June 2016 reviews

Highly recommended this month: Un Blonde, Fanfare Ciocarlia

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: Tragically Hip, Allen Toussaint, Paul Simon

Well worth your while: Brandy Clark, Doomsquad

As always, these reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please find a way to support your favourite artists financially.

Un Blonde – Good Will Come to You (Egg Paper)

Perhaps the most obscure artist to vault onto this year’s Polaris Music Prize long list, Jean-Sebastien Audet spent his teenage years in Calgary with a variety of musical projects, which is probably why the latest album by this 19-year-old and recent Montreal transplant sounds so accomplished, even though it’s incredibly bare, featuring little more than acoustic guitar and layers of Audet’s gospel-tinged harmonies. (For anyone, like me, who’s been seeking out Prince demos online since that legend’s death, Un Blonde has further resonance.) One song is called “I Felt the Evening Come Through the Window,” and indeed, Audet retains the sound of falling rain outside his apartment, along with seagulls and other ambient noise. Audet isn’t just a singer-songwriter fond of sparse arrangements; on instrumental tracks like “Exercise A,” he also explores ambient textures (with what’s either a melodica, accordion or harmonium—hard to tell). Good Will Come to You features 21 songs in 46 minutes; tiny perfect sketches that speak volumes about the man’s talent. (June 9)

Stream: “Celebration,” “Brand New,” “Staying in Line”

case/lang/veirs – s/t (Anti)

The first time I ever heard Neko Case, I hadn’t been that electrified by a North American woman’s singing voice since k.d. lang. Twenty years later, the two women have formed a trio with Oregon singer/songwriter Laura Veirs. It sounds amazing—on paper. 

Both lang and Case are powerhouse vocalists who can leave listeners—at least this one—in a weepy mess. Veirs—well, frankly, it’s a bit of a mystery what she’s doing here. (I’m sure she’s a lovely person.) She doesn’t distract from the potential in this recording—she’s certainly a decent singer—but it’s not clear that she adds anything, either.

It starts out with a promise: opening track “Atomic Number” finds all three women trading off lines. That promise quickly evaporates: most tracks are solo turns, with the other two providing backing vocals, the likes of which could really have been performed by any studio professionals (admittedly, a rare occurrence in the age of solo artists multi-tracking their own backups). We’re denied the sublime pleasure of Case and lang exchanging lines, or even singing a lead in two-part harmony.

Much of the collaboration here took place in the songwriting process, which might be the problem: for the last 20 years, k.d. lang has been a masterful interpreter but a middling songwriter; Veirs is perfunctory, but not capable of writing material for a project like this; Case, the strongest songwriter of the three, has an idiosyncratic flair that may not lend itself to surrender. Veirs’s husband, producer/engineer Tucker Martine, dresses up the material in impeccably bland arrangements, with strings and woodwinds and vibraphones that merely clutter up the sonic space that should be left wide open for these voices to roam.

Naturally, there are sublime moments, starting with lang’s

“Honey and Smoke,” which ranks as one of her finest torch songs in the Roy Orbison mode. Case’s “Delirium”—written by all three, an apparently the song with the longest gestation—is the highlight here. Neither are enough, however, to compensate for the squandered potential here. Let’s hope the tour brings out the best in them. (June 23)

Case/lang/veirs play Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on Aug. 16.

Stream: “Atomic Number,” “Delirium,” “Honey and Smoke”

Brandy Clark – Big Day in a Small Town (Warner)

Still have tears in your beer since ABC cancelled Nashville? Well, cheer up, because there’s a new Brandy Clark album. The 40-year-old songwriter, who’d penned hits for or with Miranda Lambert, Reba McEntire and Kacey Musgraves, was thrust into the spotlight with 2013’s 12 Stories, the kind of album songwriters of every genre study carefully, full of both killer one-liners, developed narratives and astute character sketches.

Here, Clark steps up into the big time, with a major label and a producer, Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Carrie Underwood) who beefs up her (previously predominantly acoustic) sound for radio play. Thankfully, it’s not an unrecognizable makeover: the core of Clark’s charm and songcraft remain. She can be incredibly poignant, as on the examination of faded youth on “Homecoming Queen,” or laugh-out-loud funny, on “Broke”: “Ain’t enough apples for our apple pie / if we had a penny not sure we could spare it / we’re sitting on the porch drinking generic  / Coke / we’re broke.” And she’s got sass to spare, as on the first single, in which she taunts, “If you want the girl next door, go next door.” (June 9)

Stream: “Girl Next Door,” “Broke,” “Homecoming Queen”

Doomsquad – Total Time (Hand Drawn Dracula)

Granted, there are moments here that sound like the soundtrack to a ritual sacrifice at a rave somewhere north of Sudbury. But when it comes to spookier-than-thou psychedelic trance music, it doesn’t get much better than these three Toronto siblings, who recruited Mary Margaret O’Hara to sing backups for them, and whom Wolf Parade picked to open their sold-out reunion shows in New York City. There are elements of dub reggae, hippie jams, plenty of goth angst, and you can practically smell the incense coming out your speakers. It’s certainly divisive, but to these ears, it’s just perfect for summer nights in subversive times. (June 2)

Stream: “Who Owns Noon in Sandusky,” “Pyramids on Mars,” “Farmer’s Almanac”

Fanfare Ciocarlia – Onwards to Mars! (Asphalt Tango)

Did you know one of the best bands in the world is playing the Italian Canadian Centre in Guelph this week? And Maxwell’s in Waterloo shortly after that? (And the major jazz festivals in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City as well.)

Fanfare Ciocarlia are a Balkan brass band from a remote Romanian village, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. In 2014 they recorded an album with Guelph guitarist Adrian Raso, owner of the Little Shop of Guitars on Quebec Street. They’ve already toured in Europe; now they’re finally bringing it to major jazz festivals in Canada—and a local wedding hall in Guelph.

Here they’re on their own, doing what they do best: incredibly fast and brash brass lines, frenetic rhythm driven by sousaphones and two percussionists, and occasional vocal forays sung in their Roma language. It’s physically impossible not to dance to this music, the dizzying horn and clarinet lines adding to the euphoria.

The band’s style has evolved over the years, and not just through their work with Raso. Here, the oddball pop entry is a cover of the 1950s slow-grinding classic “I Put a Spell on You,” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Here it’s sung by Iulian Canaf, a comically histrionic soulman who attained notoriety as a contestant on the Romanian version of TV’s The Voice. It has to be heard to be believed—though, truth be told, the original is just as much of an oddball, (literally) snortin’ good time. (June 23)

Fanfare Ciocarlia and Adrian Raso are playing Toronto with the Lemon Bucket Orchestra on June 29 at the Opera House, the Guelph Italian Canadian Club on July 2, and at Maxwell's in Waterloo on July 5.

Stream: “Crayfish Hora,” “Out to Lounge,” “Mista Lobaloba”

The Kills – Ash and Ice (Domino/Outside)

The Kills are a bluesy guitar duo who’ve survived and thrived almost 15 years after forming, with much credit going to attention magnet Alison Mosshart—who also fronts perhaps the finest of all Jack White projects, the Dead Weather. Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince claim they wanted to flip the script on this, their fifth album, and even cited hip-hop master Pusha T as a big influence. Which is an interesting ploy to convince people that Ash and Ice is some radical reinvention, when in fact it’s just another Kills record, no better or worse, with slightly more interesting drum programming. It may not be fair to compare, but Mosshart is much better utilized in the Dead Weather, where her howls and snarls and sexual energy is completely captivating; in the Kills, one always gets the sense she’s underplaying her power. That does allow her to sink her teeth into some of the slower material, exploring the torch singer into which she’ll inevitably evolve some day. (June 9)

Stream: “Doing It to Death,” “Hard Habit to Break,” “Days of Why and How”

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity (ATO)

A nonagon, for the geometrically challenged among us (I looked it up), is a nine-sided figure. This is the eighth album by this seven-piece Australian band in the last four years. All those numbers add up to: infinity?

That’s the intention behind these nine rollicking psychedelic rock songs, which not only flow seamlessly into each other like a 42-minute suite, but the last track also flows back into the first if you (are weird enough to) leave your player on “repeat.” That journey often travels at a breakneck speed, with influences from Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” through Deep Purple and Can and Iron Maiden and Stereolab—basically, any band that’s ever strapped themselves to a runaway train. Nonagon Infinity is more than just a thrill ride, however, with a keen sense of dynamics, spacey keyboards and guitar textures balancing the hard-driving riffs and rhythms. (June 9)

Stream: “Evil Death Roll,” “Road Train,” “Robot Stop”

Pantha du Prince – The Triad (Rough Trade)

I played this record in a cabin in the woods one morning, surrounded by a symphony of birds—who fit in seamlessly with the stuttering bells and chimes that have become the trademark sound for this German producer. His rhythms have much more swing in them than you’d expect from minimal techno, and he’s more prone to using major chords than most of his peers. This time out there are more vocalists employed, though not to particularly great effect; his keyboard leads are still the main melodic driver.

The producer has mused that he’ll bury the name after this album, having achieved everything he wants to with this aesthetic. The Triad isn’t as strong as its predecessor, Black Noise—he’s starting to sound like a one-trick pony—so perhaps that decision is wise. In the meantime, the birds in my neighbourhood are more than happy to sing along. (June 2)

Stream: “The Winter Hymn” feat. Queens, “Frau im mond, Sterne laufen,” “Dream Yourself Awake”

Samaris – Black Lights (One Little Indian)

Of Monsters and Men have shifted our perceptions of Icelandic music away from esoteric electronica, avant-garde pop stars and whatever it is Sigur Ros happens to be, and toward catchy yet bland radio rock. Which is why it’s refreshing to encounter Samaris, a Reykjavik trio that draws from ’90s trip hop, dubby electronica and the (relatively) more recent sounds coming from London’s Hyperdub label, including Hamilton’s Jessy Lanza. Breathy female vocals and strong, skittering beats—even at slower tempos—are adorned with equally dreamy and disquieting synths, making for languid, late-night vibes. (June 30)

Stream: “Wanted 2 Say,” “Black Lights,” “3y3”

Sate – Red Black and Blue (independent)

Canada has no shortage of rock bands. What this country is lacking, however, is fantastic rock singers: people who can grab a song by the throat, who can be heard above electric guitars even without a microphone. More howlers, fewer growlers, please.

Enter Sate, a.k.a. Saidah Baba Talibah—daughter of Salome Bey, one of this country’s greatest R&B/jazz voices in the ’70s and ’80s—reinventing herself as a rocker here, after starting her career in a bluesier vein. The blues is still present here, but on opening track “Warrior” she goes for the jugular in ways the Toronto scene probably hasn’t seen since Danko Jones. “You’re gonna know my name / from the Mississippi to the Rhine,” she boasts—and by the end of the track you’re more than inclined to agree. As strong as that song is, in the context of the album it seems like a gimmick to get you to pay attention. Once she’s got you hooked, Sate starts to get serious: right away she delves into the blues of “What Did I Do,” and “Mama Talk to Me” is a poignant, emotional rocker about Bey’s struggles with dementia. For all her fiery delivery, the upbeat tracks here suffer in comparison with the slower numbers, especially the gorgeous, gospel-tinged closer, “Peace.” Red Black and Blue is an uneven record by an artist searching for her sound, but there’s no denying that Sate is a force to be reckoned with. Her talent is too enormous to be denied. (June 30)

Stream: “Warrior,” “Mama Talk to Me,” “Peace”

Andy Shauf – The Party (Arts and Crafts)

One of the most anticipated Canadian albums of the year is by this mild-mannered Regina singer/songwriter, who steps into the big time by signing with Arts and Crafts in Canada and Anti in the U.S., the label that is also home to the new album by k.d. lang, Neko Case and Laura Veirs, with whom Shauf will be touring this summer. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy is a huge fan, as is novelist Nick Hornby. The hype seems strange for songs of such subtle pleasures; Shauf is on the same wavelength as Beck’s acoustic moods, or Elliott Smith, an early influence. And he’s chosen as his coming-out party a concept album of sorts, connected songs set at a house party, a series of character sketches that highlight Shauf’s eye for nuance. The playing and production are impeccable—all Shauf solo, except for the strings—though Shauf’s sedated vocals drag some of the material down; The Party in question is more than a bit of a bummer. No matter. This record puts plenty of wind in his sails; the after-party promises to be a lot more exciting. (June 2)

Stream: “The Magician,” “To You,” “Martha Sways”

Tegan and Sara – Love You to Death (Universal)

It’s heartening that an act like Tegan and Sara get bigger and bigger with each album—rare in the chart-pop sphere they no longer aspire to, but to which these 36-year-old sisters rightfully belong. Working again with producer Greg Kurstin (Adele), who helmed 2013’s Heartbeat, Tegan and Sara aim for stadiums and come up with a gold rush of hooks and radio-ready melodies—granted, few with the undeniable punch of Hearbeat’s “Closer” or “I Was a Fool,” which would be hard to top. “Boyfriend,” however, is unusually lyrically rich bubblegum, a lesbian love song that will forever erase the memory of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” (June 9)

Stream: “Boyfriend,” “Dying to Know,” “100x”

Pre-Polaris, day four: Tegan and Sara, A Tribe Called Red, Lee Harvey Osmond, Corb Lund

The fourth installment of our pre-Polaris Prize countdown; parts one and two and three ran earlier. Two shortlisted albums and two albums that should’ve made it.

The shortlisted:

Tegan and Sara – Heartthrob (Universal)

The album:

This is one of only two shortlisted acts in Polaris history I’ve ever heard in a grocery store (the other was Ron Sexsmith). Small wonder why: Tegan and Sara embrace the big gestures necessary to move the masses, and never more so than on this blatant bid for pop supremacy.

It works. They started their career when they were still teenagers, and though they’re now 33, they still tap into that time of giddy hormones and high drama, which is an even better match for the techno pop for which they’ve traded in their earnest power pop.

But just because the clothes fit, do they look good? I’d love it if this album rose to the level of Robyn or Lady Gaga, which it obviously aspires to, but at best they deliver four decent songs (“Drove Me Wild,” “Closer,” “I’m Not Your Hero” and “How Come You Don’t Want Me”). Heartthrob is a pleasant pop record; by no means is it a great one. At least their last album, the similarly shortlisted So Tough, managed to give me an appreciation for them I’d never had before.

The chances:

Again, this is the hardest Polaris year to decipher: it’s about comparing apples to oranges to chick peas to steak tartare. How could you possibly assess the merits of Tegan and Sara versus those of A Tribe Called Red? Only Metric bears any remote stylistic resemblance to Tegan and Sara, and my gut tells me this is not the year for either artist.

A Tribe Called Red – Nation II Nation (Pirates Blend)

The album:

From my review in May 2013:

Idle No More isn’t just a political movement. Thanks to this Ottawa DJ crew, it’s a musical one, too. Though Native hip-hop has had its own healthy scene for at least the last 15 years, merging Aboriginal rhythms and voices to a pulsing techno beat hasn’t been done as successfully, if at all—and it’s certainly never reached the kind of audience that this DJ crew is doing. A Tribe Called Red has transformed their popular Ottawa club gig into a national, nay international, phenomenon.

Part of the appeal, of course, is hearing what may be one of the last “exotic” cultures to be plundered in the name of globalized dance culture, but if that was the beginning and end of this crew’s appeal, their story would be over by now. Instead, their second album (or first, if you don’t count their free-download debut recording, which was long-listed for the Polaris Prize) is brimming with beats designed to excite and send crowds into a frenzy; the one track without Aboriginal vocals, “Sweet Milk Pop,” is squiggly, sweaty and built for Berlin or Brazil more than Brantford. But it is the vocals that make this more than just another solid dance record and a vital cultural document of a time and place in North American Aboriginal culture. They are joyous, furious and inspired, full of the raw sound of community, trapped inside synthetic machines and yet rising above them to find strength and power.

The chances:

Strong. A Tribe Called Red have a lot of momentum, both musically and politically. Naysayers will say they’re working some kind of “gimmick” in the same way that Stetson is—electro beats with Native voices!—but that’s an insult to their inherent talent: these tracks would be just as compelling even if the Native voices weren’t on top. They’ve come a long way since their long-listed debut mixtape; Nation II Nation is as strong as anything by Caribou or Holy Fuck or any other critically lauded electronic act you care to name.

On top of that, there is the unspoken but inherent political message here. Granted, it’s vague, or at least as vague as Idle No More, but ultimately it’s about using modern technology to give voice and visibility to an invisible, ancient culture—and inviting all parties to the dance. It’s impossible to listen to Nation II Nation and not think about that, which gives it a weight most dance records simply don’t have.

What Polaris jurors are not supposed to think about, of course, is what it will “mean” if Artist X wins. Because the prize has yet to pass its first decade, there is still lots of chatter about what has and hasn’t been reflected in the winners’ circle. There’s certainly never been an Aboriginal winner before, and because Caribou’s Andorra is arguably more of a pop record than an EDM one, this would be the first techno winner as well. (And the first Ottawa winner, for what that’s worth.) If jurors are even thinking about these things subconsciously, this could definitely come out on top.

What would A Tribe Called Red win mean? Nothing really, of course: Polaris is a parlour game. But because we’ll be told that this is the biggest thing to happen to Aboriginal music in Canada since Kashtin, it will therefore be true.

The could’ve/should’ve beens:

Lee Harvey Osmond – The Folk Sinner (Latent)

The album:

From my January 2013 review:

Tom Wilson, of Junkhouse and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, has been a mainstay in Canadian music for more than 20 years—a career, he often jokes, that has earned him “tens of dollars” over that time. And yet ever since he reinvented himself as Lee Harvey Osmond in 2009, it sounds like he’s just hitting his stride now. This is where he teams up with the Cowboy Junkies’ Michael Timmins, and together they set Wilson’s haunting baritone and bluesy songs to spare and spooky goth-folk arrangements centred around chugging, droning guitars and a healthy dose of rockabilly reverb.

Guest stars lend a hand: Hawksley Workman’s lovely falsetto on “Break Your Body,” a duet with Oh Susanna on “Big Chief,” the haunting harmonica of Paul Reddick, and the unmistakable harmony presence of Margo Timmins. As producer, Michael Timmins is careful never to crowd a song: all extraneous elements—and plenty of excellent electric guitars, courtesy of Colin Cripps, Colin Linden and Timmins—hover around the atmosphere, leaving the focus on the spare rhythms and Wilson’s commanding, though subtle, presence.

It’s Canadiana cottage-country weirdness at its finest, as well as a fine album by two guys who’ve wanted to be wise, old ragged veterans ever since they were 25 years old. Now that they are, they have even more to offer than they did in their supposed prime.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist:

Polaris: No country for old men.

Corb Lund – Cabin Fever (New West)

The album:

Speaking of country and old men, Corb Lund is now as much of the Albertan cultural fabric as Ian Tyson (with whom he’s touring this fall, by the way). He’s a staple at the Stampede, and there’s even a Corb Lund tribute band in Calgary. Cabin Fever is his eighth album, and perhaps his best.

My review from August 2012:

It’s not an accident that storyteller Corb Lund opens his new album with a post-peak-oil apocalyptical scenario where “when the oil stops, everything stops,” with talk of “a rip in the social fabric” and rural retreat as the only salvation from a world about to go to hell.

On the surface, the rest of Cabin Fever is a collection of largely light-hearted songs about how “everything is much better with cows around,” and how “you ain’t a cowboy if you ain’t been bucked off.” But the characters here are all dealing, in their own way, with societal collapse, with escape and resilience, with history catching up with them. Even “Bible on the Dash,” a duet with Hayes Carll—about travelling musicians deceiving border patrols by claiming to “play Christian music, sir!”—is set in a theocratic country where religious allegiance is used as a barometer to suss out suspicion.

It is Lund’s gift that he has always successfully shattered stereotypes of simplistic country music, or of well-read urbanites being out of touch with rural reality. His short stories set to music have always straddled both worlds—Lund was raised in rural Alberta and spent 22 years in the liberal enclave of Edmonton—which is why he can write a song like “September” so successfully, in which the narrator laments losing his love to the glamour and charm of New York City, knowing that even the splendour of his back quarter in the Rocky Mountains can’t compete with the Big Apple. There’s no us vs. them, red-state/blue-state B.S. here, just pathos and empathy and regret—and respect.

If Lund gives you plenty to read into his music, he’s also brilliant at simple surface pleasures. Every song here is a country music classic, full of twang, swing, rowdy rock’n’roll and heartbreaking balladry. Lund’s pulled this off twice before: on 2003’s Five Dollar Bill, and 2007’s Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier!, with plenty of other worthy material scattered across his other albums; Cabin Fever is undoubtedly Lund at the top of his game. He may be a poet laureate of the Canadian Prairies, but he’s simply one of the best songwriters working today, anywhere, in any genre.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist:

Several reasons. Any guy with eight albums to his name who hasn’t significantly changed his M.O. is at a disadvantage when picking albums that captured the zeitgeist in the last 12 months—although, as I argue above, Lund is nothing if not topical. But I’ll concede that yes, musically, nothing’s changed. Nor should it: Lund is a master at what he does, and he’s got a crack band.

Regionalism, such a strength of Lund’s lyrics, plays against him in this arena. People I know from Alberta take Lund for granted; he’s so ubiquitous on the radio that they find it hard to get excited by him anymore (think: The Tragically Hip and Ontario). And people not from Alberta don’t seem to have much time for a country artist with such a mainstream sound—though I’d love it if mainstream country music actually sounded like Corb Lund. Why Ontarians get all hot and bothered about the likes of Daniel Romano, I’ll never understand.

Finally, the country/folk vote was seriously split this year, between Lund, Lee Harvey Osmond, Evening Hymns, Les Souers Boulay, Old Man Luedecke, Lindi Ortega, Daniel Romano, Al Tuck and Whitehorse. Only the latter came out on top.