BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - October 2016

56 | OCTOBER 2016 • BEATROUTE
from Twitter to YouTube online, swerving into IRL with
oppressive billboards, and finally back to email with a
P2P album announcement directly to a fan, Powell’s
craftily-won breakthrough on XL suspiciously scans as a
case of wagging the dog.
Just before listening to Sport for the first time, this
reviewer was worried that Powell had missed his calling
as a marketing executive and wrongly stumbled upon
music. Boy, was he wrong.
Sport is a lo-fi feeling work made up of hiss, fraudulent-sounding
drums, perverted digitizations of rock,
fraught basslines and weird electro-clash parodies. That
shouldn’t seem to make much sense on the surface, but
Sport is also a case of being happily proved wrong. It’s
a debut album that has enough imaginable narrative
cohesion between online/offline life, business/art
mechanics, and cool/corny power roles to halt the
hurried listener’s quickness to assess, and convinces one
to ease up and listen for a while. Its highest value is that
it doesn’t ask to be liked but instead can’t be looked
away from.
There are enough sonic plot points found along the
noise, groove, rawkishness and club-informed phases to
solidify its haphazard construction as a deconstructive
device. Jarring the listener between outright abrasion,
slick delight and crispy uncool, Powell shows he’s
not just agitating us out of sadism. Instead, the tonal
disagreement and cast of desperate, screeching vocal
characters sampled along the way remind us of the
turbulent, intrusive ways that we tune out the parts of
life that we don’t want to see. Hints and nods towards
social issues, raw ugliness, actual dance-worthy parts
and crass rehashings somehow make sense together
and offer an alternative to doing just one thing particularly
well. Powell’s ability to scream into the void and
actually draw attention is ostentatious and impossible
not to think about.
• Colin Gallant
Tanya Tagaq
Retribution
Six Shooter Records
It is refreshing to come across an album that utilizes
musicianship as a medium to enlighten. I mean, getting
jiggy to a riff is great and all, but feeling heavy from a
rhyme is something else entirely. Polaris Prize-winning,
Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq’s newest album, Retribution,
makes you feel this something else. “We turned
money into God/ and salivate over opportunities to/
crumple and crinkle our souls/ over that paper – that
gold/ Money has spent us.”
It really has, don’t you realize it? We strain, we suffer.
Our Mother Earth, she’s in pain, she suffers. She knows
the patterns of time. She knows those coming generations
of humankind will strain, suffer, too. Money – it’s
a tool, yes, we all know that. Its presence really messes
with our minds, though. Blurs our perception into
thinking we need more and more of it and insists upon
materialistic gain until we can’t see anymore. Our vision
fails and we blindly consume. This vicious greed seeps, it
prevails. We should resist.
Tagaq thinks so, too. Throughout Retribution, she
speculates upon the travesty of inclining towards
Western thought, touches upon quantum theory, and
laments upon rape concerning women, the land, and
our souls. Furthermore, Tagaq’s powerful gutturals,
shrieks, and hysteric vocal stretches in-and-of-themselves,
voicing her realizations. You really have to listen,
though. Meditate upon this album. You must. Every
sound you hear, whether it be vocalization, synthetic
swirls, strumming and sliding strings, or any spit of
rhyme, it’s all purposeful. It really makes you think.
Music ought to do that from time-to-time, eh? Awaken
the currents of your thoughts rather than numb your
circuitry. Make you swift rather than drift. Strays you
from delusion, thus becoming the ultimate retribution.
If that’s what your ears are desirous to hear, this is an
album for you.
• Hannah Many Guns
Yann Tiersen
EUSA
Mute
Yann Tiersen may not be the biggest name in North
America, but in his home of France, he’s renowned
for his heartfelt, cinematically-inclined compositions.
Most famously, his work formed the soundtrack for the
2001 film Amelie, eventually going platinum in Canada.
That’s the peak of Tiersen’s career in the mainstream,
but he’s steadily been amassing an impressively experimental
discography without the spotlight shining on
him. Recorded at Abbey Road, EUSA, Tiersen’s latest
album – and first composed solely for piano – may just
be his crown jewel.
EUSA is the Breton name for the French island
Ushant, the place Tiersen hides away to write most of
his works. A so-called “musical map,” EUSA is filled with
evocative, entrancing piano work, accompanied only by
a field recording taken from the exact spot each song
was named after. Songs like “Pern,” and the waltzing
“Porz Goret,” offer an escape into the near-desolate
island. The compositions are almost hypnotic in nature;
Tiersen’s performance is full of artful arpeggios and
human tempo shifts while birds chirp gently in the
background
EUSA isn’t a glitzy affair, but it is an utterly arresting
record that manages to be musically minimalist, but still
emotionally maximalist.
• Jamie McNamara
Touché Amoré
Stage Four
Epitaph
Burbank’s Touché Amoré have always been known for
their intellectual brand of emotional post-hardcore, but
on Stage Four, their first album for major label Epitaph,
the group manages to progress yet again. The result
is a mature masterwork that is easily the group’s best
album, a statement that is quite a compliment after
2013’s bracingly stunning Is Survived By, an album that
laid bare lead-singer Jeremy Bolm’s personal shortcomings
and neurosis for all to see.
That trademark unvarnished honesty returns again on
Stage Four, but this time Bolm’s neuroses are tragically
validated by the passing of his mother from cancer just
two years ago. Stage Four offers an unflinching look into
Bolm’s psyche as he processes the loss of his 69-year-old
mother.
More often than not, Bolm finds himself unmoored,
drifting in a gorgeous cacophony led by guitarist Nick
Steinhardt and anchored rhythmically by drummer
Eliot Babin. Sonically, the group sounds stadium ready,
finding visceral catharsis in blown-out atmospherics
and thundering tempos. It goes without saying that
Stage Four is an emotionally heavy album, but the band
does well to keep from veering into melodrama. Instead,
the album offers a hauntingly human examination into
the process of grief. It’s easily one of the best albums of
the year, a crushing gut punch that feels all too familiar
for anyone who has ever lost a loved one to cancer.
• Jamie McNamara
Various Artists
Taking It To Heart, Volume 1
Treeline Records
If you needed proof that Calgary’s music scene is a hotbed
of talent, look no further than the new compilation
Taking It To Heart, Vol. 1 from fresh-faced label Treeline
Records. The comp, which will see any proceeds
donated directly to the Heart and Stroke foundation, is
packed full of local talent and familiar faces from across
the country.
The compilation starts off on a great note with
“Shape Of Things To Come,” an already amazing Operators
record with Perfect Pussy frontwoman Meredith
Graves joining Dan Boeckner on vocal duties. It’s a rapid
fire, electro assault that is demonically danceable and
raw. In addition, tracks from Canadian favourites like
Kevin Drew, Woodpigeon, and Winnipeg’s Duotang
lend a friendly hand to the cause.
Calgarian acts Melted Mirror, Chad VanGaalen, and
Pre Nup, hold down the local contingent, making Taking
It To Heart, Vol. 1 a rare compilation that warrants
a full listen.
• Jamie McNamara
Warpaint
Heads Up
Rough Trade
Warpaint’s latest album, Heads Up, is a seductive
and mature third album. Since their self-titled album
released in 2014, Warpaint has evolved and created a
cohesive, polished sound. The band cites artists such as
Janet Jackson, Kendrick Lamar and OutKast as inspiration,
and the presence of both R&B and rap influences
are clear on the album.
Heads Up feels like more of an expansion of their
previous work instead of a concrete shift in direction.
Standouts from the album include the single they
released, the fittingly titled “New Song,” which feels the
most unique from previous releases. “New Song” has
a strong pop influence and is a song you could easily
hear blasting out of any car radio. As well as “So Good”
which features a steady, dance ready beat. Heads Up is
a moody and sensual album that moves at a faster pace
than previous albums, and is a welcomed change of
pace for Warpaint.
• Kennedy Enns
Wilco
Schmilco
dBpm Records
The most infamous moment of Wilco’s career is their
famous firing from Reprise Records. This came after it
was determined that their magnum opus, Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot, was too inaccessible for wide release. As if the
irony wasn’t great enough that Yankee Hotel would
go onto become a bestseller, with last year’s Star Wars,
Wilco put out the least accessible music of their career.
If Schmilco is any indication, Wilco is going to continue
doing whatever they want.
Schmilco is the quirky fuzz folk record I don’t
think any of us knew we wanted. It’s lean, earthy,
and entirely strange. It opens with an oscillating
guitar line behind a raw acoustic line with all of the
imperfections left intact. Fingers sliding from fret
to fret, the buzz of muted strings permeate several
tracks on the record. Behind frontman Jeff Tweedy’s
youthful pessimism on “Normal American Kids,” the
bedroom folk aesthetic feels naturalistic, even for
such a marquee artist.
The record is a palpable 13 tracks, but they mostly
run around three minutes. Even with the glean of professional
production and major label mastering, some of
the record feels strangely, but intentionally, unfinished.
After the weirdo glory of Star Wars, Wilco keep the
crazy train rolling with an alt-folk extravaganza. It’s
beautifully strange.
• Liam Prost