Wednesday 01 September 2010



Some of you folks

QBiM SPiNS: Luke Doucet and the White Falcon Steel City Trawler

He’s referred to it as his idea of a “rock and roll” record, a descriptor that had me a little leery about what Steel City Trawler would turn out to be.  What I loved about Luke Doucet’s last album, Blood’s Too Rich was the rich tapestry of musical influences woven with Doucet’s unique lyrical sense.  By “rock and roll” did Doucet mean he was going for the brass ring, the mass appeal that he rightly deserves but has alluded him?

The short answer is no.  Happily, Steel City Trawler is not Luke Doucet’s generic take on love, loss, and sex.  Using the city of Hamilton Ontario has his backdrop, Doucet’s latest record is a blunt, often confrontational look at life in the rat race.  In comparison, his last record Blood’s Too Rich is a more lyrical affair, poetry set to flowery arrangements.  Steel City Trawler is the friend that pulls no punches, telling it like it is even if that’s the last thing you want to hear.  The change of style is a bit of a jolt if you were looking for the sequel to “The Commandante” but by the time Doucet and wife Melissa McClelland settle into the slow sexy groove of “Hey Now” you’ll willingly go along for the ride through this dirty old town.  First-time producer Andrew “Sloan” Scott brings a wealth of knowledge about the rock and roll songbook to the table, pulling classic elements together to create a musical record that sounds familiar in places and fresh and new in others, often times all in the same verse.  Doucet’s cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” might sound like a bold choice, but he manages to make it sound all his own without tarnishing the song’s musical legacy.  You don’t have to be a musical historian to recognize some of the touchstones that helped shape Steel City Trawler:  The Rolling Stones, 60s folk rock, 80s college rock and British new wave.  It’s not a pastiche album, though.  Doucet is one of the finest guitarists and songwriters working in Canada now, so what you get here is a balance between reverence and reinvention.

I live in a city built on the steel trade that lost its lustre years ago.  I know the streets Doucet’s been walking and driving down since he moved to Hamilton in 2008, because they’re the same as the ones I pass to and from work every day.  The difference between he and I is that he’s been paying attention and observing the people he sees while I have been ignoring them, trying to forget that this place is dying a slow death around me.  You don’t have to know Hamilton or have lived their to appreciate Doucet’s storytelling, as perfectly exemplified on “The Ballad of Ian Curtis”.  Hamilton and Manchester, England, they’re not so different.  Both are places that can suffocate and choke the creativity out of you if you let it.  The tragic story of Joy Division’s lead singer could easily be told on both sides of the Atlantic.  When Doucet sings “I wasn’t thinking I could be the one/to save the soul of this town,” he speaks for a voiceless many who’ve struggled to rise above their situation in life, and found the weight of expectation too much to handle.  It is a pitch-perfect tribute to Joy Division and New Order’s signature sound: bass-driven melody, tight rhythm section, and sparkling guitar lines; like I said before, it’s respects its source material rather than just ripping it off.

Doucet and I are the same age, born a mere 48 days apart, and a quick once-over of the bio that accompanied this CD confirms for me that he and I shared many of the same musical touchstones in our early years (Blue Rodeo’s Diamond Mine, Pixes’ Bossanvova, Violent Femmes’ Why Do Birds Sing?, Rheostatics’ Whale Music).  We’ve also shared a number of defining milestones, some simultaneously, some years apart, but Steel City Trawler reminds me that where we’re different is that instead of being the observer (like Doucet) I have become the observed. Steel City Trawler is a mirror reflecting some aspects of my life right back at me.   “Baby,” he sings on the record’s penultimate track “Dusted”, “I don’t know if I’m here/’cause I don’t know where ‘here’ is”, and all I picture is a colossal illuminated map of my life, like the kind you find in the middle of a shopping mall, and I’m staring at a red dot labeled “You Are Here”, not knowing exactly how I got here.

Thanks for the wake up call, Luke.

Steel City Trawler was released August 31, 2010 on Six Shooter Records.

MP3: Luke Doucet and the White Falcon “The Ballad of Ian Curtis”
Myspace: Luke Doucet
Facebook: Luke Doucet

(For more from the man himself about Steel City Trawler, check out the extensive conversation Herohill has been having with Doucet this past week.)





by J. Di Gioia | Comments Off

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