New music

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/10/2020 (1830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP / ROCK

Mise en Scene
Winnipeg, California (Light Organ Records)

If its title is meant to imply that breezy-yet-crunchy, jangly-yet-thumping pop-rock can come just as easily from Portage and Main as from Hollywood, then Mise en Scene has hit the mark with its third full-length album

The band’s core members — singer/guitarist Stef Johnson and drummer Jodi Dunlop — have been making art and music together since their high school days in Gimli, and they’ve really revved up their creativity in the five or so years since they landed a deal with Light Organ, the alt/indie imprint of 604 Records.

Still Life on Fire, the duo’s 2017 album — its first in six years — was practically a comeback record and its emotionally cathartic songwriting and catchy hooks reminded longtime followers why the group was a buzz band nearly 10 years ago. Winnipeg, California picks up where Still Life… left off and finds the two refining their sound to a focused sheen (handclaps, soaring backing vocals!) while retaining the emotional angst and edgy grit of live performance.

Dave Genn (guitarist/producer with 54-40 and Matthew Good) and Eric Ratz (Arkells, Billy Talent, Dragonette and many more) do their best Richard Gottehrer impersonation as producers, while studio musicians Micah Erenberg (guitar) and Anna Ruddick (bass) add colour, depth and crunch.

Each of the 10 songs is almost immediately catchy and Johnson modulates her whisper-to-a-scream voice to reflect the emotional pitch of tunes about love’s ache (Back to the Start, Love and War) and love’s promise (All the Love), pushy or troublesome men (Unsolicited Advice, You Guy), nostalgic reminiscence (High School Feeling) and the joy of losing yourself in a moment (Dance My Life Away).

When live performances eventually become a thing again, the next Mise en Scene show should be a can’t-miss occasion. ★★★★ out of five

Stream these: About Love; Dollar Dreams; Dance My Life Away

— John Kendle

 

 

Bruce Springsteen
Letter to You (Columbia)

Has Bruce Springsteen written a Letter to You to say goodbye?

The Boss turned 71 just last month. Although his fitness, spirit and the actuarial tables would suggest he has plenty of music left in him, it’s hard to miss the valedictory feel and sense of loss that pervades this new album.

Its centrepiece is Last Man Standing, which Springsteen has explained was inspired by George Theiss, one of his mates in the teenage Jersey band the Castiles. Theiss’s recent death left Springsteen the lone survivor of his first band.

He’s seen colleagues in the E Street Band fall, too, saxophonist and onstage foil Clarence Clemons most prominently, along with organist Danny Federici. He surely sees all of them by his side in the song Ghosts, where he sings, “Meet you brother and sister on the other side.”

Similarly, in the album’s concluding song, Springsteen sings that “death is not the end and I’ll see you in my dreams.”

For a man who once sang Glory Days to mock someone stuck in high school, Springsteen is now looking back himself. The difference is that instead of bragging of exploits, he’s reminiscing about the warmth and companionship a lifetime in music has brought him. There’s an undertone of precious time lost to the pandemic when you listen to House of a Thousand Guitars.

In that song, he yearns to “go where the music never ends,” and he’ll no doubt be joined there by the E Street Band. His old friends back him on Letter to You, doing something they’d never done before with a famed perfectionist as frontman: cutting the music essentially live in the studio in five days.

They can still make a mighty roar and that’s something to be appreciated, too. They’re not to be taken for granted. As Steve Van Zandt mentioned recently, who knows how many more of these albums are left in them, if any?

Three of the 12 songs here date back to the 1970s and almost seem written by another man, a youthful, ambitious Springsteen with Dylan-like imagery flowing out of him. Each of these rediscovered compositions stretch past six minutes.

The newer songs are more professional than inspired. Occasionally, they even slip into cliché; the crown-of-thorns phrase usually suggests a need to try harder.

He is not, by any means, a nostalgia act. Yet his well-received Broadway show and Letter to You suggest Springsteen now is less about pulling out of here to win than pulling back in to appreciate what he has. ★★★1/2 out of five

STREAM THESE: Last Man Standing, Ghosts

— David Bauder, The Associated Press

 

JAZZ

Rebecca Hennessy
All the Little Things You Do (Self-Produced)

At first listen this album might be seen as a bit of a departure from the styles of jazz frequently reviewed here. While the licks are excellent, there is a mood that sometimes feels more pop or folk. This is a misread, as the original songs are often accompanied by serious lyrics within a smoother feel (more on that in a moment).

Hennessy is a trumpeter/vocalist/composer who has taken some critical life moments and turned them into a musical journey of discovery. With her here are Kevin Breit on guitars and organ, Tania Gill on piano, Michael Herring on bass and Dave Clark on drums. All are well-known Canadian jazz musicians who also offer background vocals to Hennessy’s solos.

The music, as described in the notes, “deals with love, grief and mental health… being released between the death of (Hennessy’s) mother and the birth of her first child.” She does not have a big voice, but it is pure and clean, and defines the lyrics of each song well. There are a number of guests who expand the overall sense of movement, from the bluesy There’s One Thing to the more meditative Deeper Than the Dark Blue Sea. Breit’s guitar is a treat throughout.

Other highlights are settings for two poems by author Thomas King from his new collection. Hennessy’s tunes to Dig Up the Stories and Nothing Passes for Favour are beautiful and wrap the poems in a warm blanket; her trumpet on the former is ethereal. King is heard briefly on Nothing Passes for Favour (“all promises are bruises in good suits”).

I confess to having been a bit skeptical when I first started to play this album, but have found it increasingly endearing after many listens. It is extremely enjoyable in a package that might be considered “light” if one didn’t pay attention. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: Eclipse, Dig Up the Stories

— Keith Black

 

 

CLASSICAL

Silkroad Ensemble
Falling Out of Time (In a Circle Records)

This astonishing new release by the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble features the first, new large-scale work in more than 10 years by Argentine-born composer and MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Osvaldo Golijov. It’s a “tone poem in voices,” based on Israeli writer David Grossman’s novel/fable of the same name, chronicling the searing grief of losing a child. The album’s theme resonates even more strongly during a historic time of global crisis that has seen society stalked by the pervasive, looming shadows of death.

The ensemble, originally founded in 2000 by American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, is now under the guidance of newly appointed artistic director Rhiannon Gidden; its current 13-member configuration — including album producer/violinist Johnny Gandelsman — features musicians hailing from China, Syria, Argentina, the Netherlands, Venezuela, Iran, the United States, the former U.S.S.R. and Israel. They perform on a variety of ancient and traditional instruments, which allows them to shapeshift to Golijov’s knotty, complex musical demands, which draw inspiration from everything from early Delta blues to the sweeping ballads of Central Asia.

The album’s 13 movements, sung in Hebrew and frequently English, channel the spirit of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, the grief-stricken song cycle of 1904, composed in the wake of the death of his two children. The work is often abstract and densely conceived, straddling the worlds of keen intellectualism and raw, visceral emotional power; it admittedly takes a few listens to fully digest.

Three vocalists — Dutch soprano Nora Fischer, Venezuela’ s Biella da Costa and Beijing-born Wu Tong (who doubles on the Chinese Sheng) — portray prototypical characters that help unify, ground and further humanize the hour-long work.

Highlights include the opening “vignette,” Heart Murmur, the piercing Fly, and the final benediction, Breathe, with a particular standout being da Costa’s powerhouse performance of Step, her guttural voice rising in intensity and ultimately packing the punch of a wailing keen for the dead heard all around the world. ★★★★★ out of five

STREAM THIS: Step

— Holly Harris