Album reviews

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This article was published 15/11/2024 (686 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ROCK

The Cure

Songs of a Lost World (Fiction)

It takes over three minutes for Robert Smith to begin singing on Alone, the opening track from the Cure’s first studio album in 16 years, but once his unmistakably fraught and aching voice intones that “This is the end of every song that we sing,” decades slip away, and the track’s looped synthesizers repeating drum pattern and thrumming bass transport listeners to a distant past — an age when finding love and meaning hurt so very much, and Smith’s songs gave voice to the lonely and despairing.

Forty-six years removed from the Cure’s first edgy, post-punk single, Songs of a Lost World finds Smith and his bandmates creating eight songs featuring dense walls of melancholy, orchestral pop similar to those that marked their halcyon days of the late ’80s and early ’90s. But this is an older, wiser Smith — a writer whose world-weariness is born of knowing that everything eventually ends, that love and peace are hard to find and that, as he sings on Endsong, we are “left alone with nothing at the end of every song” — a line which neatly bookends the album.

★★★★ out of five

Stream: Alone, Warsong, Endsong

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Porridge Radio

Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be With Me (Secretly Canadian)

There’s a lot of the Cure in the work of Porridge Radio singer/songwriter Dana Margolin, but it’s no doubt been filtered through the likes of PJ Harvey and Florence Welch, and Margolin and her Brighton bandmates set their examinations of relationships, meaning and pain to a guitar-based, indie-leaning sound. Margolin loves loud-quiet-loud dynamics but the familiar pattern works as she and the band bring their songs to guttural, vital crescendos. The 11 songs build gently on skeletal melodies created by voices, guitars or synthesizers, and the sounds and instruments slowly coalesce into guttural, crashing crescendos in which Margolin slowly exorcises the demons of past relationships. By album’s end, however, she’s declaring “I’m sick of the blues, I’m in love with my love again.”

★★★★ out of five

Stream: Anybody; Sick of the Blues

— John Kendle

Hip Hop

Tyler, the Creator

Chromakopia (Columbia)

On his seventh studio album, Chromakopia, the multi-hyphenate Tyler, the Creator pulls back the curtain. Across 14 tracks, the rapper born Tyler Okonma interrogates the anxieties that come with age and fame, intertwining them with his own wisdom.

Chromakopia starts off strong with St. Chroma — an introduction to the new masked persona on the album’s cover — with forceful military cadences in the background of both Tyler and R&B singer Daniel Caesar’s vocals.

As a whole, the album Chromakopia represents the two-time Grammy-award winning artist as he delves into his 30s. In this new era, he seeks understanding in all aspects of his life as he seeks to understand himself.

He’s thinking about a lot: Hey Jane details a pregnancy scare atop dreamy production, Take Your Mask Off tells the story of various characters afraid to live in their truth. Lead single Noid targets celebrity, addressing paranoia and the strange parasocial relationships that come with fame in a claustrophobic, transgressive package.

But the album isn’t all deep introspection. Tyler is as brash as ever on like Thought I Was Dead and Rah Tah Tah, which use deep bass that reverberates, felt in the listeners’ bones.

His fun and outrageous personality isn’t hidden, either. It’s clearly heard on tracks such as the cheerful Sticky which features Lil Wayne, GloRilla and Sexyy Red and Balloon, which features Doechii.

It’s a too-early mid-life memoir, one many 30-somethings will relate to: an album that considers all that he’s accomplished, fears and hopes for the future to come.

★★★★ out of five

Stream: Sticky; Thought I Was Dead

— Leslie Ambriz, The Associated Press

Jazz

Mosaic Quartet

Mosaic (Cornerstone)

Mosaic is a multigenerational quartet whose ages cross five decades. The quartet is Stefan Bauer on vibraphone, Matthew Halpin on saxophone, Matthias Akeo Nowak on bass and Terry Clarke on drums. Nominal leader Bauer has roots in Winnipeg, having lived here for years while playing a serious part in the local jazz scene. Canadian drummer Clarke was performing in Germany last year and several of the concerts with the quartet were recorded to form this album. The melding of ages and citizenships is a treat.

The music is a joyful, straight-ahead mix of driving rhythms and gentle ballads. Each member has opportunities to shine, with Bauer and Halpin doing most of the leading. Clarke’s drumming defies the fact that he’s the “senior” member of the quartet. He shines especially on Coast to Coast and Clown. Lonely Moments is a beautiful ballad that dances around a ¾ time signature with subtlety and morphs into a heavier mood.

Six of the tracks are Bauer compositions. Two of them have local connections. When Bauer first moved to Winnipeg and a house on Simcoe Street, he was unprepared for the first major snowfall. When he stepped out of his house the next morning he discovered his neighbour, Bob Kincaid, on Bauer’s roof with a shovel. He said he feared for the roof, and when he was thanked for risking his life, Kincaid replied, “Piece of cake.” The tune Piece of Cake is dedicated to his neighbour.

In 1996 Bauer and a fabulous band with several local connections toured Canada. (The album that ensued is called Coast to Coast, and if you can find it, it’s terrific.) The track Coast to Coast ends this album with a swinging arrangement that has everyone flying around the melody joyfully. Bauer retains a love of our city, and this album is more than a tribute to one neighbour — it’s a treat for all of us.

★★★★½ out of five

Stream: November 13; Piece Of Cake

— Keith Black

CLASSICAL

Aleksandra Kurzak

Falcon (Aparté)

Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak pays homage to the legacy of legendary opera singer Cornélie Falcon in this release, the aptly titled Falcon.

Renowned for her expressive artistry, the 19th-century French singer, who tragically lost her voice at age 23, gave her name to a well-known voice type called the “Falcon soprano.” Lebanese-Polish conductor Bassem Akiki sensitively leads the Morphing Chamber Orchestra through Kurzak’s eclectic program, composed of 13 works that made Falcon famous.

Highlights include two arias from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with the first offering, Crudele, immediately displaying Kurzak’s soaring upper range with pitch-perfect intonation, with the second, Non mi dir, showing off her darker, more dramatic sensibility.

Another must-listen track is Beethoven concert aria Ah perfido! Op. 65, further showcasing her innate lyricism, while two excerpts from Spontini’s La Vestale brim with unbridled intensity.

Listeners are also treated to Rossini’s En proie…la tristesse from Le Compte Ory, infused with sparkling colouratura passagework.

The album also features works by Halevy, Niedermeyer, Berlioz and Weber. Meyerbeer’s Ah, je suis sele chez moi…Parmi les pleurs, mon rêve se ranime from Les Huguenots proves a particularly tender choice as the last composer Falcon sang before acknowledging her voice had left her forever during her attempted comeback at the Paris Opera in 1840. Kurzak’s deeply felt performance gives voice to this long gone, yet never forgotten soprano.

★★★★ out of five

Stream: Ah, je suis sele chez moi… ; En proie … la tristesse

— Holly Harris