New Music

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This article was published 19/03/2015 (4169 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP/ROCK

The Real McKenzies

Rats in the Burlap (Stomp)

WITH previous album titles like Clash of the Tartans and Pissed Tae Th’ Gills: A Drunken Live Tribute to Robbie Burns it’s pretty easy to figure out that Vancouver’s the Real McKenzies are a Celtic-punk band. Their latest album, the wild Rats in the Burlap has leader Paul McKenzie and his crew of seasoned brothers wallowing wonderfully in their version of a style that was past its best-before date when the original Celt punks the Pogues broke up in 1991.

This newly minted 14-tracker is an old-school punk-rock throw down that will appeal to those who valiantly moshed while drunk back in the early ’90s…. or their children. There isn’t much pure Celtic revelry here; instead the band rocks hard on tracks such as Who’d a Thought and the Social Distortion-like Stephen’s Green.

Woven into the tartan are the odd pennywhistle, banjo and bagpipes, but any overt reverence to traditional music from another culture is pretty low in the mix. Fans will eat this up like a plate of luscious haggis, while others may be less enamoured with this particular slice of the punk-rock shepherd’s pie. Rats not included.

See for yourself when the Real McKenzies play the Windsor Hotel on March 21 with the Isotopes. HHH

DOWNLOAD: Who’d a Thought, Stephen’s Green

— Jeff Monk

 

Sarah MacDougall

Grand Canyon (Rabbit Heart Music)

LET’S get all this straight: Sarah MacDougall is a Canadian musician who was born and grew up in Malm, Sweden (her mother is Swedish, her father is from London, Ont.). She left her hometown after high school to study music in Vancouver, was living there when she launched her music career, but now calls Whitehorse home.

That’s about as rich and peripatetic a background as a musician can have, and MacDougall brings it all to bear in the eight songs on her third album. While her two previous records were rooted in her quavering voice and the sweet melodies of her acoustic guitar, she and producer Caleb Stull stir things up on Grand Canyon. Propulsive drums, atmospheric electric guitars, moody keys, swelling strings, horns and gang-vocals combine to create a big, textured sound that manages to retain the delicate, expressive qualities of MacDougall’s lyrics and vocals.

Opening cut I Want to see the Light (Lost from Our Eyes) is perhaps the perfect distillation of this album’s intent and effect. While its verses evoke dark images of murder and violence against women, the upbeat tune and its chorus insist on reaching up, toward the light, without irony and full of hope. Sparrowhead can be read as a breezy, rousing Canadian travelogue (“Manitoba!” is the refrain — really), but it’s also shot through with desire for a home. Another exceptional song is Malm I mitt hj§rta, a brooding, piano-based sonic exploration that’s sung in Swedish, and which translates as “Malm in my heart.”

There’s much more to be had here, but at just over 34 minutes, Grand Canyon is not as sweeping as it could be. Which is hardly a complaint at all, really.

Catch MacDougall when she opens for the Once on March 24 at the West End Cultural Centre. HHHH

DOWNLOAD: I Want to See the Light (Lost from Our Eyes), Sparrowhead, Malm I mitt hj§rta

— John Kendle

 

COUNTRY/ROOTS

Black River Drifters

Hearts Gone Cold (Independent)

SOMETIMES it seems as if you can’t turn a corner in the Exchange District without seeing a gig poster for a local folk-roots outfit. New to the scene are the Black River Drifters, and if the music on their new eight-song album Hearts Gone Cold is any concrete indication, these guys could spring to the top of the heap right quick. The combination of their hard folk sound and darker lyrical subject matter (The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) reveals a mature feel, something a lot of locals miss by simply setting their diary entries to moody, softly plucked music.

The requisite fiddles, banjo and cleverly thrummed acoustic guitars are here, but the entwining of these instruments with excellent electric and pedal steel guitar elevates BRD into a whole new realm of listenability. Their Civil War-based epic Bushwacker might be a little disingenuous coming from dudes from the frozen north of Canada, but it still works well musically.

At only eight tracks, the less-is-more theory works here, and if this band can deliver in a live context, who knows where their next horizon lies?

Black River Drifters release Hearts Gone Cold at Maw’s Eatery and Beer Hall on March 20. Admission is free. HHH

DOWNLOAD THIS: Ride On, Bug-Stained Windshield

— Jeff Monk

 

HIP HOP

Kendrick Lamar

To Pimp a Butterfly (Interscope)

RAPPER Kendrick Lamar went three years without releasing an album, taking his time to craft an impressive sophomore effort.

Already a two-time Grammy winner, Lamar continues to demonstrate that he’s one of hip hop’s best on the thought-provoking To Pimp a Butterfly, a play on the title of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. And much like Lee’s novel, Lamar’s album overflows with metaphor, focusing on how innocent minds can be influenced by money, fame and worldly matters.

The album’s 16 tracks flow masterfully from one to another, a fusion of jazz, funk and hip hop. It’s a compelling piece of work that features production by Pharrell Williams, rapper Terrace Martin, Boi-1da and Rahki. Lamar’s socially conscious messages are easy to digest, especially on Institutionalized featuring Bilal, Anna Wise and Snoop Dogg, and on the Pharrell-produced Alright and How Much a Dollar Cost, where he raps about the struggle of his fame.

The rapper touches on how some black entertainers have fallen victim to the entertainment industry on Wesley Theory, featuring George Clinton and Thundercat. Mortal Man is a 12-minute song that finds him questioning the loyalty of people in troubled times. He speaks about the betrayal of influential leaders from Moses to Martin Luther King Jr., reads a poem, then closes the song with a hypothetical conversation with Tupac Shakur in which he asks the late rapper about his perspective on today’s changing world. HHH1/2

Download: Alright

— Jonathan Landrum Jr., The Associated Press

 

CLASSICAL

Avi Avital

Vivaldi (Universal)

THERE’S something very appealing being whisked to Venice at this time of year — musically or otherwise. And when you travel with someone like acclaimed mandolin player Avi Avital, you know you’re in good hands.

This new release, simply titled Vivaldi, features the Israeli-born, Grammy-winning artist with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, paying homage to the romantic Italian city, including its most famous son, Antonio Vivaldi, who once called the watery city home.

In terms of authenticity, you can’t beat the Mandolin Concerto in C Major, RV425 with Avital skilfully attacking each of its three movements with crisp precision and rhythmic clarity despite an, at times, overly brusque orchestral accompaniment. Nor is it possible to resist the two interspersed 18th-century gondolier songs featuring the buttery-smooth vocals of Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flòrez.

Also included is one of Vivaldi’s best known works, The Four Seasons Concerto in G minor, Op. 8, RV 315 with Avital’s delicately strummed mandolin evoking buzzing insects and hazy days of summer — also worth dreaming of — capped by its turbulent Storm movement that proved no match for this passionate player. HHH1/2

— Holly Harris