Apologies for the delay; the following reviews ran in thee Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in July 2010.
Laurie Anderson – Homeland (Nonesuch)
It’s true that perhaps only Laurie Anderson would begin a verse of a song with the lyric: “Ah this world, which as Kierkegaard said…” But it’s also true that perhaps only Laurie Anderson could set Socratic questioning and existential musings about the end of an empire (specifically, the American one) to music. Not only that, she does so with emotional weight—even while doing little more than reciting her lines with the detached neutrality of a planetarium narrator.
Homeland is only her third musical work in the past 20 years, but it’s a natural continuation of her vital work in the ’80s—right down to the use of a Vocoder (which she did on her one and only pop hit, 1981’s “O Superman”)—and yet miraculously, she doesn’t sound like an artifact of that decade. Instead, her lyrics are terrifyingly timely, and her music is otherworldly enough to be permanently out of time.
She may decry those who “haven’t a clue what time it is, or where it goes, or even what a clock is”—but rest assured, Anderson will never be any of those. (July 8)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Another Day in America,” “Only an Expert,” “Transitory Life”
Big Boi – Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam)
As one half of Outkast, Big Boi has long championed an eclectic, freaky brand of R&B and Southern hip-hop; when he appeared earlier this year on Janelle Monae’s track Tightrope, the song of summer 2010, it was as much a passing of the torch to a new Atlanta-based freak as it was a reminder how unproductive the Outkast camp had become lately.
Sir Luscious Left Foot is Big Boi’s long-awaited, much-delayed solo album; his first since Speakerboxxx in 2003. Various singles leaked out in the interim—none of which appear on the final version of the album. Combining the best of ’90s Dirty South hip-hop, ’80s funk and new wave, and old school ’70s funk, Big Boi also emphasizes vocal melodies and rich harmonies this time out. George Clinton, Janelle Monae, Lil Jon and T.I. all make appearances; sadly the Kate Bush hook-up didn’t work out, but there’s no reason why her idiosyncracies couldn’t have fit right into Big Boi’s vision as well.
For whatever reason, Sir Lusicous Left Foot was rejected by his previous record company, which claimed to not hear any hits—an accusation that is patently ridiculous. This is every bit as full of hooks as Speakerboxxx and doubles as a welcome return and a bold step forward. (July 15)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Shutterbugg,” “Tambourine,” “Follow Us”
Brasstronaut – Mount Chimeara (Unfamiliar)
This Vancouver band does feature a trumpet player and they do play spacey music—but that doesn’t excuse their terrible moniker. Can a group of musicians who pick the name Brasstronaut actually have any taste in music? Thankfully, they do, and Mount Chimeara finds them charting their own course with expansive songs and instrumentation that veers into jazzy territory: upright bass, electric piano, trumpets, clarinets and violins provide delicate shadings, like a jazzier Talk Talk or a considerably more chill and less apocalyptic Godspeed You Black Emperor. Mount Chimeara was partially written and recorded during a residency at the Banff Centre, but it’s the Vancouver vibe that is evident throughout—you can almost taste the ocean air. (July 22)
Download (zunior.com): “Slow Knots,” “Lo Hi Hopes,” “Insects”
The Clientele – Minotaur (Merge)
When The Clientele announced they were breaking up this year, shortly after the release of easily their best album, 2009’s Bonfires on the Heath, they were commended for going on a high note. And yet here they are again, with an eight-song EP that’s every bit as delectable and definitive as that album, one that encapsulates their rainy-day U.K. dream-pop perfectly. Alisdair MacLean gets increasingly melodic with each passing release, while “The Green Room” is little more than a poem set to sound art, showing the band pushing forward in every direction. Which once again leads to the obvious question: why stop now? (July 15)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “Minotaur,” “Jerry,” “Strange Town”
Gonjasufi – A Sufi and a Killer (Warp)
Sumach Ecks, who records as Gonjasufi, admits in interviews he does yoga every day not just for his health, but to calm his temper. That’s obvious on his debut album, which straddles chilled-out, psychedelic soul and paranoid, dishevelled garage rock, with North African and Arabic influences woven throughout, and Ecks’s gravelly, morning-after crackle of a voice—not unlike Tricky’s, or late period Sly Stone—attempting to glue it all together. There are times when Ecks lets his aggression breaks free, but much of A Sufi and a Killer is about tension and restraint—especially when most of the songs clock in at less than three minutes, presumably checking out before things get really, really weird. Even at its most disorienting, it manages to be entirely intoxicating, and highly recommended for the next heat wave. (July 15)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “Ancestors,” “Change,” “Duet”
Grady – Good as Dead (C12)
Not sure what the album title is referring to, but it’s safe to say that guitarist Gordie Johnson hasn’t had the same kind of success with Grady as he did with Big Sugar in the ’90s. Not that he seems to care: he’s relocated to Austin, Texas, is still playing as loud as ever, and Grady’s brand of what he calls “cowboy metal” has legions of enthusiastic fans in the U.S.—including ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and, oddly enough, punk icon Jello Biafra, who is quoted as saying Grady is the “missing link between early Johnny Winter and Ministry.” (Biafra also put out an earlier album on his label, Alternative Tentacles.)
So while Grady once sounded like a low-grade boogie band doing Big Sugar covers, Johnson has whipped this band into shape and found its own sound—and its own songs, like “Alberta Bone”s and “If I Was King,” that prove Johnson isn’t just relying on guitar gimmicks. (A almost unrecognizable cover of The Tragically Hip’s “Boots or Hearts” is a nice touch, as well.) That he’s still a phenomenal guitarist is undisputed, and this album demands to be played at full volume. The rhythm section could use some more swagger and swing, but Johnson’s energy alone carries the day. (July 1)
Download (iTunes, eMusic): “Blackass Woman,” “Alberta Bones,” “If I Was King”
Sarah Harmer – Oh Little Fire (Universal)
It’s been five years since we heard from Sarah Harmer, and there was no telling what we might expect. Another acoustic record, like 2005’s I’m a Mountain? A return to her Weeping Tile rock days? An everything-all-at-once classic like 2000’s You Were Here? All bets were off when first single “Captive” made it to radio; some unsuspecting listeners thought it sounded like Metric, not because of some synth-rock makeover, but because of Harmer’s vocal style.
It turns out that this album’s closest predecessor is 2004’s All Our Names, a sanded-off album that didn’t seem to satisfy fans of any of Sarah’s various sides. Thankfully, Oh Little Fire has considerably more zip than that, perhaps due to her long absence, and it says a lot about Harmer’s charisma and talent that she can communicate some rather raw emotions in jaunty acoustic pop. She may be feeling heartbroken—as anyone could easily discern from titles like “Captive,” “Careless,” “New Loneliness and “The Thief”—but minor chords are rare here, and tempos seldom drag.
Sarah Harmer is so good at what she does—or rather, everything she’s done so far, be it raucous rock, old-timey jazz, acoustic country, or pop music—that one can only wonder what it would sound like if Oh Little Fire had sparked some serious reinvention. Then again, if it ain’t broke…(July 1)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com): “Captive,” “The City,” “Silverado”
Kylie Minogue – Aphrodite (EMI)
Robyn – Body Talk Pt. 2 (Universal)
Criticizing a fembot like Kylie Minogue is pointless: no one listens to her records expecting an outpouring of warmth or human emotion. She’s managed to maintain a mysterious 25-year international career by being largely faceless, her singles largely indistinguishable—with the exception of 2000’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” Along the way there has been an oddball duet with Nick Cave and a high-profile battle with breast cancer, but there’s little on Aphrodite that sounds significantly different than anything else Minogue has done since day one, and with no standout single as a calling card, either.
And so Swedish pop singer Robyn is here to tell us: “I’ve got some news for you/ fembots have feelings, too.” On the surface, little distinguishes herself from Minogue: both sound robotic, both revel in technological artifice, neither of them pretend to be anything but pop stars. Yet Robyn actually has personality: she’s tough (“Don’t F---ing Tell Me What To Do”), she’s independent (“None of Dem”), and she can be vulnerable (“Dancing On My Own”)—but ultimately warns you not to fall in love with her (“Hang With Me”). She sounds perpetually dissatisfied that lovers and the world at large will never meet her high standards—and you can be sure that she’s not settling for second best: from anyone else, from herself, from her music. (July 15)
Download Robyn (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Dancehall Queen,” “None of Dem,” “Cry When You Get Older”
Owen Pallett – Lewis Takes Off His Shirt EP (Domino)
"Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" is by far the poppiest song on Pallett’s recent neo-classical masterpiece, Heartland. Odd, then, that the three remixes on this EP don’t make it any more danceable than it already is; only Benoit Pioulard’s near-ambient approach improves on the original—and does so by removing any rhythm track at all, as well as 95 per cent of the vocals, making the song sound almost sombre. Most disappointing is Dan Deacon’s remix, which manages to muddy the waters, seemingly forgetting about various faders and leaving everything on all the time. Simon Bookish wins the contest, however, by roping the 9/4 time signature of “Keep the Dog Quiet” onto the dance floor with all its quirks intact—if not adding more. (July 22)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “Keep the Dog Quiet (Simon Bookish remix),” “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (Benoit Pioulard remix),” “Midnight Directives (Max Tundra remix)”
Reflection Eternal: Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek – Revolutions Per Minute (Rawkus)
Never mind Jay-Z: Talib Kweli is one of the top MCs of the last decade, and that’s something Jay-Z himself has admitted on record (a line that’s immodestly sampled here). And while his albums have been somewhat spotty, his best tracks have always been with DJ Hi-Tek, dating back to Kweli’s days in Black Star with Mos Def. Revolutions Per Minute is only the second Reflection Eternal album (and the first in 10 years), but it’s a mature encapsulation of everything Kweli has been up to since the start. With one exception: there’s very little straight-up hip-hop here, relying instead of ’70s soul styles. And it’s not because Kweli is any less fiery. If anything, Hi-Tek pulls some punches in order not to compete with Kweli’s verses; instead of sounding weak, he sounds entirely complementary and comfortable—like long-time collaborators should. (July 15)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Back Again,” “In This World,” “Midnight Hour” (featuring Estelle)
The Roots – How I Got Over (Universal)
After eight albums, 15 years, and hundreds upon hundreds of marathon live shows, the Roots had announced that the 2008 album Rising Down would be their last. They had just got a gig as the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, they still planned on being a touring band, and bandleader ?uestlove was consistently busy with other projects. What else was there to say? To do?
For starters, their recorded output had never reached the level of respect that everyone had for the band as an entity‹and that¹s why How I Got Over is as much of a comeback as it is a classic in their catalogue. Rarely, if ever, have the multi-talented Roots crew been able to sustain a mood over the course of a concise album that plays to all their strengths: classic hip-hop, both vintage and neo-soul, and eclectic influences filtered through their unique vision.
Lyrically, How I Got Over is very much like a hangover of the George W. Bush years, with battered idealism and plenty of self-doubt. And yet the music is far from dark: it¹s fierce and funky, it¹s soothing and soulful, and it benefits from a bevy of guests that range from usual collaborators Dice Raw, Phonte and Blu to John Legend and the Dirty Projectors. Two songs born of borrowed sources don¹t sample or cover existing songs, but instead invite the original artists—in this case, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Monsters of Folk, and harpist Joanna Newsom—to sing their hooks while the MCs write verses that expand on the original themes.
This isn’t a band ready for its Vegas years. This is a band with a renewed sense of purpose. (July 8)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Right On,” “How I Got Over,” “The Fire”
Shad – TSOL (Black Box)
Shad doesn’t believe in wasting words. The London, Ontario MC packs enough of them into his third album that he could be excused for slacking off once in a while, but the free-associative double entendres fly fast and furious here. The pop culture references and occasionally adolescent jokes abound—he calls himself a “true school rapper with middle school humour”—but there’s no denying his versatility and verbal dexterity, which is equal to his ’90s heroes like Common or Guru. He can also be deadly serious when he wants to, like on the tribute to clever ladies on “Keep Shining,” or the post-Obama paranoia of “At The Same Time.” Guests include Ian Kamau, Classified, Justin Nokuza and Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning and Lisa Lobsinger, all of whom help make TSOL Shad’s most solid set of backing tracks to date. But there’s no doubt the spotlight is all on the main MC, who is as warm, funny and engaging as he is whip-smart on the mic. This fall he’ll be hooking up with K’naan for a fall tour; on TSOL, Shad sounds like he’s a small step away from a “Wavin’ Flag” of his own. (July 22)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Telephone,” “We Myself and I,” “At the Same Time”
The Slew – 100% (Ninja Tune)
Ten years ago, Montreal turntablist master Kid Koala appeared on a track by Handome Boy Modeling School called “Rock’n’Roll Could Never Hip-Hop Like This.” Now, after years in the interim make abstract, absurdist and jazzy records and pop cameos, Kid Koala returns to the rock, splicing myriad ’70s rock riffs together and setting them to the heaviest hip-hop beats this side of John Bonham. That mash-up sounds almost too easy to do, in a way that everyone from Girl Talk on down has done already. But Koala doesn’t take obvious classics and funk them up; in fact, you’d be hard pressed to name any of these samples. Instead, as always, he’s primarily interested in sounds, taking a distorted organ or a fuzzed-out guitar or a hysterical scream and manipulating it manually, rather than letting the original sources play out. But unlike much of his other work, The Slew is very much a visceral rock’n’roll experience—live, it’s augmented by the former rhythm section of Wolfmother, although they don’t appear here—and leaves little doubt that, yes, rock’n’roll can hip-hop like this. (July 1)
Download (now only available physically): “You Turn Me Cold,” “Battle of Heaven and Hell,” “Robbing Banks (Doin’ Time)”
Stars – The 5 Ghosts (Universal)
Three years ago, Stars put out an album called In Our Bedroom After the War, with songs titled “Take Me to the Riot” and “Barricades.” If they’d have released that album the week of G20 protests in their hometown of Toronto, their melodramatic sense of drama might not have felt so histrionic—albeit effectively so—as it did at the time. Now, they return with songs about how “dead hearts are everywhere” and how “thousands of ghosts in the daylight walking through my hometown square.”
Yet the ghosts here might as well refer to Stars’ past glories, which seem hidden in a distant past on this, their major label debut. “I Died So I Could Haunt You” provides an unhelpful reminder that a definite sense of loss—even defeatism—hangs over the album, as opposed to the romantic idealism that has often buoyed their more triumphant moments. The band gets easily caught up in their own contradictions: “Changes/ I’ve never been good with change/ I hate it when it all stays the same.”
Musically, they step back from the more rock-heavy moves of recent album and rely more on synths. But while the production is top notch, the songs rarely rise to the occasion—especially when they try on an electro-pop sex-kitten jam called “We Don’t Want Your Body,” which sounds like a twisted collaboration between Trent Reznor and Mariah Carey.
At one point, Amy Millan sings: “I don’t mind this wasted, hated daylight.” I don’t know why her character hates the daylight, but it certainly sounds like it’s wasted here. (July 1)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “The Passenger,” “Wasted Daylight,” “Changes”
Wolf Parade – Expo 86 (Sub Pop)
When Wolf Parade first appeared on anyone’s radar in 2004, part of what blew everyone away was that they appeared fully formed, with classic songs and a sound of their own cobbled together from the debris of their major influences, and bashed out on equipment that could barely stay together. Now that the two songwriters (Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner) have successful bands of their own (Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs, respectively)—with more records between them than Wolf Parade does at this point, the original project can seem like an afterthought—which it did on 2008’s disappointing At Mount Zoomer.
For whatever reason, Expo 86 finds Wolf Parade sounding hungry once again, ready to prove something either to themselves, the world, or both. Both Boeckner and Krug are not necessarily at the top of their game—their recent albums with their other bands are, overall, more cohesive and satisfying—but they’ve obviously agreed to make a full-on rock’n’roll record, with nary a ballad in the bunch, and the lines blurred between their individual songwriting styles.
Engineer Howard Bilerman helps deliver perhaps the biggest sound Wolf Parade has ever put to tape, and every member of the band puts everything they have into visceral performances—there are even guitar solos this time out. The lyrics are often absurdist (“I had a vision! / Of a gorilla! / And he was a killer! A KILLER!”), but no matter: Expo 86 is a return to the giddy thrill of discovery, the rush of youth, and the sparks that ignited such an explosive band in the first place. (July 8)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Little Golden Age,” “What Did My Lover Say?”, “Pobody’s Nerfect”
The Wooden Sky – If I Don’t Come Home You’ll Know I’m Gone (Black Box)
It’s tempting to file Toronto’s The Wooden Sky as a roots rock act. All the signifiers are there: pedal steel, acoustic guitar, country rhythms, occasional gospel influences and a slight twang in Gavin Gardiner’s voice. And yet The Wooden Sky don’t fit into any easy category, due primarily to Gardiner’s songwriting, which is more on par with the noir-ish elegance of The National than, say, Blue Rodeo. While most Canadian roots artists tend to play it rather straight, The Wooden Sky are, along with Cuff the Duke, one of the more convincing acts to deliver raucous, occasionally epic country rock that never sounds like it’s falling back on a formula. Passionate performances and no shortage of standout tracks make this a powerful statement from an exciting band. No wonder they leapt from obscurity to the Polaris Prize long list this year; their dynamic set at Guelph’s Hillside Festival in July proved that they’re ready for much bigger stages. (July 22)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Angels,” “Oslo,” “An Evening Hymn”
Wovenhand – The Threshingfloor (Sounds Familyre)
“I am the god of hellfire!” began an old psychedelic rock classic by Arthur Brown, a man who has nothing on David Eugene Edwards, a.k.a. Wovenhand. Edwards believes in a god of blood and redemption, and doesn’t think that Christian music is meant to be some kind of feel-good false witness to the world. Edwards sings with great gravitas about a God who has the whole world in his hands—and is going to do whatever He damn well pleases with it, human intentions be damned. Speaking of the whole world,
Edwards expands his usual mix of gothic country, blues, Celtic and Appalachian folk with textures drawn from Arabic, Native American, Italian and Indian sources, all of which seamlessly fit into his songwriting and help create his best album to date—which, considering the impeccable 2003 self-titled Wovenhand album, is no small achievement. (July 8)
Wovenhand plays the Garrison in Toronto on October 1.
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “A Holy Measure,” “Sinking Hands,” “Terre Haute”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Arcade Fire
In June, I was invited to Montreal to interview Arcade Fire and write their promotional bio. This is not that bio. These are just random thoughts and observations.
Win Butler’s fortune cookie states the obvious: “You are the kind of person who will go places.” It’s mid-June 2010, and the Arcade Fire front man proudly displays this premonitory phrase for his bandmates, who are taking a dinner break while rehearsing in a Montreal warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. They are preparing the stage show that will find them going plenty of places for much of the next year, promoting their third album The Suburbs (out on Aug. 2).
In the past, Arcade Fire has always underplayed their own popularity by playing smaller venues; while touring 2007’s Neon Bible, they opted to play three shows at Toronto’s Massey Hall, when the local promoter insisted they could have sold out the Air Canada Centre. In 2010, there’s no point in modesty. The first leg of the tour, before the album was even released, found them playing European festivals where they headlined over Jay-Z. Two dates headlining Madison Square Gardens in New York City are booked for mid-August.
These days, this kind of global domination isn’t that shocking for Canadian artists, especially a band whose debut album, 2004’s Funeral, was named the No. 1 album of the past decade by Rolling Stone. What’s unusual about Arcade Fire is that they’ve achieved this while trying to maintain a maximum distance from celebrity culture, mainstream radio and mega-marketing.
Six weeks before The Suburbs arrives in stores, the band is still mastering the vinyl version of the album, proofing artwork and learning how to play the songs live. No one in the band is on Twitter. Not a single ad has appeared anywhere. Not a single journalist—nor the band’s record label—has heard the finished product. Thousands of local fans heard the new songs before anyone else, at live shows in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Toronto in the past month—including a free show on June 9 in a suburban mall parking lot in Montreal, announced on mere hours’ notice, that drew almost 10,000 people.
The outside world is clamoring for details—even ones that the band aren’t trying to keep secret. During rehearsal, the band’s management gets an email from a Rolling Stone fact-checker, asking questions about recent gigs and new songs. Among other details, the fact-checker wants to confirm that the new song “Rococo” is, in fact, “slow-burning.”
The Arcade Fire camp—most of the crew and staff consist of old friends, some dating back to high school—all appear relaxed, a welcome contrast to the anxiety that accompanied the release of Neon Bible. This time, the only real pressure the band feels is internal; no matter how many external accolades they receive—from journalists, audiences, or musical heroes—Arcade Fire have never been convinced that they’ve managed to meet their own standards. The best is always yet to come. There is always work to be done. And the only people any one of them really wants to impress are the seven other musicians on stage every night.
Guitarist and bassist Tim Kingsbury had driven me to rehearsal from his new house in Point St. Charles, a slowly gentrifying neighbourhood on the south side of Montreal’s Lachine Canal. In his dishevelled car, five CDs are stuffed into the passenger door pocket: AC/DC, Jackson 5, the Pretenders, fellow Montreal band Sunset Rubdown, and Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. The latter, he said, is homework before the tour.
Every Arcade Fire member has bought property in Montreal in recent years. Certainly nothing ostentatious, despite the fact that the fiercely independent band is, to some degree, rolling in dough; they’re financially secure enough to announce recently that they would match up to $1 million of their fans’ contributions to Haitian relief, which has been a pet cause since well before this year’s earthquake (founding member and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne is the daughter of Haitian immigrants). “Take our money, please,” Win would urge an audience in Quebec City a month later.
At the warehouse, the stage is set up in the middle of the cavernous room, surrounded by black curtains. There is everything they need for a festival gig: a full lighting truss, a video screen and stadium-size sound system. Despite the production, rehearsal is as casual as it would be in the living room of bandleaders (and married couple) Win and Régine, where some of The Suburbs was recorded. The band is unselfconscious about mucking around, pulling songs apart and trying different arrangements, even if it leaves the crew—who are supposed to be rehearsing cues—a bit befuddled.
Many of the new songs have never been performed together by the eight people in the room now. The song “Empty Room” fades out on the album; here, they decide to segue into “Modern Man” by having Régine hold a high note in F-sharp minor while they shift into the key of A. They try a choral approach for two songs: one from Neon Bible, one a sombre cover of recently deceased garage rocker Jay Reatard (“Oh It’s Such a Shame”), who was scheduled to open for Arcade Fire this year. At one point everyone drops their instruments and stands in a circle to arrange harmonies. For a band that built their name on bombast, it’s a remarkably delicate moment.
It’s not incongruous with the arguably more mature Arcade Fire that can be heard on The Suburbs. They’ve dialled down the intensity that fuelled their earlier work; Win jokes that they wanted to write some “music to do dishes to.” But even hearing them rehearse an older number such as “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)”—a song that was once performed live with motorcycle helmets used as particularly violent percussion—it now sounds older, wiser, not as strident. There is a quieter strength at work, yet no less forceful.
Everything now has space to breathe; for all the glorious urgency of earlier material, it could also be claustrophobic. Part of what was so frustrating about seeing Arcade Fire back in 2004—both before and after the release of Funeral—was that they sounded so much bigger than they actually were. Instruments would break. The sound mix would be muddled. The band wasn’t reaching the intensity that an often visibly agitated Win wanted. Audiences didn’t always understand. They could look and sound constricted, like watching professional soccer players trying to play on a basketball court.
Now the music has found its home: less restless, less like it has something to prove, but no less eager or hungry to live up to their own high expectations. Most importantly, the new material is considerably more welcoming than the weight-of-the-world fog that marred some of Neon Bible.
And why wouldn’t it be? Despite their deadly serious reputation, the members of Arcade Fire are, understandably, quite happy. They’ve carved out considerable success on their own terms. They feel like a family. They’ve been able to shine a light on their own projects and those of their peers (drummer Jeremy Gara was a key part of recent masterpieces by Owen Pallett and Snailhouse).
Furthermore, they’ve been able to put their money where their mouth is, by helping kick-start a new Haitian foundation called Kenpe, and by funnelling one dollar from every concert ticket they sold over the past three years (and the current tour) to Partners in Health, which focuses on community partnership solutions to poverty and health-care issues in the developing world. During the 2008 U.S. election, they headlined two pro-Obama rallies in North Carolina; the Democrats took the state for the first time in over 30 years, by a thin margin. On Obama’s inauguration day, Arcade Fire played the volunteer and staff party; they met the President for a photo op, and Win gave him a copy of George Orwell’s Why I Write.
Sitting in Tim’s home-studio office the next morning, a photo of the band with Barack and Michelle Obama is one of the only clues that a member of Arcade Fire lives here. Tim sets me up with an unmastered version of The Suburbs and leaves me alone for the rest of the morning.
I actually need most of the morning to listen to The Suburbs all the way through three times—the album is 63 minutes long. This concerns multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry, who confessed at rehearsal that the length is the one thing he doesn’t like about an album he’s otherwise very proud of—and the latter statement doesn’t come easily from this workaholic and perfectionist, who devotes most of his non-Arcade Fire time to his project with violinist Sarah Neufeld, Bell Orchestre.
Parry says there were many discussions about the track list and the format. Should some songs come out on an EP? As stand-alone singles not found on the album? That seemed to work for Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths and, uh, the Beatles. Ultimately they decided to throw it all on there, and, despite Parry’s reservations, the album doesn’t suffer for it. The Suburbs is dynamic and deliciously satisfying. Besides, the kids these days are going to listen to MP3s out of order anyway, right? Or at least one side of a double vinyl set at a time?
As always with Arcade Fire, “the kids” figure prominently on The Suburbs, not just because Win and Régine are writing about wasted time in the suburbs of their youth. This time out, however, there is a different tone. In the past they would rally the children, as on “Wake Up,” “Power Out” or “No Cars Go,” and now there’s a bit of a sneer: chastising “the kids with their arms folded tight” (“Month of May”) and, on “Rococo,” practically mocking: “Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids / They will eat right out of your hand / Using great big words that they don’t understand.”
Those aren’t the only times Win—who just turned 30—sounds a bit like a crotchety grandpa: “We Used to Wait” is a fond remembrance of antiquated days when lovelorn teenagers wrote letters while separated for summer vacations. There is no romance in texting, it’s true. Thankfully, there is no verse about how far the narrator had to walk to school, and in what adverse weather conditions.
The Suburbs is definitely a concept album: we know this because the word “suburbs” appears in almost every song. It’s a rich theme, encompassing ennui of youth, wasted time, wasted potential, technological transformation, urban planning, and dreams of escape. But after “The Suburbs,” “Suburban War,” “Sprawl 1,” “Sprawl 2” and “Wasted Hours”—some of which share not just themes, but specific lines—it’s easy to feel trapped on a cul-de-sac.
Amidst the suburban angst, there are touching laments for disappearing landscapes—which sound less grandfatherly than they do like the legitimately apocalyptic anxieties of a potential parent: “This city’s changed so much since I was a little child / Pray to God I won’t live to see the death of everything that’s wild.” The title track asks, “So can you understand / Why I want a daughter while I'm still young? / I want to hold her hand / And show her some beauty / Before all this damage is done.”
There is no resignation, however. There is a pointed call for responsibility, ala Inauguration-Day Obama: “I know it's heavy, I know it ain't light / But how you gonna lift it with your arms folded tight?” Apathy isn’t just a crutch, it’s a dishonest denial: “Some people say we’ve already lost/ but they’re afraid to pay the cost.”
The Suburbs is dense with musical majesty. It doesn’t sound like either Funeral or Neon Bible, even though it’s quite obviously the same band. The rousing anthems are largely absent (Régine’s “Empty Room” and the fuzzy punk of “Month of May” being notable exceptions); now Arcade Fire is much more selective in applying its intensity. A sense of economy—perhaps the influence of labelmates Spoon or tourmates LCD Soundsystem—is evident throughout. The Springsteen influence this time out is more “Jungleland” (sparse, epic balladry) than “Born to Run” (all-or-nothing barnburners). New wave textures colour mid-tempo pop songs with stuttered rhythms. And as a left turn right before the album closes, Régine’s “Sprawl 2” sounds like Swedish reggae—in a good way.
You can take all of this with several grains of salt, if you like: the band members are friends of mine--even if I've barely seen them in recent years--and I’ve been a huge fan, though not an uncritical one, since I first heard a cassette demo in December 2002. But The Suburbs is thoroughly satisfying, in ways that I almost don’t even expect anymore from my favourite artists.
In 2004, just before Funeral came out, Régine told me: “I’m always at zero trying to get to square one. For me, I haven’t achieved anything yet. This is a start.” As beloved as that album is now, The Suburbs trumps it on almost every level.
Later that day, after a full day of interviews, the band and crew assemble for a barbecue at a friend’s house in a lush, green neighbourhood near Parc Laurier. It’s partially a belated birthday party for Win and one of the production staff, and partially an album-wrap party before the European tour.
The Butler brothers play backyard basketball with their friend’s seven-year-old son. Tim and the band’s video director Vincent Morisset talk birdwatching. The Canadians try to explain to the Americans what proroguing Parliament entails. Rock’n’roll decadence this is not.
When the birthday cakes come out, Régine leaps to the piano, instantly intuiting the key everyone’s agreed on for "Happy Birthday." The singer of one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last 10 years extinguishes his birthday candles by obeying chants to “suck! suck! suck!” Win then makes a brief toast, congratulating everyone on the culmination of a year’s work.
This calls for another celebratory song that everyone knows—except that no one knows what that should be. “What does everyone know?” someone mumbles. “Christmas!” comes the suggestion. “Silent Night” it is, then, even on this warm summer night, in a town with a crucifix on a mountaintop.
Of course, that doesn’t seem quite triumphant enough—so Will, a transplanted American, strikes up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” To a rousing, laughing chorus of “glory, glory, hallelujah,” the army of Arcade Fire raise their glasses and prepare for a triumphant year.
Earlier interviews with the band on this site are (from 2004) here and here and here, as well as (from 2007) here and here and here.
Win Butler’s fortune cookie states the obvious: “You are the kind of person who will go places.” It’s mid-June 2010, and the Arcade Fire front man proudly displays this premonitory phrase for his bandmates, who are taking a dinner break while rehearsing in a Montreal warehouse the size of an airplane hangar. They are preparing the stage show that will find them going plenty of places for much of the next year, promoting their third album The Suburbs (out on Aug. 2).
In the past, Arcade Fire has always underplayed their own popularity by playing smaller venues; while touring 2007’s Neon Bible, they opted to play three shows at Toronto’s Massey Hall, when the local promoter insisted they could have sold out the Air Canada Centre. In 2010, there’s no point in modesty. The first leg of the tour, before the album was even released, found them playing European festivals where they headlined over Jay-Z. Two dates headlining Madison Square Gardens in New York City are booked for mid-August.
These days, this kind of global domination isn’t that shocking for Canadian artists, especially a band whose debut album, 2004’s Funeral, was named the No. 1 album of the past decade by Rolling Stone. What’s unusual about Arcade Fire is that they’ve achieved this while trying to maintain a maximum distance from celebrity culture, mainstream radio and mega-marketing.
Six weeks before The Suburbs arrives in stores, the band is still mastering the vinyl version of the album, proofing artwork and learning how to play the songs live. No one in the band is on Twitter. Not a single ad has appeared anywhere. Not a single journalist—nor the band’s record label—has heard the finished product. Thousands of local fans heard the new songs before anyone else, at live shows in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Toronto in the past month—including a free show on June 9 in a suburban mall parking lot in Montreal, announced on mere hours’ notice, that drew almost 10,000 people.
The outside world is clamoring for details—even ones that the band aren’t trying to keep secret. During rehearsal, the band’s management gets an email from a Rolling Stone fact-checker, asking questions about recent gigs and new songs. Among other details, the fact-checker wants to confirm that the new song “Rococo” is, in fact, “slow-burning.”
The Arcade Fire camp—most of the crew and staff consist of old friends, some dating back to high school—all appear relaxed, a welcome contrast to the anxiety that accompanied the release of Neon Bible. This time, the only real pressure the band feels is internal; no matter how many external accolades they receive—from journalists, audiences, or musical heroes—Arcade Fire have never been convinced that they’ve managed to meet their own standards. The best is always yet to come. There is always work to be done. And the only people any one of them really wants to impress are the seven other musicians on stage every night.
Guitarist and bassist Tim Kingsbury had driven me to rehearsal from his new house in Point St. Charles, a slowly gentrifying neighbourhood on the south side of Montreal’s Lachine Canal. In his dishevelled car, five CDs are stuffed into the passenger door pocket: AC/DC, Jackson 5, the Pretenders, fellow Montreal band Sunset Rubdown, and Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible. The latter, he said, is homework before the tour.
Every Arcade Fire member has bought property in Montreal in recent years. Certainly nothing ostentatious, despite the fact that the fiercely independent band is, to some degree, rolling in dough; they’re financially secure enough to announce recently that they would match up to $1 million of their fans’ contributions to Haitian relief, which has been a pet cause since well before this year’s earthquake (founding member and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne is the daughter of Haitian immigrants). “Take our money, please,” Win would urge an audience in Quebec City a month later.
At the warehouse, the stage is set up in the middle of the cavernous room, surrounded by black curtains. There is everything they need for a festival gig: a full lighting truss, a video screen and stadium-size sound system. Despite the production, rehearsal is as casual as it would be in the living room of bandleaders (and married couple) Win and Régine, where some of The Suburbs was recorded. The band is unselfconscious about mucking around, pulling songs apart and trying different arrangements, even if it leaves the crew—who are supposed to be rehearsing cues—a bit befuddled.
Many of the new songs have never been performed together by the eight people in the room now. The song “Empty Room” fades out on the album; here, they decide to segue into “Modern Man” by having Régine hold a high note in F-sharp minor while they shift into the key of A. They try a choral approach for two songs: one from Neon Bible, one a sombre cover of recently deceased garage rocker Jay Reatard (“Oh It’s Such a Shame”), who was scheduled to open for Arcade Fire this year. At one point everyone drops their instruments and stands in a circle to arrange harmonies. For a band that built their name on bombast, it’s a remarkably delicate moment.
It’s not incongruous with the arguably more mature Arcade Fire that can be heard on The Suburbs. They’ve dialled down the intensity that fuelled their earlier work; Win jokes that they wanted to write some “music to do dishes to.” But even hearing them rehearse an older number such as “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)”—a song that was once performed live with motorcycle helmets used as particularly violent percussion—it now sounds older, wiser, not as strident. There is a quieter strength at work, yet no less forceful.
Everything now has space to breathe; for all the glorious urgency of earlier material, it could also be claustrophobic. Part of what was so frustrating about seeing Arcade Fire back in 2004—both before and after the release of Funeral—was that they sounded so much bigger than they actually were. Instruments would break. The sound mix would be muddled. The band wasn’t reaching the intensity that an often visibly agitated Win wanted. Audiences didn’t always understand. They could look and sound constricted, like watching professional soccer players trying to play on a basketball court.
Now the music has found its home: less restless, less like it has something to prove, but no less eager or hungry to live up to their own high expectations. Most importantly, the new material is considerably more welcoming than the weight-of-the-world fog that marred some of Neon Bible.
And why wouldn’t it be? Despite their deadly serious reputation, the members of Arcade Fire are, understandably, quite happy. They’ve carved out considerable success on their own terms. They feel like a family. They’ve been able to shine a light on their own projects and those of their peers (drummer Jeremy Gara was a key part of recent masterpieces by Owen Pallett and Snailhouse).
Furthermore, they’ve been able to put their money where their mouth is, by helping kick-start a new Haitian foundation called Kenpe, and by funnelling one dollar from every concert ticket they sold over the past three years (and the current tour) to Partners in Health, which focuses on community partnership solutions to poverty and health-care issues in the developing world. During the 2008 U.S. election, they headlined two pro-Obama rallies in North Carolina; the Democrats took the state for the first time in over 30 years, by a thin margin. On Obama’s inauguration day, Arcade Fire played the volunteer and staff party; they met the President for a photo op, and Win gave him a copy of George Orwell’s Why I Write.
Sitting in Tim’s home-studio office the next morning, a photo of the band with Barack and Michelle Obama is one of the only clues that a member of Arcade Fire lives here. Tim sets me up with an unmastered version of The Suburbs and leaves me alone for the rest of the morning.
I actually need most of the morning to listen to The Suburbs all the way through three times—the album is 63 minutes long. This concerns multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry, who confessed at rehearsal that the length is the one thing he doesn’t like about an album he’s otherwise very proud of—and the latter statement doesn’t come easily from this workaholic and perfectionist, who devotes most of his non-Arcade Fire time to his project with violinist Sarah Neufeld, Bell Orchestre.
Parry says there were many discussions about the track list and the format. Should some songs come out on an EP? As stand-alone singles not found on the album? That seemed to work for Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths and, uh, the Beatles. Ultimately they decided to throw it all on there, and, despite Parry’s reservations, the album doesn’t suffer for it. The Suburbs is dynamic and deliciously satisfying. Besides, the kids these days are going to listen to MP3s out of order anyway, right? Or at least one side of a double vinyl set at a time?
As always with Arcade Fire, “the kids” figure prominently on The Suburbs, not just because Win and Régine are writing about wasted time in the suburbs of their youth. This time out, however, there is a different tone. In the past they would rally the children, as on “Wake Up,” “Power Out” or “No Cars Go,” and now there’s a bit of a sneer: chastising “the kids with their arms folded tight” (“Month of May”) and, on “Rococo,” practically mocking: “Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids / They will eat right out of your hand / Using great big words that they don’t understand.”
Those aren’t the only times Win—who just turned 30—sounds a bit like a crotchety grandpa: “We Used to Wait” is a fond remembrance of antiquated days when lovelorn teenagers wrote letters while separated for summer vacations. There is no romance in texting, it’s true. Thankfully, there is no verse about how far the narrator had to walk to school, and in what adverse weather conditions.
The Suburbs is definitely a concept album: we know this because the word “suburbs” appears in almost every song. It’s a rich theme, encompassing ennui of youth, wasted time, wasted potential, technological transformation, urban planning, and dreams of escape. But after “The Suburbs,” “Suburban War,” “Sprawl 1,” “Sprawl 2” and “Wasted Hours”—some of which share not just themes, but specific lines—it’s easy to feel trapped on a cul-de-sac.
Amidst the suburban angst, there are touching laments for disappearing landscapes—which sound less grandfatherly than they do like the legitimately apocalyptic anxieties of a potential parent: “This city’s changed so much since I was a little child / Pray to God I won’t live to see the death of everything that’s wild.” The title track asks, “So can you understand / Why I want a daughter while I'm still young? / I want to hold her hand / And show her some beauty / Before all this damage is done.”
There is no resignation, however. There is a pointed call for responsibility, ala Inauguration-Day Obama: “I know it's heavy, I know it ain't light / But how you gonna lift it with your arms folded tight?” Apathy isn’t just a crutch, it’s a dishonest denial: “Some people say we’ve already lost/ but they’re afraid to pay the cost.”
The Suburbs is dense with musical majesty. It doesn’t sound like either Funeral or Neon Bible, even though it’s quite obviously the same band. The rousing anthems are largely absent (Régine’s “Empty Room” and the fuzzy punk of “Month of May” being notable exceptions); now Arcade Fire is much more selective in applying its intensity. A sense of economy—perhaps the influence of labelmates Spoon or tourmates LCD Soundsystem—is evident throughout. The Springsteen influence this time out is more “Jungleland” (sparse, epic balladry) than “Born to Run” (all-or-nothing barnburners). New wave textures colour mid-tempo pop songs with stuttered rhythms. And as a left turn right before the album closes, Régine’s “Sprawl 2” sounds like Swedish reggae—in a good way.
You can take all of this with several grains of salt, if you like: the band members are friends of mine--even if I've barely seen them in recent years--and I’ve been a huge fan, though not an uncritical one, since I first heard a cassette demo in December 2002. But The Suburbs is thoroughly satisfying, in ways that I almost don’t even expect anymore from my favourite artists.
In 2004, just before Funeral came out, Régine told me: “I’m always at zero trying to get to square one. For me, I haven’t achieved anything yet. This is a start.” As beloved as that album is now, The Suburbs trumps it on almost every level.
Later that day, after a full day of interviews, the band and crew assemble for a barbecue at a friend’s house in a lush, green neighbourhood near Parc Laurier. It’s partially a belated birthday party for Win and one of the production staff, and partially an album-wrap party before the European tour.
The Butler brothers play backyard basketball with their friend’s seven-year-old son. Tim and the band’s video director Vincent Morisset talk birdwatching. The Canadians try to explain to the Americans what proroguing Parliament entails. Rock’n’roll decadence this is not.
When the birthday cakes come out, Régine leaps to the piano, instantly intuiting the key everyone’s agreed on for "Happy Birthday." The singer of one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last 10 years extinguishes his birthday candles by obeying chants to “suck! suck! suck!” Win then makes a brief toast, congratulating everyone on the culmination of a year’s work.
This calls for another celebratory song that everyone knows—except that no one knows what that should be. “What does everyone know?” someone mumbles. “Christmas!” comes the suggestion. “Silent Night” it is, then, even on this warm summer night, in a town with a crucifix on a mountaintop.
Of course, that doesn’t seem quite triumphant enough—so Will, a transplanted American, strikes up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” To a rousing, laughing chorus of “glory, glory, hallelujah,” the army of Arcade Fire raise their glasses and prepare for a triumphant year.
Earlier interviews with the band on this site are (from 2004) here and here and here, as well as (from 2007) here and here and here.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Jimmy Cliff
I’ve interviewed plenty of people I consider to be legends, but I’m quite sure I’ve never interviewed someone who has sold over 20 million records. I had the pleasure of interviewing reggae legend Jimmy Cliff for Massey Hall’s Performance magazine; here are excerpts from the piece and my full conversation with Mr. Cliff.
Who knew he was a Green Day fan? Also: note his odd, rambling answer to my innocuous final question.
Jimmy Cliff plays Massey Hall in Toronto tonight, July 19.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t reach beyond its namesake genre very often. Which is why Jimmy Cliff, inducted in March 2010, is one of only two reggae artists (so far) to be deemed worthy of inclusion alongside the likes of the Beatles, James Brown, Ray Charles, AC/DC and hundreds of other legends.
The list of international reggae superstars can be boiled down to two names: Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. It was Jimmy Cliff who starred in the movie The Harder They Come, which introduced Jamaican reggae culture to the world. That film’s soundtrack—dominated by Cliff classics like the title track, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” and “Many Rivers to Cross”—was the best selling reggae album ever, until the 1984 release of Bob Marley’s posthumous greatest hits album, Legend. And it was Cliff who first discovered Marley as a hungry and confident 16-year-old performer, auditioning in a rum bar in 1962.
Cliff himself was only 14 at the time, and had just scored his first local hit with a song called “Hurricane Hattie,” which reached #1 in Jamaica. Cliff grew up in the district of Somerton in rural Jamaica, where he shared a house with eight siblings, and started singing in church. His father brought him to Kingston at age 12 to attend a technical school, studying TV and radio and trying to find someone to record his songs. One day he walked in Leslie Kong’s shop, a combination ice cream parlour, cosmetics boutique, and record store. Kong wanted his shop to be stocked with exclusive product, and this young, enterprising youth convinced him to start making records—starting with Cliff’s.
In 1964, Cliff made another key connection, when young Jamaican entrepreneur Chris Blackwell invited him to take part in the Jamaican contingent of ska singers for the 1964 World Fair in New York City. This peaked the interest of American record companies, who released ska compilations following the fair; one was co-produced by Curtis Mayfield and featured a couple of Cliff numbers.
At Blackwell’s suggestion, Cliff moved to the U.K., which was the largest market for Jamaican music off the island. Four years later, Cliff would release his debut for Blackwell’s label, Island Records, and score a huge hit in Brazil, “Waterfall,” which prompted a short stay there.
After extensive touring in South America, Cliff scored an international hit with “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” which served as his introduction to North America. Cliff then returned home to Jamaica, where he started developing younger artists, and scored another hit with a cover of Cat Stevens’ song “Wild World.”
Then came the pivotal moment in Cliff’s career, when he was tapped to star in The Harder They Come, a 1971 movie about a rural Jamaican trying to navigate the bullet-ridden, drug-infested alleys of the music business. The film became a cult hit around the world, offering many people their first glimpses of reggae culture in Jamaica. Cliff credits the film not only with the commercial height of his career—the soundtrack has sold millions of copies—but with the international reach of reggae itself.
The Harder They Come—which was transformed into a Broadway musical recently—marked Cliff’s commercial peak, but his recording career never slowed down, scoring hits in the ’80s (“Reggae Night,” with Kool and the Gang) and the ’90s (“I Can See Clearly Now, from the film Cool Runnings) and travelling the world. Now 62, he divides his time between Paris and Jamaica, where he recently built a studio and finished work on his latest album, Existence, with young Jamaican studio musicians (who will also comprise his touring band).
Jimmy Cliff
April 22, 2010
To my knowledge, you haven’t played a full show in Toronto in eight years.
That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to it. They are great fans of Jamaican music, but also my brand of Jamaican music. Toronto has always been interesting and important place for music in general, and for reggae music. I remember on my first North American tour, when my movie had just made a big impact all over the world, what the media said in Canada kind of filtered through to the rest of North America. That makes Canada particularly Toronto, very important.
Did you know any of the reggae music coming out of Toronto at the time? Or people like Jackie Mittoo or Leroy Sibbles or Willie Williams, who all moved to Toronto?
I knew all of those artists before they moved to Toronto. We have always known that Toronto is a very important place.
It’s also one of the first places that The Harder They Come musical opened. Was it not the first place it opened after London?
Yes, it was. I came not for the opening of the musical, but I did some promotion before the musical opened there.
How did you feel about the musical? Was it something you ever envisioned happening?
I didn’t really envision it as a musical, so I was pleasantly surprised at the way it turns out. I saw the opening in London. I was surprised because I did the movie and I had not really aware that much about the power of the music. So having seen it in a musical, I see it in another dimension.
A lot has happened since the last time you toured. Along with the musical, you received a doctorate, an order of merit, and last month an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Obviously that means a lot, but does it mean as much to you as the fact that you’ve sold millions of albums that are in people’s homes?
I’ve always wanted to touch the world with my art. It’s what I do. I have achieved a good portion of that. I’m an established artist internationally, but I have not done all that I have set out to do. I’m quite happy with what I’ve achieved so far.
What are your goals yet to be fulfilled?
I have not made any #1 albums on the Billboard Charts. I have not made any #1 singles on the Billboard Charts. I am playing halls like Massey Hall and theatres, but I am not playing arenas and stadiums. (laughs) So I still have goals!
You don’t want to rest on your laurels.
Not at all! Those things I just named out there are really things that I still intend to achieve.
And you have a new album to help you do that.
I’m very happy with this album. There are two albums that I’ve put out that I feel I’ve been chasing over the years. I feel like now I have caught up with those two albums and surpassed them with this album. Those two albums I’m talking about are of course the soundtrack to the movie and the album Wonderful World Beautiful People.
So this is your best record in 30 years?
I’m feeling like that, yes. It’s difficult to say concretely. Every new album I make, I aim to make it better than the last one. Songs are like a woman giving birth to children: you love all your children, but the last one gets the most attention.
Usually because it’s the loudest!
Yes! (laughs)
Do you still live in France or are you back in Jamaica?
I used to be based in England, and after I left there Jamaica became my base. Having said that, there are places where I’ve spent a lot of time like here in France. I spend maybe three quarters of the time in Jamaica—not straight—and another quarter of the time in France, but on and off.
What appeals to you about France?
It’s a good music city. You get creativity from all over the continent of Africa and Asia. There is a mixture of cultures here that makes it interesting.
When did you first get the sense that reggae became and international music, that it wasn’t just Jamaican music anymore? It was embraced around the world—not just England or the U.S.—and lots of local cultures had their own takes on it. When did you notice that happening?
I think it was when The Harder They Come came out. Prior to that, there were people like myself, Desmond Dekker and quite a few others who had hits in Europe, particularly in England, and also in North America. But people had not seen it as a new music form. It was like novelty hits. When The Harder They Come came out, people said, ‘Oh, here is a new culture, a new music making a big impact on the world.’ That was the turning point.
Reggae is so indelibly part of the culture—when I think of Jamaican culture the first thing I think of is reggae music—and yet the way the music has travelled around the world, it’s become very independent of Jamaican culture, the way people use reggae in their own music.
I think it has become like a lot of other popular music forms, like rock’n’roll, or jazz, R&B and country. Whatever part of the world people adopted it to their own culture, they put their own experiences in it and it turns out a little different from what the authentic ones are, and it’s great.
I notice you’re playing some theatres on this tour, but you’re also playing Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, diverse festivals with a lot of young audiences.
Oh, how exciting, huh? I’m really looking forward to that. One of the festivals I’ve been doing in Europe, people who have seen the movie brought their children, so when I look into the audience I see different generations. Some people say, ‘My parents listened to this music and that’s how I became a fan.’ But I have not really had that experience in North America. Every generation got their own take on it, and why they like it.
You’ve always been about the uplift and about the positive and you want your music to reflect that. What do you say to people who find it hard to be positive in times like this?
Even more in times like this do people need this kind of music. We want to be able to appreciate our own lives, to appreciate living in this time of so much uncertainty: psychologically, spiritually, economically. People do need this kind of music. No matter how difficult you may find it to be positive, you always want something to make you feel good, to not stay in that state of mind all the time.
At the same time, The Harder They Come is not a happy story, and that’s what you’re best known for.
Not at all a happy story, no. However, it gives one hope even though my character didn’t fare so well toward the end. At the same time, it’s still a story with a national universal theme. You still find a young boy from Quebec or wherever coming to Toronto, the big city, and saying, ‘I want to make my fortune here.’ The choice my character took led him down a road where it was a dead end.
The new album is called Existence. That seems like a broad theme.
It’s a big heavy title! It is our existence on this planet at this time: ecologically, economically, spiritually, socially, all the aspects of our lives of living on this planet and beyond. People are starting to doubt religion and looking for the reality of life and people are not finding it in organized religion. All of these aspects on the planet and beyond, people are really concerned about them.
What role do you think music plays in a culture that is turning away from religion?
It depends again on what the artist is putting out there for the people. I am still putting out music with a positive twist, because the reality is that we always have these two choices in life. The positive and the negative do exist, and it’s how we balance it that gives us some sanity. I try to do that in my music. I’m coming out of a situation where I could have taken any road, and I managed to see the other way and choose that way and balance it with the disagreeable way I could have taken. And if I bring that to the lives of people, hopefully they will find some comfort in it, some direction.
You’ve collaborated with many people over the years. Who are you working with on this new record?
I am working with a young set of Jamaican musicians, who are very creative. They grew up listening to my music, and now they say they have something they can contribute to me. That made it special to me. I am going on tour with them. Who would I like to work with? For me, the way I look at it is if the vibe is right. On my last album I did some things like Sting and Annie Lennox and Wyclef Jean and a few other people. It just happened—we were talking and said ‘let’s do something.’ It’s a mutual feeling. I think it works better that way.
These young people, are they artists in their own right, are they studio musicians?
They are studio musicians who have their own band in Jamaica. I picked three from that band and two from that band and one from that band and put all their creative energies together and take them on the road.
What do you see of yourself in these young musicians? You had your first hit at 14, and you were quite bold in stepping up and starting a record label. You were very active very young.
What I see in these young musicians is that they have a lot to offer. They want to offer it to the world internationally. They see me as someone who established myself out there but still very viable and current in this time.
Is there anyone you greatly admire right now in terms of young artists, carrying that kind of positivity and openness that defined your career?
There are a few people in Jamaica. There is this female artist, Queen Ifrica, she is touching on subjects that most artists wouldn’t touch, like incest. She is really empowering young girls, about education and those kind of things. She makes some love songs too, but she really touches social and cultural subjects and empowers young girls to try to make the best of themselves. I appreciate that. [Queen Ifrica plays a free show at Toronto’s Harbourfront on Saturday, July 31, as part of Caribana.] Then there is Tarrus Riley; he is also touching on those kind of subjects. That’s on a local basis. Internationally, there are some rappers that I like. Some R&B people I like. Some rock people; I like the band Green Day. I like Jay-Z because as a rapper he’s been out there and staying on one level of consciousness that I really appreciate. R&B people: Mary J. Blige.
I’m sure you’ll see a lot of younger artists when you play these large festivals with different artists, too.
Definitely, yes.
How old are your youngest kids right now?
I like to make that subject very clear. The subject of children: I look at it from a perspective of the African way. Every mother is a mother; every father is a father.
The way I grew up in my village in Summertown, Jamaica, if I’m on my way to school or on the street out there, and I do something out of order, any mother or any father could catch me and scold me. When I went home, I dared not say anything or I’d get another scolding on top of it. Or, if I need something to take me on to school, a kind word or bus fare—well, we didn’t have buses at that time—or lunch money, the community takes care of everyone. So having grown up with nine of us in one household, and not all of us were from the same mother and father. But we look at each other as brothers and sisters.
So in that sense, I think this is the right concept and I think this is what is missing today, why families are breaking down. Because if I say ‘these are my two children, and these are your two children’ and we look at it that way, it’s not covering the whole situation. I think the old African way where the village takes care of the children, I prefer it that way. I wouldn’t look at my own biological children and say ‘these are my only children.’ I see all the children as my children.
Who knew he was a Green Day fan? Also: note his odd, rambling answer to my innocuous final question.
Jimmy Cliff plays Massey Hall in Toronto tonight, July 19.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t reach beyond its namesake genre very often. Which is why Jimmy Cliff, inducted in March 2010, is one of only two reggae artists (so far) to be deemed worthy of inclusion alongside the likes of the Beatles, James Brown, Ray Charles, AC/DC and hundreds of other legends.
The list of international reggae superstars can be boiled down to two names: Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. It was Jimmy Cliff who starred in the movie The Harder They Come, which introduced Jamaican reggae culture to the world. That film’s soundtrack—dominated by Cliff classics like the title track, “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” and “Many Rivers to Cross”—was the best selling reggae album ever, until the 1984 release of Bob Marley’s posthumous greatest hits album, Legend. And it was Cliff who first discovered Marley as a hungry and confident 16-year-old performer, auditioning in a rum bar in 1962.
Cliff himself was only 14 at the time, and had just scored his first local hit with a song called “Hurricane Hattie,” which reached #1 in Jamaica. Cliff grew up in the district of Somerton in rural Jamaica, where he shared a house with eight siblings, and started singing in church. His father brought him to Kingston at age 12 to attend a technical school, studying TV and radio and trying to find someone to record his songs. One day he walked in Leslie Kong’s shop, a combination ice cream parlour, cosmetics boutique, and record store. Kong wanted his shop to be stocked with exclusive product, and this young, enterprising youth convinced him to start making records—starting with Cliff’s.
In 1964, Cliff made another key connection, when young Jamaican entrepreneur Chris Blackwell invited him to take part in the Jamaican contingent of ska singers for the 1964 World Fair in New York City. This peaked the interest of American record companies, who released ska compilations following the fair; one was co-produced by Curtis Mayfield and featured a couple of Cliff numbers.
At Blackwell’s suggestion, Cliff moved to the U.K., which was the largest market for Jamaican music off the island. Four years later, Cliff would release his debut for Blackwell’s label, Island Records, and score a huge hit in Brazil, “Waterfall,” which prompted a short stay there.
After extensive touring in South America, Cliff scored an international hit with “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” which served as his introduction to North America. Cliff then returned home to Jamaica, where he started developing younger artists, and scored another hit with a cover of Cat Stevens’ song “Wild World.”
Then came the pivotal moment in Cliff’s career, when he was tapped to star in The Harder They Come, a 1971 movie about a rural Jamaican trying to navigate the bullet-ridden, drug-infested alleys of the music business. The film became a cult hit around the world, offering many people their first glimpses of reggae culture in Jamaica. Cliff credits the film not only with the commercial height of his career—the soundtrack has sold millions of copies—but with the international reach of reggae itself.
The Harder They Come—which was transformed into a Broadway musical recently—marked Cliff’s commercial peak, but his recording career never slowed down, scoring hits in the ’80s (“Reggae Night,” with Kool and the Gang) and the ’90s (“I Can See Clearly Now, from the film Cool Runnings) and travelling the world. Now 62, he divides his time between Paris and Jamaica, where he recently built a studio and finished work on his latest album, Existence, with young Jamaican studio musicians (who will also comprise his touring band).
Jimmy Cliff
April 22, 2010
To my knowledge, you haven’t played a full show in Toronto in eight years.
That’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to it. They are great fans of Jamaican music, but also my brand of Jamaican music. Toronto has always been interesting and important place for music in general, and for reggae music. I remember on my first North American tour, when my movie had just made a big impact all over the world, what the media said in Canada kind of filtered through to the rest of North America. That makes Canada particularly Toronto, very important.
Did you know any of the reggae music coming out of Toronto at the time? Or people like Jackie Mittoo or Leroy Sibbles or Willie Williams, who all moved to Toronto?
I knew all of those artists before they moved to Toronto. We have always known that Toronto is a very important place.
It’s also one of the first places that The Harder They Come musical opened. Was it not the first place it opened after London?
Yes, it was. I came not for the opening of the musical, but I did some promotion before the musical opened there.
How did you feel about the musical? Was it something you ever envisioned happening?
I didn’t really envision it as a musical, so I was pleasantly surprised at the way it turns out. I saw the opening in London. I was surprised because I did the movie and I had not really aware that much about the power of the music. So having seen it in a musical, I see it in another dimension.
A lot has happened since the last time you toured. Along with the musical, you received a doctorate, an order of merit, and last month an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Obviously that means a lot, but does it mean as much to you as the fact that you’ve sold millions of albums that are in people’s homes?
I’ve always wanted to touch the world with my art. It’s what I do. I have achieved a good portion of that. I’m an established artist internationally, but I have not done all that I have set out to do. I’m quite happy with what I’ve achieved so far.
What are your goals yet to be fulfilled?
I have not made any #1 albums on the Billboard Charts. I have not made any #1 singles on the Billboard Charts. I am playing halls like Massey Hall and theatres, but I am not playing arenas and stadiums. (laughs) So I still have goals!
You don’t want to rest on your laurels.
Not at all! Those things I just named out there are really things that I still intend to achieve.
And you have a new album to help you do that.
I’m very happy with this album. There are two albums that I’ve put out that I feel I’ve been chasing over the years. I feel like now I have caught up with those two albums and surpassed them with this album. Those two albums I’m talking about are of course the soundtrack to the movie and the album Wonderful World Beautiful People.
So this is your best record in 30 years?
I’m feeling like that, yes. It’s difficult to say concretely. Every new album I make, I aim to make it better than the last one. Songs are like a woman giving birth to children: you love all your children, but the last one gets the most attention.
Usually because it’s the loudest!
Yes! (laughs)
Do you still live in France or are you back in Jamaica?
I used to be based in England, and after I left there Jamaica became my base. Having said that, there are places where I’ve spent a lot of time like here in France. I spend maybe three quarters of the time in Jamaica—not straight—and another quarter of the time in France, but on and off.
What appeals to you about France?
It’s a good music city. You get creativity from all over the continent of Africa and Asia. There is a mixture of cultures here that makes it interesting.
When did you first get the sense that reggae became and international music, that it wasn’t just Jamaican music anymore? It was embraced around the world—not just England or the U.S.—and lots of local cultures had their own takes on it. When did you notice that happening?
I think it was when The Harder They Come came out. Prior to that, there were people like myself, Desmond Dekker and quite a few others who had hits in Europe, particularly in England, and also in North America. But people had not seen it as a new music form. It was like novelty hits. When The Harder They Come came out, people said, ‘Oh, here is a new culture, a new music making a big impact on the world.’ That was the turning point.
Reggae is so indelibly part of the culture—when I think of Jamaican culture the first thing I think of is reggae music—and yet the way the music has travelled around the world, it’s become very independent of Jamaican culture, the way people use reggae in their own music.
I think it has become like a lot of other popular music forms, like rock’n’roll, or jazz, R&B and country. Whatever part of the world people adopted it to their own culture, they put their own experiences in it and it turns out a little different from what the authentic ones are, and it’s great.
I notice you’re playing some theatres on this tour, but you’re also playing Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, diverse festivals with a lot of young audiences.
Oh, how exciting, huh? I’m really looking forward to that. One of the festivals I’ve been doing in Europe, people who have seen the movie brought their children, so when I look into the audience I see different generations. Some people say, ‘My parents listened to this music and that’s how I became a fan.’ But I have not really had that experience in North America. Every generation got their own take on it, and why they like it.
You’ve always been about the uplift and about the positive and you want your music to reflect that. What do you say to people who find it hard to be positive in times like this?
Even more in times like this do people need this kind of music. We want to be able to appreciate our own lives, to appreciate living in this time of so much uncertainty: psychologically, spiritually, economically. People do need this kind of music. No matter how difficult you may find it to be positive, you always want something to make you feel good, to not stay in that state of mind all the time.
At the same time, The Harder They Come is not a happy story, and that’s what you’re best known for.
Not at all a happy story, no. However, it gives one hope even though my character didn’t fare so well toward the end. At the same time, it’s still a story with a national universal theme. You still find a young boy from Quebec or wherever coming to Toronto, the big city, and saying, ‘I want to make my fortune here.’ The choice my character took led him down a road where it was a dead end.
The new album is called Existence. That seems like a broad theme.
It’s a big heavy title! It is our existence on this planet at this time: ecologically, economically, spiritually, socially, all the aspects of our lives of living on this planet and beyond. People are starting to doubt religion and looking for the reality of life and people are not finding it in organized religion. All of these aspects on the planet and beyond, people are really concerned about them.
What role do you think music plays in a culture that is turning away from religion?
It depends again on what the artist is putting out there for the people. I am still putting out music with a positive twist, because the reality is that we always have these two choices in life. The positive and the negative do exist, and it’s how we balance it that gives us some sanity. I try to do that in my music. I’m coming out of a situation where I could have taken any road, and I managed to see the other way and choose that way and balance it with the disagreeable way I could have taken. And if I bring that to the lives of people, hopefully they will find some comfort in it, some direction.
You’ve collaborated with many people over the years. Who are you working with on this new record?
I am working with a young set of Jamaican musicians, who are very creative. They grew up listening to my music, and now they say they have something they can contribute to me. That made it special to me. I am going on tour with them. Who would I like to work with? For me, the way I look at it is if the vibe is right. On my last album I did some things like Sting and Annie Lennox and Wyclef Jean and a few other people. It just happened—we were talking and said ‘let’s do something.’ It’s a mutual feeling. I think it works better that way.
These young people, are they artists in their own right, are they studio musicians?
They are studio musicians who have their own band in Jamaica. I picked three from that band and two from that band and one from that band and put all their creative energies together and take them on the road.
What do you see of yourself in these young musicians? You had your first hit at 14, and you were quite bold in stepping up and starting a record label. You were very active very young.
What I see in these young musicians is that they have a lot to offer. They want to offer it to the world internationally. They see me as someone who established myself out there but still very viable and current in this time.
Is there anyone you greatly admire right now in terms of young artists, carrying that kind of positivity and openness that defined your career?
There are a few people in Jamaica. There is this female artist, Queen Ifrica, she is touching on subjects that most artists wouldn’t touch, like incest. She is really empowering young girls, about education and those kind of things. She makes some love songs too, but she really touches social and cultural subjects and empowers young girls to try to make the best of themselves. I appreciate that. [Queen Ifrica plays a free show at Toronto’s Harbourfront on Saturday, July 31, as part of Caribana.] Then there is Tarrus Riley; he is also touching on those kind of subjects. That’s on a local basis. Internationally, there are some rappers that I like. Some R&B people I like. Some rock people; I like the band Green Day. I like Jay-Z because as a rapper he’s been out there and staying on one level of consciousness that I really appreciate. R&B people: Mary J. Blige.
I’m sure you’ll see a lot of younger artists when you play these large festivals with different artists, too.
Definitely, yes.
How old are your youngest kids right now?
I like to make that subject very clear. The subject of children: I look at it from a perspective of the African way. Every mother is a mother; every father is a father.
The way I grew up in my village in Summertown, Jamaica, if I’m on my way to school or on the street out there, and I do something out of order, any mother or any father could catch me and scold me. When I went home, I dared not say anything or I’d get another scolding on top of it. Or, if I need something to take me on to school, a kind word or bus fare—well, we didn’t have buses at that time—or lunch money, the community takes care of everyone. So having grown up with nine of us in one household, and not all of us were from the same mother and father. But we look at each other as brothers and sisters.
So in that sense, I think this is the right concept and I think this is what is missing today, why families are breaking down. Because if I say ‘these are my two children, and these are your two children’ and we look at it that way, it’s not covering the whole situation. I think the old African way where the village takes care of the children, I prefer it that way. I wouldn’t look at my own biological children and say ‘these are my only children.’ I see all the children as my children.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips
July 8, 2010
Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto
I thought I was done with the Flaming Lips. I'd seen them three times in five years; the last was their show at Metropolis in Montreal in 2004, one of the best shows I’d ever seen in my life, the kind that leaves you on a high for at least a week afterward. I thought there was no way I could return and not be comparing it to that experience.
Plus, by then I felt like I'd had enough of the balloons, the confetti, the jaunty space-age pop, Wayne Coyne’s reedy voice, the interminable wait and large letdown that was their sci-fi film project Christmas on Mars, and that supremely annoying “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” on the disappointing 2006 album At War With the Mystics.
And yet there I was, at the corporate beer barn by the lake last night, weeping with tears of joy in my eyes as they encored with “Do You Realize?” amidst a flurry of confetti, visual overload, and the glorious orgy of ridiculousness that has been their calling card for the last decade.
Oddly enough, after returning to their more experimental tendencies on the 2009 album Embryonic—an album that avoids happy pop songs entirely—the Flaming Lips had finally graduated from worst-kept-secret status to full-on stadium rock. Seeing them play for their largest Toronto audience ever, promoting their weirdest album in over a decade, was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. Stacking the bill with Spoon made it that much more irresistible.
[I was torn on the Spoon show: I love this band and much of their recorded output, but they’re often stiff on stage. That said, some clever rearrangements and a solid set list drawing mainly from Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga—with added five-piece horn section—did not disappoint.]
The Flaming Lips meant a lot to me between 1999 and 2004. Initially I wasn’t as taken with the 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin as many were at the time—for whatever reason (I think it was lyrical), I preferred its limp sister album, Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs. Nonetheless, I embarked on a road trip to Detroit to see the show with a couple of friends. Though I was expecting some kind of spectacle, I really had no idea what I was in for.
When my friend Tristan and I saw the stagehands wheel out a gong on stage, we placed bets on how many times it would be used: once? five times? Opening with “Race for the Prize,” Wayne Coyne hammered on that gong six times per bar in between verses, triggering flashes of light every time, and foreshadowing the avalanche of lo-fi awesome that was to follow. Coyne was one of the most engaging frontmen I’d ever seen, personable and devoid of any mystique, an idealistic hippie in a white suit who smeared himself in blood and spoke frankly of near-death experiences and the dark demons that haunt us all—and would then sing the next song using a finger-puppet of a nun, its image amplified by a tiny camera placed on the microphone. He was the same performer he is today, although much chattier, and sharing in the same sense of wide-eyed wonder the audience was at the time: “Holy shit, is this actually working? Can a rock show actually be this much fun?”
But fun is only half of it. If the Flaming Lips were simply all smiles and good times, they’d be the Barenaked Ladies—or Bananas in Pyjamas. While Coyne is an undeniably upbeat person, he’s not immune to the shit of the world—whether it’s political forces beyond your control, or personal tragedy that’s in your face every day (sometimes in your own band, in the case of Steven Drozd’s heroin addiction). And so while a song like “Do You Realize?” may sound saccharine sweet, it’s actually about eventually losing everyone and everything you know and coming to terms with that, not by mourning or with denial or self-pity, but by embracing everyday beauty. Both simple beauty—your lover’s eyes—or the extravagance that the Flaming Lips put on for you for two hours, two hours that feel like a magnified memory of your most-treasured childhood birthday party.
The jaded will jeer that all the gimmicky props are somehow infantilizing, a Romper Room for adults. That’s not entirely inaccurate—but so what? It’s a lot more entertaining and imaginative than other rote clichés of rock performance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had giant hands that shot laser beams at the mirror balls? And it’s not all love and flowers; the dream states they conjure can be just as dystopian as they are utopian. Anyone who grew up in the ’70s—by which point the counterculturalists had taken control of children’s television programming—can’t help but be thrilled by large-scale psychedelia brought to life, to see surrealism set to stadium rock.
Also: shouldn’t every rock show should begin with the band members emerging from a giant projection of a vagina, with the singer in an amniotic bubble walking over the crowd?
For all the effort they put into projecting their own show outward, the Lips’ message is always about bringing the audience in. Coyne is constantly reminding us, directly and indirectly, that this show is only going to be as fun as we all make it: crossed arms don’t cut it. There are times when his come-hither hand gestures and induced applause could be egotistical; more likely that he wants us to hear ourselves screaming and having a fantastic time.
Watching the Flaming Lips in 2010, it’s a potent reminder of how cathartic this band was earlier this decade—when there was an utter incompetent at the helm, the world was going to shit and little hope in sight. Watching Wayne Coyne’s boundless enthusiasm was so incredibly affirming; long before “yes we can” became a campaign slogan, Coyne’s mission was to put positive energy back into a cynical, despondent world. Every time he raised his arms it was like he was encouraging us to take the power back, that we—the freaks, the lovers, the dreamers—could turn things around. We could win. If this band of underdogs could pull off this spectacle, we could all go home and pull off something equally amazing on our own scale.
The world is still going to shit, of course, even with a smart man in the White House. Maybe that’s why the Lips don’t feel like being so directly inspirational—hence the largely instrumental and freakier, darker abstractions on Embryonic (which added welcome, if dissonant, diversity to the set list).
But they have that impossibly rare quality as performers that leaves you not just excited about the music or about the experience, but about possibilities for you, your lover, your children, your friends, for strangers, for—well, you know, the universe and all that. Dream on, indeed.
July 8, 2010
Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto
I thought I was done with the Flaming Lips. I'd seen them three times in five years; the last was their show at Metropolis in Montreal in 2004, one of the best shows I’d ever seen in my life, the kind that leaves you on a high for at least a week afterward. I thought there was no way I could return and not be comparing it to that experience.
Plus, by then I felt like I'd had enough of the balloons, the confetti, the jaunty space-age pop, Wayne Coyne’s reedy voice, the interminable wait and large letdown that was their sci-fi film project Christmas on Mars, and that supremely annoying “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” on the disappointing 2006 album At War With the Mystics.
And yet there I was, at the corporate beer barn by the lake last night, weeping with tears of joy in my eyes as they encored with “Do You Realize?” amidst a flurry of confetti, visual overload, and the glorious orgy of ridiculousness that has been their calling card for the last decade.
Oddly enough, after returning to their more experimental tendencies on the 2009 album Embryonic—an album that avoids happy pop songs entirely—the Flaming Lips had finally graduated from worst-kept-secret status to full-on stadium rock. Seeing them play for their largest Toronto audience ever, promoting their weirdest album in over a decade, was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. Stacking the bill with Spoon made it that much more irresistible.
[I was torn on the Spoon show: I love this band and much of their recorded output, but they’re often stiff on stage. That said, some clever rearrangements and a solid set list drawing mainly from Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga—with added five-piece horn section—did not disappoint.]
The Flaming Lips meant a lot to me between 1999 and 2004. Initially I wasn’t as taken with the 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin as many were at the time—for whatever reason (I think it was lyrical), I preferred its limp sister album, Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs. Nonetheless, I embarked on a road trip to Detroit to see the show with a couple of friends. Though I was expecting some kind of spectacle, I really had no idea what I was in for.
When my friend Tristan and I saw the stagehands wheel out a gong on stage, we placed bets on how many times it would be used: once? five times? Opening with “Race for the Prize,” Wayne Coyne hammered on that gong six times per bar in between verses, triggering flashes of light every time, and foreshadowing the avalanche of lo-fi awesome that was to follow. Coyne was one of the most engaging frontmen I’d ever seen, personable and devoid of any mystique, an idealistic hippie in a white suit who smeared himself in blood and spoke frankly of near-death experiences and the dark demons that haunt us all—and would then sing the next song using a finger-puppet of a nun, its image amplified by a tiny camera placed on the microphone. He was the same performer he is today, although much chattier, and sharing in the same sense of wide-eyed wonder the audience was at the time: “Holy shit, is this actually working? Can a rock show actually be this much fun?”
But fun is only half of it. If the Flaming Lips were simply all smiles and good times, they’d be the Barenaked Ladies—or Bananas in Pyjamas. While Coyne is an undeniably upbeat person, he’s not immune to the shit of the world—whether it’s political forces beyond your control, or personal tragedy that’s in your face every day (sometimes in your own band, in the case of Steven Drozd’s heroin addiction). And so while a song like “Do You Realize?” may sound saccharine sweet, it’s actually about eventually losing everyone and everything you know and coming to terms with that, not by mourning or with denial or self-pity, but by embracing everyday beauty. Both simple beauty—your lover’s eyes—or the extravagance that the Flaming Lips put on for you for two hours, two hours that feel like a magnified memory of your most-treasured childhood birthday party.
The jaded will jeer that all the gimmicky props are somehow infantilizing, a Romper Room for adults. That’s not entirely inaccurate—but so what? It’s a lot more entertaining and imaginative than other rote clichés of rock performance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had giant hands that shot laser beams at the mirror balls? And it’s not all love and flowers; the dream states they conjure can be just as dystopian as they are utopian. Anyone who grew up in the ’70s—by which point the counterculturalists had taken control of children’s television programming—can’t help but be thrilled by large-scale psychedelia brought to life, to see surrealism set to stadium rock.
Also: shouldn’t every rock show should begin with the band members emerging from a giant projection of a vagina, with the singer in an amniotic bubble walking over the crowd?
For all the effort they put into projecting their own show outward, the Lips’ message is always about bringing the audience in. Coyne is constantly reminding us, directly and indirectly, that this show is only going to be as fun as we all make it: crossed arms don’t cut it. There are times when his come-hither hand gestures and induced applause could be egotistical; more likely that he wants us to hear ourselves screaming and having a fantastic time.
Watching the Flaming Lips in 2010, it’s a potent reminder of how cathartic this band was earlier this decade—when there was an utter incompetent at the helm, the world was going to shit and little hope in sight. Watching Wayne Coyne’s boundless enthusiasm was so incredibly affirming; long before “yes we can” became a campaign slogan, Coyne’s mission was to put positive energy back into a cynical, despondent world. Every time he raised his arms it was like he was encouraging us to take the power back, that we—the freaks, the lovers, the dreamers—could turn things around. We could win. If this band of underdogs could pull off this spectacle, we could all go home and pull off something equally amazing on our own scale.
The world is still going to shit, of course, even with a smart man in the White House. Maybe that’s why the Lips don’t feel like being so directly inspirational—hence the largely instrumental and freakier, darker abstractions on Embryonic (which added welcome, if dissonant, diversity to the set list).
But they have that impossibly rare quality as performers that leaves you not just excited about the music or about the experience, but about possibilities for you, your lover, your children, your friends, for strangers, for—well, you know, the universe and all that. Dream on, indeed.
Monday, June 28, 2010
June '10 reviews
The following reviews appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in June.
Bei Bei and Shawn Lee – Into the Wind (Ubiquity)
Chinese-Western musical match-ups are all too rare; successful ones rarer still. The pairing of Bei Bei Zheng and Shawn Lee is nothing short of perfect: she is a master of the gu zheng, or a Chinese zither, and he is an extremely adaptable funk instrumentalist and film composer. The gu zheng is most familiar to Western audiences from martial arts films; hearing it paired with Shaft-worthy instrumentation is evocative splendour—it’s amazing Quentin Tarantino didn’t think of it first. (He was too busy recycling old soundtracks, apparently.) Though Bei Bei comes from an obviously classical tradition—she’s a teacher and has even written a textbook about the instrument—she’s more than willing to bend the instrument’s capabilities to whatever cinematic mood Lee conjures up, from sparse, smoky jazz to bossa nova to action-sequence soundtracks. The gu zheng’s harp-like qualities at times recall Alice Coltrane’s enchanting jazz records, though Bei Bei is much more playful than spiritual. (June 17)
Download (eMusic, amazon.com): “Hot Thursday,” “East,” “The Master Room”
Cowboy Junkies – Renmin Park: The Nomad Series Volume One (Latent)
Michael Timmins is having a mid-life creative renaissance. After 10 years of Cowboy Junkies albums that only the most diehard of the band’s fans heard, the guitarist and songwriter bounced back in 2009 with a new band, Lee Harvey Osmond (with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings’ Tom Wilson and Skydiggers’ Josh Finlayson), that tapped into the sparse and spooky nature of the Junkies’ best recordings.
Now back with the Junkies, Timmins launches the first of four albums they intend to put out in the next 18 months, a schedule that sounds ridiculously ambitious for a band well past their prime—until you hear how strong this album is.
Renmin Park was written after Timmins and his family (not his siblings in the band) lived in China for three months, an experience that shapes the setting of Timmins’s short stories in the lyrics, but more importantly seeps into the music as well. Ehru and pipa solos fit perfectly into the Junkies’ sound, and Chinese singer Zuoxiao Zuzhou takes lead vocals on “A Walk in the Park,” co-written with bassist Alan Anton and guest keyboardist Joby Baker; two other tracks (“My Fall,” “I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side”) are written by Chinese writers and translated into English, sung by Margo Timmins.
If the Junkies have been in a rut recently, Renmin Park widens their scope considerably, while remaining as intimate as their finest moments. Michael Timmins appears to have asserted more control here than ever—he also introduces his own, scraggly voice for the first time in the band’s 25-year history—yet it’s actually bassist Alan Anton who rises from the background to glue all these new elements together, especially on the handful of tracks where he adopts a dub reggae backbeat while Michael and keyboardist Baker provide textural touches that tap into the band’s psychedelic, Velvet Underground beginnings.
The sound is captivating enough; Michael Timmins has also written some of his strongest songs in years. Longtime Junkies fans will be ecstatic; fair-weather fans are more than encouraged to check in and help this Canadian institution celebrate their 25th anniversary on a high note. (June 17)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com): “(You’ve Got to Get) A Good Heart,” “My Fall,” “Stranger Here”
Crystal Castles – II (Last Gang)
If notoriety is any measure of success, Crystal Castles are one of the biggest Canadian acts internationally. Listening to their second album, however, it’s near impossible to imagine why.
The first album, which featured a demo recording that became a MySpace sensation, was a decent electro album that was equal parts abrasive aggression and goth gloom with melancholic melodies buried beneath the bleeps and blurps.
Yet none of that promise is heard here, which—for a band that induces riot-like behaviour at live gigs—sounds remarkably muzzled. Singer Alice Glass is rarely let loose to squeal bloody murder; her most effective moments come when she’s at her most detached and robotic (notably on a cover of Platinum Blonde’s "Not In Love"). Ethan Kath’s production dips into cheesy ’90s rave territory and rote ’80s electro fetishism; even at it’s most aggressive here (which isn’t that often) it still sounds like it would fade into the background on a fashion runway.
For all their adoring crowds, Crystal Castles attract a large amount of venom, due to their prickly and prank-ridden public personas. But this time the venom may well come from fans wondering why Crystal Castles sound like they’re made of sand. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “Celestica,” “Baptism,” “Not in Love”
Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles – The Grand Bounce (Universal)
The best and worst thing about Gord Downie’s solo records is their sloppy, unproduced nature. Outside the confines of The Tragically Hip—confines that applied much less to their last album, the creative comeback We Are the Same—Downie has hired musicians that embrace scrappy first takes, wrestle with wrong notes until they sound right, colour outside the lines when possible and settle into a punk-country shuffle when necessary.
They still do all of those things on The Grand Bounce, Downie’s third solo album with this group of players, though this time everything is brought into brighter focus, in large part due to the influence of producer Chris Walla (Decemberists, Tegan and Sara). Thankfully, it’s not as polished as most of Walla’s work, like his own far-too-polite band Death Cab for Cutie and its spin-off project The Postal Service; Walla respects the raw nature of the Country of Miracles while also bringing out their best. As a result, Downie sounds more in control here—as he naturally does with The Hip, where he remains one of the most captivating frontmen in rock’n’roll—as opposed to surrendering to the spontaneity of his bandmates.
The songwriting stands out this time as well; Downie is writing to his band’s strengths, particularly guitarist Dale Morningstar and vocalist Julie Doiron, while some songs (“The Drowning Machine”) sound like a younger, hungry Hip, minus the bluesy riffs that defined many of their earlier classics. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com): “The East Wind,” “Yellow Days,” “As a Mover”
Drake – Thank Me Later (Universal)
He was Canada’s biggest hip-hop superstar ever, even before his debut album came out. So why, now that we’re all paying attention, does he do nothing on said debut but whine about how empty and meaningless the life of a rich and famous rap star is? What a way to squander a wave of goodwill for the upstart underdog—imagine an Academy Award winner making an acceptance speech about how much the win will ruin their life.
Drake grew up as a child TV star, so he’d already experienced a small level of fame before he was being wined and dined by U.S. rap royalty. So on some level, his love/hate relationship with fame comes naturally, and on the album’s first single, “Over,” he sums up his discomfort in his new mega-celebrity status, unsure whether he’s still playing a role or whether it’s his real life: “What am I doing? Oh, that’s right, I’m doing me.”
That might be tolerable for a single—and yet Drake spends the vast majority of his debut album deconstructing the jetset life, how easy it is to get laid, how hard it is to have so much money, and wondering if it’s all worth it.
Cry me a river. Isn’t there a recession going on? Isn’t the world going to hell? Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Or is he trying to comfort the rest of us lowly listeners by explaining how success is not all that? Is this some self-deprecating Canadian complex, ill at ease in the belly of American celebrity culture?
No matter which, it’s indulgent emo rap that rings hollow on almost every level—even the music is limp, without even a single escapist track that might make it on the dance floor—and it’s entirely unclear what exactly we’re supposed to be thanking him for. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Over,” “Fireworks,” “Karaoke”
Fred Eaglesmith – Cha Cha Cha (Lonesome Day/E1)
After 15 albums in a 30-year career, Brantford, Ontario’s Fred Eaglesmith is currently enjoying his biggest mainstream success, with the likes of Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson and even Toby Keith recording his material. When it comes to his own albums, however, Eaglesmith is content to get weirder.
On Cha Cha Cha, it sounds like Tom Waits got Leonard Cohen’s back-up singers hammered with Los Lobos, getting David Lynch to film the whole thing. The Ginn sisters provide backing vocals that are alternately elegant and creepy, a perfect complement to Eaglesmith’s increasingly raspy voice—which is put to work singing songs of romantically devastated men who think their lover is “being careless with my love,” is “playing tricks on me,” has been “gone too long,” and who spend their days hallucinating said lover’s appearance all around town.
As one might expect, Cha Cha Cha has a slight Latin vibe, mixed with twangy guitar, Farfisa organs and ’50s rock’n’roll. Because Eaglesmith recorded it at home—though still employing long-time collaborator Scott Merritt to mix the album—it has a decidedly more raw sound. Obviously, Eaglesmith is fine letting others make radio-friendly versions of his songs; left to his own devices, he likes to dwell in the shadows, where attention to sonic detail is as important as lyrical narratives. In fact, on their own, most of these songs are merely average: it’s Eaglesmith’s eerie delivery and morbid mood that really makes them shine. (June 17)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, zunior.com, eMusic): “Careless,” “Sliver of the Moon,” “Dynamite and Whiskey”
Minotaurs – The Thing (Static Clang)
Once a drummer, always a drummer. Though Nathan Lawr (Royal City, King Cobb Steelie) moved from behind the skins to become an acclaimed singer/songwriter in his own right, he is once again slave to the rhythm in his new project, Minotaurs. Lawr isn’t drumming here—he leaves that to CanRock veteran Don Kerr (Ron Sexsmith, Rheostatics)—but has written a set of songs that rely almost entirely on rhythm. (That, and a killer horn section.) Opening track “Caught in the Light” sets the pace, easily falling into the type of Afrobeat groove that’s driven so many recent reissues of ’70s African obscurities. Several other tracks follow a similar template, but this is not Lawr’s Afrobeat record—even if perhaps it should be, seeing how those are the standout tracks. His tendencies toward traditional Western songcraft still shine through—though often it sounds like he’s trying to tame these wild Minotaurs, when really, he should be letting them loose to follow wherever the beat takes them. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, zunior.com): “Caught in the Light,” “Get Down,” “Pink Floyd”
Janelle Monae – The Archandroid (Bad Boy/Warner)
“Am I a freak?” asks Janelle Monae, “Or just another weirdo? / Call me weak / Or just call me your hero.”
Hero it is, then. Her haircut and style might be the first thing you notice—like on her explosive performance on David Letterman’s show a couple of weeks back—but Monae’s myriad talents are what make her a star, not just the fact that she can out-glam Gaga if she wants to.
Vocally, she can be Grace Jones one moment, Lena Horne the next, and then sound as giddy as a young Michael Jackson, dropping huge pop songs, soul revue rave-ups, wigged-out hip-hop like her friends in Outkast and dancing like James Brown in the process. Then, just for the hell of it, she’s slice off some British psychedelic folk music or Broadway-style show tune—because she can. That she is capable of doing anything is obvious. Should she?
The Archandroid contains 18 tracks, including a couple of pseudo-classical instrumental interludes that have something to do with the fact that Monae has somehow envisioned this album as parts two and three of a soundtrack to the silent film classic Metropolis—which I don’t believe for a second. She doesn’t need that kind of backstory to sell herself as an enigmatic, multi-talented tour-de-force—it’s all there in the music itself.
But if The Archandroid is a tad show-offy and a bit too long, it never entirely wears out its welcome, thanks to at least four or five killer tracks and Monae’s seemingly endless charisma. Prince is undoubtedly also high on her list of influences, though unfortunately The Archandroid is more like Diamonds and Pearls-era Prince—past his prime but before the total decline. Monae is on her way up, of course, and there’s no doubt she’ll be bathing in the purple rain soon enough. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Tightrope,” “Cold War,” “Dance or Die”
Parallels – Visionaries (E1)
Cameron Findlay was the live drummer in Crystal Castles before striking out to form Parallels; if CC has ’80s presets in their keyboards, Findlay likes to take it back further, mining warm analog synth sounds as if music stopped progressing after Kraftwerk’s Man Machine album.
Findlay teamed up with singer Holly Dodson (whose father spent the ’70s avoiding synths in the colossal CanRock band the Stampeders), who plays the part of ice princess effectively—warmer than, say, the faceless Sally Shapiro, but not as charismatic as Lykke Li or Annie. Parallels are very much a genre band and a promising one at that, but Visionaries suffers from a sameness that gets wearying after more than a couple of tracks at a time. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com): “Nightmares,” “Ultralight,” “Needless to Say”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Mojo (Warner)
Don’t do drugs, kids. If you do, you’ll wind up 60 years old and playing boring blues rock—no matter how good you were a mere 20 years ago, or 20 years before that.
Tom Petty is not a man who should be singing the blues—nor, for that matter, at his age, should he be paying women backhanded compliments like: “She was kinda cute/ if a little past her prime.”
His nasal voice is perfect for snarling rockers, tiny perfect pop songs and laid-back country rock; singing the blues simply brings out his worst, laziest tendencies. He doesn’t have the curmudgeonly character or evasive wordplay that his friend Bob Dylan does in order to pull this off; instead, he sounds like an old bore singing about partying with motel maids (which he does on “The Trip to Pirate’s Cove”) or his first acid trip (which he does on “First Flash of Freedom”).
The Heartbreakers do their best—in particular stalwarts Mike Campbell on guitar and Benmont Tench on keyboards—and several tracks would be fine without Petty involved, like the lite reggae “Don’t Pull Me Over” or the shuffle of “Running Man’s Bible.” But the world is full of great bands backing up lacklustre songwriters—it’s just sad that fate has befallen the Heartbreakers. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, puretracks.com): "High In the Morning," "Something Good Coming," "Don’t Pull Me Over"
Sean Nicholas Savage – Movin Up in Society (Arbutus)
Plenty of artists adopt a retro sound; few sound like actual artifacts from times gone by. Sean Nicholas Savage, an Edmonton expatriate now living in Montreal, sounds like he hasn’t heard any new music since Bob Dylan went electric; Savage’s sound is very much rooted in the early ’60s Greenwich Village folk scene, with his warbly, slightly nasal tenor imbued with all the wide-eyed idealism and naivete of a Prairie boy suddenly “sleeping in a car in New York City.” His lyrics may not be terribly deep (“giant brain up in the sky/ tell me what is on your mind”)—he’s no Ian Tyson—yet his voice is entirely captivating, and the lo-fi, acoustic recording is enchanting, especially the contributions from the soprano backing vocalists and violinist. At times it recalls a more wistful and romantic Ray Condo—another Westerner who moved to Montreal to make country music—or a rural take on the sweet simplicity of Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Hopefully his new city life inspires some lyrics to match his musical vision. (June 10)
Download: the entire album is available for free here.
South Rakkas Crew – The Stimulus Package (Mad Decent)
With the lone exception of Kardinal Offishall’s 2008 pop hit “Dangerous”—which unfortunately overshadowed the criminally underrated album it appeared on, Not 4 Sale—the tiny but vital group of Canadians making Caribbean-influenced dancehall pop has rarely made international waves. South Rakkas Crew might be the ones to change that.
South Rakkas Crew grew up in Mississauga and Brampton, worked in Toronto briefly (including on Barenaked Ladies tracks), and then fled to Orlando where they found work with ’N Sync, of all people, and even Michael Jackson, while maintaining links to club culture, in particular Jamaican dancehall. That dichotomy has made fans out of Thom Yorke and Tricky as well as Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake, and, most importantly, Diplo—the Baltimore DJ who helped give birth to M.I.A.’s career, as well as Santigold’s, and who is one-half of the electro-dancehall-pop duo Major Lazer. Diplo has put out South Rakkas Crew mix tapes and albums on his Mad Decent label, where they’re right at home alongside other artists under heavy Jamaican, Brazilian and hip-hop influences.
Unlike their like-minded peer Poirier in Montreal, South Rakkas Crew come from a decidedly more pop background, meaning the hooks are huge and the beats much bigger than most people from the underground who came to the dance floor late in the game. That doesn’t mean they play it safe, however: one of the most engaging tracks on The Stimulus Package is their remix of sorts involving oddball art-punk band Deerhoof, and their 2008 pop song “+81”; stripped of its signature guitar riff, the Crew pull apart the other hooks embedded in the track and cut the tempo in half.
They may be globetrotters now, but it’s not hard to hear the new sound of the suburbs—the culturally rich, cross-pollinating suburbs, not the sleepy enclaves of yore—in South Rakkas’ polyglot pop. (June 10)
Download: the entire album is available for free here.
Tracy Thorn – Love and its Opposites (Merge)
Everything But the Girl always seemed like one of those ridiculous British names for disposable pop bands of the ’80s (see: Pop Will Eat Itself, Wet Wet Wet). But that band’s singer, Tracy Thorn, is definitely not making music for girls and boys anymore: this, her second album, is for mature audiences only. And by mature, I mean anyone with enough life experience to be in a long-term relationship that either fractures after years of slowly developing cracks, or somehow survives despite years of disappointments. Mature in a way that will no longer accept a tired cliché like “I miss you like deserts miss the rain.”
Thorn let’s you know exactly what you’re in for right off the top: “Oh! The Divorces” is a devastating song about watching friends fall apart, lost idealism, the fallacy of romantic pop songwriting, and the fall from passionate beginnings to mundane custody obligations—the latter is done during the song’s bridge in a mere 11 words: “the honeymoon/ the wedding rings/ the afternoon handovers by the swings.” Ominously, the song both opens and closes with the question: “Who’s next?”
Love and its Opposites is not a breakup album—after all, Thorn is still married to her former EBTG bandmate and father of her children, Ben Watt. Rather, it’s full of well-crafted observations of middle age in general: parenting teenagers (“you worry about growing up/ I worry about letting go”), singles bars (“Can you tell how long I’ve been here? / Can you smell the fear?”) and family ghosts in the old hometown.
The lyrics are the real selling point; on first listen, the music is merely pleasant and, well, adult. Thorn’s melancholy, empathetic voice is nothing if not subtle, but understatement serves her well; the arrangements here are often sparse, but always spot-on, and there are enough colours and tempos to rescue it from being a middle-aged mope. Much like the quiet, unseen daily dramas that she documents, there is far more going on here than first meets the eye. (June 10)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Oh! The Divorces,” “Kentish Town,” “Singles Bar”
Andre Williams – That’s All I Need (Bloodshot)
This 73-year-old bluesman isn’t up to any new tricks on his latest album, other than that he’s digging into more of a late-night psychedelic blues trip than he has in the past, thanks to a group of Detroit players, most of whom—with the notable exception of Motown session legend Dennis Coffey—are from much younger generations. Williams is an oddly compelling vocalist, equally sexy and sinister, cool and creepy, even when he’s just chanting the word “tricks!” over a minimalist blues backdrop, or squeezing every bit of pathos out of a song titled “When Love Shoots You in the Foot.” Williams sounds a bit spent: he doesn’t seem capable of belting it out, but nor does he have to, and his calm command of the feisty youngsters behind him lends him even greater authority. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “There Ain’t No Such Thing as Good Dope,” “Tricks,” “Cigarettes and My Old Lady”
Bei Bei and Shawn Lee – Into the Wind (Ubiquity)
Chinese-Western musical match-ups are all too rare; successful ones rarer still. The pairing of Bei Bei Zheng and Shawn Lee is nothing short of perfect: she is a master of the gu zheng, or a Chinese zither, and he is an extremely adaptable funk instrumentalist and film composer. The gu zheng is most familiar to Western audiences from martial arts films; hearing it paired with Shaft-worthy instrumentation is evocative splendour—it’s amazing Quentin Tarantino didn’t think of it first. (He was too busy recycling old soundtracks, apparently.) Though Bei Bei comes from an obviously classical tradition—she’s a teacher and has even written a textbook about the instrument—she’s more than willing to bend the instrument’s capabilities to whatever cinematic mood Lee conjures up, from sparse, smoky jazz to bossa nova to action-sequence soundtracks. The gu zheng’s harp-like qualities at times recall Alice Coltrane’s enchanting jazz records, though Bei Bei is much more playful than spiritual. (June 17)
Download (eMusic, amazon.com): “Hot Thursday,” “East,” “The Master Room”
Cowboy Junkies – Renmin Park: The Nomad Series Volume One (Latent)
Michael Timmins is having a mid-life creative renaissance. After 10 years of Cowboy Junkies albums that only the most diehard of the band’s fans heard, the guitarist and songwriter bounced back in 2009 with a new band, Lee Harvey Osmond (with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings’ Tom Wilson and Skydiggers’ Josh Finlayson), that tapped into the sparse and spooky nature of the Junkies’ best recordings.
Now back with the Junkies, Timmins launches the first of four albums they intend to put out in the next 18 months, a schedule that sounds ridiculously ambitious for a band well past their prime—until you hear how strong this album is.
Renmin Park was written after Timmins and his family (not his siblings in the band) lived in China for three months, an experience that shapes the setting of Timmins’s short stories in the lyrics, but more importantly seeps into the music as well. Ehru and pipa solos fit perfectly into the Junkies’ sound, and Chinese singer Zuoxiao Zuzhou takes lead vocals on “A Walk in the Park,” co-written with bassist Alan Anton and guest keyboardist Joby Baker; two other tracks (“My Fall,” “I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side”) are written by Chinese writers and translated into English, sung by Margo Timmins.
If the Junkies have been in a rut recently, Renmin Park widens their scope considerably, while remaining as intimate as their finest moments. Michael Timmins appears to have asserted more control here than ever—he also introduces his own, scraggly voice for the first time in the band’s 25-year history—yet it’s actually bassist Alan Anton who rises from the background to glue all these new elements together, especially on the handful of tracks where he adopts a dub reggae backbeat while Michael and keyboardist Baker provide textural touches that tap into the band’s psychedelic, Velvet Underground beginnings.
The sound is captivating enough; Michael Timmins has also written some of his strongest songs in years. Longtime Junkies fans will be ecstatic; fair-weather fans are more than encouraged to check in and help this Canadian institution celebrate their 25th anniversary on a high note. (June 17)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com): “(You’ve Got to Get) A Good Heart,” “My Fall,” “Stranger Here”
Crystal Castles – II (Last Gang)
If notoriety is any measure of success, Crystal Castles are one of the biggest Canadian acts internationally. Listening to their second album, however, it’s near impossible to imagine why.
The first album, which featured a demo recording that became a MySpace sensation, was a decent electro album that was equal parts abrasive aggression and goth gloom with melancholic melodies buried beneath the bleeps and blurps.
Yet none of that promise is heard here, which—for a band that induces riot-like behaviour at live gigs—sounds remarkably muzzled. Singer Alice Glass is rarely let loose to squeal bloody murder; her most effective moments come when she’s at her most detached and robotic (notably on a cover of Platinum Blonde’s "Not In Love"). Ethan Kath’s production dips into cheesy ’90s rave territory and rote ’80s electro fetishism; even at it’s most aggressive here (which isn’t that often) it still sounds like it would fade into the background on a fashion runway.
For all their adoring crowds, Crystal Castles attract a large amount of venom, due to their prickly and prank-ridden public personas. But this time the venom may well come from fans wondering why Crystal Castles sound like they’re made of sand. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “Celestica,” “Baptism,” “Not in Love”
Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles – The Grand Bounce (Universal)
The best and worst thing about Gord Downie’s solo records is their sloppy, unproduced nature. Outside the confines of The Tragically Hip—confines that applied much less to their last album, the creative comeback We Are the Same—Downie has hired musicians that embrace scrappy first takes, wrestle with wrong notes until they sound right, colour outside the lines when possible and settle into a punk-country shuffle when necessary.
They still do all of those things on The Grand Bounce, Downie’s third solo album with this group of players, though this time everything is brought into brighter focus, in large part due to the influence of producer Chris Walla (Decemberists, Tegan and Sara). Thankfully, it’s not as polished as most of Walla’s work, like his own far-too-polite band Death Cab for Cutie and its spin-off project The Postal Service; Walla respects the raw nature of the Country of Miracles while also bringing out their best. As a result, Downie sounds more in control here—as he naturally does with The Hip, where he remains one of the most captivating frontmen in rock’n’roll—as opposed to surrendering to the spontaneity of his bandmates.
The songwriting stands out this time as well; Downie is writing to his band’s strengths, particularly guitarist Dale Morningstar and vocalist Julie Doiron, while some songs (“The Drowning Machine”) sound like a younger, hungry Hip, minus the bluesy riffs that defined many of their earlier classics. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com): “The East Wind,” “Yellow Days,” “As a Mover”
Drake – Thank Me Later (Universal)
He was Canada’s biggest hip-hop superstar ever, even before his debut album came out. So why, now that we’re all paying attention, does he do nothing on said debut but whine about how empty and meaningless the life of a rich and famous rap star is? What a way to squander a wave of goodwill for the upstart underdog—imagine an Academy Award winner making an acceptance speech about how much the win will ruin their life.
Drake grew up as a child TV star, so he’d already experienced a small level of fame before he was being wined and dined by U.S. rap royalty. So on some level, his love/hate relationship with fame comes naturally, and on the album’s first single, “Over,” he sums up his discomfort in his new mega-celebrity status, unsure whether he’s still playing a role or whether it’s his real life: “What am I doing? Oh, that’s right, I’m doing me.”
That might be tolerable for a single—and yet Drake spends the vast majority of his debut album deconstructing the jetset life, how easy it is to get laid, how hard it is to have so much money, and wondering if it’s all worth it.
Cry me a river. Isn’t there a recession going on? Isn’t the world going to hell? Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Or is he trying to comfort the rest of us lowly listeners by explaining how success is not all that? Is this some self-deprecating Canadian complex, ill at ease in the belly of American celebrity culture?
No matter which, it’s indulgent emo rap that rings hollow on almost every level—even the music is limp, without even a single escapist track that might make it on the dance floor—and it’s entirely unclear what exactly we’re supposed to be thanking him for. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Over,” “Fireworks,” “Karaoke”
Fred Eaglesmith – Cha Cha Cha (Lonesome Day/E1)
After 15 albums in a 30-year career, Brantford, Ontario’s Fred Eaglesmith is currently enjoying his biggest mainstream success, with the likes of Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson and even Toby Keith recording his material. When it comes to his own albums, however, Eaglesmith is content to get weirder.
On Cha Cha Cha, it sounds like Tom Waits got Leonard Cohen’s back-up singers hammered with Los Lobos, getting David Lynch to film the whole thing. The Ginn sisters provide backing vocals that are alternately elegant and creepy, a perfect complement to Eaglesmith’s increasingly raspy voice—which is put to work singing songs of romantically devastated men who think their lover is “being careless with my love,” is “playing tricks on me,” has been “gone too long,” and who spend their days hallucinating said lover’s appearance all around town.
As one might expect, Cha Cha Cha has a slight Latin vibe, mixed with twangy guitar, Farfisa organs and ’50s rock’n’roll. Because Eaglesmith recorded it at home—though still employing long-time collaborator Scott Merritt to mix the album—it has a decidedly more raw sound. Obviously, Eaglesmith is fine letting others make radio-friendly versions of his songs; left to his own devices, he likes to dwell in the shadows, where attention to sonic detail is as important as lyrical narratives. In fact, on their own, most of these songs are merely average: it’s Eaglesmith’s eerie delivery and morbid mood that really makes them shine. (June 17)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, zunior.com, eMusic): “Careless,” “Sliver of the Moon,” “Dynamite and Whiskey”
Minotaurs – The Thing (Static Clang)
Once a drummer, always a drummer. Though Nathan Lawr (Royal City, King Cobb Steelie) moved from behind the skins to become an acclaimed singer/songwriter in his own right, he is once again slave to the rhythm in his new project, Minotaurs. Lawr isn’t drumming here—he leaves that to CanRock veteran Don Kerr (Ron Sexsmith, Rheostatics)—but has written a set of songs that rely almost entirely on rhythm. (That, and a killer horn section.) Opening track “Caught in the Light” sets the pace, easily falling into the type of Afrobeat groove that’s driven so many recent reissues of ’70s African obscurities. Several other tracks follow a similar template, but this is not Lawr’s Afrobeat record—even if perhaps it should be, seeing how those are the standout tracks. His tendencies toward traditional Western songcraft still shine through—though often it sounds like he’s trying to tame these wild Minotaurs, when really, he should be letting them loose to follow wherever the beat takes them. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, zunior.com): “Caught in the Light,” “Get Down,” “Pink Floyd”
Janelle Monae – The Archandroid (Bad Boy/Warner)
“Am I a freak?” asks Janelle Monae, “Or just another weirdo? / Call me weak / Or just call me your hero.”
Hero it is, then. Her haircut and style might be the first thing you notice—like on her explosive performance on David Letterman’s show a couple of weeks back—but Monae’s myriad talents are what make her a star, not just the fact that she can out-glam Gaga if she wants to.
Vocally, she can be Grace Jones one moment, Lena Horne the next, and then sound as giddy as a young Michael Jackson, dropping huge pop songs, soul revue rave-ups, wigged-out hip-hop like her friends in Outkast and dancing like James Brown in the process. Then, just for the hell of it, she’s slice off some British psychedelic folk music or Broadway-style show tune—because she can. That she is capable of doing anything is obvious. Should she?
The Archandroid contains 18 tracks, including a couple of pseudo-classical instrumental interludes that have something to do with the fact that Monae has somehow envisioned this album as parts two and three of a soundtrack to the silent film classic Metropolis—which I don’t believe for a second. She doesn’t need that kind of backstory to sell herself as an enigmatic, multi-talented tour-de-force—it’s all there in the music itself.
But if The Archandroid is a tad show-offy and a bit too long, it never entirely wears out its welcome, thanks to at least four or five killer tracks and Monae’s seemingly endless charisma. Prince is undoubtedly also high on her list of influences, though unfortunately The Archandroid is more like Diamonds and Pearls-era Prince—past his prime but before the total decline. Monae is on her way up, of course, and there’s no doubt she’ll be bathing in the purple rain soon enough. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, puretracks.com, amazon.com): “Tightrope,” “Cold War,” “Dance or Die”
Parallels – Visionaries (E1)
Cameron Findlay was the live drummer in Crystal Castles before striking out to form Parallels; if CC has ’80s presets in their keyboards, Findlay likes to take it back further, mining warm analog synth sounds as if music stopped progressing after Kraftwerk’s Man Machine album.
Findlay teamed up with singer Holly Dodson (whose father spent the ’70s avoiding synths in the colossal CanRock band the Stampeders), who plays the part of ice princess effectively—warmer than, say, the faceless Sally Shapiro, but not as charismatic as Lykke Li or Annie. Parallels are very much a genre band and a promising one at that, but Visionaries suffers from a sameness that gets wearying after more than a couple of tracks at a time. (June 3)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com): “Nightmares,” “Ultralight,” “Needless to Say”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Mojo (Warner)
Don’t do drugs, kids. If you do, you’ll wind up 60 years old and playing boring blues rock—no matter how good you were a mere 20 years ago, or 20 years before that.
Tom Petty is not a man who should be singing the blues—nor, for that matter, at his age, should he be paying women backhanded compliments like: “She was kinda cute/ if a little past her prime.”
His nasal voice is perfect for snarling rockers, tiny perfect pop songs and laid-back country rock; singing the blues simply brings out his worst, laziest tendencies. He doesn’t have the curmudgeonly character or evasive wordplay that his friend Bob Dylan does in order to pull this off; instead, he sounds like an old bore singing about partying with motel maids (which he does on “The Trip to Pirate’s Cove”) or his first acid trip (which he does on “First Flash of Freedom”).
The Heartbreakers do their best—in particular stalwarts Mike Campbell on guitar and Benmont Tench on keyboards—and several tracks would be fine without Petty involved, like the lite reggae “Don’t Pull Me Over” or the shuffle of “Running Man’s Bible.” But the world is full of great bands backing up lacklustre songwriters—it’s just sad that fate has befallen the Heartbreakers. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, amazon.com, puretracks.com): "High In the Morning," "Something Good Coming," "Don’t Pull Me Over"
Sean Nicholas Savage – Movin Up in Society (Arbutus)
Plenty of artists adopt a retro sound; few sound like actual artifacts from times gone by. Sean Nicholas Savage, an Edmonton expatriate now living in Montreal, sounds like he hasn’t heard any new music since Bob Dylan went electric; Savage’s sound is very much rooted in the early ’60s Greenwich Village folk scene, with his warbly, slightly nasal tenor imbued with all the wide-eyed idealism and naivete of a Prairie boy suddenly “sleeping in a car in New York City.” His lyrics may not be terribly deep (“giant brain up in the sky/ tell me what is on your mind”)—he’s no Ian Tyson—yet his voice is entirely captivating, and the lo-fi, acoustic recording is enchanting, especially the contributions from the soprano backing vocalists and violinist. At times it recalls a more wistful and romantic Ray Condo—another Westerner who moved to Montreal to make country music—or a rural take on the sweet simplicity of Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Hopefully his new city life inspires some lyrics to match his musical vision. (June 10)
Download: the entire album is available for free here.
South Rakkas Crew – The Stimulus Package (Mad Decent)
With the lone exception of Kardinal Offishall’s 2008 pop hit “Dangerous”—which unfortunately overshadowed the criminally underrated album it appeared on, Not 4 Sale—the tiny but vital group of Canadians making Caribbean-influenced dancehall pop has rarely made international waves. South Rakkas Crew might be the ones to change that.
South Rakkas Crew grew up in Mississauga and Brampton, worked in Toronto briefly (including on Barenaked Ladies tracks), and then fled to Orlando where they found work with ’N Sync, of all people, and even Michael Jackson, while maintaining links to club culture, in particular Jamaican dancehall. That dichotomy has made fans out of Thom Yorke and Tricky as well as Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake, and, most importantly, Diplo—the Baltimore DJ who helped give birth to M.I.A.’s career, as well as Santigold’s, and who is one-half of the electro-dancehall-pop duo Major Lazer. Diplo has put out South Rakkas Crew mix tapes and albums on his Mad Decent label, where they’re right at home alongside other artists under heavy Jamaican, Brazilian and hip-hop influences.
Unlike their like-minded peer Poirier in Montreal, South Rakkas Crew come from a decidedly more pop background, meaning the hooks are huge and the beats much bigger than most people from the underground who came to the dance floor late in the game. That doesn’t mean they play it safe, however: one of the most engaging tracks on The Stimulus Package is their remix of sorts involving oddball art-punk band Deerhoof, and their 2008 pop song “+81”; stripped of its signature guitar riff, the Crew pull apart the other hooks embedded in the track and cut the tempo in half.
They may be globetrotters now, but it’s not hard to hear the new sound of the suburbs—the culturally rich, cross-pollinating suburbs, not the sleepy enclaves of yore—in South Rakkas’ polyglot pop. (June 10)
Download: the entire album is available for free here.
Tracy Thorn – Love and its Opposites (Merge)
Everything But the Girl always seemed like one of those ridiculous British names for disposable pop bands of the ’80s (see: Pop Will Eat Itself, Wet Wet Wet). But that band’s singer, Tracy Thorn, is definitely not making music for girls and boys anymore: this, her second album, is for mature audiences only. And by mature, I mean anyone with enough life experience to be in a long-term relationship that either fractures after years of slowly developing cracks, or somehow survives despite years of disappointments. Mature in a way that will no longer accept a tired cliché like “I miss you like deserts miss the rain.”
Thorn let’s you know exactly what you’re in for right off the top: “Oh! The Divorces” is a devastating song about watching friends fall apart, lost idealism, the fallacy of romantic pop songwriting, and the fall from passionate beginnings to mundane custody obligations—the latter is done during the song’s bridge in a mere 11 words: “the honeymoon/ the wedding rings/ the afternoon handovers by the swings.” Ominously, the song both opens and closes with the question: “Who’s next?”
Love and its Opposites is not a breakup album—after all, Thorn is still married to her former EBTG bandmate and father of her children, Ben Watt. Rather, it’s full of well-crafted observations of middle age in general: parenting teenagers (“you worry about growing up/ I worry about letting go”), singles bars (“Can you tell how long I’ve been here? / Can you smell the fear?”) and family ghosts in the old hometown.
The lyrics are the real selling point; on first listen, the music is merely pleasant and, well, adult. Thorn’s melancholy, empathetic voice is nothing if not subtle, but understatement serves her well; the arrangements here are often sparse, but always spot-on, and there are enough colours and tempos to rescue it from being a middle-aged mope. Much like the quiet, unseen daily dramas that she documents, there is far more going on here than first meets the eye. (June 10)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com, puretracks.com): “Oh! The Divorces,” “Kentish Town,” “Singles Bar”
Andre Williams – That’s All I Need (Bloodshot)
This 73-year-old bluesman isn’t up to any new tricks on his latest album, other than that he’s digging into more of a late-night psychedelic blues trip than he has in the past, thanks to a group of Detroit players, most of whom—with the notable exception of Motown session legend Dennis Coffey—are from much younger generations. Williams is an oddly compelling vocalist, equally sexy and sinister, cool and creepy, even when he’s just chanting the word “tricks!” over a minimalist blues backdrop, or squeezing every bit of pathos out of a song titled “When Love Shoots You in the Foot.” Williams sounds a bit spent: he doesn’t seem capable of belting it out, but nor does he have to, and his calm command of the feisty youngsters behind him lends him even greater authority. (June 24)
Download (iTunes, eMusic, amazon.com): “There Ain’t No Such Thing as Good Dope,” “Tricks,” “Cigarettes and My Old Lady”
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