, she’s at her most powerful when she applies her strength at a lower volume, with an ever-so-slight tremolo that’s nothing short of chilling, especially on the epic nine-minute ballad N’Teri. Parish gives her a stripped-down backing: a minimalist funky drummer, an n’goni player and a bassist, all used sparingly.

Traoré recently relocated with her son to Paris from Bamako, which is threatened by Islamist insurgents who, among other atrocities, want to ban music in one of the most musically rich regions of the world. Her lyrics are in French, so I can’t assess their political content (if any), but her voice alone is resilience and beauty embodied. (April 25)

Download: “Sikey,” “Melancolie,” “Tuit Tuit”

Joshua Van Tassel - Dream Date (Backward Music)

“Dream date” doesn’t refer here to a fantasy romance; it’s about an appointment with an imaginative, abstract, haunting and playful environment. Van Tassel is an in-demand drummer and multi-instrumentalist for many Toronto singer/songwriters; left to his own devices, he constructs carefully constructed melodic and cinematic instrumentals of all varieties: propulsive, subdued, acoustic instruments manipulated electronically or left to shine on their own strengths. He believes in brevity—only one song here is longer than five minutes—and every sonic layer is entirely deliberate; there’s very little clutter. He does invite two vocalists into the fold—an uncharacteristically gut-wrenching Justin Rutledge, and a soaring Kate Rogers—for two of the album’s strongest songs, but those are by no means the most melodic. Van Tassel has charted an eclectic sonic journey where Calexico, Patrick Watson and the Rheostatics are fellow travellers. (April 11)

Download: “The Sharpest Corner,” “Sentimental Health,” “I Think You’re a Salesman”

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Mosquito (Universal)

In the first three songs of the first new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album in four years, we hear: a raw post-punk song that culminates with a full-on gospel choir: a brooding, haunting lullaby that samples a New York City subway car as a rhythm track; an unhinged, nonsensical shriekfest that hearkens back to the very first tracks that put this once-incendiary trio on the map. After the smash success of their electro-disco makeover on 2009’s It’s Blitz!, it sounds like the band has no idea what it should be anymore and doesn’t care. Neither should we, if they sound this good flailing in all directions.

No doubt it helps that singer Karen O has returned to New York from California to join her bandmates; Mosquito is much more informal and loose than this band has been since their debut full-length. Invite long-dormant Kool Keith alias Dr. Octagon to rap on “Buried Alive”? Why not. A Cramps-style sci-fi goof-off about alien conspiracy theories? Of course. And then there are the garage rock rave-ups, the ballads, the disco songs and everything in between. O has lost none of her potency as an ever-elastic vocalist—the bonus tracks include three acoustic demos where she’s pitch-perfect and gorgeous, as well as a howling, snarling live version of the title track—and her bandmates rarely resort to rock clichés.

If their former comrades in the Strokes—another band who defined New York City and rock and roll’s comeback in the early 2000s—are getting successively sleepier with each release, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs return fully invigorated. (April 18)

Download: “Subway,” “Mosquito,” “Despair”

Nov 09 reviews

These reviews ran in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in November.

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Devendra Banhart – What Will We Be? (Warner)

It’s an old trope to complain about an artist becoming less interesting with a major label leap. And yet in the case of Devendra Banhart—whose sixth album is his first for Warner—he now sounds creatively bankrupt and downright bored.

Banhart is a restless creative soul, whose toss-offs were always at least interesting. He consistently been inconsistent, either falling flat on his face with ridiculous lyrics and goofy hippie-isms, or—as he did on his last album—successfully jumping from Brazilian bossa nova to gospel-infused classic rock jams to doo-wop to reggae to psychedelic folk—all glued together with his wonderfully elastic voice.

Trace elements of those things are heard here, but it sounds like someone put Banhart on meds and inhibited his wilder urges; everything lopes along in a heroin haze, without any of the fantastical imagery or intoxicating melodies that Banhart used to excel at.

“I know I look high, but I’m just free dancing,” he sings, on one of this album’s otherwise passable songs. But rather than sounding unselfconscious, Banhart sounds like he’s being monitored closely in case he waves his freak folk flag too high. (K-W Record, November 12)

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Bell Orchestre – Who Designs Nature’s How (Arts and Crafts)
Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Remixes – Various Artists (Merge)

Merge Records celebrated its 20th anniversary with a week-long festival, an oral history book, a subscription series of specially curated compilations, and a disc of cover versions, now caps off its year by surrendering the master tapes of some of its best-loved artists to remixers.

This fares better than the patchy covers comp released in the spring—after all, how badly can you miss the mark when you’re dealing with the original tracks? In some cases here they improve remarkably on the originals: Caribou remixing Polvo, +/- juicing up the Rosebuds, and Four Tet turning the naivete of Guv’ner into a techno chant. John McEntire takes one of the only weak moments from the last 10 years of Spoon’s discography, “The Ghost of You Lingers,” and replaces the insistent piano plunking with a lilting ambient techno breeze.

Others are far more faithful, or attempt to unnecessarily insert their vocals. The only serious disappointment—if only because of the lost potential—is Jason Forrest’s remix of Arcade Fire’s “No Cars Go.” It’s nowhere near as daring as his own work nor the possibilities buried in the dense mix of the original; it also doesn’t help that an early cover of this song by Canadian electronic band Vitamins for You already cast it in a more synth-y arrangement similar to that heard in the first half of this remix; meanwhile, the second half is Forrest’s remix is almost indistinguishable from the original.

Though it’s billed as a remix album, Bell Orchestre’s Who Designs Nature’s How seems more like a compilation of their favourite artists than reconfigurations of the rich source material heard on their 2009 masterpiece As Seen Through Windows.

Therefore Montreal sound sculptor Tim Hecker offers a piece that could well have been culled from his most recent album, An Imaginary Country; likewise, saxophonist Colin Stetson—who joined the band last year—delivers a solo saxophone performance that is as rhythmically repetitive, enchanting and muscular as his normal solo material … which it may well be, as the title of his track doesn’t resemble any Bell Orchestre composition.

U.K. dub master Mad Professor stretches out the title track with hazy textures and electronic effects, although remains largely faithful to the original song’s structure; Montreal’s veteran turntablist Kid Koala and new duo Deadly Stare (one half of which engineered Amon Tobin’s Foley Room, which had contributions from Bell Orchestre members) fare better toying with trace elements of two of Windows’ stronger tracks.

No one touches the original album’s astounding triumph, the track “Elephants”—because why mess with perfection? (K-W Record, November 19)

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Blue Rodeo – The Things We Left Behind (Warner)

It’s high time Blue Rodeo kicked its own ass.

While they’ve never suffered as a live band, their studio output of at least the last 10 years has been less than inspiring. On this double album, however, the difference is both cosmetic and concrete: the production is warm, hazy and old school; strings, flutes and tympani make appearances on some of Greg Keelor’s trippier numbers. But more importantly, both Keelor and Jim Cuddy step back up as songwriters worthy of their Hall of Fame status.

Keelor showed considerable strength on his 2006 solo album Aphrodite Rose, so it’s Cuddy who is the surprise here. It can be argued that every ballad he’s ever written is entirely interchangeable, but that certainly can’t be said of this album’s “One Light Left in Heaven”—despite the slightly maudlin title, it’s one of Cuddy’s finest accomplishments in his 25 years as a songwriter. His rockers are no small shakes either; tracks like “One More Night” and “Arizona Dust” show off some swagger.

Though Keelor and Cuddy split the album’s 16 songs evenly, Keelor eats up more running time with long, expansive tracks; “Million Miles” draws on raga rock and the folkier side of Led Zeppelin, while the 10-minute “Venus Rising” is the album’s lone stinker. Both discs open with two of Keelor’s best brooders—the kind that sound like Neil Young produced by the Beatles—where the band’s vocal and instrumental arranging skills come into clear focus.

In between are plenty of songs that do what Blue Rodeo have always done best, and there’s little here that really rocks the boat. But after years of conceding their crown to bands like the Sadies and Cuff the Duke, it sounds like they’re ready to fight for it back. (K-W Record, November 12)

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Dead Man’s Bones – s/t (Anti)

The official holiday is over, but every day is Halloween for Dead Man’s Bones. Every song on their debut album sounds like it was recorded in a haunted house, with ghoulish lead vocals, sparse guitars, primitive percussion, and a choir of ghostly children lurking in the background of almost every track. Much of the music is fragile and falling apart, which suits the rickety ride perfectly: if this was the least bit slick, it wouldn’t work at all.

Dead Man’s Bones is the duo of Zach Shields and Ryan Gosling, who play everything on the album whether they know how to or not, which adds an innocent amateurism to the atmosphere. Dead Man’s Bones revel in the naivete of ’50s rock’n’roll and ’90s lo-fi indie rock, with the children’s choir and cartoonish fright-night lyrics (“Werewolf Heart,” “My Body’s a Zombie For You”) adding a suitably bizarre element.

This is the kind of project that mainstream celebrity mags mock as a Hollywood actor (Gosling) slumming as a musician, but it’s unique and strange and beautifully broken in ways that exist outside any proper conceptions of pop culture. And as a weirdo art project that exists in its own world, it works wonderfully well. (K-W Record, November 5)

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Fool’s Gold – s/t (Iamsound)

The name may be emblematic of the ersatz nature of this band, but Fool’s Gold doesn’t joke around. Ethiopian melodies, West African rhythms, and lyrics sung in Hebrew all melt together when played by a bunch of Los Angelenos whose only direct link to their influences is the fact that vocalist and bassist Luke Topp was born in Israel, hence the Hebrew. Otherwise everyone comes to the music as an outsider—not that you’d ever know, and not that you should care.

Guitarist Lewis Pesacov excels at clean highlife rhythms, dirty Malian blues, and fading into the background amidst the heavy percussion. He and his bandmates imitate existing African styles with excellence, but how they assemble them is entirely unorthodox. They’re not out to fit everything into a North American context—the way Vampire Weekend marries township jive with Velvet Underground/Violent Femmes innocence—and nor are they trying to pass themselves off as something they’re not. The choral refrain on “The World Is All There Is” could just as well be Aboriginal North American, African, or the Arcade Fire. The syncopated, swaying waltz of “Nadine” is otherworldly unto itself, with or without any specific cultural reference point.

Purists should stay away; everyone else should jump right in. (K-W Record, November 26)

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Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport (All Tomorrow’s Parties)

Even at its loudest and most intense, ’90s rave was too pretty, too pristine and not perverse enough to live up to its subversive reputation. That’s where Fuck Buttons come in, using white noise and distorted electronics to create nonetheless beautiful textures and slow-moving, cinematic melodies, set to chopped-up techno beats that certainly don’t guarantee a spot on the dance floor. Even when all hell breaks loose on a completely disorienting track like "Phantom Limb," a majestic mood still prevails.

Part of the credit can go to noted ’90s producer Andrew Weatherall (Two Lone Swordsmen, Sabres of Paradise), who helps beef up the Buttons’ sound considerably. “Olympians” sounds like it could be the theme for a 22nd century Chariots of Fire; closing track “Flight of the Feathered Serpent” breaks down in the middle of its 10-minute stretch into an extended African drum break before the eerie, Moby-meets-Morricone melody creeps back in.

Taken as a whole, however, Tarot Sports can be draining; this is a band best absorbed one epic track at a time. (K-W Record, November 26)

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Bebel Gilberto – All in One (Verve)

Bebel Gilberto has erred on the safe side of bossa nova ever since her international debut, 2000’s Tanto Tempo, an album that found her working with interesting beatmakers and electronic musicians. All in One is the first album since to return to that experimentalism, although the slightly more abstract numbers are side by side with very middle-of-the-road, easy-listening route Gilberto has been most comfortable in. The laid back, velvety vocalist allows herself to surrender to groove on tracks like Carmen Miranda’s “Chica Chica Boom Chic,” a cover of Bob Marley’s “Sun is Shining” (produced by Dust Brother John King), and Stevie Wonder’s “The Real Thing,” where she’s backed up by the Dap-Kings. She’s suitably seductive on the sleepy ballads, which stand out when juxtaposed with the meatier tracks. All in One contains the best of what Gilberto can do, although one senses she could still push any one of these directions even further. (K-W Record, November 26)

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Norah Jones – The Fall (Blue Note/EMI)

After over 50 albums in the last 30 years, The Fall can always be expected to reinvent themselves, and what better way than to title their new album Norah Jones. Oh wait, the Norah Jones album is called The Fall? Either way, surprises are still afoot.

No matter how huge her earlier successes were, The Fall may just as well be Norah Jones’s first real album. She’s no longer covering standards, her reliance on co-writers has lessened, and she’s left behind explicit nods to the jazz and country music that was such a formative influence; The Fall draws on the likes of Joe Henry, Tom Waits, and the Shins instead. Most importantly, she sounds like she’s developing her own personality—instead of simply making decent music that was easy to ignore. And as always, she melts genre barriers with her velvety voice.

With the help of producer and engineer Jacquire King—whose diverse resumé includes work with Tom Waits, Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon—Jones crafts an atypical backdrop for her languorous voice, one full of rumbling bass, eerie background sounds, and distorted Wurlitzer pianos. There is also far more guitar than can usually be found on a Norah Jones album—much of it she plays herself, occasionally calling in ringers like Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel to paint with more abstract colours.

Thankfully, the makeover suits her well. And judging by the lyrical content, which is steeped in heartbreak and loss, it sounds like she needed at least a change of sonic scenery. Jones doesn’t wallow in her personal loss, and despite the prevailing melancholy mood, The Fall is not a dark record—instead, it’s colourful and alive with detail. Because Jones has always been a bit of a blank canvas as vocalist, even the most desolate lyric here is rich with empathy and reassurance.

It’s obviously her most personal album, it also wound up being her best. The Fall makes her earlier commercial breakthroughs seem like child’s play; hopefully, this marks the arrival of the real artist. (K-W Record, November 19)

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Lyle Lovett – Natural Forces (Universal)

After 23 years of heartbreaking country balladry and rollicking Western swing, Lyle Lovett is ready to rock’n’roll.

At least, that’s what we hear on the closing track of his new album, suitably titled “It’s Rock’n’Roll,” with a finger-tapping guitar riff, big power chords and a boogie-woogie rhythm underneath. Lovett’s trademark deadpan dry delivery suits the material perfectly, and the song itself manages to be much more than just the campy send-up it could have been.

Sadly, that’s the most animated Lovett manages to be on the whole of Natural Forces, which is the latest in a series of merely average albums from this once-great artist; only 2003’s My Baby Don’t Tolerate has managed to break that curse in the last 15 years. His wit, his narrative storytelling, and his sardonic eye for detail all seem to have evaporated; without those, Lovett is still a decent songwriter, but nowhere near the unique, captivating figure he once was.

Perhaps it’s unfair to saddle him with the weight of his past, but when he set the bar so high, so many times, it’s near impossible not to. (K-W Record, November 5)

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Pick a Piper – EP (independent)

Brad Weber has been touring the world for the last several years as a drummer with Dundas, Ontario’s Caribou. He is ostensibly the drummer in that band, but many Caribou tracks end up with every musician on stage hammering on a drum kit of their own. It sounds like Weber carries some of that aesthetic over to his new project, Pick a Piper, which is just as equally percussive and melodic, although considerably less intense than the multi-layered density that Caribou aims for. Weber likes to keep things sparse, whether he’s tapping ’60s psychedelia, ’90s lo-fi bedroom rock, or channelling a drum circle to interpret abstract electronica. Whatever the hell it is he’s up to, this is an incredibly promising beginning, and likely a rousing live show as well. (K-W Record, November 26)

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Dave Rawlings Machine – A Friend of a Friend (Acony)

It’s a perfect album title for a sideman stepping into the spotlight. Rawlings has written and performed with Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes and Robyn Hitchcock, but is best known as the long-time right-hand-man for Gillian Welch. She’s right by his side here, playing, singing and co-writing on this, his first solo album.

Fans of Welch won’t find anything drastically different here, although Rawlings is very much his own songwriter and less likely to sink into a lethargic lull, as even Welch’s finest albums tend to do. “It’s too easy to feel good,” he sings, over a driving fiddle and upright bass, and for the most part he keeps matters spirited. The exception is a brooding, unnecessary medley of Bright Eyes’ “Method Acting” and Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer,” which share similar chords but couldn’t be further apart lyrically.

Highlights include a resurrection of his co-write “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, To Be High),” first heard on Ryan Adams’s debut solo album, and the gorgeous closing number “Bells of Harlem,” which could well go on to be a standard.

Along with Buddy and Julie Miller’s excellent Written in Chalk, 2009 has been a good year for the sidemen to step forward. (K-W Record, November 19)

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Rupa and the April Fishes – Este Mundo (Cumbancha)

There’s something about this San Francisco band that’s too good to be true for public radio programmers or folk festival bookers: steeped in Parisian hot jazz and reggae, riddled with accordions, trombones, dumbeks and violins, and sung in French and Spanish, the music of Rupa and the April Fishes seems devised to push all the correct “world music” buttons for the café set. Yet they’re exceptionally good at it; bandleader and singer Rupa Marya strikes the right chord between torch song tragedy and hopeful optimism, while her lively band excel at delicate and spritely arrangements that may be musically nomadic, but don’t sound the least bit restless. This is a band who sound right at home in any corner of the world. (K-W Record, November 12)

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John Southworth – MamaTevatron (Dead Daisy)

Despite being a huge fan of his first two albums, both released about a decade ago (1998’s Mars, Pennyslvania and 1999’s Sedona, Arizona), I have to confess to having missed almost everything John Southworth has been up to since. I lost track around the time he was reinventing his old songs for a bluegrass band and performing in whiteface; his newer material at the time suggested that the terminal romantic was surrendering to not-so-clever wordplay in place of real emotion.

So having no idea what’s transpired since—other than some co-writing with old chum Hawksley Workman, and having songs covered by Sarah Slean and Jully Black—it’s a joy to hear Southworth in top form on MamaTevatron.

He’s back behind the keyboards—no guitars allowed here—with a distorted Rhodes driving most of the material by pounding out steady eighth notes, while his droll tenor spins sweet and sour and silly tales. Southworth’s sound is still impossible to pin down, other than to say it borrows from various eras from English music hall to ’80s new wave, with a bit of many a pop oddball from history in the mix—including even Prince’s paisley period. “Buffalo City Hall,” “Trust the Voice of Love,” and “I Get It Now” are some of the finest pop songs of the year, and even the weakest tracks here are incredibly catchy and clever.

On the closing track, “Zulou,” he enters enchanted territory, and even if the lyrics about “19th century dwarves” and holding “your egg and spoon as you walk across the moon” seem ridiculous, Southworth’s unexpected delivery pulls it off with aplomb.

Clearly, it’s time to start paying attention again. (K-W Record, November 12)

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Joss Stone – Colour Me Free (EMI)

At a ripe old 22, Joss Stone has four albums under her belt, but Colour Me Free is the first time she sounds in full control of her awesome vocal power: she’s not stretching to prove herself and nor is she trying to contain herself into a box. The title sounds like a cliché, but she does sound free here; even when the material is frequently lightweight, Stone owns this material, having matured into the kind of gospel/blues/soul singer that brings class and finesse to anything she touches. When she matches that with a strong original—which she does several times here (“Could’ve Been You,” the Stevie Wonder-ish “Parallel Lines”)—she’s unstoppable.

But if her vocal chops have always been there—emboldened now with years of valuable experience—the success of Colour Me Free is due just as much to her backing band, her collaborators and—most of all—her producers, who craft a sumptuous, swampy sound that gives Stone plenty of space to fill with her voice. The well-arranged, gospel-infused backing vocals sound like a real live trio of women singing in a room, not just clones of the lead; the pianos plink and the organs swirl around the sparse rhythm section; the strings are never syrupy. The cumulative effect goes for that late-’70s New York City soul sound that Alicia Keys frequently aims for but never quite gets. A guest appearance by Nas, on the politically lightweight “Governmentalist,” lends further weight to the album’s funkiest track.

For all its strengths, Stone isn’t quite at the stage where she can get away with a track called “Mr. Wanker Man” (it’s as bad as it sounds); the cover art is equally atrocious. Otherwise, this is the Stone we’ve been waiting for. (K-W Record, November 5)

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Them Crooked Vultures – s/t (Universal)

The first thing you hear from this supergroup is a song titled “No One Loves Me, Neither Do I.”

After hearing the rest of the disappointing debut album by Them Crooked Vultures—a band featuring Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and Nirvana’s Dave Grohl—the self-flagellating song title seems like less of a joke.

How could this possibly fail? Perhaps it has everything to do with singer Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, because no matter how good a band’s rhythm section is, their fate ultimately rests on their singer and songwriter. And instead of rising to the challenge in the presence of greatness, Homme sounds asleep at the wheel, like he’s trudging his way through Alice in Chains b-sides.

There are times when Grohl and Jones break a real sweat (“Reptiles,” “Elephants,” or the Cream-like “Scumbag Blues”), but even if you block Homme from the mix, this is still nowhere near as monstrous as it should be.

Them Crooked Vultures is an incredibly wasted opportunity. One wonders why they didn’t call Jack White—he’s always good for whipping together a side project on a moment’s notice. Too bad he was busy stealing another Queen of the Stone Age (guitarist Dean Fertita) for the debut of his far superior 2009 band The Dead Weather. (K-W Record, November 26)