Polaris 2011 predictions, day three

Day three of Polaris Prize predictions, featuring two albums from the shortlist and two alternate suggestions.

Galaxie – Tigre et Diesel (C4)

The album: Only in Quebec would a band think to match ’70s blues rock with electro beats and shades of Krautrock. And only in Quebec could such a band make it work so brilliantly as Galaxie does. Every wonder what it would sound like if Quintron produced a collaboration between ZZ Top and Neu? No, I hadn’t either. But thank God it exists.

Though this is one of the more obscure albums on the list, it most certainly does not deserve to be. Anyone who thinks this was an oddball addition to the shortlist quite obviously hasn’t ever listened to it. Tigre et Diesel should be heard on classic rock stations across the country, be blasting out of cars at the beach, and soundtracking your next backyard BBQ. It’s sweaty, it’s sexy, and it’s built equally for fist-pumping, disco dancing and spacing out. Just another night on St. Denis, really.

This is one of only two francophone albums to ever make a Polaris list that I can completely get behind (the other was La Patere Rose, long listed two years ago, and I’m still disappointed that Pas Chic Chic was completely ignored by Polaris jurors several years back—and everyone else, it seems). Bandleader and singer Olivier Langevin makes you instantly forget that old adage that I heard a French actor repeat on stage at TIFF this week: “French rock’n’roll is like English wine.” Not anymore it’s not.

The chances: Slim. I’m going to assume there will be an unspoken, unconscious bias in the jury room against awarding the award to a francophone band two years in a row. But just being on the shortlist is a major coup for this band; hopefully they’ve been able to translate it into wider exposure and bring the rock to TROC. Watch them slay on gala night.

Hey Rosetta – Seeds (Sonic)

The album: Can someone explain to me the difference between Hey Rosetta and Hootie and the Blowfish?

I’m not being facetious here. I really don’t get it. There’s something patently offensive to me about a band being emo and intense about songs that really don’t deserve it. I like the music they aspire to make—there are nods to Arcade Fire’s more blustery moments here. Not that it works, though, nor do the artier moments that sound like a poor man’s Karkwa. You can’t build to a climax without any tension or road map to a big finish. The string section is a part of the core band, but they sound grafted on to everything and not employed particularly effectively. Don’t get me started on the track with the Inuit folk singers, which seems to have been concocted at some CBC Radio 2 programming meeting (not terrible in principle, but horribly executed).

The chances: In a year with so much heavyweight talent, I’m going to have to say slim. And if this wins, I’m going to start throwing tables.

The alternates:

Eternia & Moss – At Last (Urbnet)

The album: “They tell me that I’m too late / too wordy / too white.” Well, whoever “they are,” they’re dead wrong. Ottawa MC Eternia has been around for the better part of a decade, but this is as good an introduction to her work as any, and the title (apologies to Etta James) is more than apt—this is easily not only a personal best, but the most gripping hip-hop album released in Canada in the last year.

With stunning, raw backing beats from MoSS (Raekwon, Ghostface Killah), drawing from ’70s funk and film soundtracks—and bearing the obvious influence of his highest profile fan, Gang Starr’s DJ Premier—Eternia’s furious flow spins mostly autobiographical tales. And she has more than a few stories to tell: abusive father, restraining orders, shotguns, alcoholism, sexual assault, Catholic redemption … you name it, she’s lived it and come through stronger. This isn’t a confessional or just about one woman’s pain, however; Eternia is engaging and dynamic throughout, and earns every bit of her braggadocio by outshining high-profile guests like Rah Digga and Maestro Fresh Wes.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist: Eternia is pure, raw hip-hop, unlike the likes of Shad, K’naan and K-OS, who all balance their beats with acoustic guitars and pop songs. That puts her in a uphill battle for crossover appeal, yet anyone who’s ever loved hip-hop can appreciate the mastery at work here. Again, in a less competitive year, she’d likely have had a better shot.

It Kills – s/t (independent)

The album: This was the most pleasant surprise of the 2010/11 Polaris fiscal year, a Halifax trio who sound alternately like a string quartet, a chamber choir, and a small ensemble scoring a Hal Hartley film. Fans of early 4AD recordings (This Mortal Coil) will find plenty to appreciate here, as will people who appreciate the Constellation Records roster but don’t feel like slitting their wrists on a regular basis. While It Kills do have their somber, morning-after-the-apocalypse moments, they’re never dour or outright depressing; there’s a lot of sunlight breaking through that Halifax fog here. They’re incredibly evocative, and, being a trio, are capable of making a lot out of very little—which every decent film composer knows how to do. They’re not invited to the Polaris gala in Toronto at the end of the month, but if they’re smart they’ll be slumming around TIFF this week trying to get some gigs.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist (or long list): Because no one’s ever heard of them. And they’re from Halifax.

Polaris 2011 predictions, part two

Day two of Polaris prize predictions and alternate suggestions.

Braids – Native Speaker (Flemish Eye)

The album: The second debut on the list, this also acts its age. This Montreal-via-Calgary quartet are in love with sound: with synth textures, with the sound of their full-throated vocals, with the possibilities of pedals and studio tricks, with interlocking rhythms. They’re young enough—all in their early 20s—that one has to wonder if they’ve ever heard the Cocteau Twins, the Sugarcubes, or African records that may have influenced some of the guitar patterns here.

They may be youthful ingénues, or they might know exactly what they’re doing every step of the way. Who cares? The more mystery, the better, and this band is full of it. Braids sound like they all learned to play their instruments together as childhood friends in Calgary before moving east to Canada’s cultural mecca and commiserating with fellow freaks there. Unlike most bands with too many ideas, Braids know their breathing exercises and allow plenty of space for everything to float perfectly in place.

While they may sound like a breath of fresh air, however, they are undeniably, well, airy. As lovely as their ethereal approach may be, it rarely transcends the initial moment. Every time I think of Braids, I can never remember what they sound like. While listening to the album, I hear new things all the time. When it’s over, I forget all about it.

There’s something to be said for that tabula rasa experience of listening, and it’s either the best thing or the worst thing about Braids. I can’t decide. But I do know they’re going to make much better records than this one, especially after the relentless road trip they’ve been on since this album’s release in January.

The chances: Strong. Braids’ originality gives them an edge over everyone else on this list, which past Polaris behaviour has rewarded (Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson, Caribou, arguably Karkwa).

Destroyer – Kaputt (Merge)

The album: I was ready to give up on Destroyer completely until Dan Bejar made this record. That he managed to pull this off is nothing short of astounding. Is his embrace of ’80s smooth-jazz-inflected AOR ironic? That’s the immediate assumption with something this cheesy (this video didn’t help the discussion). But Bejar takes this way too seriously to be any kind of joke, as is evident in the incredibly precise attention to detail to every element of the soundscapes here.

The saxophone, synths and trumpet get most of the attention—I think they’re lovely and used tastefully and effectively, but more than a few would disagree with me—but the longer I listen to this album, the more I fall in love with the guitars: the finger-picked rhythm guitar that’s particular to ’80s pop, and the processed lead guitar that plays call-and-response with the vocals, popping up randomly and sometimes fading into the background in the middle of a phrase.

Destroyer—the band itself, not Bejar—has been getting increasingly textural on recent albums, most of the time completely overshadowing Bejar’s actual songs and vocals. That reaches full fruition here, and now, for the first time in years, Bejar doesn’t sound like he’s battling his own band. Everyone here is in the same boat. Specifically, the same cruise ship in the Caribbean. Sipping the same daiquiri.

Drawbacks: “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” and “Song for America” are far too similar to each other, although each is lovely on its own. The 11-minute ambient techno of “Bay of Pigs” is likely a stumbling block for some, but it’s a gamble on Bejar’s part that works.

Everything else I have to say about this album is here.

The chances: Fair. Destroyer has always been divisive, to say the least. Few people hear a Destroyer album and say, “Yeah, I guess that’s okay”—although this, being his most approachable work, might win him some soft votes. But if he wins, it will be because he comes up the middle of an otherwise split vote (say, Arcade Fire vs. Braids), not because he convinced everyone in the room that this is the album of the year. More than a few people hate this album for its sonics alone, before they even get around to dealing with Bejar’s poetry.

Alternates:

Jim Bryson & the Weakerthans – The Falcon Lake Incident (Maple/Kelp)

The album: As much as I love this album, as much as I often reach for it over breakfast or before bed or as driving to the cottage or as I “watch the clouds collide and cover up the setting sun,” I have a lot of trouble writing about it. Some things just feel right; they shouldn’t require any explanation. They just are. But here goes.

Bryson writes deceptively simple songs with sparse arrangements, all the colour and shading employed extremely subtly, and his voice rarely rising above an intimate whisper even on his most upbeat songs (of which there aren’t many). He rarely strays from a CanRock template of 4/4 electric folk rock with chugging guitars, and yet he never sounds lazy. Likewise, the Weakerthans are a band that in many ways rely on little more than three chords and bare-bones punk/folk arrangements, and yet there are so many small treats in the tiny details of their recorded works that set them apart from almost anyone else attempting something similar, to say nothing of John K. Samson’s lyrics.

Bryson is not in Samson’s league as a lyricist—to be fair, extremely few people are—but they share a love of tiny observations that speak volumes about the characters and situations in the songs. And so Samson’s band are used to colouring his sketches musically in ways that the listener barely notices; they do the exact same thing for Bryson here, to great effect.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist (or the long list): As good as Jim Bryson is, it’s hard to come up with hyperbolic adjectives to describe his music (see above). And so if you haven’t already slowly fallen in love with the guy over a series of albums, it’s hard to rally the troops and wave the flag excitedly for one of his new records—even if he has an all-star backing band, as he obviously does here.

Kathryn Calder – Are You My Mother? (File Under: Music)

The album: This is the first solo record for Calder, who is a keyboardist and vocalist in the New Pornographers, and used to help front a trio called Immaculate Machine when she was barely out of high school.

This album was written while her mother was dying, and while that is a theme here, you’d never know it unless she’d advertised the fact. There’s nothing morbid about this at all. Calder is no slouch as a lyricist, but her wordless choruses speak volumes. On “Down the River,” she sings about saying “your goodnights and goodbyes” over a slow pulse of piano and cello, and eventually a gradual crescendo of snare drum, until at the 2.5-minute mark a huge chorus of la-la-la’s comes crashing in sounding like the most joyous, triumphant sendoff any mortal soul could hope for. I’m not sure that song is actually about death, but “Slip Away” certainly is, and features a similar structure that climaxes in a divine “ooo-ooo” chorus that’s one of the most anthemic hooks on the record.

Mother is melancholy at times, absolutely, but no more so than anyone else. For every mid-tempo moment, there’s a rousing rocker like “A Day Long Past Its Prime” or “Castor and Pollux”—or songs that do both, like the stunning “All It Is,” the kind of song U2 wishes it could still write (I mean that in the best possible way, as one of the few music critics I know who doesn’t loathe U2).

More than anything else, Calder has made a beautiful record: there’s her pitch-perfect choirgirl voice, of course, but the instrumentation is impeccable, imbued with a lush West Coast vibe that colours every guitar line, every touch of reverb, even the background ambiance of birdsong on “So Easily.”

When I first this record in August 2010, I thought it was pretty good, and better than I expected, and I wrote a lame review extolling one or two of its virtues and making obvious comparisons to her boss (and uncle) Carl Newman. But in the months that followed, various hooks from various songs kept reappearing in my head even if I hadn’t heard the album in weeks. Eventually, I started listening to it obsessively. I still am. You should too.

Why it didn’t make the shortlist (or the long list):

That this album mostly ignored, in Canada and everywhere else, is to me the single biggest crime of the music business in 2010. It came out last August, and so even had almost a year to register with critics and rally support. Alas, it did not.

Why? Who knows. Maybe people remember that her pre-New Pornographers project, Immaculate Machine, was an average band with uncommonly talented musicians whose best moments were few and far between. Maybe people don’t care about solo records by New Pornographers who aren’t Carl Newman, Dan Bejar or Neko Case (just ask Todd Fancey).

Calder’s new album is out this fall. I haven’t heard it yet. If it’s anywhere near as good as this one, I’m going to be talking about it incessantly until everyone actually listens to it and it wins next year’s Polaris.

Polaris Prize short list, part one

The Polaris prize will be handed out on September 19; one artist from the shortlist of 10 will receive $30,000 ($10,000 more than previous years), and all shortlist artists get $2,000. In an annual Canuckistan tradition, we'll look at the nominees and 10 other records that deserve recognition in the Polaris fiscal year (June 1 2010 - May 31 2011).


Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (Sonovox)

The album: Alphabetical matters aside, why not start with what’s been called the elephant in the room? This is easily the most critically and commercial successful album on the list. It’s won the top Grammy, Juno and Brit Award. Can it take the Polaris as well?

It should. Despite all their earlier achievements—which are not inconsiderable—this band is only now hitting their stride. Win Butler’s voice has matured and he no longer tries to sing outside of his range. Regine Chassagne reappears as a frontwoman, singing two of the album’s strongest songs (“Empty Room,” “Sprawl 2”). Richard Reed Parry, Will Butler and Sarah Neufeld create glorious atmospherics underneath each track, no matter the tempo or the temper. The weakest songs here (“Rococo,” “Half Light 1,” “Sprawl 1”) are still memorable and filled with detail, functioning well as breathers in dense, lengthy song cycle. The bluster that used to be their default setting is applied judiciously; stripped-down songs like “City With No Children” are just as emotionally affecting as the rousing rocker “Ready to Start.” They’re capable of being reductive and simple (the Jay Reatard-influenced “Month of May”) and gloriously epic (“Suburban War”). What were once obvious influences have been successfully consumed into Arcade Fire’s original sound.

There is an all-too-obvious lyrical theme running through the album. It’s obvious because the album is called The Suburbs. And almost every song contains a lyric with the word “suburbs” in it (even as a casual throwaway line between verses, as in “Month of May,” when Win sings, “We were shocked in the suburbs!”). And while that is unapologetically repetitious, it’s not an album exclusively about boredom or living in the shadows of big-box stores.

It's easy to assume that an indie rock band hates the suburbs, and there are more than a few derisive lines on the topic. But this is not a "fuck the conformist suburbs" album. Far from it.

Who are the real targets? Those who "build it up just to burn it back down." Defeatists are taken to task as slackers: "Some people say, we've already lost / But they're afraid to pay the cost for what we've lost." Apathy is death in the face of great challenges: "I know it's heavy, I know it ain't light / But how you gonna lift it with your arms folded tight?" In other words, stopping stroking your chin and get to work—themes taken directly from Obama’s inauguration speech. These are themes of hope and escape and dreams, set against a backdrop of fading memories. Every time Butler says something about "wasted hours" in the suburbs (which he does more than once), he counters it by saying he'd gladly waste all those hours again.

Chassagne and the Butler brothers grew up in the suburbs; they're realistic about it. There are amazing things about growing up there and really shitty things about growing up there. The suburbs are a place where imagination runs wild, where the sterility of the surroundings allows you to invent worlds of your own, where you ride bikes all day with your friends and fight imaginary wars, where you spend endless hours riding buses that loop around the town. You dream of escape to something you imagine to be more exciting—and probably is more exciting in the mind of any adult—but for a child, there's something magical about those suburbs that we're now all quick to disdain. And as adults returning to the suburbs years after we grew up there, we now find them unrecognizable, because nothing was ever built to last.

The Suburbs is about memory as much as it is about any specific geography. It’s about a plea for the pleasure of darkness in a blinding array of endless light, about the sensation of stepping off hot pavement onto grass.

And in a year when I probably listened to more new music than ever before in my life, The Suburbs still sounds fresh to me every time I hear it—which, more than 12 months after its release, is still at least once a week.

The chances: Joshua Ostroff of Spinner raised eyebrows when he was quoted on CBC Radio 3 saying that if Arcade Fire do not win it this year, the mandate and methods of the Polaris Prize should be overhauled, with new rules applied specifying that successful records can’t be nominated, or to somehow make it more of a “most-promising artist” award. “There is one great album [on this year’s shortlist], and nine good ones,” he said, not inaccurately.

But just because global consensus is behind it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to find 10 Canadian critics who don’t think The Suburbs is all that great, and for all we know, that might be what ends up happening in the jury room. The Suburbs is one of my favourite albums ever made; obviously, not everyone is obliged to agree with me. And I have many friends who don’t.

If The Suburbs does not win, let’s hope it’s because the 10 jurists really don’t think much of it, that they find it too long or too bloated or too bland or too derivative or lyrically naïve—and they don’t just hate it because it’s successful. After all, the Polaris mandate is clearly stated: to recognize “albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history."

In the past, that last point has meant that it doesn’t matter if Colin Stetson is lucky to sell 1,000 copies of his album in Canada—he’s given the same consideration as Drake (who did not even make the long list). Today, it means that Arcade Fire face unspoken concerns about whether they “need” to win the Polaris—shouldn’t it go to someone who could use the profile boost?

No. They don’t need it, but Polaris is not an altruistic charity. It’s supposed to be about the work. Like Ostroff, I personally don’t believe any of the other nine albums come close to the towering achievement that is The Suburbs. But, as Polaris proves time and time again, there are no sure things. And just as Arcade Fire upset the Grammys, there could just as easily be a situation on the morning of September 20 where indignant indie geeks tweet “WHOTHEFUCKISRONSEXSMITH?”

Personal note: I was offered a spot on this year’s grand jury, which was incredibly flattering and something that, frankly, I’ve been coveting since the inception of the prize. However, because Arcade Fire hired me to write their official bio for The Suburbs and contribute to their EPK—and paid me to do so—I felt that might create a conflict of interest. I brought this to the attention of the Polaris team and they thought that even the appearance of conflict might raise eyebrows. In the event of an Arcade Fire win, I’d rather have bowed out than have critics think the process was somehow sullied. So you can take my critical assessment of the album with several grains of salt, if you wish. But Lord knows I’ve been paid to write bios for some truly shitty bands (and plenty of amazing ones, in case anyone reading this has hired me) artists I don’t at all feel obliged to cross the street for afterwards. Arcade Fire is not one of those artists.

Austra - Feel It Break (Paper Bag)

The album: The first of three debuts on the list, Austra is spearheaded by Katie Stelmanis, who began in a riot grrrl band with Austra drummer Maya Postepski called Galaxy (no relation, obviously, to the Quebecois band Galaxie on the shortlist), was an original member of the Bruce Peninsula choir, has sung with Fucked Up, and released a fine solo record on Blocks Recording Club.

Despite that pedigree, Feel It Break still feels like a debut album, like a band finding its feet. A few times they knock it out of the park, as on "Lose It," "Spellwork" and "Beat and the Pulse," all sublime slices of new wave pop that sound like a collaboration between Depeche Mode and Kate Bush in their particularly darker moments, with the operatic vocals of Stelmanis at the forefront.

The vocals are key. There are few, if any, women in Canadian pop music who sing like this and don't waste their voice on boring, pretty music. On her solo album under her own name, Stelmanis admitted to me that she purposely sought out harsh synthetic tones to counterbalance her voice; she also sounded shrill there. In Austra, both she and her synths sound much warmer, which is a big part of why this has taken off while her solo record did not. And even when she strips it down to just acoustic piano and voice, as she does on closing track "The Beast," her goth tendencies prevent it from going anywhere near Sarah McLachlan territory.

Austra is not all Stelmanis's show, however. Postepski is a classically trained percussionist and has her own project (Princess Century), while bassist Dorian Wolf comes from the grossly underrated Spiral Beach. Together they provide a depth to this kind of synth pop that's rarely heard from most musicians who find it easy to use built-in presets as crutches or substitutes for actual creativity. It also doesn't hurt that the album was mixed (and partially recorded) by Damian Taylor, a recently returned Canadian expat who has been Bjork's main engineer in recent years.

The chances: It all sounds fabulous, but outside of the singles, it's more promising than it is an album to return to again and again. Landing on the shortlist was a major coup, but this is not their year. They'll be back.

Alternates:

Kiran Ahluwalia – Aam Zameen: Common Ground (independent)

The album: Cross-cultural “world music” albums made in this country usually mean that someone has set a Scottish reel to a reggae backbeat. In the hands of Kiran Ahluwalia, it means that she’s taken traditional Pakistani music and fused it with the desert blues of Mali, an idea that comes to full fruition when she invites Touareg band Tinariwen to help her cover Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s classic “Mustt Mustt.”

It’s not just her voice or her choice of material that sets this apart from the rest of her discography or other albums made outside the Canadian pop paradigm; the no-fuss production, while lovely, doesn’t try to dress up this material and make it any more pretty than it inherently is (overproduction being one of the worst sins in presenting non-Western music to Western audiences).

Why it didn’t make the list: The “world music” ghetto is real, and it’s hard for Canadian artists in particular to break out of it. I suspect part of this album’s obscurity in Polaris pools is the jury itself: because the community for this music is so small, many of its biggest champions are also concert promoters, which makes them ineligible to be a jury member. Albums such as this don’t even make the Polaris long list. When they do, that will be a major step forward.

Geoff Berner – Victory Party (Mint)

The album: Geoff Berner has written some of the most biting, resonant political satire of the last 10 years, along with a fair share of heartbreakers and tales of lives spun out of control. A solo accordion player who, when he can, performs with a trio—violinist Diona Davies and percussionist Wayne Adams—Berner’s sound has always been sparse and raw, his albums little more than a portrait of his live sound.

Here, however, he joins forces with Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, who widens Berner’s sonic scope and paints every song with a different colour palette, while utilizing the strengths of Berner’s band and some hotshot klezmer ringers from New York City (as well as Dolgin’s own keyboard skills).

The writing is consistently strong, whether he’s penning punk-tinged hipster takedowns, odes to the flora of his hometown of Vancouver, rousing klezmer numbers, or adapting old Yiddish folk songs with modern political lyrics. Dolgin saves Berner from some of his worst habits in the studio, and even convinces him to set a Golem story—which Berner uses as a metaphor for modern Israel, naturally—to drum machines and odd sound effects, for a discombobulated dance track that’s as disturbing as it is ridiculous—in a good way. Likewise, the goofy “Jail” (“I am going to jail / to get a new pair of shoes”) sounds like a throwaway on its own, but next to the rousing chorus of “fuck the police!” heard on "Daloy Polizei," it sounds like the last resort of the disempowered trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Berner is not a folk singer, not a punk rocker, not the kind of klezmer act most people expect. But with Victory Party, his musical vision is brought into sharp focus, and there was no other Canadian record this year that sounded anything like it.

Why it didn’t make the list: Berner’s albums until now have been very inconsistent—even as a big fan, I’ll concede that there are some stinkers on every record—and so if someone had written him off before, they may not have felt like tuning in again. Their loss. But also because he’s funny—frequently hilarious, actually—Berner runs the risk of being seen as a novelty act, much like his friend Carolyn Mark, when really, neither ever goes for a cheap laugh, and every one-liner is meant to inflict a serious wound, either internal or external. A sense of humour rarely wins you any affection outside of the bar, which until now has been fine—Berner has been more than happy to stay in the bar. Victory Party shows he’s capable of much more; hopefully more people clue into that soon enough.

Aug '11 reviews

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

Beirut – The Rip Tide (Ba Da Bing!)


Beirut bandleader Zach Condon has the voice of a romantic traveller, which is what he is: from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Paris to Prague and beyond, with his ukulele and trumpet in tow. In the tender warble of his tenor, one can hear the youthful longing for experience, the fascination with new worlds, the friendly stranger who will offer you the shirt off his back and a drink from his glass, the mysterious siren who convinces kindred spirits to line up behind him and form a marching band parade through the centre of town.

That’s been the story of Beirut since its 2006 debut, Gulag Orkestar, became a word-of-mouth sensation, when Condon, the humble home recorder, was suddenly a bandleader attracting rapturous crowds who would storm his stages only to sway and swoon along with him. More recently, Beirut has spawned a cottage industry of tribute bands in Brazil, proving that his mongrel take on Eastern European folk music is truly adaptable to all cultures.

The Rip Tide is only his third full-length, and despite its brevity, it proves that since that debut album Condon has worked best in small doses, most recently on two 2009 EPs, March of the Zapotec and Holland, the latter exploring his electronic side. The sound of Beirut is so lush and lovely that it’s hard to quibble with it, but The Rip Tide finds Condon treading water; if you’re new to the band, then maybe this will sound every bit as intoxicating as the debut. For older fans, it’s hard to argue with more of the same, but it’s more interesting to imagine where Condon’s curiosity will take him next. (Aug. 18)

Download: “Santa Fe,” “East Harlem,” “A Candle’s Fire”

Charles Bradley – No Time For Dreaming (Daptone)

Why, you might ask soul singer Charles Bradley, is it No Time for Dreaming? He answers quickly, with a voice that takes no prisoners, in the opening couplet of the first song: “The world is going up in flames / And nobody wants to take the blame.”

Bradley rides that righteous rage throughout most of this, the debut album for the 63-year-old singer, where, among other woes, he laments the unravelling of the American social fabric. And he does so over the sound of the civil rights era in which he grew up; his backing band is led by Thomas Brenneck, of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and the Budos Band.

Bradley sings like he’s been waiting his whole life to make this record—which he has. Working as a chef and a construction worker while looking for a musical break on the side, he was discovered doing a James Brown tribute in Brooklyn. (Listening to his performance here, there’s no doubt he was convincing in that role.) Brenneck provided him with a young, eager backing band and coaxed him into writing original material, based in part on his hardscrabble life (“Why Is It So Hard? (To Make It in America),” “Heartaches and Pain”). Even when he’s at his bleakest, his performance and his passion break through the darkest clouds; like anyone raised in the gospel tradition, Bradley is ultimately an optimist who finds refuge in love and urges us all to “go back to the golden rule.”

Though this record came out quietly earlier this year, Bradley has had an exceptional summer: he’s a highlight of a new Spin magazine tribute to Nirvana’s Nevermind (available for free download from the mag’s website), and his performance at Sackville, New Brunswick’s SappyFest a few weeks ago—a festival that’s a mecca for indie music lovers across the country—was the talk of the entire weekend, almost outshining Arcade Fire’s secret show there.

Charles Bradley doesn’t have time for dreaming, because his dreams are finally coming true. (Aug. 11)

Download: “The World (Is Going Up in Flames),” “No Time For Dreaming,” “The Golden Rule”

Hollie Cook – s/t (Mr. Bongo)

In the last 10 years there’s been a huge renaissance of classic ’60s and ’70s soul music, recorded with analog equipment and virtually indistinguishable from albums of the original era. Now it’s reggae’s turn.

The debut album by Hollie Cook takes a similar approach to roots reggae and rocksteady; unlike most modern reggae records, there’s no hint here that dancehall or hip-hop ever happened. Likewise, there’s no attempt to cross-pollinate or demonstrate Cook’s catholic tastes; this is nothing if not remarkably consistent.

Thankfully, it’s also much more than that. Cook—who has direct connections to ’70s punk, being the daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, and having served time in a recent incarnation of the Slits—is a breezy but engaging singer, and never uses her genre as a two-chord crutch: she writes great pop songs, just as many of the great singles of reggae’s first 20 years were, and sets them to deceptively simple arrangements with deep rhythm sections, big, churning organs and short, sharp horns.

Though reggae fans and followers of former punk greats will be the first to cotton on to her, she deserves a much more mainstream audience. (Aug. 4)

Download: “Walking in the Sand,” “That Night,” “Cry”

Dominik Eulberg – Diorama (Traum)

This German techno producer used to be a park ranger, which makes a lot of sense when you hear the rich textures he uses to create his playful, colourful and vivid approach to electronic dance music, one that can be imagined coming to life at a rural rave deep in the woods. His melodies are played on synths that sound like bells, his drum machines have a deep, analog texture to them, and everything in between has a shimmering, evocative warmth that continues to soothe even when the tempos accelerate or the mood turns darker. Though some of his rhythms occasionally draw from the minimal glitchiness of the last decade in German music, much of Diorama could just as easily be found on early ’80s records by Kraftwerk or Tangerine Dream. Which doesn’t make it retro; instead, the futurism of those acts is instead clearly vindicated. (Aug. 4)

Download: “Islandmuschel 400,” “H20,” “Die 3 Millionen Musketiere”

Fountains of Wayne – Sky Full of Holes (Yep Roc)

In mainstream consciousness, Fountains of Wayne are known primarily as a one-hit wonder (“Stacy’s Mom”). Outside of that, the band is known to the record-collector crowd as clever and consistent songwriters who exist somewhere between Barenaked Ladies, Weezer and Ron Sexsmith. In his spare time—which is not inconsiderable, seeing as how FoW put out an album every four years—singer/songwriter Adam Schlesinger has penned hits for Katy Perry, Jonas Brothers, Tom Hanks movies (That Thing You Do), John Waters Broadway musicals (Cry Baby) and Stephen Colbert Christmas TV specials, as well as running two side projects, one with the Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha.

So even though Schlesinger takes his time and risks wearing himself thin, Sky Full of Holes is well worth the wait. He utilizes pop culture references not just as cheap signifiers, but as telling details of his characters, like the woman of whom he writes, “She’s been afraid of the Cuisinart since 1977.” He’s also conscious of cliché—like the tired trope of the lonely musician writing a song for a lover back home—and yet still manages to pen the touching “A Road Song,” with the chorus, “I’m writing you a road song that you can call your own.” That makes him one of the only people since Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Your Song” to actually pull that off.

Suitably, the music behind those lyrics sounds instantly familiar, like a series of lost ’70s AM radio hits, which makes Fountains of Wayne irresistible to any pop fan on the other side of 40. Sky Full of Holes also sounds warmer and more welcoming than most of their previous recordings; now that they’re off the major-label treadmill, their acoustic side is brought to the forefront, without toning down the tempos of their patented power pop. (Aug. 18)

Download: “The Summer Place,” “Richie and Reuben,” “A Dip in the Ocean”

Heavyweights Brass Band – Don’t Bring Me Down (independent)

You know when you walk by a group of buskers and you think, “Oh, isn’t that cute, there’s a New Orleans-style brass band playing a Michael Jackson cover.” It’s fun for a minute or two, you toss them some change, and then you move on. Heavyweights Brass Band probably sound just fine on a street corner, but there’s little on their debut album that suggests they’re much more than festival filler. Over half the tracks here are covers—including Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and Jackson’s “Beat It”—but other than a somewhat inspired version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” (which, above all else, is a great melody), they’re all tiresome at best, and none more so than Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” a song that sounds even worse when someone other than him does it. The originals are passable, but there still doesn’t sound like there’s any serious fire in this band. Brass bands should not be polite, as anyone who’s seen or heard Chicago’s Hypnotic Brass Ensemble can attest. These guys, on the other hand, sound like they’ve never had a blister on their lips. (Aug. 11)

Download: “Bad Romance,” “The Plunge,” “City Dreams”

Aline Morales – Flores, Tambores, e Amores (independent)

Morales is perhaps the most visible Brazilian musician in Toronto, as the former bandleader of drum corps Maracatu Nunca Antes. Here, she dials down the volume for an album of tender tropicalia and bossa nova, where her voice sounds just as compelling over vibraphones and muted trombones as it did when it was being projected over thundering drums. Even when she’s singing softly, her voice is as strong as it is seductive, and the arrangements are likewise delicate but powerful. If she wasn’t singing in Portugese—the linguistic rhythms of which are an integral part of this album’s appeal—Morales could easily envision a mainstream crossover to the Sade crowd. Summer’s not over yet; it’s not too late to unwind with this beautifully breezy Brazilian record. (Aug. 18)

Download: “Como Polen,” “Rosa,” “Um Cheiro Que Arrepia”

National Parks Project – Various Artists (Last Gang)

When you’re in a van touring Canada, the true splendour of this country is not always apparent from the Trans-Canada Highway. And when you’re hustling from gig to gig, there usually isn’t a lot of time to stop and smell the wild roses. Which is why this collection of Canucks was probably ecstatic to be invited by Parks Canada to spend some quality time in this country’s national parks, being photographed by some of the country’s top documentary filmmakers, and creating music in the wild.

The result has surfaced in 13 episodes of a TV series for the Discovery Channel (which can also be viewed here), a series of six EPs, and this album collecting some of the more focused moments from the often improvisational collaborations. The well-curated cast reads like the Polaris Prize people put this all together: Sarah Harmer, Shad, Besnard Lakes, Great Lake Swimmers, Kathleen Edwards, Sam Roberts, Tanya Tagaq Gillis, John K. Samson of the Weakerthans, Miracle Fortress, and more, including members of Billy Talent, the Deadly Snakes, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Death From Above 1979, Woodpigeon and the Luyas.

As one would expect, much of the material sounds like it was written for a nature documentary; the catch is that it was written on location. It’s not all acoustic guitars and hand drums; most of the musicians manage to either plug in or make do—hip-hop artist Cadence Weapon, for example, brought solar-powered backpacks that he could plug his sampler into, which he used to capture natural sounds and transform them into percussion. It is, however, almost uniformly reflective and mellow, with the sole exception being an up-tempo percussive track from Sebastien Granger, Woodhands’ Dan Werb and Jennifer Castle.

Sometimes actual songs are created; the album opens with two of the most straightforward tracks here, one by Sarah Harmer, Jim Guthrie and the Constantines’ Bry Webb, the other by Old Man Luedecke, Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker and Snowblink’s Daniela Gesundheit. Generally, the less literal the lyrics are, the better, although Christine Fellows—who travelled to Bruce Peninsula with John K. Samson and Sandro Perri—captures sublime imagery in “Marr Lake.”

Mostly, however, the process produces ambient instrumentals that effectively convey the sense of space and awe that a national park is supposed to inspire, like Tanya Tagaq Gillis with the Apostle of Hustle. Sometimes—like the track by Ohbijou’s Casey Mecija, Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think, and drummer/producer Don Kerr (Rheostatics, Ron Sexsmith)—the result is an epic amalgam of both approaches, and is the highlight track of the entire project. (Which is good, as the episode it came from is one of the most harshly reviewed of the entire series.)

And yet much of this isn’t as rewarding as it might look on paper, despite the more-than-impressive cast of characters. The material was written and recorded quickly, and much of what ended up on this compilation are short snippets that aren’t fully developed; people like Sam Roberts and Kathleen Edwards seem wasted. But it is fascinating to hear artists taken out of their comfort zone, both physically and with new, perhaps unexpected collaborators. One of the more revealing tracks features Graham Van Pelt of electro-dream-pop act Miracle Fortress with Mishka Stein of the cinematic art-rock band Patrick Watson, and the real wild card, Ian D’Sa of pop-punk megastars Billy Talent, who has never sounded more like Peter Buck of R.E.M.—an obvious but often unacknowledged influence on his guitar style—than he does here.

The album is much like a national park itself: beautiful, somewhat inaccessible, its greatest charms lying in subtle moments and unexpected surprises rather than the obvious. (Aug. 25)

Download: “Long Time Before This” – Sarah Harmer, Jim Guthrie, Bry Webb; “Welcome to the Dark” – Old Man Luedecke, Tony Dekker, Daniela Gesundheit; “Mystic Morning” – Casey Mecija, Ohad Benchetrit, Don Kerr

Peaking Lights – 926 (Not Not Fun)

Peaking Lights is to reggae what Shabazz Palaces (see review below) is to hip-hop: a 21^st-century mutation that colours outside almost every line. There’s nary a trace of traditional reggae in Peaking Lights, but everything they do is influenced by Jamaican dub and its approach to texture. The married couple of Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes always start with a reggae rhythm, though usually programmed on cheap, minimal electronic percussion that merely floats in the background. The focus is instead on distorted, dream-like, indistinguishable instrumentation and Dunis’s airy voice. Her dreary, distracted vocals are the weak link. When they work, they suit the lazy vibe perfectly, deadpan and drenched in sunbaked reverb. Too often, however, she just sounds bored—which is too bad, because the creative lo-fi soundscapes swirling around her are fascinating. There’s much here that’s reminiscent of the mid-’90s ambient dub band from Vancouver, Perfume Tree—and if that reference means anything to you, you need to hear Peaking Lights. (Aug. 4)

Download: “All the Sun That Shines,” “Hey Sparrow,” “Amazing and Wonderful”

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up (Sub Pop)

“Psychedelic hip-hop” usually means one of two things: someone has shamelessly sampled ’60s psychedelic pop music and rapped over it (e.g. Edan), or they’ve created something entirely abstract and impenetrable (e.g. Georgia Anne Muldrow). Which makes a case for this deliciously weird debut record by Shabazz Palaces as being the first truly great psychedelic hip-hop album—ever. “Catchy, yes, but trendy, no,” goes one line.

Fans of ’90s alt-hip-hop act Digable Planets—whose 1994 album Blowout Comb was a much-beloved underground favourite of that decade—should note that it is that group’s Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler who is behind Shabazz Palaces, although he purposely masked that fact while releasing two earlier EPs, not revealing who was behind the mask until shortly after the album came out last month.

Shabazz Palaces is nothing if not mysterious: rhythms can fall out of meter or shift entirely during the course of a track, perhaps, say, after everything drops out for a random kalimba interlude. Butler demands the listener “clear some space out so we can space out,” and there’s no telling where a track will take us, either musically or lyrically. Lyrically, Butler is often obtuse (check the song titles), but such is the relaxed cadence of his flow that nothing underneath it could possibly be discombobulating.

Traces of the Digable Planets’ jazzy underpinnings can be heard, and the album closes with a refrain from the Last Poets, a group who were, along with the late Gil Scott-Heron, the ’70s jazz progenitors of political hip-hop. But Shabazz Palaces is decidedly 21^st-century in its approach to sound and texture, making avant-garde hip-hop that can both rock like early LL Cool J and flake out like Lee “Scratch” Perry jamming with Sun Ra.

Does any of it make sense? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Strap on some serious headphones and enjoy the trip. (Aug. 4)

Download: “An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum,” “Youlogy,” “Swerve… the reeping of all that is worthwhile (noir not withstanding)”

William Elliott Whitmore – Field Songs (Anti)

William Elliot Whitmore is a gruff guy in his early 30s who sounds like he’s worked the fields for the past 50 years. In fact, he does work in fields—he still lives on his family farm in rural Iowa on the banks of the Mississippi River, and Field Songs may well have been recorded on his back porch. (The only sounds we hear are Whitmore’s voice, either a banjo or acoustic guitar, and occasionally a bass drum and a tambourine—all underscored by an army of crickets and frogs.)

Unlike his Anti Records debut, 2009’s Animals in the Dark—which was a thunderous, angry, political record with a full band—Field Songs is intimate, detailing personal struggle and hardship. “If you have burdens, don’t carry them / bury them in the ground,” Whitmore sings, although he’d obviously rather set them to song and deliver them with his gutsy, gripping vocals, which makes even the quietest songs here sound gigantic.

Field Songs is suitably timeless, with only the occasional modernity sneaking into the lyrics—there’s a lyric about “the manifest destiny of the factory farms.” Along with the near-perfect Gillian Welch album released last month, it’s been a good summer for bare-bones acoustic singer/songwriters. (Aug. 11)

Download: “Don’t Need It,” “Everything Gets Gone,” “Not Feeling Any Pain”