New Music

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This article was published 21/04/2012 (4935 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TRAIN

California 37 (COLUMBIA/SONY)

TRAIN just keeps rolling along. Riding on the success of the ubiquitous single Hey, Soul Sister, the San Francisco pop-rockers genre hop like a Bon Jovi-worshipping bunny on their seventh album in the hope it won’t be another six years between hits.

Those hits could happen. Frontman Pat Monahan teamed up with Norwegian production team Espionage and Butch Walker to help write the 11 tracks on California 37, filling them with big sing-along hooks and pop-culture references. On This’ll Be My Year, Monahan talks us through the news highlights of the past three decades that sounds like a cousin to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire. Feels Good at First borrows a snippet of the vocal melody from the Beatles Two of Us so it seems instantly recognizable and comfortable. Bruises (featuring Ashley Monroe) is a convincing country twanger, while 50 Ways to Say Goodbye is a mariachi-flavoured number with the catchiest chorus on the album.

They don’t all come in, though. You Can Finally Meet My Mom is an embarrassing ballad, complete with some forgettable whistling, which drops names like Jimi Hendrix and Mister Rogers and the hip-hop flavoured title track calls out the band’s detractors with the lines, “Here’s to those who didn’t think that Train could ever roll again/You were the fuel that I used when inspiration hit a dead end.” Zing, haters.

Still, most of the album is earnest and catchy enough that it should keep this Train on the tracks, and blasting out of windows of a minivan near you, a little while longer. Three stars

— Rob Williams

 

POP AND ROCK

 

JASON MRAZ

Love Is a Four Letter Word (Atlantic/Warner)

LOVE Is a Four Letter Word rests its weary head in the kind of grooves that will strike a chord with anyone that believes that romantic idealism is, like, a “thing.” The music is reasonably tolerable in a kind of sleep-inducing way. Acoustic guitars thrum against a lightly airbrushed string and rhythm section while Jason Mraz warbles delicately over the thin, warm gruel of sound.

But it’s the lyrics that sink this album like the Titanic. In Mraz’s cushioned world-view he feels good when he is calm and when he is calm, he sings (The Freedom Song). He totally lives in the moment, easy and breezy (Living in the Moment) and will be the steadiest of boyfriends because his heart will always be at home (The Woman I Love). If your heart is heavy, he’ll lighten in up (Everything Is Sound) and life can be made just perfect by taking baths and drinking wine.

The eight-minute plus dreck fest that closes the album (The World as I See It) invites other, less cloyingly positive four-letter descriptive words that can’t be printed here. Avoid this one with great fervour. Two and a half stars

— Jeff Monk

 

SPIRITUALIZED

Sweet Heart, Sweet Light (Fat Possum)

ANOTHER album, another health scare for Jason Pierce. After releasing 2008’s Songs in A&E following a near-fatal bout with double pneumonia, Sweet Heart, Sweet Light was finished after the man known as J. Spaceman endured six months of chemotherapy to battle a degenerative liver disease.

And like he has done in the past, he emerges from the hospital even stronger: Sweet Heart, Sweet Light is another triumphant comeback from the brink, filled with everything Pierce has been perfecting for the past three decades from the nine-minute Velvet Underground-evoking folk-pop epic Sweet Jane through the distortion filled ramshackle psych-rock of Headin’ for the Top Now. The album is loaded with creaky vocals, strings, overdriven guitar, horns and even a banjo and gospel choir on the lovely anthemic So Long You Pretty Thing, which ends the album on a high note.

Pierce has a shown a knack for turning his pain into aural pleasure, but here’s hoping he won’t have to suffer so much for his art next time. Four stars

— RW

 

RAY WYLIE HUBBARD

The Grifter’s Hymnal (Bordello)

WITH 65 years of experience under his grizzled visage, Ray Wylie Hubbard remains the outlaw oft referred to as the Wylie Lama for his ability to create literary musical magic. Hubbard paints vivid pictures of life with lines like “He couldn’t commit to the devil’s side, his ink read 665.9,” or, “I kept that turntable right through my divorce, played Neil Young and Crazy Horse.”

If you have a penchant for raw, gritty unadulterated hillbilly swamp rockin’ blues that’s “strip bar dirty” played on a Les Paul through a Vox AC30, Ray Wylie Hubbard delivers the goods and more with his seductive tongue and Coricidin bottle slide guitar, “layin’ down a groove like a monkey gettin’ off”.

Hubbard may expound, “the truth of the matter is I can’t sing but I can quote Martin Luther King, his words are stronger than Angel Dust is” … well, so are Hubbard’s. And like pretty much all his work since 1971 it’s not just great but essential. Four and a half stars

— Bruce Leperre

 

ELECTRONIC

 

THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS

Don’t Think (Astralwerks)

WHILE Skrillex may be the poster child for the recent rave revival, it was London big-beat mavericks the Chemical Brothers that led the charge during the first wave in the 1990s. Daft Punk set the bar high for live electronic albums with their gem, Alive 2007, but the Chemical Bros. come out swinging with an intense collection of supersized beats recorded at last year’s Fuji Rock Festival.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are still around, and the duo may be at the top of its game on Don’t Think, sending out swirling sirens, bottom heavy beats, acid tweaks and enough carefully placed nostalgia to reinvigorate an old raver or suck some new fans into their psychedelic, futuristic world. Older tracks like Chemical Beats and Hey Boy Hey Girl are rolled out with ease, while the duo carefully control the ebb and flow of the show, deftly dealing out thunderous break beats, smart bomb synths and the type of visceral, peak-hour madness that has made them one of the few relevant big stadium electronic acts from the ’90s.

A live DVD is also available. Four stars

— Anthony Augustine

 

PAUL VAN DYK

Evolution (Vandit)

NEARLY 20 years after the release of For an Angel, German electronic dance music pioneer Paul van Dyk still consistently ranks among the top 10 DJs in the world, even with wildly popular contemporaries like Deadmau5 and Avicii biting at his heels.

Evolution, his sixth studio album and first since 2007’s In Between, isn’t exactly the revolutionary work the title might imply; in fact, most of the tracks here could have been released at almost any point during his lengthy career. But they’re so well-polished, it doesn’t really matter.

The gorgeous Lost in Berlin, aggressive Rock This, and stunning Verano with Austin Leeds would all be right at home in any prime time dance set, while The Ocean and The Sun After Heartbreak, both collaborations with Russian producer Arty, go for a more subdued, chill-out vibe.

Eternity, the requisite pop crossover track with Adam Young of Owl City is really the only throwaway on this otherwise excellent album from one of dance music’s biggest mainstays. Three and a half stars

— Steve Adams

 

JAZZ

 

KARL JANNUSKA

Featuring Sienna Dahlen

The Halfway Tree (PJU Records)

THE title of Paris-based drummer (and former Manitoban) Karl Jannuska’s new recording refers to a cottonwood tree that stands halfway between Brandon and Winnipeg along the Trans-Canada Highway. But the term halfway also alludes to the fact Jannuska and Canadian singer Sienna Dahlen each wrote half the lyrics on this both instrumentally and vocally engaging CD.

Jannuska’s presence is felt throughout the disc, of course, but there are no pyrotechnics; no, give the drummer an extended solo on every cut. Jannuska is a very good drummer, but he concerns himself more with the overall sound and having Dahlen’s voice serving as an instrument that merges with the others rather than just singing along with them.

Jannuska’s compositions are interesting, tight and can stretch the jazz label with some fiery guitar work by Pierre Perchaud. The septet includes Toronto bassist Andrew Downing, on five-string cello here, on what is a very good underground jazz outing. Four stars

— Chris Smith

 

CLASSICAL

JAMES EHNES, ANDREW ARMSTRONG

Bartók: Sonatas and Rhapsodies for violin and piano (Chandos)

BRANDON’S own James Ehnes has been serving up some very fine Bartók these days.

On the heels of an outstanding Chandos disc of the two violin concertos and viola concerto comes this generous and splendidly played album of the two sonatas and rhapsodies. The ordering is telling too: the congenial rhapsodies flanking the thornier sonatas, with the alternate ending to the First Rhapsody included along with Bartók’s early salon-like andante to close.

Ehnes of course encompasses every challenge here with a sweet-toned elegance that somewhat tames the slashing dissonances in the First Sonata for an added layer of expression beyond its innate fierceness. The Second Sonata is endlessly inventive with the dance elements there, and in the other pieces, ideally caught. Pianist Armstrong is especially into the music’s colouring. It’s a compelling, beautifully judged partnership throughout. Four stars

— James Manishen