New Music

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This article was published 08/10/2011 (5443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FEIST

Metals (EMI)

Jingles be damned, Feist is a true artist and on Metals she is out to prove it.

Fans of Leslie Feist’s most pop-oriented material, like the fun iPod ditty 1234 or Mushaboom, won’t find any immediate singles like those nuggets on her latest album, Metals, the followup to her 2007 breakthrough The Reminder.

The album title is a misnomer since there is nothing hard, sharp or vaguely metallic about any of the 12 tracks. Metals is a carefully constructed, arty, genre-hopping release filled with warm and organic material perfect for a dinner party or as background music in a bookstore.

The album’s charms become truly evident after multiple listens. Graveyards is an uplifting number featuring Feist and a choir singing, “Bring them all back to life.” First single, How Come You Never Go There, is a slice of finger-snapping jazzy doo-wop. Commotion is a slow-burner that builds to a bombastic chorus filled with electronic blasts and shouts overtop a hyperactive pizzicato string section. Caught a Long Wind and Comfort Me are mellow and plaintive.

No matter what genres serve as her inspiration or what instruments Feist and her producers Chilly Gonzales and Mocky throw into the mix, she always sounds perfectly in control. She is one cool artist and Metals serves as an adult contemporary cocktail for hipsters. Three and a half stars

— Rob Williams

 

NIRVANA

Nevermind Deluxe Edition (Sub Pop/Universal)

THE 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s landmark 1991 album Nevermind is not only a look back, but a look at what could have been.

The two-disc deluxe version includes the remastered original album along with alternate versions of songs like In Bloom, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Territorial Pissings and Polly recorded before the official May 1991 Nevermind sessions with producer Butch Vig.

Vig is behind the boards for the April 1990 Smart Studio Sessions that served as a demo tape for the band and include early versions of Breed and Stay Away, known as Immodium and Pay to Play respectively. Compared to the shiny, polished sound of Nevermind, the gritty and rough mixes of the eight songs are more akin to the sound of Bleach. The Boombox Rehearsals are just that: recordings of eight songs recorded in the band’s practice space in the spring of 1991.

Nine B-sides and some BBC Session material available elsewhere round out the set, which is also available in a four CD/one DVD set for $130, about $110 more than the Deluxe edition, which should satisfy most fans, no matter how many times they’ve heard Nevermind, one of the greatest guitar rock albums of the 1990s. Five stars out of five

— RW

 

FRUIT BATS

Tripper (Sub Pop)

CHICAGO’S Fruit Bats are ostensibly leader and main Bat Eric D. Johnson and whomever he drags into the studio to flesh out his disparate and wide-ranging musical ideas.

For his fifth full-lengther Johnson has built something of a loose concept album about life, faith and moving oneself forward while taking stock of what may have shaped your life and opinions along the way. Musically and lyrically he paints beautiful scenes built on eclectic acoustic and electric instrumentation with a tight connection to a folk pop vibe. Tracks like the beautiful and elegiac Wild Honey, the elegant Shivering Fawn and the pseudo-rocker Heart Like An Orange are all delivered with a creative force and musical punch that sets Johnson a notch or two above his contemporaries.

There is a bit of Arcade Fire-like charge to a couple of tracks but that alone should appeal to fans of this kind of modernist folk music. Three and a half stars

— Jeff Monk

 

THE DUKE ROBILLARD BAND

Low Down and Tore Up (Stony Plain)

THE latest album from the hefty Rhode Island-based veteran guitarist follows what can be considered a pretty standard Duke template: honking, good times-infused rhythm and blues featuring his brand of polished and reverential big-bodied guitar pyrotechnics. Low Down and Tore Up finds Robillard lovingly covering artists like Eddie Jones, Pee Wee Crayton and Elmore James with blues piano, bass, sax and drums adding vital personality to all the tracks. He’s in his usual fine form with his gravelly vocals evoking the kind of passion necessary to turn this one into a solidly listenable set.

It’s a trip down memory lane to be sure, with a loose vibe and a live-in-the-studio sound that speaks volumes about Robillard’s love for capturing real feeling without complication. Three and a half stars

— Monk

 

SARAH SLEAN

Land and Sea (Pheromone Recordings)

A concise band vs. billowing string arrangements — the division between the two discs in Slean’s double album isn’t artificial. Despite Land’s title, Slean isn’t an earthy presence, but where other artists would have a hard time justifying straightforward pop as a concept, her regal romance has never been so direct.

Direct, not dumbed down — the theatrical flourishes haven’t been steamed out of her voice. On its own merits, Land is a refreshingly streamlined take on Slean’s drama, but it can’t compare to its counterpart. Sea’s orchestrations are a natural setting for Slean, and there’s nothing pretentious about them. The Cosmic Ballet’s sweeping scope, the creeping menace of Napoleon, the way The Devil and the Dove’s piano gives the sensation of perpetual flight — this is Slean’s masterpiece. Land Three and a half stars; Sea Four and a half stars

— Jordan Zivitz, Postmedia News

 

J. COLE

Cole World: The Sideline Story (Columbia / Sony)

THE young North Carolina MC has taken the now seemingly obligatory buzz-building-mixtape route to his long-awaited first studio album, and that polish shows.

An engaging and entertaining lyricist, Cole also has a keen ear for beats, producing 13 of the disc’s 16 tracks. He’s also got a gold-plated Rolodex, and he puts those boldfaced names to good use here. He goes verse-for-verse with Jay-Z — admittedly not the feat it used to be — on the dubstep-ish Mr. Nice Watch, makes a convincing play for the ladies with Drake on the slinky In the Morning and scores points for getting the too-long-M.I.A. Missy Elliott on the hook on Nobody’s Perfect.

A safe bet for rap’s rookie of the year. Four stars

— Basem Boshra, Postmedia News

 

JAZZ

MICHAEL CAIN

Solo (Native Drum Music)

BRANDON University music professor and former New Yorker Michael Cain mixes acoustic piano and electronics on his new recording, Solo, with mostly good results.

Cain has performed with M-Base members such as saxophonist Greg Osby, trombonist Robin Eubanks and bassist Lonnie Plaxico, and with drummer Jack DeJohnette, and has the credentials and chops to step outside the mainstream, the skill to stay within it, and the ability to mix it up.

Kammotion, the first of five original compositions that make up the disc, starts off with some great acoustic piano before the electronics are introduced, in a slightly jarring way. The meshing of the acoustic and electronic works better throughout the rest of the disc, though, and the CD-ending tune, Last Waltz, is the best of the bunch. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö 1/2

— Chris Smith

 

CLASSICAL

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BRASS LIVE

Gabrieli, Bach, Revueltas, Prokofiev, Grainger, Walton (CSO Resound)

COMPOSER Percy Grainger enjoyed rearranging music in a process he called “dishing-up,” so it’s fitting the centrepiece of this brass collection is his folk-based Lincolnshire Posy, with an arrangement by Timothy Higgins. All the pieces, in fact, are rearrangements, the only originals being three of Gabrieli’s most famous pieces for brass, including the Sonata Pian e forte.

The rearrangements and performances by the renowned CSO brass section are terrific — so convincing you come away convinced Prokofiev would have been perfectly happy hearing his ballet score for Romeo and Juliet set for brass section alone. Ditto for Bach and the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, Silvestre Revueltas and Sensemaya plus Walton’s more typical Crown Imperial. Conducted by CSO principals Dale Clevenger, Jay Friedman, Michael Mulcahy and Mark Ridenour, it’s almost as if each player is aware of original instruments that are missing, with the resulting goal of adding back lost colours and signing the deal with flawless, stylish execution.

As a brass disc it doesn’t get better than this. Four stars

— James Manishen

 

PAUL MCCARTNEY

Paul McCartney’s Oceans Kingdom (Hear Music)

SIR Paul’s new ballet, which is a love story based in two worlds — the pure ocean kingdom and the more sinister earth kingdom — is not getting much love from the critics. The score, his fifth classical album, is nothing to get that negative about, but it’s nonetheless on the tepid side — more like competent movie soundtrack music than a stirring, unified work.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a McCartney piece if it didn’t contain flashes of wonderful, graceful melody, like the motifs that open and close the second movement, Hall of Dance, the melancholy, Pepperland-ish theme of the third movement, Imprisonment, or the stately conclusion of Moonrise, the fourth movement. But Macca’s previous orchestral work, Ecce Cor Meum, was more enthralling. Three stars

— Bernard Perusse, Postmedia News