Pre-Polaris, day two: Braids, Caribou

The 10^th Polaris Music Prize gala is next Monday, Sept. 21, at the Carlu in Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in a room will decide which one of these 10 artists will get $50,000 and a gig with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2016. All other nominees receive $3,000.

Every day this week I’ll look at two of the shortlisted albums, assess their chances, and celebrate two albums that didn’t make the short list—or, in some cases, even the long list.

The first in this series is here.

Braids – Deep in the Iris (Arbutus)

The album:

First off, I simply cannot believe how much the piano chords that open this album remind me of the breakdown in Chalk Circle’s “April Fool” (which is almost 30 years old, by the way). Then there’s the fact that I keep hearing echoes of the Cocteau Twins. But that’s just this geezer talking. Everything else about Braids is firmly rooted in the 21^st century, as this trio becomes increasingly more electronic, anchored by the ace drummer Austin Tufts. I want to give the Polaris money to that guy alone, he’s that good.

What Braids do as a band I find admirable, but it’s incredibly heady. It seems torn between a band that deals primarily in abstracts and a band that wants to write direct pop songs. I’d rather they dive off the deep end and get as weird as they want to. When they get political, as they do on the much-praised feminist anthem “Miniskirt,” it comes off more like an earnest sociology student’s first attempt at songwriting, rather than the seasoned veterans Braids are at this point. It’s clunky, both melodically and lyrically. The rest of the album fares much better: “Taste Revised” proves their pop mettle, even if it sounds a lot like, um, Sarah McLachlan. “Getting Tired” is lovely. “Sore Eyes” is similar to Blue Hawaii, the side project for vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston.

Now, a Caribou remix of this entire record—that might be something. I know they already share a lot of the same synths.

The chances:

Strong. This is the kind of heavily layered album that might convince jurors with repeated listens. It’s also the brainiest record on this list. And jurors are nothing if not huge nerds.

Caribou – Our Love (Merge)

The album:

I’ve loved just about everything Dan Snaith has ever done, dating back to his 2001 debut, Start Breaking My Heart. And yet this is the first time he’s left me relatively cold. Why?

It might be that the opening track and lead singe, “Can’t Do Without You,” seems like the slightest of ideas in search of a song; once you’ve heard the three-second hook, very little else happens for the remaining four minutes. It might be that the album’s centrepiece, “Second Chance,” featuring Jessy Lanza on vocals, has this odd phase-shifting effect that actually makes me physically nauseous, and the synth tone, which appears on several other tracks, I find especially grating. Purely subjective, I realize. But several other tracks also fall flat, which is odd for a guy who doesn’t usually pad his albums with filler (he does, however, release plenty of B-sides, where he’s released as much music as can be found on his albums).

I’ll happily take four tracks here for posterity: “All I Ever Need,” “Our Love,” “Mars,” “Your Love Will Set You Free,” the latter of which makes this one of two albums on this year’s list that fulfills Polaris’s Owen Pallett quota.

The chances:

Slim. No previous winner has won again. Now that Polaris is 10 years old, that may well change in the near future. Not for this album, though.

Two of the should’ve, could’ve beens:

Bahamas – Is Afie (Brushfire)

The album:

What’s that, you say? Yet another singer-songwriter from the land of Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young and Leonard Cohen who writes beautiful songs and sings them in a cracked late night voice and pulls in some string sections and female backing vocalists and whose guitar skills are better appreciate live than on his subtle recordings? Surely we’ve heard this story before. And yet, so precious few do this as well as Afie Jurvanen, and this is his finest album to date.

My August 2014 review:

Another singer/songwriter album, another dozen love songs—except that this one sets the bar considerably higher, right from the opening lyrics: “I held your breath inside my lungs for days / and I saw myself as just one of many waves / when I knew I’d become the ocean’s slave / I just stayed.”  Afie Jurvanen recorded his first two (highly acclaimed) albums in the space of a week each. On this, his third, Jurvanen spent a whole summer in a studio. His love of late-night sessions fuelled by Willie Nelson and wine hasn’t changed; nor has his modest reluctance to showcase his skills as a soloist. But the extra attention to detail is obvious in every carefully constructed track, from the lovely vocal arrangements to the occasional string section to just the right amount of space left inside every song: Bahamas is all about the subtle charms, the soft sell.

Qualifier: there are two total stinkers on this otherwise flawless record. One is the single “All the Time,” the whining guitar riff of which wore out its welcome by the third time I’d heard it. The other is “Record Store Girl,” which is far too cutesy and out of character—or maybe this song just makes me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable because, just like some cliché devotee of High Fidelity, I’ve always had an inherent crush on just about any female employee of a record store I’ve ever met. Doesn’t mean I’d write a song about it, though.

Fun game: pronounce "Bahamas" by combining Ebenezer Scrooge and the Palestinian organization. 

Why it didn’t make the short list:

Excellent question. This was the first album of the Polaris qualifying period I heard that I felt was a shoo-in.

Amelia Curran – They Promised You Mercy (Six Shooter)

The album: I want to transform this album into a blanket and wrap it around me in my darkest moments. Such is the power of Curran’s voice and her songs. My November 2014 review:

The East Coast’s Amelia Curran has been stopping listeners dead in their tracks ever since her 2008 album War Brides brought her to national attention. Until now, her approach has been relatively bare bones; this, on the other hand, is a full-blown rock record by comparison, full of ringing electric guitars, powerful drums, strings (by Drew Jurecka, of Jill Barber’s band), horns (by Bryden Baird, of Feist’s band), lap steel, accordion, and some stunning jazz piano and organ work by Aaron Davis (Holly Cole Trio).  If you’re a folkie singer/songwriter looking to expand your sound, you’d be hard pressed to find a better producer than ex-Rheostatic Michael Phillip Wojewoda, a man who’s worked in almost every genre of music and knows how to capture dynamics. Your song that sounds perfect with just your own stunning voice and minimal guitar accompaniment sounds even better with what Wojewoda decides to add and how he does it.  Curran herself is a master of empathy, the kind of voice you need to hear in your darkest moments, the kind of voice that has lived through mood disorders and anxiety (the topic of a current public awareness campaign she’s spearheaded) and reaches out in song.

Here, with the help of many friends, a variety of tempos and textures ensure that it’s not a dour affair. It’s much more than that: it’s a powerful record by a major artist.

Listen to “I Am the Night,” “Song on the Radio,” “Somebody Somewhere” or “Coming For You” or “Never Say Goodbye”—hell, just listen to the whole damn thing.

Why it didn’t even make the long list: 

Total mystery. She’s made the Polaris long list before, back in 2010. She has a powerful indie (Six Shooter, home to last year’s winner, Tagaq) behind her. She has Wojewoda behind the boards. She made news with her mental health campaign. She has heaps of ECMAs and Juno nods and is up for four Canadian Folk Awards in November. And yet she was snubbed at Polaris for what is her finest record to date? Weird. As Joni would say: "Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm."

Pre-Polaris, day one: Alvvays, BadBadNotGood

The 10^th Polaris Music Prize gala is a week tonight, Sept. 21, at the Carlu in Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in a room will decide which one of these 10 artists will get $50,000 and a gig with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2016. All other nominees receive $3,000.

Every day this week I’ll look at two of the shortlisted albums, assess their chances, and celebrate two albums that didn’t make the short list—or, in some cases, even the long list.

Alvvays – s/t (Royal Mountain)

The album: 

To some degree, every other album on this year’s Polaris short list could be construed as a surprise—but not this one. From the moment it was released in July 2014—a full year after it was finished, while the band looked for the right label and built reams of positive press—Alvvays had Canada’s critics in the palm of their hand. It’s easy to see why. Molly Rankin writes lovely pop melodies of lost innocence and what she terms “Adult Diversion,” and then buries them in the mix alongside fuzzy and jangly guitars that strike a chord with anyone who ever loved early R.E.M., Blake Babies, or anything on K Records. The album was produced by mad genius Chad Van Gaalen, who specializes in lo-fi sonics. Alvvays sound fantastic if you’re in your teens or 20s, caught between worlds, struggling to articulate heartbreak and longing, taking long walks along the rocks and writing your names on overpasses.

And yet—this record drives me nuts. I love Rankin’s lyrics and her melodies, but something about her vocal tone here is like nails on chalkboard for me. What’s frustrating is that I sense she’s a much better singer than we’re witnessing here; maybe she suffers from Plaskett-itis, writing melodies just slightly out of her range. Then there’s Van Gaalen’s production: I love the way his own records sound, like they could fall apart at any minute; I love his guitar tones, his electronic shadings, his fragile voice. Sadly, this Alvvays record doesn’t sound anything like a Van Gaalen record: it’s a trebly blur that suggests he merely set up microphones outside their rehearsal hall.

That said, it’s impossible to deny the melodic and lyrical punch of the opening lines of “Archie, Marry Me”: “You’ve expressed explicitly your contempt for matrimony / You’ve student loans to pay and will not risk the alimony.” And the opening guitar riff of “Party Police” makes me… feel things. But I feel like everything about this record doesn’t do this band any justice.

The chances: 

Strong. I feel like the only critic in Canada who didn’t adore this record; surely it will have more than a few fans in the jury room. Were it to win, it would be the first time a so-called “indie rock” record—by which I mean a record that actually sounds like what the term “indie rock” was understood to signify back in the 1990s (hello, Velocity Girl!)—will have won the Polaris. CBC Radio 3 and Indie88 listeners will rejoice.

BadBadNotGood feat. Ghostface Killah – Sour Soul (Lex)

The album: 

It’s only a matter of time before an instrumental hip-hop band hooks up with an MC and finally get the attention they deserve. The Toronto jazzbos had done various collaborations before, but mostly live—not on their own albums. Ghostface Killah, of course, is from the legendary Wu-Tang Clan: a once-revolutionary group, now a heritage act whose debut is almost 25 years old, with a collective discography that’s far too vast for most fans to keep up with. That said, Ghostface’s name undoubtedly still carries weight (witness the recent beef with Action Bronson). This album was recorded before BBNG’s far-superior (and fully instrumental) third album (titled, um, III), and goes some way to explain the giant leap they made after their second album: far more confident, far more dexterous, far more textural and subtle. In other words, why Sour Soul is getting significantly more attention than III did is due entirely to Ghostface, even though he’s largely incidental to this album: he played no role in the genesis of the tracks, recorded his vocals remotely, and doesn’t really gel—Danny Brown and Doom prove to be more interesting in their brief cameos than Ghostface does on most of the record. This would be as good or better an album without him. He does, however, leave us wondering what he means by: “With the strength of 10 midgets, Ima murder you, son!”

The chances: 

Good. The music here stands to appeal to any curious music fan: this is not just a hip-hop album, but one that draws heavily from jazz, soundtracks and psychedelic rock. Ghostface will make or break jurors’ impression of the record: is he an asset or a distraction?

Two of the should’ve, could’ve beens:

Afiara Quartet with Skratch Bastid – Spin Cycle (Centrediscs)

The album: If you only listen to one collaboration between a string quartet and a hip-hop DJ this year—this is the one. My review from May: 

This young Toronto string quartet commissioned four composers to write new pieces for them, which they recorded and then handed over to turntablist Skratch Bastid (Buck 65, Shad) to remix; the musicians then went back to the composers to add more material responding to the remix, furthering the musical conversation.  The idea seems like it’s better suited for an arts grant proposal than a record you’d actually want to listen to. But this works. The composers and the players here aren’t looking to write music for the 18^th century: this is modern work for modern players, whose occasionally percussive style suits the transformation to hip-hop perfectly.  String quartets have an inherently nimble nature that all small ensembles do, which makes their work easier to isolate and pull apart—especially if you’re doing so with their complete participation. Skratch Bastid will take an eight-bar riff and loop it, then take the violin line and make it sing in new ways via pitch shifting, while bringing in sampled drums and keyboards and anything else he likes.  Obviously the remixes are the real draw here, but the original works—by Dinuk Wijeratne, Laura Silberberg, Rob Teehan and Kevin Lau—stand entirely on their own merit, and not just as remix fodder. It’s there that Afiara shows off their subtle and dynamic side, where they prove that they’re not just brash players who secretly want to be in a rock band. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  For such an oil-and-water experiment, there is some serious emulsification happening here.

Why it didn’t even make the long list: Classical music. Also: May release date (Polaris cutoff is June 1).

Lydia Ainsworth – Right From the Real (Arbutus)

The album: 

My review from January:

Ainsworth is straight from the lineage of (obvious yet inevitable comparisons) Kate Bush, Bjork, Fever Ray and Grimes: a classically trained cellist who scores films and draws as much inspiration from visual art and dream states as she does music. Indeed, she says she wants her music to feel like “shivers caused from a lucid dream.” Mission accomplished. Ainsworth’s layered cello and electronics are entrancing; her voice is conventionally beautiful; her songs unconventionally arranged, tripping over time signatures and easily melding textures both natural and otherworldly with strong melodies tying everything together. Ainsworth has a good home on Montreal’s Arbutus Records—home of Grimes, Blue Hawaii, Braids and other wonderful weirdos. But comparisons and compatriots are not even necessary when she’s made a debut album as strong as this.

Why it didn’t make the short list: 

You’d think this would be prime Polaris bait, being somewhere between Austra, Jessy Lanza and Owen Pallett. Votes went to Braids, Jennifer Castle or Caribou instead. But bet on seeing her on plenty of future Polaris lists.

August 2015 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Highly recommended this month: Destroyer

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: Torres

Well worth your while: Gypsophilia, Kalle Mattson, Lindi Ortega, Tony Wilson 6tet

Mac DeMarco – Another One (Captured Tracks)

If Tom Waits’s piano has been drinking, Mac DeMarco’s guitar is totally wasted, dude. Of course, Waits is actually a fantastic piano player, and DeMarco, behind his goofball image, is an accomplished guitar player. It takes skill to sound that bad. No, just kidding—the guy can play, it’s just that he chooses to play in a way that sounds like his guitar is being detuned on every note, and play through guitar pedals unearthed in a closet that’s been sealed shut since 1988. This eight-song album is DeMarco’s 10^th release in the last six years, and as the title suggests, sounds like it was written and recorded in a week—which it was. There’s something to be said for immediacy and consistency, but one can’t help but wonder what delights DeMarco will conjure if and when he branches out and hunkers down. (Aug. 13)

Download: “The Way You’d Love Her,” “A Heart Like Hers,” “No Other Heart”

Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge)

Vancouver’s Dan Bejar has now put out 10 albums as Destroyer. The last one, Kaputt, was a commercial breakthrough of sorts, which led to bigger venues and audiences for the often-reluctant performer. But that came out four years ago—an entire “indie rock generation,” in Bejar’s words. "I assume people who listened to Kaputt have completely stopped listening to music, if I'm familiar with how things work,” he told Canadian Press. "So I've almost arranged it so I cannot bank on any previous success."

Poison Season, then, sounds like Destroyer’s Greatest Hits—though surely unconsciously for such a contrarian. Every stage of his ever-evolving sound is here: the glam rock of 2001’s classic Streethawk or his work with New Pornographers (“Midnight Meet the Rain”), the smooth, saxophone-inflected new wave of Kaputt (“Archer on the Beach”), the loose, rambling folk rock of Rubies (“Solace’s Bride,” “Times Square”). The band Bejar assembled for Kaputt and took on the road for two years is on fire here: trumpeter JP Carter (Dan Mangan), saxophonist Joseph Shabason (Diana), Black Mountain drummer Josh Wells and long-time collaborators Nick Bragg (guitar), David Carswell (guitar), Ted Bois (keys) and John Collins (bass). This band got booked into jazz festivals for a reason: each is a remarkably expressive player, and Bejar’s songs give them plenty of room to provide delicate splashes of colour—or a full-on assault, as on the three-chord stomper “Dream Lover.”

Primarily, however, Bejar revisits the lush orchestrations of 2004’s Your Blues—only that time he was utilizing only MIDI synths. Now he employs live orchestration, and it works beautifully, particularly when paired with just piano and percussion, as on “Forces From Above,” proving that Poison Season is hardly just a journey to the past: it’s about Bejar—an artist who muses openly, on and off his records, about the frivolity of the music business and insecurity about his own muse—being completely comfortable in his own skin, finessing the finest points from his discography and pushing toward the future without changing the core of what has made him so compelling for the last 15 years. (Aug. 27)

Download: “Dream Lover,” “Archer on the Beach,” “Girl in a Sling”

Gypsophilia – Night Swimming (Forward)

As the name would suggest, this Halifax seven-piece has a thing for Django Reinhardt and Roma melodies in a jazz context. But there’s a lot more than that going on here than some of the finest players on the East Coast engaging in a genre exercise: there are Latin rhythms, distorted electric guitar and violin leads, torchy blues that would impress Timber Timbre, cinematic textures and other elements that make this a thoroughly modern recording. Made at Joel Plaskett’s studio by producer Joshua Van Tassel (Great Lake Swimmers, Amelia Curran), this is their fourth and most accomplished. They have four ECMAs under their belt, but it’s time the rest of the country caught on. (Aug. 20)

Download: Boo Doo Down, Insomniac’s Dream, Night Falls and You Need Company

Hudson Mohawke – Lantern (Warp/Maple)

Ratatat – Magnifique (XL/Beggars)

Subjectivity is everything, but especially in music. We all have singers whose talent we can recognize but whose actual voice drives us crazy, whether it’s Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits or Drake or anyone in between. We don’t talk as often about the timbre of instrumentation as being our breaking point—except when I run screaming from the sound of Elliott Randall’s guitar on Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”

That sound in particular comes to mind on Ratatat’s fifth album, one that doesn’t stray from their modus operandi of melding ’70s classic rock guitar with modern electronics to make zippy, danceable, instrumental pop songs. But that tone, that one guitar tone, the automatically harmonized guitar lead, threatens to distract an otherwise decent collection, one almost as strong as their third and best album, LP3. They bounce from slamming electro a la early Daft Punk to dreamy Hawaiian interludes and a lot of it works. But as soon as they hit autopilot and turn on that guitar harmonizer, it’s game over.

I have a similar reaction to the frequency of the synths on this second album by Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke, which appear to be all treble, no mids, and minimal bass. (Yes, I checked my stereo and tried different headphones.) Think of the most garish sounds employed by Eurotrash EDM—and then turn up the treble some more. Surely this cannot be the future of electronic music, or of Warp Records. Which is too bad, because Mr. Mohawke (real name Ross Birchard) is full of intriguing ideas that even his terrible equipment can’t hide, which is why he’s been tapped by Kanye West, Drake, Pusha T and Azealia Banks for beats in the five years since his debut album. None of those artists return favours here, but he does land Miguel, Antony Hegarty and Jhené Aiko—even though those are among the least interesting tracks here. (Aug. 6)

Download Ratatat: “Cream on Chrome,” “Drift,” “Nightclub Amnesia”

Download Hudson Mohawke: “Lil Djembe,” “Indian Steps (feat. Antony),” “Scud Books”

Rochelle Jordan – 1021 (Protostar)

Now that even Tom Cruise is excited about the new Weekend album, here’s a Toronto R&B artist who’s been overlooked in the past year, when Drake and his crew continue to define the city to the rest of North America. Rochelle Jordan relocated to L.A. with her long-time collaborator KLSH, but she still sings about cruising down the 401, and has a faithful cadre of critics from her hometown hyping her every release. She has a stronger voice than this downtempo material would suggest; one senses that she’s dialling back her powerhouse capabilities to focus on a hushed, late-night, chilled-out vibe, even when hip-hop producer Rich Kidd enters the equation. The production owes a debt to ’90s R&B but also today’s next wave; Jordan has as much in common with FKA Twigs as she does Aaliyah (the most common comparison point). The next time someone talks up “the 6ix” without mentioning anyone outside the OVO crew—especially ladies like Jordan and the equally underrated Merna—they’re only telling half the story. (Aug. 6)

Download: “What the Fuss,” “Day Ones,” “Ease Your Mind”

Kalle Mattson – Avalanche (Home Music Co. Records)

Earlier this summer, beloved Winnipeg veterans the Weakerthans announced that they had formally split (no surprise, really—it had been eight years since the release of their last album). Soon enough, the new EP by 25-year-old Ottawa-via-Sault Ste. Marie songwriter Kalle Mattson arrived, and the vocal, lyrical and melodic resemblance between him and the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson is uncanny—so strong that the last time I reviewed a Mattson record I spent most of the review talking about it. And yet here I am again, writing a review that Mattson will most likely want to crumple up and throw across the room. But I mean it only as a compliment, especially when the arrangements surrounding his songs here occasionally aim for synth-driven, anthemic bombast and Coldplay choruses. (There’s even a song called New Romantics. It does not, thankfully, nod to Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran). When he dials it down for an acoustic ballad with harmonicas and pianos, Mattson and his backing band—which includes Drake collaborator Colin Munroe and Kathleen Edwards sideman Jim Bryson (who once made an album with, um, the Weakerthans) conjure tasteful atmospherics and percussion that pull his folk-pop into the 21^st century. With only six songs on this EP, Mattson doesn’t waste any time: every one’s a winner, every one should be on the radio, and it buys him a lot of time. With an EP this good, he can take as long as he wants to put out a full-length. And I swear that next time I’ll no longer be talking about that band from Winnipeg. (Aug. 20)

Download: “Avalanche,” “Lost Love,” “Baby Blue”

Lindi Ortega – Faded Gloryville (Last Gang)

Lindi Ortega is all of 35 years old, And yet, in the liner notes to this, her fourth album, she admits to having a mid-life crisis and wondering whether she should soldier on.

Ortega has faced tough times before: she struggled for 10 years on the Toronto scene, playing traditional country music and singing her guts out—Ortega possesses one of the most remarkable voices, in country music or otherwise, to come out of this country in a long time. She started getting some lucky breaks about five years ago, is now living in Nashville, and Faded Gloryville was recorded with some of the finest producers that friendships can buy: fellow Torontonian Colin Linden (Bruce Cockburn, the TV show Nashville), the Alabama duo of Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes) and John Paul White (the Civil Wars), and Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, the upcoming Corb Lund record).

For a woman who burst on the scene with rockabilly drive and a helluva holler, Faded Gloryville is unusually subdued and downtempo. “I will not forget the good old days when I was driven by my will / and I won’t get back all the dues I paid here in Faded Gloryville,” she sings on the title track, the sound of an older, wiser woman taking stock. She still has swagger, of course, and the last third of the album, the songs recorded with Cobb, revisits the hard-living, bad-ass characters in which Ortega specializes. A cover of the oft-covered Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody,” recorded in Muscle Shoals with Tanner and White, brings some R&B to the table, but hardly seems necessary when the rest of the record enhances everything Ortega already does so well. (Aug. 27)

Download: “I Ain’t the Girl,” “Faded Gloryville,” “Run-Down Neighbourhood”

Slime – Company (Weird World/Domino)

Will Archer started playing music as a teenager as a drummer in a Rage Against the Machine cover band; he thought all electronic music was bogus and fake. He’s obviously come around; his work as Slime fits easily alongside the likes of Jaime XX or Caribou or James Blake or FourTet, with whom he shares a love of live instrumentation and found-sound samples. The word “organic” is one of the most overused terms of the last 10 years, rendering it virtually meaningless, and yet Slime’s intersection of traditional instrumentation and electronic manipulation, though hardly novel—Nicolas Jaar’s 2013 album as Darkside is another kindred spirit—still sounds fresh in Archer’s hands. (Aug. 13)

Download: “Striding Edge,” “My Company,” “Liquorish”

Tony Wilson 6tet – A Day’s Life (Drip Audio)

It seems odd that Vancouver, the most expensive city in Canada, one which most aspiring rock musicians have fled, boasts such an impressive jazz and improv scene—and most of the key players can be found in this band. Guitarist Tony Wilson has been a bandleader for more than 25 years, and here he rounds up trumpeter JP Carter (Fond of Tigers), violinist Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq), jazz superstar cellist Peggy Lee, Russell Sholberg on bass and drummer Skye Brooks for a walk through the wild side—or more specifically, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a troubled neighbourhood of beauty and despair and lost dreams, where Wilson once lived; the (non-autobiograhpical) album is meant to be the tale of a crack-addicted musician busking on East Hastings, based on a 2012 Wilson novella. Not that you’d infer that by just listening, necessarily, but no matter. The songs here boast strong melodic leads, delicate textures, occasional bursts of noise and strong composition to which these sensitive players bring their top game. Zubot and Lee in particular shine, partly because it’s unusual to hear both violin and cello together in a jazz band where they’re lead players, not texture, but also partly because those two are capable of anything. Carter, too, stands out by not only being the sole wind player, but by running his trumpet through distortion and effects, as he does with Destroyer and Dan Mangan and myriad other projects. Wilson himself is the consummate bandleader, setting the stage and letting everyone shine equally. The guitarist is incredibly prolific, and this humble reviewer can’t lay claim to knowing even a fraction of his oeuvre. But it’s hard to imagine a better introduction than this. (Aug. 6)

Download: “A Day’s Life,” “The Morn’ in Blues,” “The Long Walk”