Back in ’10, when writing about John K. Samson‘s Provincial Route 222 EP, I called it “a succinct, lush 3-song set that makes the listener beg for more.” Perhaps my begging wasn’t emotive enough, for no new work showed last year, but Samson wasn’t resting on his laurels. He recently told Exclaim! magazine “I decided to do this project of three seven-inches covering three different sections of road in Manitoba. And then after I did two, I realized I wanted it to be four ― there wanted to be two more sections, and also one about home. And then it just kind of started to make sense to make it into a full-length,” and thus Provincial was begotten, his first solo album proper without the Weakerthans.
Including all the songs from his two previous EPs (each one re-recorded for Provincial) plus the new, unreleased material, Samson has crafted a travelogue-as-love letter to his home of Manitoba, offering up vignettes of life along four stretches of provincial road in his distinct narrative style. They could be set anywhere, but even the tale of a teacher who’s had an affair with a married colleague in “The Last And” sounds like a short film shot through a frost covered window, all colours bleached out and muted by the pale light of winter as only a small Manitoba town could produce. The song was devastatingly beautiful when I first heard it back n 2010 and it still has the power to haunt me now.
The trip ends at home with the song “Taps Reversed”, recorded in his living room with wife Christine Fellows on backing vocals, and the clicking of his three animals across their floor, but you’ll just want to get back in the car and do the road trip all over again as soon as it’s done. Samson is the quintessential Canadian songwriter, capturing not just the physical landscape, but the mental and emotional geography of frozen winters. Whether it’s songs about waking up in front of frozen computer screens, online petitions to get former NHLers into the Hockey Hall of Fame, or a grad student struggling to finish his thesis, Provincial‘s songs are songs about my people, our people.
Who’s needs any more than that?
Provincial was released on January 24, 2012 by Anti- Records.
In the early days of QBiM, it seemed strange if a month went by where I didn’t write something about Andrew Bird, let alone years between posts. A brief recap is in order, then? Bird’s 2007 album Armchair Apocrypha was a shoo-in for end of year honours ’round these parts after its March release that year, and was probably the most played album of ’07 for me. 2009′s Noble Beast was good, but didn’t have the pull of its predecessor. Since then, there’s been nary a chirp out of Bird, hence the silence on his whereabouts hereabouts.
Bird is breaking the silence with Break It Yourself, his new record due on March 6 via Mom+Pop Music, and the release of album track “Eyeoneye” by that other site earlier this week. the newsy, PR-ish thing to tell you is that the record is available for pre-order in all kinds of deluxe linen wrappings and with download codes, booklets and a stationary and stamp set; the music geek thing to tell you is that “Eyeoneye” sounds like a recharged and revitalized Bird, sounding better than I’d have expected.
I had a chance to become familiar with Montreal-based artist Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, last year when her album Halfaxa was being considered for Polaris nomination, and she struck me as someone of great potential and mystery. She comes from a scene where the only rules are ones you allow yourself to set, so it’s no surprise that her every movement seems unencumbered by fashion, fad, or fame. She’s attracted a lot of attention that way, and deservedly so, for her music can be approached from a number of different angles: pop, punk, performance, post-everything.
As Grimes prepares for the release of Visions, Boucher’s fourth release in less than two years, and the first for her new global label, 4AD (at home in Canada, Grimes records will continue to come out on Arbutus Records, the Montreal label/collective she’s been a part of for some time now), it seems her performance world is colliding with yet another: popular culture. Currently the blogosphere it girl, the first offerings from Visions are showing up everywhere, making it hard to ignore her. And who would want to? That ethereal voice of hers, her instinctive pop sensibilities, the cathartic and passionate work she pours into each piece, like they were objects being prepared for presentation in a museum rather than CD pressings, all hard to forget once you’ve heard them. And so here I am, wading into the fray and picking up the Grimes banner and waving it in my little corner of the world (wide web). Visions will be available on February 21, via the channels noted above. Check out “Oblivion” and “Genesis” below. I had intended, but never got around to writing about Halfaxa, so if you like these new tracks, please go and check out Halfaxa, too, because there are some amazing moments on there that are too good to miss. Arbutus offers the album as a donate-what-you-want download (along with a a number of their other releases) here.
Okay, I’m sick and tired of writing and rewriting this review. So you tell me, what do you need to know more: a) how in God’s name did The Darcys end up covering the whole of Steely Dan’s Aja, or b) how good (or bad) said cover album is?
If you said a):
Picture it: Toronto, early 2010. The Darcys are a week away from playing an anticipated Canadian Music Week when their singer Kirby Best ups and leaves the band. Boom! Not only that, but they just finished recording their self-titled sophomore album with The Dears’ Murray Lightburn as producer and Best’s voice all over it, a voice they’d no longer be needing. Double boom! They elect keyboardist/guitarist Jason Couse to step into vocal duties, fulfill the CMW commitments, and start reworking and rerecording the disc to excise the voice of singers past and try to move into the future. Except the future isn’t coming so fast. Work on the album stalls, and the band can’t move onto new music with The Darcys in limbo, so instead they half-jokingly, half-seriously decide to reinterpret a collective favourite, the aforementioned Aja. That in itself became a chore, as Aja is a complicated and intricate record to unravel and re-imagine in The Darcys’ dark, brooding tones, but they kept at it, part out of sheer stubbornness, and part out of sheer desperation to keep the creative fires burning.
If you said b):
It’s fucking incredible.
I’d never listened to the original Aja front to back before hearing The Darcys’ interpretation, so I came at the songs with fresh ears and no bias. Since then, I’ve gotten to know both versions well, and I can appreciate the reinvention and rebuilding they put into this art project turned obsession. Right from the opening, the flawless sheen of the original has been peeled away to reveal a throbbing, pulsating, dark and menacing set of songs that will bowl you over with bombast. The Darcys’ “Black Cow” will slam into your subconscious like a charging bull, their “Peg” is next to unrecognizable from the original and all the better for it, and closer “Josie” shoots daggers through your heart with it glowering, smoky, soulful sound. Yeah, bands cover songs all the time, and websites are commissioning compilations of artists doing a track from some classic modern rock albums, but I can’t think of anyone else having the audacity to tackle an album held in such high esteem as this, and have the talent and creative genius to make it sound like it was their record all along.
Aja is being released in the same way that tortured (and terrific) sophomore album made it out into the world: as a free digital download from the band’s website, starting today. It’s the second album of three releases planned by The Darcys and their new label Arts & Crafts; a third full album of original material is slated for release later this year.
Nick Thorburn is getting ready to serve up a deliciously sweet treat for fans of Islands on Valentine’s Day, 2012: A Sleep & A Forgetting, the first new music from Islands since 2009′s Vapours. Just as Vapours was a departure from its predecessor, Arm’s Way, so too does A Sleep & A Forgetting push Islands’ sound forward into new, uncharted territory. Thorburn’s says the record “…is far more personal than any I’ve made before,” noting that its introspective nature developed naturally after some personal changes in his own life. “I left New York and came to Los Angeles and there was this piano where I was staying. And that’s where I wrote these songs. The record deals with loss, with memory and forgetting and with dreaming.”
With just the two tracks that have premiered so far, it’s clear that the gimmicks and humour of previous albums takes a back seat on A Sleep & A Forgetting, letting emotions and honesty take the wheel for this ride.
Back in ’10, when writing about John K. Samson‘s Provincial Route 222 EP, I called it “a succinct, lush 3-song set that makes the listener beg for more.” Perhaps my begging wasn’t emotive enough, for no new work showed last year, but Samson wasn’t resting on his laurels. He recently told Exclaim! magazine “I decided to do this project of three seven-inches covering three different sections of road in Manitoba. And then after I did two, I realized I wanted it to be four ― there wanted to be two more sections, and also one about home. And then it just kind of started to make sense to make it into a full-length,” and thus Provincial was begotten, his first solo album proper without the Weakerthans.
Okay, I’m sick and tired of writing and rewriting this review. So you tell me, what do you need to know more: a) how in God’s name did 
Cuff The Duke
