Feist

Thunder Buddies (Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Every once and a while, we all need a hug. Especially when it gets weird and dark.

 

Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder

released July 7, 2017
********* 9/10

Broken Social Scene are a Canadian indie rock band (yay for Canadian content!) formed by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. Sometimes they have six members, and sometimes they have nineteen band members, because above all, Broken Social Scene are a musical super group of popular Canadian indie rock acts and solo artists…

Metric (Emily Haines, James Shaw), Feist (Leslie Feist), Stars (Amy Millan, Torquil Campbell, Evan Cranley), Apostle of Hustle (Andrew Whiteman), Do Make Say Think (Ohad Benchetrit, Julie Penner, Charles Spearin), KC Accidental (Kevin Drew), Valley of the Giants (Brendan Canning), Land of Talk (Elizabeth Powell), Raising the Fawn (John Crossingham), Reverie Sound Revue (Lisa Lobsinger), Treble Charger (Bill Priddle), Jason Tait, Justin Peroff, Jason Collett, Ariel Engle and a few other people have all featured at one time or another.

Altogether, they have released a whopping five studio length albums since their inception in 2001, which I think is pretty admirable given that all of these artists are in at least one other full-time band.

Despite misgivings that no band can be this big and still sound like the individual artists within, BSS manages to do just that. Sometimes they are chaotic and experimental, other times they are orchestral, sometimes they are sad and introspective, and still other times they are celebratory, but they are never timid in their presentation. Hug of Thunder is no weak sauce either.

This isn’t your Spider-Man album, no pulled punches people, please.

BSS spend most of the album letting us know that they are counter-culture, and by that, I mean that they refuse to share dream pop tracks and emotionally abuse people on the internet. This is a community of people shouting the importance of community, when most of us are screaming about politics into our phones. It resonates with the hipster nihilism we started to experience in the early 2000s, the stuff that took root in popular culture and grew into a field of bullshit weeds.

Ideas of love, community, sexuality, and honest to goodness rock and roll seem to have been completely forgotten about in recent years, but BSS refuse to give up on us ingrates. They’ll elevate us up, despite the incredible effort it takes to produce tracks like Gonna Get Better, tittle track Hug of Thunder, and Vanity Pail Kids.

I’m not gonna lie, this album deserved better than the world it’s been brought up in. Our celebrations of libertarianism are so common now that it’s tough to stomach the idea of pulling together and getting along, but Please Take Me With You and Skyline insist, almost plainly that we do. Though never quietly.

But here’s the catch, while you can consume this album in parts and pieces, it’s actually best viewed as a whole. Recognizing that a stable of musicians reunited after a seven year hiatus in order to combat against global indifference is a far stronger statement than Protest Song can deliver all on it’s own. Broken Social Scene have come together to release a pragmatic optimism, and that is probably the best antidote we could receive. Unabashed positivity isn’t realistic in 2017, but stating that the world is ending is foolish too.

We need to keep up the fight and keep working, vigilant without naivety. A challenge to be sure, but I wouldn’t have the message delivered any other way.

Pros: Halfway Home, Gonna Get Better and Protest Song are all excellent demonstrations of the gentle-hearted politics of this album, Hug of Thunder being a personal favourite.

Cons: At certain intersections the lack of a frontwoman or frontman is difficult to digest, and leaves the album feeling disjointed, like a compilation or a soundtrack, rather than an album. But this rare.

Runtime: 52 minutes

Points of Interest: In March of 2017, Broken Social Scene made an appearance on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, featuring past members Emily Haines, James Shaw, Amy Millan, and Evan Cranley, indicating we would see the a return to form. Ariel Engle is a new member of the band, and she has worked with Andrew Whiteman on AroarA previously, which is how she was introduced to the rest of the troupe.

The best and worst parts of Broken Social Scene come from their ability to work together as a group, and in taking it a bit safer with this record, those aspects become more apparent. This is still an excellent record, but not perfect because the exploration isn’t quite where it has been previously. Their message is amazing though, which makes up for a lot of that safety net.

theories Summarized

To put it in brief, this is an anthem for a new generation of apathy. The WIIFM (what’s in it for me) drone need not apply themselves in this case, because Broken Social Scene are all about that open concept of love, empathy and pulling together as a greater community. I’ve not much else to say, except that you really should listen to this album. And those are all of my theories on the matter.

Tim!

Your Stoicism Entryway (The Shins, Heartworms review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

Start each day knowing that the world is full of indifference, ill-will, selfishness, and a ton of other vices. Next, accept that each of us is affected by our environment, and not effected by it.

How we perceive the thing is much more powerful then the thing itself. The world will always be this way, which is why a certain kind of music could be popular ten years ago, and yet feel less interesting now.

 

 

 

The Shins – Heartworms
released March 10, 2017
******* 7/10

 

The Shins are an American indie rock band that have been playing together for just over 20 years. I own the bands first two records Oh, Inverted World (2001) and Chutes Too Narrow (2003) which I promptly picked up after listening to New Slang during it’s brief moment of spotlight in the film Garden State.

A few years later the dudes put together their third album Wincing the Night Away, which was a huge commercial success, and even earned them a Grammy nod.

I missed them when their fourth album came out, but I didn’t think to call or write, so I don’t have any strong feelings about it either way, but I can say most assuredly that The Shins fifth offering, Heartworms, is just as good as I was hoping it would be. And maybe a bit too comfortable for convention.

Does anyone remember when indie rock was the next big thing?

Death Cab For Cutie, Stars, Feist, Arcade Fire, The Strokes, Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend, The Killers, et. al.

These were our champions in the 2000s, and The Shins were right at the centre of it all. Belle and Sebastian, The Black Keys, and Weezer too. Actually, I could probably list another twenty bands pretty quickly, but my point is this, when we look back in another ten years, people will be emulating the looks of these bands, and karaoking hard to their sweet tunes.

Sure indie rock has been around since the 1980s, (read: The Smiths), but The Shins are a picture perfect example of the sound captured at the height of it’s popularity. And Heartworms is no exception.

Which is probably why James Mercer dumped all of his bandmates in favour of something new on the last album. And then owned it fully for this outing. Name for You starts things off right with a higher note then we’re used to, but he doesn’t discard that tempo and brings it back a short one song later in Painting a Hole. We get excited listening to the lyrics while the instrumentation keeps things on track.

Cherry Hearts feels like it could be a late addition to the Sixteen Candles soundtrack or inside a more current addition in the movie Sing Street.

Fantasy Island is just good fun. And frankly I could make little anecdotes about each song along the way, which is how I feel that Mercer tackled this album from the outset. And that’s where it’s not quite punchy enough, it feels like each song was both captured in a moment and painstakingly crafted to sound that way. But thematically it can be a challenge to accept this as another other than a solo project finally realized in full. The Shins are James Mercer, and James Mercer is The Shins, good or bad.

 

 

 

Indie rock changed the game. Not in the sense that it forced anything political or social to happen, but that we collectively agreed that it was good music for a time, and now we are experiencing a shift away from thoughtful and whispy lyrics, saturated by striped down instrumentation, and heading back towards the glitz and glamour of the pop music. And that’s okay.

While that doesn’t mean that The Shins are less interesting, only that the larger public feel differently, I do agree that Mercer has run the course on some of his ideas, exploring things more fully is good, but where is the broader message at the centre of it all? Where is the stoicism?

That’s the theory I want to hear.

Tim!

Shut Up, Kiss Me, Hold Me Tight (Angel Olsen, My Woman review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Ever read Peter Pan dear readers? Or watch one of the many animated and live action movies that exist? Well, there is this idea out there that Peter Pan didn’t want to grow up and so he stayed in a state of perpetual childhood.

Now, in the media it’s become rather common to refer to those who engage in youthful behaviour without wanting to or feeling unable to grow up as having Peter Pan syndrome. It’s not considered as a psychological condition, but there is definitely a movement.

But what about people who oppose the normative behaviour and also experience that full range of emotions, are they still called adults?

 

 

 

Angel Olsen – My Woman
released September 2, 2016
********** 10/10

angel-olsen-my-woman-album

Angel Olsen is an American folk and indie rock singer and guitarist. She also manages to channel some punk, western country and psychadelic rock when needed – Olsen is incredibly sorrowful, uncut, raw, and mindful. And from what I’ve heard it only took her 3 full-length albums to get there. *cough* Anthony Fantano *cough*

This is what grunge should have sounded like if it had some ska in it. Eat your heart out Nirvana and No Doubt. Or to put it another way, and ironically it breaks my heart to say this, this is a much stronger version of anything that Leslie Feist has ever put out. And I love me some Feist. Like, I can’t even – you have no idea what Leslie Feist did to my dumb little punk rock heart in 2005. Go listen to Let It Die, Open Season, and The Reminder after listening to this and tell me I’m not right. I dare you. It’s not gonna kill you.

Which incidentally is my favourite track on this little piece of album gold. I mean she even has a song called Heart Shaped Face, that just has to be a send up to Nirvana. It just has to.

Olsen does something special on every single track. She uses the best instrument she has, her voice, and arranges the melody accordingly to carry the weight of each message. The first half of the record starts out as woefully naive and volatile with its themes of love, but the back half puts itself it the shoes of one who has loved and lost, dealing with regret and that bitter disenchantment that dulls the edge of each love ventured.

The thing about excellent country music is that it doesn’t have to be about dead dogs, broken trucks or marriages ruined. It has to be authentic to the artist it represents, paying homage to what came before, but also owning the moment of what is. If I had to pick a track to represent the back half it would probably be Sister an epic of growing up and growing apart and rather well put by Olsen herself – you fall together, fall apart. A close second would have to be slow burner Pops, which if you haven’t fallen in love with Angel Olsen after listening to nine songs, I don’t know what to tell you.

This is an album of many tones, and I know it might come off cliche but she is in rare form and easily becomes my woman.

 

 

 

I would never accuse Angel Olsen of being a victim of Peter Pan syndrome, especially because it’s almost exclusively associated with men. But nonetheless, the question of love, lust, and loss are intertwined throughout this musical endeavour. What starts out as a youthful and naive look at love slowly turns into something much darker and more intimate and My Woman is seriously my favourite album of the year as a result. We’ll have to see what’s in store for the rest of the year, but with less than four months to go, you’ll want to snag a copy of this, lest you get left all alone.

Tim!

 

Sweet Treat (Corinne Bailey Rae, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Have you ever had a favourite food you loved so much that you were convinced you could eat it over and over again without any consequence to your stomach or feelings toward it? Ice cream was the food that did me in. I loved ice cream so much that I would eat it whenever I could, and one day I decided that I couldn’t stomach it all the time. Today’s album review feels a bit like that.

 

 

 

Corinne Bailey Rae – The Heart Speaks In Whispers
released May 13, 2016
********* 7/10

Corinne-Bailey-Rae-The-Heart-Speaks-In-Whispers-2016-2480x2480

Corinne Bailey Rae is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. She is the fourth British female artist in history to have a debut album open at no.1 in 2006. Her second album, The Sea, was released almost four years later after a personal tragedy occurred in 2008. Her husband and frequent collaborator Jason Rae died of what has been identified as an overdose. The Sea was nominated for a Mercury Prize for Album of the Year, given it’s somber tone and emotional weight.

It wasn’t until 2012 that Corinne followed The Sea up with The Love EP, and a year later that she married her producer and friend Steve Brown.

The Heart Speaks in Whispers helps us close the gap between that period of heartbreak, newfound love and the cautious optimism of Bailey Rae in her current life.

There is no doubt in my mind that Bailey Rae has a great vocal range and broad versatility to her music & lyrics. It reminds me of a great many female artists whom I have enjoyed previously, like Billy Holiday, Amy Winehouse, Feist, Joni Mitchell, and Emily Haines.

Now I say this with some reservation, but at first I didn’t really care for Bailey Rae as an authentic act.

Her work kind of fits into the larger genre of jazz and soul, and especially the soul revival that is happening, and which I admittedly have been kind of oblivious to until very recently. I will also mention Kendrick Lamar and Leon Bridges as artists who have been part of this movement, also with hesitation, because I hate to compare artists, but in this case, Bailey Rae has been collaborating with Lamar and that is a great indicator of her input into the landscape.

The songs on the album are often rather upbeat and fun – Been To The Moon, Horse Print Dress, and … come to mind. Stop Where You Are has that indie pop sentiment that reminded me of Feist. And if you are looking for anthems to build you up after any manner of letdown Caramel and High will serve that role rather easily. It’s a great ebb and flow of real life experiences without ever telling you explicitly what she gone through.

Push On For The Dawn closes out the album rather beautifully and isn’t ambiguous with Bailey Rae’s future. After all is said and done, The Heart Speaks In Whispers does an excellent job of changing your mind about the commercial production of the entire album, but its not something you can play anywhere and for all occasions.

 

 

 

I think pop music and jazz music are a wonderful form of expression, and that you should listen to them with regularity, but you can definitely over-expose yourself to forms of it. Especially when the music is rich and full of addictive content. The Heart Speaks in Whispers is a great example of this. When consumed in appropriate settings, you will have an awesome time, just don’t over indulge it.

Tim!