Highly recommended this month: Adrian Raso with Fanfare
Ciocarlia
Worth your while: Wet Secrets, Sam Roberts, Freedom Writers, New
Mendicants
These reviews appeared in the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury
earlier this month.
Beck – Morning Phase (Capitol)
Apparently Morning Phase involves not having yet left the bed.
Beck’s first album in six years (and first good one in almost 10) finds him
struggling to find his own pulse. The sluggish tempos aren’t the problem; his
2002 album Sea Change was a full-on bummer of a record, albeit beautiful, and
containing some of his finest songs. Morning Phase, on the other hand, is Beck
at his most marble-mouthed, surrounded by amazing studio musicians who are
called upon to do—well, not much of anything. The not-terribly-originally
titled "Blue Moon" conjures some pleasant Pet Sounds moments, but it stands out
from the rest of this pack merely because it’s remotely interesting psychedelic
folk. Sad-ass strings milk the melancholy for all its worth, but come off as
the emotionally manipulative soundtrack to a 10-hanky tearjerker rather than a
worthy successor to Nick Drake, which appears to be the mood Beck is after
here. By the time he gets to a song called “Turn Away,” I’m ready to take his
advice. Especially during the same week that new records by Neneh Cherry and
St. Vincent show up. (Feb. 27)
Download: “Blue Moon,” “Say Goodbye,” “Turn Away”
Broken Bells – After the Disco (Columbia)
Broken Bells is James Mercer of the Shins and Danger Mouse
of—well, of a lot of your favourite records of the last 10 years (Gnarls
Barkley, Black Keys, Gorillaz). They’re talented men. Their attention to minute
sonic detail is impeccable. They both know a thing or two about songwriting.
But you knew that already.
What’s striking about the second Broken Bells album is how
almost exactly half the album is inspired, engaging and brilliant—and then the
other half sounds like they kind of gave up. When it succeeds, After the Disco
marries delicate acoustic guitars with electronics, string sections, drum
machines and—surprisingly—bass lines driving the instrumentation, whether it’s
a disco song, a ballad, an obvious Bee Gees homage (“Holding On For Life”) or
something in between. When it flops, it sounds like a lot of fancy toys and no
one to play them. (Feb. 6)
Download: “After the Disco,” “Perfect World,” “Holding On For
Life”
Egyptrixx – A/B Til Infinity (Night Slugs)
You can practically hear the dripping neon. Toronto producer
David Psutka, aka Egyptrixx, creates industrial, ambient electronic music that
reeks of ’80s futurism. It’s a few small steps from Vangelis’s Blade Runner
score, ominous and eerie and existing in a suspended state: Psutka resists
throwing a thumping bass drum beneath these tracks. Indeed, there’s very little
bass at all, just a lot of sounds from an archaic ’80s Roland DX7 synthesizer,
including the cheesy yet haunting digital choir patch. Psutka was collaborating
with a visual artist in Berlin while making this record; the artist works with
fluorescent lights, images of Martian landscapes and what looks like molten
lava. The music here is equally amorphous, melodic yet ephemeral—and as lovely
as it is downright creepy. (Feb. 20)
Download: “Disorbital,” “Water,” “Alta Civilization”
Neil Finn – Dizzy Heights (Lester)
The Crowded House bandleader keeps himself busy with plenty of
projects—with his brother and Split Enz bandmate Tim in the Finn Brothers, with
his wife in Pajama Club, and with a reformed Crowded House—so this is only the
third solo release in his storied career. Here, he turns to modern psychedelic
wizard Dave Fridmann, the sonic architect behind the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev,
Tame Impala and MGMT, to immerse the Beatlesque songwriter in rich soundscapes.
On paper, it sounds like a perfect match. But Finn’s songwriting
skills haven’t aged well—nothing he’s done since Crowded House’s heyday,
including the band’s two reunion discs, holds up to those first four albums.
Fridmann and Finn share production credit, so hopefully not all the good ideas
here are Fridmann’s, but it might sound that way to any Flaming Lips fan.
Especially when Finn tries on an ill-fitting falsetto, ala the Lips’ Wayne
Coyne, on "Divebomber"; he fares much better in brothers Gibb territory
on "Recluse." (The Bee Gees are clearly on a comeback in the zeitgeist. See also:
the new Broken Bells album.)
If you dive in not expecting the quality of songcraft on which
Finn made his name, it’s a decent collection of adult pop. But it feels like
Fridmann could have made this record with anyone. (Feb. 20)
Download: “Recluse,” “Flying in the Face of Love,” “White Lies
and Alibis”
Freedom Writers – Now (independent)
The list of great Canadian hip-hop records is too short; the
list of great Canadian political hip-hop records is minuscule, if it exists at
all. The Freedom Writers may not have much competition, but even if they did,
this record would be sure to come out on top.
This is a collective of Toronto MCs—Tona, Adam Bomb, Frankie
Payne, Theo 3 and Progress, with occasional guest Mathematik— and producer Big
Sproxx, who set pointed critiques and manifestos to music: “I make red, black
and green face-mask music / I make First Nation genocide retribution music /
Nat Turner, slave revolt / Rakim, Paid in Full.” Aside from the potent language
and expected swipes at more lightweight hip-hop (“I see you making hella hits
but you should rebel a bit”), Freedom Writers dig deeper—unlike most political
posturers, you get the impression these guys *actually read newspapers*: “Water
levels rise / hire more cops / Lord of the Flies / Piggy’s on top / A wolf in
disguise eats from the flock / The revolution is televised / See it on Fox.”
Not to suggest they’re po-faced sourpusses. Big Sproxx packs his
tracks with big, brassy samples, some serious scratching skills, and the five
MCs have a winning chemistry that’s all too rare these days, when hip-hop
groups are an endangered species and guest MCs phone in their cameos. They’re
also not exclusively political; there’s a much broader emotional spectrum here
than that, but that’s when they pack their biggest punches. (Feb. 6)
Download: “Separation,” “Never Give Up,” “Arizona Bay”
Fresh Snow – I (Reel Cod)
This instrumental Toronto quartet wanted to make an album
inspired by the ’70s German experimental group Neu!, by recording a long jam
session shortly after the band formed. So many ideas came out of that one
session that engineer Tim Condon and guitarist Brad Davis slowly assembled the various
motifs and sounds in the studio and sculpted them into actual songs, inviting
string and wind players to enhance the melodic elements while allowing squalls
of feedback and droning keyboards to inject chaos into the creation. And so
this debut album by a noisy, experimental improv act is surprisingly polished.
If they can extract this much from one six-hour jam, their future looks
promising indeed. (Feb. 20)
Download: "Helix Pass," "Your Thirst For Magic Has Been Quenched By
Death!," "To a Sea"
The New Mendicants – s/t (Ashmont)
Joe Pernice, Norman Blake and Mike Belitsky have formed a new
group. To most people, this is not only not news, the names don’t even
register. All are members of underappreciated bands of the last two decades:
Pernice with the alt-country act the Scud Mountain Boys and folk-pop Pernice
Brothers, Blake with the Scottish power-pop veterans Teenage Fanclub. Only
drummer Belitsky, as the drummer in the venerable and ubiquitous Ontario
favourites the Sadies, might look familiar.
Both Pernice, a Boston native, and Blake moved to Ontario for
love. They recently became neighbours in Toronto, around the corner from
Belitsky. (Until recently, Blake had been living in Kitchener.) Within minutes
of their first kitchen session, the story goes, Pernice and Blake were booking
recording dates. No wonder: their voices blend beautifully together.
Comparisons to the Byrds are inevitable, but not made lightly; Pernice and
Blake hit that sweet spot between English folk and California pop that few bands
since the Byrds have pulled off. The music is consistently lovely; the lyrics,
however, are not nearly as sunny. “You look so young at the ledge on the edge
of December” doesn’t lend itself to sing-alongs on a summer day with a warm
breeze. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Blake is on a roll, even though Teenage Fanclub’s output has
slowed to a trickle. His last album, released in 2011 under the name Jonny, was
another collaborative effort, with Euros Childs of Welsh pop weirdos Gorky’s
Zygotic Mynci. It wasn’t that far removed from this album. Maybe Pernice and
Blake should invite Childs into this fold to flesh out the live harmonies, and
make him a Mendicant next time around. There can never be too much of a good
thing. (Feb.
13)
Download: “Cruel Annette,” “Shouting Match,” “Out of the Lime”
No - El Prado (Arts and Crafts)
For everyone who’s ever hated the band Yes, here comes hot new
L.A. band No!
But seriously, folks, for everyone who wishes The National would
release two new albums in the space of 12 months, here comes hot new L.A. band
No. With a baritone singer and a flair for dark drama set to stadium-size
alt-rock anthems, No seem tailor-made for the modern zeitgeist. That’s not
their fault. They do it very well—arguably better than The National themselves;
they’re certainly less narcoleptic. They should soak it up while they can. But
stop them if you’ve heard all their songs before. (Feb. 20)
Download: “Monday,” “Leave the Door Wide Open,” “What’s Your
Name”
Adrian Raso and Fanfare Ciocarlia – Devil’s Tale (Asphalt Tango)
I’ll admit: it’s been a while since I’ve lived in Guelph. When I
was there, I knew Adrian Raso only as the guitar teacher at Guelph Music, whose
fiery fingers were mostly put to work on wailing heavy metal leads (which he
still does, with his rock band the Big Idea). Not my bag. What I didn’t know
was that his career had blossomed to the point where he’s collaborated with
Prince percussionist Sheila E. and members of the Stray Cats and Extreme. More
important, I had no idea he had an acoustic side of him that revered Django
Reinhardt’s style of gypsy jazz.
It’s that pursuit that led to this collaboration with arguably
the best Balkan brass band in the world, the 12-piece Fanfare Ciocarlia, who
hail from a remote region of Romania. They specialize in a blistering,
relentless tempos and virtuosic display. It’s hard to imagine them taking a
back seat to anyone, never mind a Guelph guitar teacher. It’s just as hard to
imagine Raso carving out a space for himself amidst Fanfare Ciocarlia, who have
played together for decades.
And yet: both camps meet here as complementary equals. Neither
is here to upstage the other. Even though Raso’s fingerwork can match the brass
players 16th note for 16th note, more importance is
placed here on the actual songs and group dynamic. We know these people are all
incredible; they don’t feel they have to prove it in every phrase. On the track
“Spiritissimo,” Raso even makes room for another guitar hero, Rodrigo Sanchez,
of Rodrigo y Gabriela, with whom he shares a similar love of metal shredding
and flamenco.
Now: can someone help Raso bring Fanfare Ciocarlia to the Guelph
Jazz Festival this fall? If so, that town will never be the same. (Feb. 6)
Download: “Quatro Cicci,” “Devil’s Tale,” “Spiritissimo”
Sam Roberts – Lo-Fantasy (Universal)
Sam Roberts’s breakthrough 2002 single, “Brother Down,” owed as
much of its success to its stripped down, percussive arrangement as it did to
its singalong hook. Roberts and his band subsequently turned toward less
imaginative guitar rock, but their last release, 2011’s Collider, displayed an
Afrobeat influence and more emphasis on rhythm.
Here, Roberts gets all groovy on us. Opening track “Shapeshifters”
sounds like INXS on a good day; the second track, “We’re All In This Together,”
recalls the Stone Roses, of all people, the 1990 sensation that hyperbolic
Brits will still try and convince you redefined rock and dance music forever.
(They did not.) On hand to help is British producer Youth (Killing Joke, The
Verve, Paul McCartney), who told Roberts to stop clinging to ideas hashed out
on his home demos; everything was ripped up and put back together in the
studio, and it’s no doubt a stronger record because of it. In the midst of that
creative chaos, his band never relies on lazy rock arrangements. I don’t know
what they’ve all been up to in the past three years, but they’ve become
versatile studio sidemen, the likes of which Daft Punk could call to take on
the road with them. They’re now much more than a dime-a-dozen Canadian bar
band.
Of course, Roberts is not the only Montreal rock artist to be
found on the dance floor lately, and there are moments here that wouldn’t be
out of place on Arcade Fire’s Reflektor. If anything, Roberts has taken the
rousing anthems of Funeral and set them to a Reflektor beat in ways that even
Arcade Fire themselves don’t entirely pull off. Most importantly, he’s come up
with 11 tracks that comprise the best album of his career, all but guaranteed
to dominate pop radio in 2014 and be road-tested in time for summer festival
season. (Feb. 13)
Download: “Metal Skin,” “Human Heat,” “Too Far”
Warpaint – s/t (Rough Trade)
It’s February. Valentine’s Day. It’s cold and miserable outside.
Maybe you’re lonely. What do you need? Something that sounds like Warpaint. But
not necessarily Warpaint.
Warpaint are four ladies from L.A. who were formed—on
Valentine’s Day, actually—10 years ago. They’ve toured with The XX, worked with
Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, and this, their second album
and first for a large indie, was produced by Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails) and
mixed by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck). While it’s—obviously—well-produced,
Warpaint still sound embryonic. Granted, it’s abstract, delicate music, and
owes more than a few debts to early Cat Power.
Warpaint are not great players, with the exception of drummer
Stella Mozgawa, who anchors most of the more airy moments here. They
effectively conjure atmosphere and texture, and when they gel, it’s seductive
and satisfying (and reminiscent of the early ’90s Golden Palominos albums
featuring Lori Carson, if that means anything to you). Over the course of the
entire record, however, they sound not just lethargic—nothing wrong with
that—but lazy. There’s a lot to love here, but not nearly enough to make you
want to get out of bed. (Feb. 6)
Download: “Love is To Die,” “Disco // very,” “Son”
The Wet Secrets – Free Candy (Rawlco)
The Wet Secrets are a band from Edmonton who wear marching-band
outfits, boast a mean horn section, and were favourites on CBC Radio 3 way back
in 2007 with snotty pop-punk anthems like “Get Your Own Apartment” and “Grow
Your Own F--king Moustache.” Seven years later, bandleader Lyle Bell is sober,
less snarky and taking the group as seriously as you can take a band called the
Wet Secrets. The outfits are still there, but the horns take a back seat to
spacey keyboards, female backing vocals and fuzzed out guitars. Atypical for
the genre, the lyrics are hardly flippant or flaccid: “I’ve seen the fire in
the eyes of the darkest souls who own the night,” starts one song. The peppy “Sunshine”
has a chorus that goes, “I want to die in the sunshine in the city.” Bell is
experienced enough not to tolerate any ramshackle sloppiness: every drum fill
and organ chord is carefully placed, without sacrificing any rock’n’roll
energy. The result is one of the finest garage rock records to come out of this
country in recent years. (Feb. 13)
Download: “Nightlife,” “Animals in Disguise,” “Death of the
Party”
