The following
reviews ran in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury in June.
Cadence Weapon
– Hope in Dirt City (Upper Class)
The former
poet laureate of Edmonton resumes his rap career after moving to Montreal, and
delivers a tour de force of storytelling and genre-jumping. He’s no longer the
19-year-old outlier overachiever he was on his debut album; now he’s an album
artist at the ripe old 26, having relocated to a bohemian paradise where he
“walks down St. Laurent avec les filles de roi.” The MC born Rollie Pemberton
has little competition in Canadian hip-hop—outside of Drake, with whom he
shares a default position of a laid-back, laconic flow. Except unlike Drake,
Cadence Weapon is in love with language rather than just himself, spitting more
lyrical head-turners in one verse than most MCs’ entire tracks.
Pemberton’s
skills as an MC were never in doubt; here, he proves to be an impressive singer
as well, and a rapper with more varied flow than he’s shown before. Cadence
Weapon is no longer just an abstract MC: he’s a punk rock howler on the climax
of “Jukebox”; he’s a soul singer and shouter on “Conditioning”; he’s a slow-jam
crooner on “No More Names.” He’s also an effective character actor, as on “Hype
Man,” a comical role-playing narrative about the fractious relationship between
an MC and a member of his entourage; it’s funny not just for its skewering of a
well-worn convention in hip-hop culture, but because it applies to all sorts of
power dynamics (think Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute on The Office).
That’s not
even the most compelling part of Hope in Dirt City. Musically, Pemberton pays
homage here to go-go funk, punk rock, Southern bounce, icy electro, R&B
balladry and anything else he can find. Several tracks are constructed as rock
songs, with killer bass lines and intense climaxes, and yet never veer into
dreaded rap-rock crossover territory. "There We Go" is an intoxicating, icy
electro ballad with a lurching, sparse beat and ominous synths, suggesting
Pemberton has been hanging out with some Mutek festival folk in his newly
adopted city of Montreal; the title track, on the other hand, sounds like a
whole other Montreal influence: Corey Hart. Seriously, this is some Boy in the
Box shit—and even more seriously, trust me when I say I’m probably one of the
few people who mean that as a compliment.
The only time
any one recognizable genre during the course of a whole track is the dub reggae
vibe of "Small Deaths." Otherwise, anything and everything is fair game and
filtered through pitched snare drums, old synths and—in a stint of seemingly
stunt casting—the wailing tenor saxophone of Pemberton’s uncle Brett Miles, an
Edmonton session player who lets loose in ways that haven’t been heard in
hip-hop since the trumpet solo in LL Cool J’s "Going Back to Cali." Miles isn’t
interested in jazzy interludes; this saxophone is out to steal the entire show,
which he almost does.
For a record
with broad reach, Hope in Dirt City is remarkably concise, clocking in at 11
tracks in under 40 minutes. Cadence Weapon is going for the gold and makes
every sonic second here count. (June 14)
Download:
"Jukebox," "No More Names (Aditi)," "Conditioning"
Neneh Cherry –
The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound)
Take a tough
lady known for both hip-hop singles and smooth pop and stick her in front of a
free-jazz band to sing covers—it sounds like a terrible idea, but Neneh Cherry
pulls it off with aplomb.
Best known for
her ’80s hit "Buffalo Stance" and her 1996 #1 single "Seven Seconds," Cherry has
been largely silent, staying at home in Sweden, for the past 16 years. Here,
she teams up with her fellow countrymen The Thing, featuring abrasive tenor
saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt
Haker Flaten—three guys you wouldn’t expect to make a pop record. Which this
isn’t.
The Cherry
Thing sounds like neither side of the pop/jazz divide; instead, it’s a perfect
meeting of the two. Cherry is an astounding, compelling and charismatic singer
who always toyed with inflections in pitch, which suits a jazz context
perfectly. The rhythm section here is impeccable and can do anything; it’s
Gustafsson you would think would be the odd man out here, but the powerhouse
player is incredibly sensitive to Cherry’s leads, cedes the spotlight easily,
and never bullies any of his bandmates, though it’s his presence that provides
the welcome tension driving the whole project.
The choice of
material is almost incidental; this combination of players is fascinating in
and of itself, no matter what they get up to. There are two originals—one by
Cherry, one by Gustafsson—and covers of MF Doom, the Stooges, Ornette Coleman
and Cherry’s stepfather, Don Cherry. An interpretation of “Dream Baby Dream,” a
song by early electro-punk pioneers Suicide, and later covered by Bruce
Springsteen, they take what was originally a monotonous, trancelike, ominous
dirge and turn it into a swinging, almost inspirational number without making
it hokey—no small feat. On the other hand, they maintain all of the menace of the
Stooges’ song “Dirt,” where Gustafsson’s solo absolutely slays. (June 21)
Download: “Cashback,”
“Dream Baby Dream,” “Dirt”
The Magic – Ragged Gold (Half Machine)
Magic doesn’t happen overnight. So even if this
Guelph group sounded fully formed right from their first gigs five long years
ago, it’s taken that long for their debut album to gestate. Long-frustrated
fans will be happy to know that it was worth the wait.
The Magic is the brothers Gordon, Geordie and
Evan—sons of folk singer James, members of Islands, and members of at least a
dozen Guelph bands between them, including Geordie’s teenage years in the
Barmitzvah Brothers. Anyone who saw that delightfully amateurish thrift-store
band will be amazed at Geordie’s transformation into a crooning pop idol—the
confidence was always there, but his vocals have improved tenfold and are now
delivered with swagger and strut. His falsetto on “No Sound” is priceless—as is
Evan’s baritone and the judicious use of vibraslap.
Ragged Gold shows no sign of the scruffy indie rock,
noisy punk or folk music the brothers have been involved with before: The Magic
is now a clean-scrubbed, ready-for-the-world international pop sensation on par
with Robyn, Santigold or their old friend Diamond Rings. The sound owes much to
the 1980s, though not in the way most youngsters grab an old keyboard and start
hitting preset buttons.
The Gordon brothers’ fascination with the ’80s (their
birth decade) involves a time when schooled studio musicians made simple pop
songs much more complex than needed be. If you’ve ever played in a cover band
and had to, for example, learn an entire set of Michael Jackson covers—as the
Gordons did as part of Guelph’s “prom band,” King Neptune and his Tridents—or
analyzed the work of Hall & Oates or Toto, you’d know that even though
breezy pop melodies were always front and centre during that era, the
instrumentalists compensated for the lack of showboating solos by executing
tasty little tricky bits in the background. Ragged Gold is full of those tasty
bits, as well as bona fide potential hit pop songs, impeccable production,
solid grooves and backing vocals by Sylvie Smith, who takes a lead turn on “Call
Me Up.”
Usually when a band takes five years to make an
album, the end result is overcooked and bloated. But Ragged Gold is stripped
down to its essence, like every good pop record should be: every synth zap,
every clipped backing vocal, every sax break, every funky 16th-note
rhythm guitar track is perfectly in place.
It’s going to be a Magic summer. (June 28)
Download: “No Sound,” “Night School,” “Door to Door”
Men Without
Hats – Love in the Age of War (Curbside)
It’s been over
20 years since Men Without Hats had a hit single (the grungy, long-forgotten “Sideways”);
about 30 years since they were catapulted out of Montreal’s electro/punk
underground onto radios around the world with “The Safety Dance.” Singer Ivan
Doroschuk is now leading a new trio under the old name; no doubt he’s using
equipment acquired in recent decades, though there’s nothing here that would
sound out of place on 1982’s Rhythm of Youth—and yet nothing about the songs
here or Ivan’s own vocals sounds remotely stale. (With one exception, that is: “The
Girl With the Silicon Eyes.” Enough said.) His commanding baritone still oozes
charisma, and he writes direct, no-nonsense pop songs with the energy of a
young punk, filtered through electronics beefed up by producer Dave “Rave”
Ogilvie, best known for his work with Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails.
Men Without
Hats are often treated as a punchline, remembered as a one-hit wonder with a
silly video involving a dancing dwarf. Behind the scenes, however, they
eschewed the excesses of the ’80s starmaking machine and helped develop their
hometown music scene into the artistic mecca it is today. More importantly to
the everyday listener, their records, though certainly guilty of some dated
filler, nonetheless featured a string of strong songs that rival any other
hitmaker of the day.
Here, Ivan
goes for all killer, no filler. It sounds like he’s been hoarding 11 hidden
hits, waiting for the appropriate time to make a momentous comeback. The truth
is that he spent most of the last 10 years raising a child in Victoria, and he
wrote this album on the back of a bus with the Human League last year on an
’80s oldies tour, on his first outing as Men Without Hats since their heyday.
Maybe that spontaneity and being on the road inspired these songs’ directness.
Or maybe, sitting on that bus, he realized that he didn’t just want to be an
oldies act—and Love in the Age of War is far, far better than anyone would ever
expect. He’ll never shake the shadow of “The Safety Dance,” but Ivan is not
going to stop trying. (June 7)
Download: “This
War,” “Head Above Water,” “Live and Learn”
Metric –
Synthetica (Metric Music)
You know that
great pop album that U2 have been trying to make for the past 20 years, since
Achtung Baby? Metric just did it. And, unlike U2, they achieved it without
sounding like they’re trying impossibly hard to do it.
The soaring
melodies, the anthemic songs, the epic scope inside a five-minute song, the
Edge-influenced guitars that bleed into synth textures, the slightly clever
platitudes and one-liners that straddle the line between profound and
pointless—all you could ever want in a rock’n’roll record that sets its sights
for the back rows of stadiums.
For the
songwriting team of vocalist Emily Haines and guitarist James Shaw, their
long-promising chemistry was finally firing on all cylinders by the time of
2009’s Fantasies. They’re still on a roll here, where every track is a
potential hit or future classic. It’s instrumentally that Synthetica really
shines: Shaw’s guitar sounds are increasingly textural, while Haines’s synth
sounds are harsher than ever; it’s hard to tell who’s playing the lead on the
fuzzed-out, droning “Dreams So Real,” but the buzzing, dirty sound is a perfect
counterpart to Haines’s sweet and sour vocals.
The rock songs
are divine, but the Robyn-ish bubblegum of “Lost Kitten” and “The Void” work
just as well without distracting from the po-faced seriousness pervading the
rest of the record, which seems set to score a sci-fi film about, you know, the
alienation of modern life and such. (Much of it, in fact, is not unlike the
Arcade Fire contribution to The Hunger Games soundtrack—and for two bands that
once had nothing in common, there’s a lot of Synthetica that sounds like it’s
trying to one-up The Suburbs.)
Haines is
writing about lives in stasis, lives once full of promise now facing defeat and
monotony: “Is this my life? Breathing underwater?” The power of songs and the
power of girls are two apparently ancient concepts to the idealistic narrator
of “Dreams So Real,” who resigns herself to singing: “I’ll shut up and carry on
/ a scream becomes a yawn.”
It’s funny,
then, that after singing “we should never meet our heroes,” that Haines invites
Lou Reed to appear on “Wanderlust.” On one hand, it’s an inspired nod to the
counterculture icon who was central to Andy Warhol’s Factory, the birth of glam
rock and punk, all key influences for Metric. On the other hand, when you
invite the Lou Reed of today to be a backup vocalist, it essentially amounts to
an old man muttering in the background. Even U2, for all their Lou Reed worship,
has never done that.
Maybe Metric
shouldn’t meet their heroes, then, and instead focus on making albums as good
as this one for the modern age. (June 21)
Download:
"Breathing Underwater," "Clone," "Synthetica"
Scissor
Sisters – Magic Hour (Universal)
Disco legends
Donna Summer and the Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb passed away within days of each other
last month, prompting much nostalgia for the genre they helped define.
But disco
itself is not dead—or if it is, no one had dare break that news to Scissor Sisters.
On their fourth album, Scissor Sisters still specialize in falsetto harmonies,
lush strings and synths and a sworn allegiance to late-’70s R&B and disco.
Modern techno elements sneak through but don’t strangle the soul out of the
source material; unlike, say, Madonna’s desperate attempts to sound current,
Scissor Sisters bridge generations of hedonistic dance pop with ease. They’ve
also got the songwriting skills to transcend the nightclub: they can dumb down
one moment with a song called “Fuck Yeah,” then switch to cabaret mode and try
and outdo Rufus Wainwright (not hard to do lately) on “The Secret Life of
Letters”—a task the band pulls off, though bandleader Jake Shears is clearly
trying to cop Wainwright’s vocal style as well; he pulls it off, but he’s
always far better in falsetto. (June 7)
Download: “Baby
Come Home,” “Self-Control,” “Only the Horses”
Patti Smith –
Banga (Sony)
Ever since her
1996 comeback album Gone Again—written after the death of her husband,
guitarist and co-writer Fred Smith, and which also included an eulogy for Kurt
Cobain—Patti Smith has been the High Mistress of Mourning. At first glance,
that hasn’t changed on Banga, where the subject matter includes Amy Winehouse,
the Japanese tsunami and recently departed Last Tango in Paris actress Maria
Schneider. Seeing as how her recent records have been more admirable for their
intentions than the actual music, Banga should be approached cautiously.
Except that
this, Smith’s seventh post-comeback album, is frankly the first since Gone
Again that isn’t a chore to sit through. Indeed, Banga is anything but a
funereal experience. Instead, Smith writes powerful anthems, touching ballads,
wickedly weird detours, and retains her rep as one of the few true poets
working in a rock format.
Who else would
improvise a 10-minute track about a blind Italian painter, Saint Francis of
Assisi, and Columbus’s discovery of the New World? Okay, admittedly, that one
is for diehard fans only, although it works far better than it should. But who
else opens her album with a dramatic piano chord and the opening line: “We were
going to see the world”? And who else reads 19th-century Russian
novels while on a Mediterranean cruise with avant-garde filmmaking icon
Jean-Luc Godard and ends up writing punk rock songs about dogs that sound as
vital and stirring as anything on her 1976 debut album?
As evidenced
by her detailed liner notes, Smith doesn’t put pen to paper unless she’s been
inspired by a particular event, person or serendipitous encounter with an
antiquated cultural artifact. That makes Banga sound like it’s going to be
little more than an academic exercise, which it most definitely is not. Smith
and her band—who have been with her for 35 years now—still tap into the
visceral inspiration that first drew them together, and play with the
experience of veterans who only ever try to act their age, drawing from jazz
and folk textures to fuel their vision of rock’n’roll. On top of that, her
voice sounds fantastic.
Coming on the
heels of her award-winning memoir Just Kids, Banga shows Patti Smith to be not
a diminished legend in danger of being taken for granted by even her own fans:
she is still a powerful, vital artist who shows no sign of fading away. (June 14)
Download: “Amerigo,”
“April Fool,” “This is the Girl”
Cassandra
Wilson – Another Country (EOne)
In case
skronky sax underneath jazz vocals is not your thing (no pun intended),
Cassandra Wilson has returned with a butter-smooth collection of laid-back,
sultry songs she co-wrote with Italian guitarist Fabrizio Sotti. Recorded
largely in Florence (which explains the cover of “O Sole Mio”), and driven
largely by Sotti’s flamenco and bossa nova stylings—and with accordionist
Julien Labro hovering gently in the background—Another Country has an old-world
charm to it that suits Wilson perfectly. This is her 18th album, and though
she’s faced plenty of competition from younger jazz singers in the last 10
years, she sounds better than ever. (June 21)
Download: “No
More Blues,” “Almost Twelve,” “When Will I See You Again”
Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL)
When Damon Albarn assembles a Gorillaz album, there
is usually such a dizzying array of guests that they get lost in the shuffle.
Which hip-hop icon or ’70s punk pioneer or African superstar is going to show
up now? It’s easy to forget Albarn not only enlisted veteran soul singer Bobby
Womack for 2010’s Plastic Beach, but he also took him out on the road for an
arena tour. While other Gorillaz have viable careers to turn to, Womack could
use another break at the age of 68. Albarn gave him one.
Womack’s voice is weathered and world-weary—30 years
of cocaine addiction will do that—but the man has got soul to spare and he’s
ready to share: “Gather round me, boys and girls / I once was lost, but now I’m
found.” Womack, for those that don’t know, has a CV that reads like a history
of soul music, including gigs with Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles,
James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye. He also wrote for the
Rolling Stones and played on Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds.”
But this album isn’t a retro revival or a history
lesson: instead, Albarn sends Womack floating in space, an earthly anchor to
synthy sci-fi dub, chillwave and psychedelic hip-hop instrumentals. The effect
is entrancing, not unlike reggae great Horace Andy’s work with Massive
Attack—and a lot better than what co-producer (and XL CEO) Richard Russell
achieved on Gil Scott-Heron’s 2010 album I’m New Here. Unlike that misfire,
nothing here sounds like oil and water.
And yet there are times when Albarn and Russell aim
low: a potential pop song like “Love is Going to Lift You Up” could easily have
been given a techno boost or transformed into a George Michael inspirational
anthem, but they keep it spare and simple—perhaps too simple, because the drum
machine’s basic rhythm doesn’t do the song justice, and there’s not much more
to the arrangement than that and the hook. Conversely, “Jubilee (Don’t Let
Nobody Turn You Around)” mines Womack’s rich gospel past and sets it to a
similarly rinky-dink synth backing, though this time it sounds more like the
inspired music that Third World musicians create with cheap electronics (like
the compilation of shangaan music Albarn’s label, Honest Jon’s, put out),
rather than just a deficit of creativity.
The only other minor misfire is “Dayglo Reflection,”
a duet with Lana Del Rey—and it’s not her fault. The song features a recurring
sample of an old man discussing the depth an elder singer brings to material,
“Because he lives life and he understands what he’s trying to say a little
more.” This is offensive for two reasons: a) we already know that—we’re
listening to a Bobby Womack album, for cryin’ out loud!; and b), it sounds like
an unnecessary slap to Womack’s considerably less experienced duet partner,
forcibly reminding us of all those ridiculous authenticity arguments that
surrounded the release of her debut album. Can’t we just sit back and enjoy the
song?
It’s been a good summer for the senior citizens, as the Dr.
John/Black Keys collaboration proved last month. But even that was about
recreating past glories, where The Bravest Man in the Universe purposely
portrays a man out of time and place. (June 28)
Download: “Stupid,” “Whatever Happened to the Times,” “Nothin’
Can Save Ya”
Neil Young –
Americana (Warner)
Young feels compelled
to release an album a year, whether or not he has any songs worthy of
releasing. On the surface, this looks like a cheap and easy, crowd-pleasing
move: dipping into old chestnuts from folk traditions like “Oh Susanna,” “Oh My
Darling Clementine,” “Tom Dooley,” etc., and jamming them out with Crazy Horse,
his self-described “third-best garage band in the world.” What could go wrong?
Young being the
contrarian he is, he doesn’t give us the pleasure of hearing traditional
melodies from our childhood: in a longstanding folk tradition, he takes most of
these well-worn rhymes and sings almost entirely new songs. Sometimes it’s
entirely incongruous: surely “Gallows’ Pole” should not sound like a jaunty
country romp. Occasionally, it’s inspired: he takes “She’ll Be Coming ’Round
the Mountain” back to its roots as an African-American spiritual, and renames
it “Jesus’ Chariot.” Often it’s innocuous—does the world need another version
of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”? In at least one instance, it’s
downright awful, as when he butchers the ’50s doo-wop classic “Get a Job.”
It can also be so
weird that it works: Young apparently got swept up in Queen Elizabeth II’s
Diamond Jubilee fever—why else, other than as a cheeky way to close an album
called Americana, would he give a garage-band workout to “God Save the Queen”?
(Note: not the Sex Pistols’ song, but the actual British national anthem.) (June
7)
Download: “God Save
the Queen,” “Jesus’ Chariot,” “Wayfarin’ Stranger”
