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
Alvvays
Blue Rev
Alvvays aren’t music, they’re weather. They build slashing fronts of reverb and coastal flange that congeal their best songs— ‘Easy on Your Own?’ is a salt-spiked sister echo of Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” while “Very Online Guy” quilts infinite vocal tracks across a cloudy melodic sky— and to sink into their first album in five years is to sit in your car with rain hammering the roof and tires slershing through gutter puddles while trying to listen to what’s playing on the radio, which you cant without hearing everything else. The wet aural texture isn’t the whole story here— Molly Rankin is one of Canada’s most stylistic and compelling singers and the guitars often go their own way in pop structures firm as corrugated boxes— but it’s still the most salient Climate Change record of the year; a PEI plug-in storm threatening to drown the music and pull it out to sea in the same way Guided by Voices forced you to live with, and embrace, the snaggling cassette buzz and songs that ended abruptly because someone forgot to spool the tape. Curiosity begs to hear Rankin blow-dried after the monsoon, but even if that’s not the move, there’s enough beauty, will and excitement about the band to keep listening through the waves. Streaming tip: start with the remarkable “Pomeranian Spinster” so you don’t miss it.
buy it on bandcamp HERE
Beth Orton
Weather Alive
This curious warm bath of a record features songs like unfinished paintings: beautiful in what’s there, yet aching in what’s not. Seated in a 4 piece jazz ensemble-- less expected folktronica, more Tranzac-style playing around the edges of the songs-- I worry a little bit if there’s enough weight to support Orton’s vocal dissolutions: singing that fades at the end of her phrasing like someone drifting into sleep or a tide pulling away on a beach. But when the playing fills rather than empties-- see “Haunted Satellite”-- this album is a softly-lit journey that takes the listener down a singular road of piano swells, reverberating melody and brushes on snares that chitter like small animals in a wall. It’s a chilly weather construction; good for autumn and rolling under that blanket you remember leaving under that pillow twelve months ago.
Buy it on Bandcamp HERE
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