July '11 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury this month.

The Abrams Brothers - Northern Redemption (Fontana)

These three prodigies from eastern Ontario have long been on Canadian country music’s “most-promising” list: they were the youngest Canadian group to ever play the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, they’ve had hits on CMT, and they’re road warriors before they’ve even turned 20. This is their fourth album, but the first two are out of print; for all intents and purposes, Northern Redemption will be their introduction to a much wider audience. And they’re more than ready for their close-up.

That they are accomplished players is a given: they were raised in a bluegrass family, and that music community embraced them early on. They’re also well-schooled in classic Nashville harmonies, and more than a few times here they sound like the Byrds. But producer Chris Brown (of Chris Brown and Kate Fenner fame, not the R&B star) took the band under his wing, introduced them to members of Broken Social Scene and a bevy of New York City session musicians, and so now they’ve moved into more of a rock direction, embracing electric guitars while still punctuating the driving rhythms with stabs of fiddle.

Most importantly, the songs establish the Abrams Brothers as songwriters: even though there are three covers here—Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” (somewhat gimmicky), Big Star’s “Thirteen” (impossible to screw up), and Brown’s “While You Sleep” (an underrated Canadian classic)—the original songs all sound like modern country classics, and prove that this trio is much more than three young, pretty pickers. (July 7)

Download: “Window,” “Nothing at All,” “Thirteen”

Archers of Loaf – Icky Mettle (Merge)

Archers of Loaf was a band of a time and place, a band that helped define American indie rock in the ’90s, a band that was the soundtrack for righteous twentysomethings searching for a confident voice peering through waves of guitar feedback. Though Archers of Loaf didn’t reach larger audiences in the way that their peers in Pavement or Superchunk did—the closest they got to mainstream success was being hand-picked by Weezer to open a tour—their fans cherished their little-known secret and often wore that obscurity as a point of pride. Sure, every smirking hipster had some Guided by Voices records—but did you know about the Loaf?

Eric Bachmann’s lyrics reinforced the insularity, the rejection, the acceptance, the boredom, the passive aggression and the outright aggression of the college-age crowd, all delivered with a hoarse holler on top of trebly guitar lines that threaten to unspool, only to be whipped back into place by the pummelling rhythm section. Fronting a muscular, masculine band, Bachmann purposely kept a distance from rock-star posturing; one of the most gripping and visceral songs on this, their debut album, features a chorus with the line: “It’s a waste of my time to pursue this/ so self-indulgent to think you’d like this song.”

Icky Mettle came out in 1993, and remains the fan favourite—even though its follow-up, Vee Vee, was far superior, and the band continued to evolve before calling it quits in 1998. Performing as Crooked Fingers since 1999, Bachmann did his darnedest to distance himself from Archers, developing into one of the most consistently compelling—though perennially underrated—singer/songwriters in the U.S. Hearing him here, finding his voice as a writer, is fascinating, even when he’s not entirely successful. There’s an entire 14-song bonus disc here of singles and b-sides (as well as the 1994 EP Greatest of All Time) for fans to parse—much to Bachmann’s own bemusement: he told the website Stereogum that “the last thing I want to do is listen to bootlegs of my band from when I was 24 years old.” [I highly recommend reading the rest of that interview, whether you're a fan or not, for a good discussion of the ups and down of revisiting youthful glories on the other side of 40.]

But Bachmann has a lot to be proud of; at their best, the Archers wrote anthems that still sound electrifying today, and likely always will. Their entire discography has been out of print for ages, and so it makes perfect sense that Bachmann’s current label, Merge, is making it all available again. The band has hit the reunion circuit to rave reviews, but don’t expect Bachmann to revert to his 24-year-old self again: he’s already got a new Crooked Fingers album due in the fall, and it’s going to be hard to top his 2008 masterpiece Forfeit/Fortune. If he’s proven anything over his long career, however, it’s that he’s constantly exceeding his fans’s expectations—which makes it easier to revisit the earliest glory days. (July 28)

Download: “Web in Front,” “Plumb Line,” “Wrong”

Battles - Gloss Drop (Warp)

Battles are one of the only rock groups that make Rush sound like a bunch of simpletons. Like Rush, Battles is a trio—although not by choice, as fourth member and frontman-of-sorts Tyondai Braxton during the making of this record—who combine prog rock and electronic music, balancing intricate composition and visceral force.

Though Braxton’s departure is a loss, this was always a band of equals, and the remaining trio is overflowing with creative ideas. Unfortunately, bringing in outside vocalists is not one of their better ones; if they were insecure about their new situation, they shouldn’t be. Lead single “Ice Cream,” with Matias Aguayo, is a great track—but not because of him. No one should invite Gary Numan to do anything anymore, never mind sing, and Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino doesn’t add anything to “Sweetie & Shag.” The Boredoms’ Yamantaka Eye, on the other hand, fits right in, mostly because his unintelligible barking resembles just another weird sound among many on this record (not unlike what Braxton used to do in the band).

Guitarists Ian Williams and Dave Konopka delight in extracting otherworldly sounds out of their instruments, often sounding like music boxes made of gamelan. Drummer John Stanier is nothing short of astounding, never once delivering a conventional beat but consistently forceful and thunderous. The tracks this time sound more linear and cinematic than a collection of riffs; as a result, it’s a bit more of a chin-stroker of an album rather than a prog-rock party machine like the debut, Mirrored was, though no less enjoyable. (July 7)

Download: “Ice Cream,” “Futura,” “Wall Street”

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings – Kings and Queens (File Under: Music)

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings make it sound so easy.

Ah yes, yet another great song by either Colin Linden, Stephen Fearing, Tom Wilson, or some combination thereof with friends like Colin James or Ron Sexsmith. Look at that, yet another sublime guitar solo. And what do we have here? Why, a guest list of 14 women who rank among the most iconic and powerful female voices of the last 30 years: Rosanne Cash, Cassandra Wilson, Emmylou Harris, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Exene Cervenka and Serena Ryder.

The album works best when the songs are actually structured as duets, a long-lost art in modern songwriting (Steve Earle and Stars being the only consistent examples). Some of the guests get their own star turn—Pam Tillis helms most of her song “My Town Has Moved Away”—but often the women are afterthoughts or counterpoints, with many an opportunity squandered. Even Lucinda Williams is essentially just singing backups on Tom Wilson’s “If I Can’t Have You.”

Why didn’t these Kings want to abdicate further? Maybe they didn’t want to write too many songs they couldn’t perform live without a lady on stage, but it’s odd that a group built on camaraderie wouldn’t fully embrace the duet concept. (July 7)

Download: “If I Can’t Have You” (w/ Lucinda Williams), “Another Free Woman” (w/ Sara Watkins), “Got You Covered” (w/ Roseanne Cash)

Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer (Merge)

As one half of the Fiery Furnaces, one of the most prolific rock bands of the last decade, Eleanor Friedberger is known for squeezing as many syllables into her melodies as possible, in verbose songs written by her brother Matthew. On her first solo record, one might expect her to relax a bit and take it easy. Which she does, to a degree, on an album that is wistful and breezy compared to the often dense and frenetic work of the Furnaces—though there are still plenty of tracks where words tumble out of her mouth as if from a free-associative fever dream.

Eleanor hasn’t done much of the songwriting in the Fiery Furnaces since their somewhat bluesy debut album; she’s said that much of this album reflects on a time just before that, when she first moved to Brooklyn. If the songs sound a bit thin, no matter: with her natural charisma, Friedberger can sell a listener just about anything, and the laid-back charm of the arrangements here go a long way, like the sax solo that outros opening track and first single “My Mistake.”

The best and worst thing about Last Summer is the absence of brother Matthew; the added space leaves a luxurious space around Eleanor’s voice, but there’s no doubt his musical wizardry would also have provided welcome embellishment—he can be subtle when he wants to be (which is rarely). Hearing the small pleasures of her first solo album makes one appreciate eve more the productive middle ground where the two siblings meet. (July 14)

Download: “My Mistake,” “I Won’t Fall Apart On You Tonight,” “One-Month Marathon”

Shuyler Jansen – Voice from the Lake (Scratch)

What if, right after recording Tonight’s the Night in 1975, Neil Young and Crazy Horse were hired to score the dystopian 1976 sci-fi film Logan’s Run? Right, odd question.

But what if one of the finest Canadian purveyors of gothic psychedelic country outside of the Sadies made a record with the two guys who produce the New Pornographers and Destroyer? That question isn’t so ridiculously hypothetical, as Old Reliable’s Shuyler Jansen proves by heading to Galliano Island to work with John Collins and Dave Carswell, who help him achieve a towering sound with layers of spacey synthesizers, eerie violins, Hammond organs, and fuzzy electric guitars.

Equally anthemic and haunting, Voice From the Lake shines not just because of the production and arrangements—which are uniformly stunning—but Jansen’s songwriting, which hasn’t been in this fine a form since the 2002 Old Reliable album Pulse of Light / Dark Landscape, an unheralded classic of Canadian alt-country. Though fans of that genre will no doubt love this, it should also introduce Jansen to the kind of wider audience who enjoy Neko Case’s recent material (her guitarist, Paul Rigby, appears here). Either way, his underdog days are soon behind him. (July 14)

Download: “Totally Anonymous,” “Wedding Band,” “Kill January”

The Jolly Boys – Great Expectations (E1)

Any time you get a bunch of 80-year-old musicians in a room together, somebody bills it as Genre X’s “answer to the Buena Vista Social Club.” In this case, Genre X is mento, the Jamaican precursor to both ska and reggae, dating back to the 1940s. The Jolly Boys were Jamaica’s main mento act, and though none of the original members remain, vocalist Albert Minott has been singing with them on and off since the 1960s.

The Buena Vista comparison crumbles, however, with a quick glance at the source material on Great Expectations, comprised entirely of gimmicky covers, mostly new wave and punk songs. Johnny Cash (whose “Ring of Fire” is also covered here—horribly) did a somewhat similar thing on his acclaimed American Recordings series, but at least he brought something original to those songs, at the very least, a sense of gravitas; those albums also featured a range of material, not just from one genre of music. Great Expectations merely sounds like a froggy old man being put up to something by snickering fortysomething hipsters who have a hard-on for the Trainspotting soundtrack (hence the two Iggy Pop songs, a New Order song and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”).

Great Expectations is more than just a failed experiment or a bad record—it’s an atrocious record, one that’s beyond embarrassing and guaranteed to clear any party after the initial titters die down. Because of that, it almost has to be heard to be believed—but only once, and only 30 seconds of each track at a time. (July 21)

Download: “Rehab,” “Don’t You Want Me,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Seun Kuti – From Africa With Fury: Rise (Knitting Factory)

The life and music of Fela Kuti is now a Broadway smash, following years of a Fela revival and interest in the father of Afrobeat. The father’s sons have also been active: first Femi, and now Seun, who comes into his own on his second album. His debut was notable not only for his lineage, but because he employed much of Fela’s last band, Egypt 80. This time out, he recorded in Rio de Janeiro with iconic producer Brian Eno, who mined father Fela’s beats for his work with Talking Heads in the early ’80s.

Eno doesn’t try and change anything about what Seun does—this is neither an experimental record like Eno’s solo work, nor a pop album like his high-profile clients Coldplay and U2—but he does make Egypt 80 sound even more fabulous than they do live, which is no small feat. From Africa With Fury is neither a retro Afrobeat album nor a self-consciously modern update: it’s simply a dense, danceable delight, punctuated by political bile. Which sums up any classic Fela recording, of course, and the differences between this and that are splitting hairs, except that Eno somehow makes every instrument in Egypt 80—including Seun’s voice—sound even more percussive. (July 7)

Download: “African Soldiers,” “Mr. Big Thief,” “Rise”

Washed Out – Within and Without (Sub Pop)

That this is one of the summer’s most-discussed albums in the underground says a lot about this year’s heat wave. Have everyone’s brains been melted into mush? Because Washed Out sounds exactly like you think it would, based on the name: like there might have once been some tracks there, but everything has been diluted and decayed and left to fade in the sun. The vocals are limp, the rhythms are comatose, the synths sound lazy, and the songs could pass for ’80s Howard Jones b-sides. The whole exercise seems designed for someone who can’t get out of bed, which for all we know, Washed Out’s main man Ernest Greene never did—it sounds like he was singing lying down. You know things are bad when a roto-tom fill is the most interesting moment on the entire album. It’s about as exciting as watching static on television—and equally colourful. (July 28)

Download: “Far Away,” “Echoes,” “Before”

Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest (Acony/Outside)

With the U.S. on the brink of bankruptcy, and the rest of the world not looking much better, it’s not a complete stretch to think that dustbowl days might well be upon us. Which is why the voice of Gillian Welch, accompanied only by her banjo, singing, “Hard times ain’t gonna rule my mind” is enough to make you hold your chin up, look your child in the eye, and focus on positivity in the present.

Not that The Harrow and the Harvest is a sunny, good-times record. Far from it. Welch and her musical partner David Rawlings—who are the only two people on this beautifully sparse record—sing about a “dark turn of mind” and a litany of downers, and concluding that, well, that’s “The Way It Goes,” “that’s the way the cornbread crumbles.” Of course, Welch is singing neither of days gone by or days to come; instead, she sings in the omniscient voice of a narrator who’s been around since the dawn of time, who’s seen it all and lived to tell us that we do, somehow, manage to survive.

Welch sounds weary, almost opiated, but her voice doesn’t crack, she never misses a note, and both she and Rawlings show remarkable discipline and strength playing so delicately at such slow tempos for so long; they’re obviously concentrating extremely hard while making everything sound entirely effortless, all so that you, dear listener, can luxuriate in the loveliness of it all on a slow summer morning.

It’s been eight years since Welch’s last album, Soul Journey; a full 10 years since her last good one, 2001’s Time (The Revelator), which was easily the most accomplished album released in the wake of O Brother Where Art Thou’s runaway success (Welch had two songs on the soundtrack). What took so long? Welch says she didn’t think her songs were good enough. Clearly she got over a huge hump: every track here is stunning and shames any other songwriters’ album you’re likely to hear this year. All fallowness is forgiven. (July 21)

Download: “Scarlet Town,” “The Way It Goes,” “Hard Times”

Zomby – Dedication (4AD)

Few who stay true to its darker, spookier beginnings of dubstep have managed to pull off a full-length album, however, and there was every reason to believe that Zomby—who has been recording tracks since 2007—might be one of them. This, his debut for the influential label 4AD, is poised to position him for much bigger success than his debut, the early ’90s rave-scene homage Where Were You in ’92?.

When Zomby comes alive, he’s successful at creating an eerie, tense sense of doom with his skittering beats, sparse synth pads and 8-bit sounds from primitive video games. Opening track “Witch Hunt” intrigues with what sounds like 128^th-note hi-hat programming, interrupted by gunshots. And like his peer Burial, Zomby employs disembodied, ghostly vocals that appear only as fractured mirages stuttered throughout a track, as he does on “Natalia’s Song.” When he tries to add a real vocalist, as he does on “Things Fall Apart,” the track does exactly that. (And why did he invite Animal Collective’s Panda Bear? That guy ruined an otherwise beautiful track on Pantha du Prince’s 2010 album Black Noise.)

But if Zomby can create mood, he rarely follows it through. Too much of Dedication sounds like the germ of an idea—or, more frequently, merely one synth preset—instead of a fully developed track. Acoustic pianos are probably intended to provide a more organic feel, but they sound just as stiff and cold as every other keyboard here. Even when he appears to let loose a bit, as he does on “Digital Rain,” the tracks sounds devoid of any warmth or human element.

Then again, should we expect anything more from an artist called Zomby? (July 28)

Download: “Natalia’s Song,” “Witch Hunt,” “Riding With Death”

Dirtbombs live

The Dirtbombs
Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, July 15

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble/ DPT
The Great Hall, Toronto, July 7

Rock’n’roll and techno do not mix. On a good day, they’re sworn enemies. Which is why I was more than surprised to find myself at two shows in the past week where live rock bands attempted to emulate and/or interpret techno hits. The Dirtbombs, a garage rock band from Detroit paying homage to that city’s pioneering techno scene, were decidedly brilliant. Toronto ensemble DPT, an acronym for the unsubtly named Daft Punk Tribute, were decidedly not.

DPT walk a weird line between imitation and reinvention; they got off to a somewhat promising start by ripping through some of Daft Punk’s bigger hits in a relatively faithful fashion, delivered by two keyboardists (of course), a rhythm section, electric guitarist and a three-piece horn section; the latter was whip tight and the best part of the band. But the schtick wore off quickly. Some of it wasn’t the band’s fault: the notoriously terrible sound in the Great Hall buried the drums (!) in the mix, and the wildly gesticulating electric guitarist was having way more fun on stage than anything the audience was able to hear would warrant.

What started out as somewhat interesting quickly became interminable, with the exception of a show-stealing female vocalist. (Are there any Daft Punk songs with female vocals? Not being the biggest fan, I missed that somehow.) Once the hits were through, it was all too easy for DPT to devolve into limp jams that betrayed the band’s secret life as Humber College music students. (For the benefit of non-Torontonians, Humber College is known for producing musicians who value skill over soul; some of the best musicians I know went there for a year or two and left before they became corrupted. How do you spot a Humber College band? Five-string bass guitar and a MIDI wind instrument, for starters.)

Who knows: maybe I was just bored waiting for the amazing Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, who transcend the New Orleans nature of most brass bands, bringing ’70s cinematic funk, hip-hop and arty fusion into their mix. If that’s not intriguing enough, let me describe them this way: a massive party with eight gorgeous half-naked African-American men doing magical things with their lips. Interested now?

But back to the techno. Back in the early ’90s when I was in a shitty alt-rock band, there was a band in London, Ont., that we’d often be billed with called Zuul’s Evil Disco, a third-rate Red Hot Chili Peppers rip-off with ironic disco wigs and other outlandish costumes. Somewhere underneath all the slap bass was just an excuse for Western frat kids to get too drunk to funk; I suspect DPT is the 21st-century version of that.

The Dirtbombs play ’70s garage rock, which attracts its own kind of drunken debauchery (on this night, it was the tank-top-clad douchebag picking fights at the front). But by approaching their techno covers from a genre standpoint, they breathe life into both the originals and their own sound.

Not being the biggest garage guy, I’ll confess that I hadn’t heard a note of the Dirtbombs’ music before hearing the new album, Party Store, which is a full-length tribute to Detroit’s techno history, rendered rock’n’roll style. It’s a brave move; I’m guessing most Dirtbombs fans don’t know that music at all (hence reviews like this one). Perhaps that’s why the crowd was somewhat subdued while the band dedicated the first half hour of its show to the new album, played as one continuous set—not unlike a DJ mix in the way each track segued into the next, and their sludgy, psychedelic take on Carl Craig’s “Bugs in the Bass Bin” used as a recurring theme to break up the beats.

The techno classics—including Juan Atkins’s “Cosmic Cars,” Kevin Saunderson’s “Good Life,” Derrick May’s “Strings of Life” and the landmark 1981 single by A Number of Names, “Shari Vari”—are perfectly suited to a band with two drummers, an amazing new bassist (recent recruit Chris Sutton, who joined after the recording), a guitarist (Ko Melina) who’s perfectly comfortable replicating the long sustained notes of the melodies without ever needing to embellish, and a frontman (Mick Collins) who brings his own style of baritone soul to the histrionic house divas heard on the originals. All the space of the originals is left intact even while power chords and thundering double-drum-set attacks bring the ruckus.

The rest of the set shifted gear and became considerably more frenetic: both the band’s tempos and the audience reaction, making it clear just how much of a shift the comparatively laid-back tracks from Party Store are for this band. And if I’d ever thought the Dirtbombs were interchangeable with a dozen other garage bands from the turn of the last decade, this show convinced me that they’re undoubtedly one of the best. The set ended with drummer Ben Blackwell leaping into the crowd with bass drum and floor tom in tow, the first of several trips necessary to set up his kit in the middle of the floor. Once there, the rest of the band exited the stage somewhat more conventionally, one by one, until only Blackwell was left pounding away. In the end, it’s the beat that drives the Dirtbombs. No wonder they made a techno record.

If the Dirtbombs’ audience was suitably impressed but not bowled over by their techno covers, I’d love to see how this would go down at the annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival; ideally, Collins should get the key to the city presented to him at the event for uniting two vital threads of the city’s music history.

An excellent read on Mick Collins’s commitment to the cause, proving that this whole affair is no ironic joke, is here.

Polaris 2011 demographics

After six years of the Polaris Prize, where 10 Canadian albums compete for a $30,000 prize (up this year from $20,000), almost everyone expects to be disappointed by the shortlist, where compromised, consensus picks tend to rise to the top rather than people’s passionate favourites.

So before tomorrow’s announcement of the Polaris Prize shortlist, let’s take a last look at the longlist. Released three weeks ago, it is the real conversation starter, and for me, the more interesting document. For better or worse, the 40 records on the longlist are considered the true snapshot of the year in Canadian music.

Let’s look at who’s on the list.

Regionally, Toronto and Montreal still dominate, and Vancouver suffers (which, with the list being announced the day after the hockey riots, must have been another slap to the city’s pride—albeit a comparatively minor one). There are 14 acts from Montreal, 13 from Toronto, and three from Vancouver (Black Mountain, Louise Burns, Destroyer). Tiny Sackville, N.B., gets two: former bandmates Shotgun Jimmie and Frederick Squire. Eight other cities (Hamilton, Halifax, St. John’s, Winnipeg, Kingston, St. Catharines, Calgary and, um, Marin, California) get one apiece.

Two of those Montreal acts, Braids and Dirty Beaches, hail from Calgary and Vancouver originally, though their careers were built in Montreal. Likewise, Buck 65 and Sloan are Haligonians originally, but have lived in Toronto for several years, so are included in that city’s count here. Tim Hecker has ties to Vancouver and Ottawa, but his entire musical career has been based in Montreal.

Four acts can be considered hip-hop or R&B: Buck 65, D-Sisive, Eternia & Moss, and The Weeknd.

Four acts, it can be argued, appeal almost exclusively to the over-30, CBC Radio 2 crowd: Luke Doucet, Ron Sexsmith, Jenn Grant and Doug Paisley. (The latter made my ballot.)

Two acts, Tim Hecker and Colin Stetson, make experimental music that will never, ever be played on CBC Radio during the day. More power to them.

The other 30 acts are, arguably, loosely affiliated with the indie rock world.

There are two francophone acts: the perennially nominated Malajube, and the much more exciting Galaxie (who had a spot on my ballot).

Two acts, Little Scream and Colin Stetson, are American citizens who are landed immigrants in Canada, thereby making them eligible for the Polaris. Both have deep ties to Arcade Fire.

Only nine acts on the list had recording careers 10 years ago. Only four (Neil Young, Sloan, Ron Sexsmith and Buck 65) had recording careers 15 years ago. And, ahem, only one of those had a recording career 40 years ago.

Ten of the 40 albums are debuts.

Two albums were only available as a free download (D-Sisive, The Weeknd).

Only two albums were released directly by a major label (Buck 65, Neil Young).

One album on the list won both the Grammy and Juno award for 2010 Album of the Year—which may well make it an underdog for the Polaris.

Seven artists have been shortlisted before (Arcade Fire, Black Mountain, the Dears, Hey Rosetta, Malajube, Miracle Fortress, Stars). Of those, one—Malajube—have been shortlisted twice before. Seven more artists have been longlisted before (D-Sisive, Tim Hecker, Land of Talk, One Hundred Dollars, Timber Timbre, Women, Young Galaxy). That means 26 artists on this year’s long list have never been nominated for Polaris.

Now let’s look at who didn’t make it.

Four of my picks made the list. I knew that the one that didn’t, Kathryn Calder’s Are You My Mother?, was an underdog, despite the fact that she’s a member of the New Pornographers. Mother is a record of subtle charms; I liked it well enough the first time I heard it, but didn’t grow to love it until later, and now almost a year after its release I enjoy it more and more with every listen, hearing new details all the time and having every one of the album’s many hooks stuck in my head at various points of my week. I was disappointed it didn’t make the list, but not surprised; I didn’t sense it had much critical traction.

Three major artists did not make the long list, much to the apparent shock of many: Drake, Sarah Harmer and Chad Van Gaalen.

Drake should come as a surprise to no one: Polaris is a critics’ prize, and critics do not love Drake. Why would they? He can’t rap, can’t sing, and he’s a morose, self-loathing narcissist whose album is tiresome at best. Not even the industry embraces him: tellingly, he was entirely shut out of the Junos, despite having the most nominations and being asked to host the show. He’s a celebrity posing as an artist, and has a lot to prove before he’s taken seriously.

Sarah Harmer and Chad Van Gaalen have both been shortlisted for Polaris before; Van Gaalen twice, in fact. Yet both of their albums from this year’s qualifying period generated lukewarm shrugs, and as a result were snubbed by Polaris. I suspect no fan of either artist loves them any less, but neither were on top of their game this year.

The only other viable gripes I could entertain about longlist omissions: Jim Bryson and the Weakerthans, Selina Martin, Geoff Berner, Socalled, Forest City Lovers, It Kills, and Kiran Ahluwalia—all of whom made better records than some of the snoozers on the longlist.

Almost half of the records on the longlist I would never listen to all the way through—most of them made by guys with guitars. By my count, over half the artists on the longlist feature either a) a solo guy with a guitar or b) a band led by a guy with a guitar who writes all the songs. Some of those acts made my ballot—but most of them I never even considered, and in some cases, I can’t even tell them apart (Daniel Romano vs. Frederick Squire, for starters).

That said, I’m very excited about the other half: the presence of Hecker and Stetson, the sudden ascent of The Weeknd, the recognition of Neil Young and Ron Sexsmith, the underdog that is Eternia, the charming Hooded Fang, the word-of-mouth buzz that built up Doug Paisley, the comeback story of Sloan, the Quebecois push for Galaxie.

Lots of fine Canadian records did not make the longlist. It speaks volumes about the health of the scene that there was so much to choose from. And so no matter who makes the final cut tomorrow, the conversation is a prize in itself.

But just for the hell of it, here’s my prediction: Arcade Fire, Black Mountain, Braids, Destroyer, Diamond Rings, Eternia & Moss, Galaxie, Doug Paisley, Rural Alberta Advantage, The Weeknd.

June '11 reviews

The following reviews appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in the past month.

Matthew Barber – s/t (Outside)

Six albums into your career is an odd time for a self-titled album, but when you shack up at home with an eight-track and play every part on the album yourself, what else would you call it? Toronto singer/songwriter Matthew Barber breaks it down to bare bones on 10 songs that are mostly dedications to his beloved, either his family or his wife. “I sing because I’m a singer/ it’s what I do with my life,” he says. There’s nothing particularly weighty on the mind of this former philosophy student; the homespun music doesn’t demand any more. The only time his charm wears off is on the closing track, with an opening couplet that should never have left his pillow, never mind his bedroom: “Oh Lexi / you’re sexy/ your body lets me in.” Otherwise, these songs suggest that Barber is best when he’s straightforward and stripped down. (June 23)

Download: “Middle of a Dream,” “Blue Forever,” “Man in a Movie”

Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)

Since For Emma Forever Ago, his breakthrough 2008 debut as Bon Iver, Justin Vernon has said that he doesn’t want to be just another guy with an acoustic guitar—which nonetheless was exactly what that album was. For its follow-up, he’s assembled a large band, including veteran pedal steel session player Greg Leisz and avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson, created electronic textures to intertwine with guitars and banjos, and layered his vocals extensively. It all adds up to otherworldly 22^nd-century folk music, made all the more alien by Vernon’s own voices, which most of the time sound like a choir of Vocoders on helium. (Perhaps that’s why Kanye West is a big fan and sought him out as a collaborator.) While the album is certainly unique, and interesting in small doses, it gets really grating, really fast. The final test of patience is the closing track, “Beth/Rest,” which Vernon admits is an homage of sorts to ’80s singer/songwriter Bruce Hornsby—not even one of his studio albums, but perhaps a murky home demo, coloured with horribly dated electronic piano sounds. This doubly eponymous album is a bold move, but it’s bound to be a divisive one. (June 23)

Download: “Minnesota, WI,” “Hinnom, TX,” “Perth”

Booker T – The Road From Memphis (Anti)

Dennis Coffey – s/t (Strut/K7!)

Two soul legends deliver their best work in decades, if not their entire storied careers.

Booker T. Jones, the organ player best known for his classic track "Green Onions," has spent most of the last 30 years backing up people like Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and otherwise igniting few of the fireworks he did on his classic recordings with the MGs. He was last heard on an uninspiring album backed up by the Drive-By Truckers, the memory of which is entirely erased by this triumphant return.

It’s easy to credit the electrifying sound of The Road From Memphis to Jones’s collaborators: his backing band is the Roots, the producer is Gabe Roth from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and Dennis Coffey is on guitar (see below). Maybe it’s because of them that the 66-year-old Jones dances around the keys with the dexterity of his youth, but he sounds positively on fire, egged on in particular by drummer and co-producer ?uestlove. The material serves him well: a mix of original instrumentals, spritely versions of hits by Gnarls Barkley and Lauryn Hill, and contributing vocalists Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Sharon Jones, Matt Berninger (The National) all complement the mood perfectly. (Lou Reed, on the other hand, not so much.)

Guitarist Dennis Coffey is not as well-known as Booker T, but he’s played on dozens of hit records from his hometown of Detroit, including many Motown sessions. The opening guitar riff to the Temptations’ “Cloud 9”? That’s him. He also scored a major solo hit in 1971 with “Scorpio,” a favourite of hip-hop producers since the days of Public Enemy.

This self-titled album finds him revisiting some of his classic sessions, on tracks by Parliament, Funkadelic, Wilson Pickett and others, with help from local vocalists from Detroit’s soul and garage scene (including Mick Collins of the Dirtbombs) as well as hot R&B newcomer Mayer Hawthorne. Whereas with Booker T the material and the collaborators push the star to great height, here the same combination mostly allows Coffey to quietly do what he does best: sit in the background, write kick-ass arrangements, let the band as a whole do its thing while Coffey himself drives the beast with rhythm guitar that’s distorted, fuzzy, heavy on the wah pedal, and always extremely tasteful. There are few, if any, showboating solos here: Coffey isn’t that kind of player, although he certainly has the chops to do it. The original compositions are just as vibrant as the classics.

There’s no mistaking Booker T’s album as the work of anybody but, and it’s guaranteed to please any old soul. Coffey, on the other hand, is the surprise: that anyone still makes hard-edged soul like this with a large band, a psychedelic edge and such colourful arrangements is an unexpected delight.

The only thing better than the arrival of these two records would be news that they’re touring together. (Note: they're not, though Coffey checks into the Horseshoe in Toronto on July 8.) (June 2)

Download Booker T: “Walking Papers,” “The Road From Memphis,” “Rent Party”

Download Dennis Coffey: “I’ll Bet You,” “7^th Galaxy,” “Space Traveller”

The Burning Hell – Flux Capacitor (Weewerk)

A “flux capacitor” is the key element of the time machine used in Back to the Future. The album named after it finds songwriter Mathias Kom reflecting on his odd life, his childhood obsessions and his wandering nature (he’s lived in Winnipeg, Peterborough, Whitehorse and now St. John’s). Kom has a wry wit and conversational vocals, which means much of this material is more entertaining as a friend telling you funny stories, rather than actual songs. It would all be little more than an inside joke—and arguably a lot of it is—if Kom wasn’t so engaging and charismatic, which is why the autobiographical “My Name is Mathias” is an album highlight, though “Nostalgia” is probably more fun live than it is here.

His band—a new group of St. John’s players, not the Peterborough crew from previous albums—boasts plenty of baritone saxophone, clarinets, violins and trombones to bolster Kom’s ukulele backdrop and baritone vocals, and Flux Capacitor has more orchestral arrangements than the organized chaos of Kom’s previous line-up. Though it’s not his strongest work, there’s still plenty of proof that Kom is a unique and original songwriter, capable of using an Albert Einstein quote in song that indirectly sums up Kom’s own work here: “We are all equally foolish before God, and equally wise.” (June 9)

Download: “My Name is Mathias,” “Report Card,” “Pirates”

Mark Davis – Eliminate the Toxins (Saved by Radio)

Mark Davis is kind of a morose guy. On the opening track of his third solo album—the previous two having dealt with the death of a spouse—he decries the god who robbed him of his beloved; later on he tells someone who has lost their father that there are “so many ways / to wake up dead.” And yet he insists, “Waste no tears on me, sad-eyed lady.”

And nor should you. Despite its often dour details, the album takes its titular advice to heart, finding hope and inspiration amidst the emotional wreckage. Davis is the rare artist who can channel catharsis from morbid material, whose empathetic voice offers hope and embodies survival.

It helps that he writes immediately affecting songs, with a melodic gift worthy of any of the greats; every single song here sounds like a modern classic. He draws from obvious influences—“Go to Ground” provides an aural image of Neil Young hanging out in Berlin with David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1978—and yet the album is a decidedly modern take on psychedelic roots rock, one where vocals run through a Leslie speaker sound just as alien as the drum machines and synthesizers that colour what are, at their essence, straightforward folk songs. Even all of those tools are only slight distractions; the core instrumentation wouldn’t sound out of place on any Blue Rodeo record: rich acoustic guitars, 12-string electric guitars, banjos, harmonicas and even whistling.

Davis successfully combines the comfort food of Canadiana roots rock with spooky sonic spellcasting in ways that few artists other than Daniel Lanois even attempt. That he does it by throwing chunky rock songs and pop hooks into the mix is even more impressive. Perfect production, timeless songs—what more do you want? Eliminate the Toxins may be full of ghosts, but you’ll want these songs to haunt you for a long, long time. (June 16)

Download: “Waste No Tears,” “A Good One,” “Let the World Know Where You Are”

Dengue Fever – Cannibal Courtship (Fantasy)

All cross-cultural mash-ups are cannibalistic in nature. In this case, Cambodian musicians of the ’60s produced a unique regional take on American rock and pop music of the day. Thirty years later, a group of L.A. musicians, fronted by a Cambodian expatriate from a popular musical family there, take that Cambodian hybrid and make it into modern American music with traces of east and west African influences. “You’re just another stamp in my passport,” sings vocalist Chhom Nimol, but she and her band don’t feel the same way about the musicians in their record collections.

Dengue Fever know that there are two ways to approach this material: with an absurdist sense of fun—like on “Cement Slippers,” the goofy first single and duet between guitarist Zac Holtzman and Nimol—or with serious reverence to all elements of the amalgam. Three albums into their career, Dengue Fever lean more toward the latter, though the mystery stops with a thud when modern rock guitars weigh down a chorus, as on the title track or “Family Business.” There are also some outright cringe-worthy moments, like “2012” (“There are so many predictions!”). But Nimol is captivating throughout, and Holtzman effectively wields his new instrument, a double-neck guitar—one neck is a Fender Jazzmaster, the other an electric version of the Cambodian instrument called the chapey.

Dengue Fever have this corner of cross-cultural collision all to themselves, and make cannibalism seem terribly tasty. (June 30)

Download: “Cement Slippers,” “Sister in the Radio,” “Kiss of the Bufo Alvarius”

Fucked Up – David Comes to Life (Matador)

I was one of the few unconvinced that this Toronto band’s 2008 album The Chemistry of Common Life was somehow a watershed moment for hardcore punk, despite the fact it won the Polaris Prize, got them signed to one of the most-respected American indie labels, and garnered attention from plenty of mainstream press and even public radio both here and in the U.S. To an aggressive genre born and ossified in the early ’80s, Fucked Up brought broad ambition, flutes, violins, female vocals and other distractions to counteract Damian Abraham’s visceral one-note growl. But on the album itself, somewhere underneath the 70 layers of guitar tracks, they forgot how to be a great punk band (which you can hear them be on the 2009 compilation Couple Tracks); Common Life was as bloated as the prog rock that punk was created to slay in the first place.

Now comes what the band claims is a rock opera. At 18 tracks and 70 minutes, Fucked Up prove once again that they don’t lack for ambition. And the first third of this album sounds like it’s paid off: the production is 10 times better than on Common Life, with the guitars roaring out of the speakers, Abraham comfortably placed in the mix instead of sounding like the guy who’s always belching loudly at the party, and songs that match fist-pumping punk energy with, well, the idea of a rock opera that The Who pioneered in the late ’60s.

Yet the album loses steam quickly after that, and not just because Abraham sounds monotonous on a good day, and not because no one in the world can possibly comprehend the narrative, which apparently has something to do with love lost and found while living in Thatcher’s England. After the initial burst of inspiration on the opening tracks, the music doesn’t function as punk, not as prog, not as pop, and certainly not as rock opera. The production—especially the guitar tones—is the only consistent strength here, and it’s curious how close the band comes to sounding like U2 at times, which surely was not what they were going for. But who knows? (June 16)

Download: “Queen of Hearts,” “The Other Shoe,” “Turn the Season”

Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital (Sub Pop)

Handsome Furs’ Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry have spent the last two years touring almost every corner of the world, especially the ones that few other Canadian bands dare to tread: Montenegro? Burma? Lebanon? Check, check, and check. They’ve learned that the unifying global music is not rock’n’roll—it’s the synth pop that blares out of basement clubs, taxicabs and storefronts the world over. And so Boeckner sets his guitar aside for most of Sound Kapital, and joins Perry in programming the synths and drum machines, making the combination of equally joyous, abrasive and raucous music that the likes of Kraftwerk, Suicide, Skinny Puppy and even Depeche Mode could never have visualized.

Anyone who loved his now-disbanded group Wolf Parade knows that Boeckner writes killer songs and is a powerful howler of a rock singer. In Handsome Furs, he still highlights those strengths while he and Perry dive deep into sound sculpting. Their 2009 album Face Control featured some of the most delicious guitar sounds put to tape in recent memory, contrasted with harsh synths and deep drum machines; here the guitar is only a texture, taking a back seat to icy Europop synths that Lady Gaga would love to get her hands on. (The album was mixed in Finland and Berlin, for whatever that’s worth.)

Sound Kapital isn’t as jam-packed with hooks and riffs as Face Control was, but it’s a different, darker beast. Boeckner takes more pointedly political turns than ever before, singing in a voice of the disembodied and disenfranchised about the “damage of the Western world,” vowing to “never be repatriated,” railing about how “you don’t serve the people” and asking “what about us?”

Part of what Boeckner finds fascinating about the far-flung places he visits is the sense of renewal, of forging a new history instead of being trapped in the prism of the past: “No nostalgia on the stereo / No hits because there’s no radio / no replacement / a thousand lonely kids making noise in the basement.” Even if Handsome Furs—Boeckner and Perry grew up in Lake Cowichan, B.C., and Elora, Ont., respectively—don’t happen to come play for some of those thousands of lonely kids in their hometown, Sound Kapital itself will make the world seem a lot less lonely. (June 30)

Download: “What About Us,” “Cheap Music,” “When I Get Back”

Junior Boys – It’s All True (Domino)

There’s nothing like failure, real or perceived, to motivate the creation of greater work. Junior Boys’ bandleader Jeremy Greenspan was apparently so distraught at the muted reaction to the electronic group’s last album—which, granted, was far from their strongest work—that for two months he set up shop in Shanghai, the other side of the world from his home base in Hamilton, and started writing and recording new material as a form of therapy.

Even without that back story, it’s evident from the titles that Greenspan is undergoing some kind of mid-career crisis: “Second Chance,” “A Truly Happy Ending,” “Kick the Can,” “You’ll Improve Me.” The music suggests he’s coming out on top.

Junior Boys have always been trapped between sad-sack pop songwriting, new wave revivalism and current electronic trends; they were discovered, after all, by Steve Goodman, aka Kode 9 and the man who launched the now-ubiquitous British electronic subgenre known as dubstep. Greenspan seems willing to let the pop part of the equation slide a bit; while still melodic, he’s diving deeper into sounds and surrendering to the grooves, especially on the euphoric nine-minute closing track “Banana Ripple,” easily the most buoyant and deliberate disco move on any Junior Boys album, the sound of Greenspan dancing his blues away into the night. (June 23)

Download: “Itchy Fingers,” “Playtime,” “Banana Ripple”

Kevin Kane – The Home Version (independent)

Since the breakup of his ’80s band the Grapes of Wrath, songwriter Kevin Kane has lived largely under the radar, and not entirely by his own design. A series of fine solo records went largely unnoticed, which is reason enough for him to revisit his rich catalogue (especially now that the venerable West Coast performer has relocated to Toronto). The Home Version is just Kane and his guitar, reaching back to the first Grapes of Wrath recording (“Misunderstanding”) right up to his last album, How to Build a Lighthouse. While the lush harmonies he’s known for are sadly lacking, the intimacy of the recording—which among other things allows you to focus on his fine acoustic guitar playing—makes up for it. (June 23)

Download: “Misunderstanding,” “Days,” “Last to Know”

Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts (Matador)

Sonic Youth are such a prolific band, both as a unit and with umpteen side projects, that very little attention is ever paid to one member’s solo record anymore—especially because no one can remember the last time the band produced something worth getting excited about.

Yet here is guitarist Thurston Moore’s acoustic solo record, produced by Beck and laced with eerie violin and harp passages. Simply by unplugging, Moore—who helped rewrite the rules of rock guitar in the late ’80s and early ’90s—sounds refreshed and engaged. Whether he’s drawing from Nick Drake, Indian folk influences, or trademarks of his own oeuvre, Moore pulls between pop and the avant-garde just as he always has. The result is certainly not a singer/songwriter record, but an enchanting surprise from a veteran reinventing himself. (June 2)

Download: “Blood Never Lies,” “Mina Loy,” “Illuminine”

My Morning Jacket – Circuital (ATO/Maple)

My Morning Jacket are one of the great American rock bands of the last decade, a reputation largely gained through their live shows. It’s there that one can completely appreciate the full-throat projection of Jim James’s voice, the sweeping dynamics that can coax lullabies into epic Southern rock anthems, the spaciousness provided by the band’s dabbling in reggae and electronics. Expect to hear all of that on the live box set they’re planning on releasing shortly.

In the studio, My Morning Jacket is not an easy band to pin down. While that can occasionally lead them down some unusual paths—like the Prince-inspired falsetto funk of the last studio album, 2008’s Evil Urges—that experimentation provides ample rewards more often than not. (Though in the case of Evil Urges, it certainly didn’t—which makes this the first good MMJ album in five long years.)

And so in an inconsistent discography, Circuital stands as one of their best albums to date, one that combines everything they’ve ever done well with subtle rhythmic approaches that could make a case for them being the American Radiohead, only with a stronger interest in pop-song structure. (The title track even sounds a bit like Radiohead’s “Creep,” as covered by Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers with Daniel Lanois on lead guitar—just in case you’ve ever wondered what that would sound like.)

There are times when things threaten to get a bit loopy—like the female choir singing woah-oh-ohs throughout a Tom Jones-like number called “Holdin’ On to Black Metal” (yes, it’s about the genre of music)—but Circuital is both remarkably consistent and constantly surprising. Pedal steel guitar and Rhodes piano are always at the forefront, with the associated country and soul influences permeating through every track, no matter where else the rhythm section is leading the band. James’s voice ties everything together: he’s becoming a more effective singer at every end of his range, not just the high notes.

As good as Circuital is, no doubt it shines even brighter on stage. My Morning Jacket play the Kool Haus in Toronto on July 11. (June 9)

Download: “Circuital,” “Victory Dance,” “First Light”

Snailhouse – Sentimental Gentleman (White Whale)

Montreal’s Michael Feuerstack “writes the songs that make the grown men cry,” he sings in the title track of his eighth album. It’s one of several moments here of self-reflection on his role as a melancholy man, as a musician who’s always on the outside looking in, as a self-aware songwriter who cuts to the heart of every situation with a well-placed couplet like, “I want the headaches that you bring / I want the painkillers, too.”

Following up his must-own masterpiece Lies on the Prize is no small task; instead, Feuerstack focuses on bringing out the strengths in his most recent backing band, who make Snailhouse gel as a real group for perhaps the first time ever, instead of simply being a vehicle for Feuerstack’s songs. He still pulls in some favours from his all-star friend pool; including appearances from Katie Moore of Socalled and Pietro Amato of Bell Orchestre and the Luyas; Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara mixed the album. Yet any Snailhouse album is ultimately about Feuerstack’s lyrical ability to make you chuckle and cry simultaneously and unsuspectingly—or, in one extreme case, dance “on the ledge with your heads in your hand like some solitary conga line.”

He’s one of Canada’s finest songwriters, and sadly one of its most unsung. If you’re a fan of sentimental gentlemen in general, you’ll fall for this Sentimental Gentleman in particular. (June 23)

Download: “Daydream,” “Sentimental Gentleman,” “Great Storytellers”

Tyler the Creator – Goblin (XL)

It’s an odd coincidence that this album came out the same month that Stanley Kubrick’s film version of A Clockwork Orange celebrated its 40^th anniversary. Tyler the Creator, the ringleader of a massively popular L.A. hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All—who went from being an underground online sensation to the subject of 10,000-word essays in the New Yorker—makes his mainstream debut with an album drenched in nihilism, misogyny and ultraviolent imagery that makes A Clockwork Orange seem antiquated and quaint.

Tyler frames the album as a dialogue with his therapist; and so instead of an all-out shockfest, Goblin is a whiny orgy of self-loathing where the protagonist claims he doesn’t have the guts to kill himself, hates being famous, blames all his trouble on women and his absent father, and has violent sexual fantasies while masturbating and doing drugs. Occasionally he attempts to be somewhat sensitive on tracks imaginatively titled “She” or “Her”; the former promises to deliver eight bullets to the subject of his stalking affection if she dares to turn him down after hearing such a charming come-on.

So why are we supposed to care? If Tyler had an ounce of charisma, he might at the very least be amusing. But after countless disclaimers about how he’s not a role model, how no one should do what he says (i.e. “Kill people, burn s---, f--- school,” goes the chorus of “Radical”), he comes off as a poser who doesn’t even have the guts to embrace his more-loathesome-than-thou persona. Is Tyler supposed to embody our darkest thoughts? Is he a trickster kicking against all social convention? Is he just a jackass?

He claims, “I’m f---in’ radical, I’m motherf---in’ radical.” Just as anyone who walks around saying “I’m so cool” is obviously the uncoolest person in the world, Tyler the Creator is little more than a 19-year-old boy who needs some kind of therapy—preferably not the kind conducted in public and on record. (June 16)

Download: “Yonkers,” “Nightmare,” “She”

Rave On Buddy Holly – Various Artists (Fantasy)

Buddy Holly is famous for three things: a) his biggest hit was “That’ll Be the Day (That I Die)”; b) he died in a plane crash at 22 with two other pop stars in 1959; c) Don McLean had a baffling #1 hit in 1971 with a song ostensibly about Holly’s death, “American Pie.”

Holly’s discography goes much deeper than this morbid trivia, of course. Despite the brevity of his career, almost every track he ever recorded was a classic—and there’s plenty of evidence of that on this 19-track collection, where even the duds at least have a great song beneath the bizarre performance (I’m looking at you, Lou Reed’s “Peggy Sue”).

The inspired guest list includes Nick Lowe, Patti Smith, Fiona Apple, My Morning Jacket and more, most of whom play it relatively straight—sometimes too straight (Justin Townes Earle) or flat (Zooey Deschanel of She & Him being the worst offender). Cee-Lo, the Black Keys and Florence and the Machine all reinvent a ’50s production aesthetic in their own modern ways, combining elements of rockabilly, bossa nova and New Orleans jazz.

Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, on the other hand, chooses to channel mid-period Billy Idol, for better or worse. And throughout “It’s So Easy,” Paul McCartney howls almost unintelligently like a manic southern rock radio DJ, like he’s suddenly trying to convince everyone that he was the really wigged out Beatle (hey kids, remember “Helter Skelter”?!). And Kid Rock is shockingly tasteful, using only bass, gospel backing vocals, handclaps and a horn section to deliver a soulful version of “Well All Right.”

This tribute was assembled to commemorate what would have been Holly’s 75th birthday. If he left this legacy and songbook at the age of 22, one can only imagine what else he would have got up to in the past 53 years. (June 30)

Download: Cee-Lo Green – “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care),” Florence and the Machine – “Not Fade Away,” Kid Rock – “Well All Right”

The Weeknd – House of Balloons (independent)

It’s rare for an album to arrive out of nowhere and turn an entire genre on its head. That’s exactly what’s happened with Toronto R&B artist The Weeknd (not to be confused with the ’90s indie rock band from London, Ontario, who spelled “weekend” properly). Little is known about the people behind The Weeknd, other than that the singer is a 20-year-old named Abel Tesfaye, with help from the occasional producer (including Martin “Doc” McKinney, who’s worked with Esthero, Santigold and many more).

The Weeknd is a strange bridge between modern R&B conventions—the smooth, Autotuned vocals, the melismatic flourishes, the R. Kelly-ish plainspoken anti-poetic take on cooing come-ons—with the dark, spooky corners of dubstep, the sinister edge of Massive Attack and the inventiveness of Prince at his strangest. For that reason, it’s likely to infuriate fans of both sides: it’s far too weird for mainstream tastes, and yet the vocals are anathema for anyone who thinks T-Pain is responsible for all the evils of modern music. Tellingly, both Drake and Adele are huge fans and supporters.

Like Drake, The Weeknd specialize in self-doubt mixed with decadence, except that Tesfaye, though juvenile, is nowhere near as loathsome a lyricist as Drake (though he’s occasionally just as juvenile). He’s also a much better singer and the music is far superior—spacious and haunting where Drake just sounds empty.

The inventiveness heard here has justly fascinated critics around the world, making The Weeknd one of the biggest buzz bands of the last few months—and two more albums are expected by years’ end, as well as a collaboration with Drake. Whether they prove to be a one-off fluke or the beginning of a new wave of R&B remains to be seen, but House of Balloons—even with all its flaws—is daring enough to be considered a game-changer. (June 2)

Download: The entire album is available for free at the band’s website, the-weeknd.com