it’s been a while. back to the grind!
Once Upon a Time in Montréal by Murray A. Lightburn
this album was a great choice for my June 22, 2023 walk to work! Lightburn’s softly sung-spoken vocals and the warmth of the orchestral jazz-rock instrumentation (of which the strings were especially pleasant!) combined quite nicely with the light drizzle on this particular Winnipeg morning. apparently this guy’s in a band called The Dears? i gotta check ’em out sometime.
highlights: “Dumpster Gold,” “Oh But My Heart Has Never Been Dark,” “Once Upon a Time in Montréal.” (loved the build-up to the sax solo in that last one, holy shit!)
4 stars out of 5.
Amor Hardcore by Isabella Lovestory
now this is where i sort of run into a problem caused by sequencing the albums in alphabetical order by artist name. i put the music i plan to listen to in a day all in the same playlist and download them at home before going to work. (i do a bullshit desk job where i get to be on the computer, which affords me the luxury of listening to music and podcasts all day. i highly recommend the experience of “being an unskilled, sedentary piece of shit”!) so, right as the tranquil final notes of Murray A. Lightburn’s album left my ears – bam! ready or not, time for some reggaeton now!
that isn’t my favourite genre at the best of times, but even in that light, my enjoyment of it is highly context-dependent. if i’d heard these tunes at the gay bar a block away from my apartment, for example, i’d probably have been more into ’em than i was while calmly sitting at my desk, thinking about jazz. don’t get me wrong: this wasn’t bad stuff (except for the tinny drum machine loops, of which i’ve already established my extreme distaste). it’s just that i had to shake off a bit of musical whiplash first.
quoting from Isabella Lovestory’s Wikipedia page: “Rodriguez commented that Lovestory is a persona, and enjoys exaggerating her personality … ‘Mocking what society views as degrading to women is fun, because nobody gets to decide what a woman’s true desires are.'” right on. that rocks. wish i enjoyed her music more, because she seems pretty cool!
2.75 stars out of 5. (this is the part where i remind you that my star rankings are based solely on how much i personally enjoyed something, rather than being intended as a reflection of how “objectively” “good” someone’s artistic expression is. objectivity is an impossible standard, and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to sell you something. whatever it is, i ain’t buyin’!)
Being Somewhere by Dan Mangan
Dan Mangan, eh? now there’s a guy i haven’t listened to in quite a while. Nice, Nice, Very Nice was a huge album for me, and Oh Fortune and Club Meds had some good songs and interesting sonic experiments, but i fell off the bandwagon after being thoroughly bored by More or Less. saw him in concert with my sisters last year because they’re both fans of his and he has excellent stage presence, but i’ll admit i wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about listening to this new one. it’s been the better part of a decade since i listened to Dan Mangan on a regular basis, and it looks like that trend will continue! Being Somewhere, you say? no kidding! because i’ve got “somewhere” else to be “being” right now! see ya!!
(just kidding. it was fine. the album’s got some of that Thom Yorke/Sufjan Stevens-lite electronic folk, which is a style that suits Mangan well. but i almost wish the album did stink, so i could’ve used the above slam earnestly instead of writing it in anticipation of not-enjoying the album before immediately walking it back. would’ve been funnier to end the review without this parenthetical, imo.)
highlights: “All My People,” “Fire Escape,” “In Your Corner (For Scott Hutchison).”
3.25 stars out of 5.
L’eau et les rêves by N NAO
i would characterize this music as “ambient folk,” although a quick Google of N NAO reveals that she refers to herself as an “interdisciplinary musician.” hey, whatever floats your boat! i prefer my description since it gives slightly more of an idea of what her stuff sounds like, but i’m not the one who’s making it, and if she wants to avoid pigeonholing herself into one genre or another, i’m all for that. there have been so many times i’ve said across these reviews that albums straddle the boundaries of multiple genres that i’m starting to wonder if the notion of “genre distinctions” is remotely useful in the first place. it’s all just sounds, if you think about it! to some extent, who cares what label is assigned to this sort of thing?
much of the album has a claire rousay feel (with their field recordings, acoustic guitar, sparkling synths, and occasional abrasive electronic noise) – albeit usually with more lyrics than rousay typically employs. rousay’s great and seems to release two or three albums per year. i aspire to that level of prolificacy, but now that i’ve dragged myself off-topic by talking about an entirely separate musician, i’ll wrap things up here.
highlights: “Saison des orages,” “Tout va bien,” “Lac Léman,” “Fin du monde.”
3.75 stars out of 5.
Kingmaker by Tami Neilson
after that brief detour into the realm of deconstruction, i’m returning to my old stomping grounds of chucking a label on something & pretending that’s a helpful way to engage with art. i assume most of you are familiar with the genre descriptor “baroque pop;” well, get ready for “baroque country.” probably already exists, yeah, but it’s the first i’m hearing of the stuff. not every song had orchestral accompaniment on this album, but the better ones did. the more stripped-back songs didn’t do anything for me, and the ones where Neilson sang in a quasi-rap cadence were even worse.
her Wikipedia article says she’s married to a cop, which instantly makes her politics extremely suspect, but that doesn’t necessarily have to do with the music itself. i’m just putting it out there to poison the well. you can decide for yourself if this is someone whose perspective you’re interested in hearing, on the basis of that information!
2.75 stars out of 5.
Staying Mellow Blows by Eliza Niemi
despite the album title, Niemi presents kind of a Lomelda/Helena Deland/Mount Eerie-style of mellow folk-rock confessional songwriting with occasional synth intrusions. not every song on the album hit for me, but i definitely dug what she was aiming for. i’ll have to add her to my informal list of “musicians to keep an eye on.”
highlights: “Sushi California,” “Trust Me,” “Not Killing Bad Energy.”
3.5 stars out of 5.
Nico Paulo by Nico Paulo
Paulo’s voice kinda sounds like Weyes Blood’s, which makes for an easy listen. i’m using these musical comparisons as a crutch because i can’t think of a single other thing to say about this. every song disappeared from my memory the second it ended, which is fine. i won’t hold it against her. just makes it hard to review an album when that’s the case, is all.
highlights: “The Master,” “Lovers in the Street.” (any time a prominent trumpet section is inserted toward the end of an acoustic folk rock song, i will go hogwild for it, guaranteed.)
3.25 stars out of 5.
Ready When You Are by Planet Giza
this is roughly the point in the Polaris reviews where i start checking out: deep in the alphabet, but not deep enough for the end to be in sight. i have to bear down and force myself to wade through several slightly-boring albums in succession, made by people i’ve never heard of, in the hope of finding a diamond in the rough somewhere. i guess i’m not convinced that canada has a strong enough music scene to produce 40 good albums per year. or at least, not 40 albums that are both “good” and “popular enough to be noticed by the at-large national music press.” 20, easily. 30, at a push. but not 40. the only solution to this that i can think of would be to make me the sole arbiter of who wins the Polaris Prize every year, which would be a very cool opportunity for me!
one thing i will say in praise of this unspectacular collection of rap/R&B tracks is that Planet Giza’s transitions between songs are really well-executed. you can barely tell where one ends and the next starts. now if only the songs themselves were anything to write home about…
highlight: “SHIPS N LUV.” (when you have this jazzy of a piano-and-clarinet sample, you can really put whatever space-filler lyrics you want in there, i don’t give a shit – i’ll be bopping my head just the same.)
3 stars out of 5.
mole by poolblood
i listened to this album while playing an online game of Wingspan. i had a hummingbird and the mute swan in my opening hand, drew the common raven from the opening tray, and then picked up the killdeer and american robin in quick succession before round 1 was even finished. i won entirely on the basis of my remarkable luck & didn’t pay that close attention to the album. but it seemed fine as background music! no complaints here.
highlight: “beam.” (i love an atonal dark-ambient drone!)
3.25 stars out of 5. i guess? i feel kinda disingenuous assigning any rating at all to this after what i just said, but i’m doing it anyway because i am more powerful than god!!!!
Yessie by Jessie Reyez
i was dreading listening to this because i remembered struggling through Being Human in Public after it was shortlisted in 2019 and i found her vocal affectations extremely irritating. this album wasn’t much better on that front. i’ve seen enough. i am saying “no thanks!” to Jessie Reyez for the foreseeable future, or at least until the Polaris committee forces me to listen to her next album when they give her another longlist nomination.
highlight: “TITO’S.” (this wasn’t a highlight so much as it was markedly the least annoying song on the album, so i gotta give credit where it’s due here.)
2.25 stars out of 5.
ruminations of a sad oaf. 