November 12, 2022
Phoenix, July Talk and The Reklaws
This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing in our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini
Phoenix
Alpha Zulu
While mocked at home, I welcome the coming of winter. For me, the new dark months signal falling into satisfying and familiar routines after a long absence, anticipating the quiet of the cold and the warmth of a heated place after time spent outdoors (musician Chris Brown has always said: “Canada isn’t cold. It’s warm.”) One of these rites of the new dark months involves music-- how we hear it, engage with it, absorb it. Summer music splashes and jumps and find us darting from one place to another on the hot fast streets, but November music breathes under a doorframe or over wainscotting while you stare into a soapy kitchen sink after dinner, the room cleared, the evening falling early after Daylight Savings as the Bluetooth bleeps to life. Because nobody’s kids are outside chittering on the sidewalk and nobody’s building an engine in the garage two houses over, the world grows quiet and we’re drawn inward, making more room for whatever you’re punching into your phone or grabbing from your record stack. Standing at the sink, I’m a little more alone with the music, especially when it’s new, and my mind isn’t thinking about what I’m doing later because there’s less to do this time of the year. November music serves its full breadth of days, occupying open aural spaces for records like Phoenix’s “Alpha Zulu,” which I enjoyed last week before the start of the Leafs game, another thing best enjoyed during the cold months.
The album bounces along on sticky synth lines and butterscotch melodies, with one hand reaching back to bubblegum, the other to the Holodeck. Phoenix (love the name!) marry the adventures of modern pop music-- keyboard-driven and heavily treated drums and guitars-- with traditional song shapes, and, in a way, they’re a group for everyone, provided you’re not too trenchant in your tastes. “Alpha Zulu”-- the title refers to a phrase that bandleader Thomas Mars heard a pilot repeat during a turbulent flight-- zigs and zags in tempo, but it’s with a soft zed and a gentle bristle that sweeps the listener in. Phoenix are friendly the way, say, Vampire Weekend are friendly, and unpretentious almost despite their European cool (Mars is Versaillese). I was about halfway through the record when I happened upon “Artefact,” a sparkling and joyful tune that reminded me of Talking Heads “Naive Melody” and had me twisting and moving while prone on the sectional, which is often the way one dances when listening to November music. Phoenix have been a cohesive musical presence for seven albums now, enduring across musical waves. Sometimes, being trend-proof is the brightest badge of all.
Listen HERE
July Talk
After This (advance album track)
This is a dynamic, giddy composition, full of immediacy. The performance is shared among its participants so that one singer’s melody and lyric falls to the next which falls to a collection of urgent guitar riffs carrying the song to its dramatic siren of an ending. It’s never a given that a band at this critical stage of their career will push as hard as July Talk sound like they’re pushing here-- just getting to this point of public awareness often requires unreplenishable energy-- but this song seized me by the collar and threw me around the room, promising that whatever follows in the upcoming full length may prove a real companion to our times.
Listen on Bandcamp HERE
The Reklaws
Good Ol’ Days
The Reklaws want to return to the “Good Ol’ Days” of their album title, but they also want it auto-tuned with slide guitar loops. The Cambridge, Ontario duo evokes a Westworld or “Boy and His Dog” unintended dystopia-- the cowboys are robots! the cowboys are robots!-- and even though there are lyrical pastiches that share a vision of Canada sometimes ignored by other musicians-- the loneliness of being one of the few 2 am cars at the all-night gas bar and snack shop; exhausted after work and looking for something to happen, but finding nothing because so much of our country is made up of towns whose main streets close at 11 from Sunday to Thursday-- “Good Ol’ Days” would be better served with less self-consciously modern production and a deeper push into the lyrical heart of its songs. In one instance, singer Jenna Walker writes about hating her abusive boss and being harassed by an ex, but she only goes that far, leaving the listener hoping that one day she can get around to telling us more about herself. This record is a little like what happens when your server clears away the bottles and plates whose presence was won after the kind of grand night the duo sings about, then spritzes the table with Lemon Pledge, dousing the room with fake fruit disinfectant where there was once the scent of lie.
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Don’t stop the reviews. Ever! Lol.