Nov. 13, 2007 - Issue #630: The path to a sustainable future
New Sounds
CR AveryMagic Hour Sailor Songs
Bongo Beat EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com
There are plenty of musicians who would like to be called poets, but few whose work can actually stand up as poetry. Of course, there’s some subjectivity to that assessment, but there’s a general consensus that folks like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits are among those who write lyrics that can hold their own apart from the accompanying music, and CR Avery is a young writer who is a legitimate contender in that arena, too.
On his latest release, Magic Hour Sailor Songs, Avery picks up where he left off with his last album, Chainsmoking Blues, taking the urban flavourings that he has found in the inspirations of life in the big city, and mixing them with the rural soundscapes that he’s gathered in his travels across North America and Europe.
Magic Hour opens up with Avery dropping some subtle beatboxing over top of a moody string section as he relates the tale of “The Boxer Who Just Returned From London.” It’s a gritty story, and Avery’s spoken-word vocal ebbs and flows, rising up and then pulling back to the edge of desperation. His voice is as much an instrument here as the strings are.
From there, the gentle plucking of a banjo and some female harmony vocals accompany Avery on “New Stanzas For Amazing Grace.” Late in the tune, Avery pulls out his best blues harp for a solo that passes graceful and clambours towards reckless, giving the song an edge that defies the tools he’s working with.
That’s true of much of the album; there’s a gospel feel that reoccurs throughout, but it lacks the pristine quality that a church setting gives to the style. This is street-gospel, which, like the urban and rural music that Avery draws from, is coated in an uncomfortable layer of grime while still offering comforting arms for the both listener and Avery himself.
Despite the wide variety of music genres that Avery dips into, he never seems to be chasing after a sound that is anything but an instinctive part of his soul. He beat-boxes alongside banjos and strings, or an organ grinds out a soulful groove while he drifts naturally between spoken-word and singing. Even on “Down at the Café,” which is the closest Avery comes to actually sounding like someone else—in this case, it’s Waits in both the growling, slightly distorted vocal and the jerky guitar solo—the effect is more one of being inspired by another performer, finding songwriting fodder in the same underside of life that others have searched in before, than simply rehashing another’s work.
Through it all, the thing that remains at the forefront of the album—even more so then the lyrics—is the emotion that Avery invests in his vocal performance, taking his words and forcing them to tell stories that cross many boundaries. It’s obvious, though, that words are what inspires Avery. A note on the accompanying CD booklet indicates that “this is a separate set of words to accompany you places where music cannot.” The effect that the booklet achieves is to act as a sort of counterpoint to the album itself, providing a glimpse of other places in the world as Avery sees it. The picture is somehow more complete after hearing the songs and then reading the poetry—or vice versa—offering other perspectives that might have otherwise gone unheard.
Buck 65
Situation
Strange Famous
LEWIS KELLY / lewis@vueweekly.com
Situation is perhaps the most polished full-length record to date from Richard Terfry—aka Buck 65. While fans of 2005's awesome Secret House Against the World may disagree, Terfry's latest release is a quality production. Articulate and intoxicating, Situation is as diverse as it is wonderful. Terfry dons and discards narrative masks like a playwright: one track he's a belligerent cop, the next a hobo and after that a smut photographer. Smut photographer? Yeah, Situation definitely has a lewd streak through it, so if you're a Catholic minister you might want to give it a pass. For everyone who enjoys the odd dirty joke, though, Situation might be just what you need.
4 bonjour's parties
pigments drift down to the brook
Mush
BRYAN BIRTLES / bryan@vueweekly.com
Does anyone remember that band from Saskatoon called No Birds? It was like an indie orchestra with violins and french horns and guitars and energy, but with a certain laid-back feel and some electronic sounding drone-y elements. 4 bonjour's parties gives the same kind of effect, but includes this sort of space-y dreamy Japanese element to it all. Whereas No Birds is tied to the land and solid in the way most prairie bands are, the members of 4 bonjour's parties have their heads in the clouds. In a good way.
And boy would I ever love to see this band live. A seven piece, the musicians switch instruments mid-song in order to create their soundscapes and have been likened to those sliding puzzles that annoyed you every Christmas morning when you inexplicably found one in the toe of your stocking. What an amazing visual spectacle that would be. Anyway, the music itself is enough for now and maybe if the band gets big enough they'll come visit.
Inhabitants
The Furniture Moves Underneath
Drip Audio
MARY CHRISTA O’KEEFE / marychrista@vueweekly.com
It’s the rare instrumental band working beyond recognizable genres that can sidle right up to the front, demand your attention and put on a circus. The Inhabitants don’t make inoffensive music to buffer you through tedious tasks that nevertheless require too much concentration for lyrics. The group’s sophomore album, The Furniture Moves Underneath, isn’t terribly jammy, only sparingly jazzy and absolutely not an atmospheric fog. Far from a soundtrack to anything, it’s the main event—somewhere between Miles Davis’s Bitches’ Brew, Do Make Say Think’s more noir-ish instrumentals and some serious prog and other retro freakouts. The Vancouver quartet has managed to cohere a backwards glancing, forward-moving orgy of effects and experimentation that isn’t overly self-indulgent.
James Murdoch
In Transit
Indica
LEWIS KELLY / lewis@vueweekly.com
As far as production values go, In Transit is top-notch. It starts with the liner notes, which fold out into an aesthetically pleasing, surprisingly well-designed musical road map that lets you know who played what on which track. This is actually quite useful for the inquiring listener, as James Murdoch and his bandmates swap instruments throughout the course of the record like swingers swap partners. The proof, though, is in the pudding: the sound of In Transit is immaculate, which is all the more impressive when you think about the absurd number of different instruments that appear on the album. Strings, horns, all manners of guitar and piano and a back-up choir all jump in and out of the action at various points, but everything is clear as a bell, even during wall-of-sound moments, of which there are many. The only real chink in this album's armour is it's songwriting—Murdoch is solid, sometimes even really good, but compared to the superlative instrumentation, the lyrics come up short. On the whole, In Transit is a promising record from an artist brimming with potential.
Nas
Greatest Hits
Columbia
BILL RADFORD / bill@vueweekly.com
Now that Nas is moving over to Def Jam, Columbia Records is releasing a greatest hits album with twelve of his songs prior to Hip Hop is Dead and two new ones. The two new songs come first, and they actually hold up pretty well next to the earlier material. Next, the album takes almost half of Illmatic before moving on to Nas’s other classics like “If I Ruled the World,” “Got UR Self A Gun,” “I Can” and “Bridging the Gap.” The Jay-Z-dissing songs are conspicuously absent, but I guess now that the beef’s over it’s time to move on.
Will.i.am
Songs About Girls
Interscope
BILL RADFORD / bill@vueweekly.com
Will.i.am had a great idea. You know how almost every hip-hop album has a compulsory song about girls, and it usually sucks? Why not do a whole album of that! The good news is that “I Got It from My Mama,” which is already on the radio and on shopping mall speakers is the worst track on the CD. The next single will probably be “The Donque Song” (pronounced “donkey”) which is also inane and annoying. The rest of the album is decent and even soulful at times, but it never rises above good background music.
WOELV
Tout Seul dans la Foret en Plein Jour, Avez-Vous Peur?
K
BRYAN BIRTLES / bryan@vueweekly.com
This is a pretty typical release for K Records, I guess. For a record company that hasn't known what typical means since the mid-‘80s, this is it. Songs in french, with lyrics translated into Russian, English, Chinese, Korean and as many other languages as you could name, with intimate arrangements—some of which feel as if they've been completely improvised—this is as typical as K Records gets. So it's not exactly mix tape fodder, unless you're courting the strangest girl in the world, but it would be awesome to underscore a dinner party full of hipsters. One thing that makes WOELV stand out from other similar K Records artists is how the album doesn't fear to tread into more rocking sonic territory. This record can bring the normal intimacy of the K sound, but can also deliver some doses of danger.
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