Author Archives: gus

Amis’s anti-hero Lionel Asbo: violent seduction

Lionel Asbo: State of England
By Martin Amis, Knopf, $29.95

Reviewed by Lynne Van Luven

Witty. Profane. Excoriating. But possibly just a tad too long?

That’s my postcard review of Martin Amis’s new work of fiction, his 15th, written from his perch in Brooklyn, from which he does indeed have the long view on Britain. As ever, I derive readerly delight from Amis’s coruscating and corrosive view of society – in this case, London’s working class of Diston Town, a populace determined to either rise above or brandish a life of crime – and his relentless wordplay. But as I got to about page 175, I found myself wondering if, like so many satires (Amis says he’s being ironic) firmly embedded in the awfulness of now, Lionel Asbo would have much of a shelf-life, even with its dedication to Christopher Hitchens.

The novel proves Milton’s thesis in Paradise Lost: that evil is always far more entertaining than good. Lionel Asbo, self-named after the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, a restraining directive occasioned by his tossing paving stones through car windshields at the advanced age of THREE, is the dark, roiling heart of Amis’s novel. Lionel’s life of constant crime is derailed by his lottery win: he becomes Lotto Lout Lionel and bespoils many a bespoke suit, posh hotel and rich woman. His nephew Desmond Pepperdine, only child of Lionel’s deceased sister Cilla, is intelligent and earnest; Des acquires a wife and baby daughter after he gets over boinking his Gran, but he cannot hold a torch to the ceaseless revenge-drama of his Uncle Li’s life.

Of course, Lionel (a yob-oik hybrid) lurches from the page as a larger-than-life caricature, but he’s one in which Amis has invested his love. The reader can never escape the threat of Lionel’s fisted face, his slab-like body, his ceaseless appetite for crime and sex, his truisms (Skirts not worth the trouble. You know where you are in prison.), his horrific abuse of his dogs . . . Lionel’s sweat and semen ooze from almost every page.

So: not a novel for the tender-hearted then. But a tour-de-force, even though Amis signals his ending from the very first epigram: Who let the dogs in? . . . This, we fear, is going to be the question.

Lynne Van Luven is the editor of Coastal Spectator

Singer Edwards Takes Listeners Places

Voyageur
By Kathleen Edwards
Maple Music 2011
Produced by Justin Vernon and Kathleen Edwards

Reviewed by Andrea June

Kathleen Edwards’ fifth CD, Voyageur, makes me feel like I’m flying. And that’s probably one of the reasons it was short-listed for the Polaris Prize.

With an unadorned voice sometimes reminiscent of a boy soprano, Edwards’s lyrical melodies glimmer over a wash of acoustic and electric mid-ranges, and deep, pulsing rock drum beats and bass. Her impressive collection of sounds, including guitars, vibraphone, synth, organ, violin, rhodes (yum!), and choir, among others, can seem oversaturated at times, but the powerful beats provide a foundation that keeps the lyrical melodies and atmospheric arrangements driving forward.

What I really like about this album is the nonstop, sustained sounds of the choir-like vocalizations, synth, organ and other instruments of that syrupy potential. These sounds shimmer above the song like ethereal connective tissue, giving me a sense of lift and expansion. Edwards’s lead vocals are sometimes joined in octaves by other voices or instruments, enhancing this sense of space. It’s like the sonic equivalent of an aerial view. I can’t help but think of sprawling wild landscapes and big skies – of voyaging.

As I listened, I wished I could understand more of the lyrics. Edwards has a choir-like vocal technique, which makes little of consonants or dipthongs, instead favouring the wide-open vowels. This sound contrasts well with the flurry of instruments around the singer, but sometimes also makes lyrics difficult to discern. But the mixing is primarily to blame for this. Edwards’s lead vocals are often faded to the level of back-up vocals. There are some songs where the mix puts the leads up front, such as “Chameleon/Comedian,” and the slower songs like “House Full of Empty Rooms,” and “Pink Champagne.” The effect of louder lead vocals creates an intimacy between performer and listener. Perhaps it is the opposite effect that the uber-blended sound was meant to achieve? Still, I think an effect is not worth completely obscuring the words.

From what I can understand of the lyrics, most songs centre on romantic relationships and associated feelings (longing, regret, fulfillment). There are some lines which stand out as particularly marvellous. For example, in “A Soft Place to Land”:

I’m looking for
a soft place to land
The forest floor
The palms of your hands

What I love about this line is the sense of space created by paralleling the forest floor (macro) and palms of hands (micro) as equally possible places to land. This collapsing and expanding of space, through words and music, is most fascinating about Voyageur. I’m reminded of Rae Spoon, a musician who’s journeyed from classic folk/country toward a more nuanced, electronic sound. Like Spoon, Edwards has also ventured from her previous folk-rock territory. I hope on her next album we’ll hear music that is comfortable in its new body, with a fully realized synthesis of thoughtful – audible – lyrics.
Andrea June is a Victoria-based singer/songwriter; find more of her work at www.autojanszandreajune.com

Boyle’s recital kept audience leaning forward

Patrick Boyle, trumpet, flugelhorn, resonator guitar, electric guitar

Featuring:
Brian Anderson, double bass
Jonathan Goldman, accordion
Joanna Hood, viola
Ian McDougall, trombone

Review by Jennifer Messelink

“Tonight someone’s going to get a haircut!!!!”

That phrase was the last thing I expected to hear thundering through the Philip T. Young Recital hall on Friday, Sept. 28, but this was Patrick Boyle’s recital, and having witnessed many of his performances, I should have known it would be remarkable.

Boyle is assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Victoria. CBC Radio calls him a “trumpet personality” and “one of Canada’s top trumpet players and jazz musicians in general.” The audience was treated to an unexpected array of original compositions, jazz standards, and unique improvisation. Boyle described the program as having, “no theme, just melodies I like with people who will tolerate being with me.” Being the tolerant audience we were, we sat back and enjoyed the show.

Boyle opened with Dave Douglas’s “Charms of the Night Sky” joined by Joanna Hood on viola, Jonathan Goldman on accordion and student Brian Anderson on double bass. Dave Douglas is a trumpeter and composer whose music derives from classical, European folk and Klezmer, and his composition was a fitting beginning. The unique orchestration produced a rich texture, with each instrument having a complementary voice. The bird calls, beautiful melodies, and walking bass were seductive and exotic, and the ensemble clearly enjoyed this piece. As a performer and composer Boyle moves easily between the genres but is consistently true to his own style. His composition “Fresh Duds” was written for legendary guitarist Bill Frisell. He calls it country music, and it had distinctive country touches: Hood strumming her viola like a guitar along with a bass solo. Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” Boyle’s Esquimalt-inspired composition “Paradise Found” segued into “Did I Ever” with the Dobro, a resonator guitar, visually beautiful with a distinctive sound. The spacious open chords resonated throughout the recital hall. To finish the first half Boyle was joined by Ian McDougall on trombone for the jazz standard, “Everything Happens To Me,” and he effortlessly switched between trumpet and guitar on McDougall’s composition, “Mc Not Mac- Two”L’s.” As the first half closed, the trombonist said what we were all thinking: “he’s a versatile little bugger isn’t he?”

The second part of the recital began informally with Boyle alone on stage playing a jazzy impressionist interpretation of “The Flintstones” on electric guitar, filled with whole tone runs and resonant harmonics. The final piece of the night, an improvised soundtrack to a 1980s wresting match projected on the wall, was unlike anything I have seen. As a female with no brothers, I have never been exposed to wrestling, especially wrestling circa 1987, in a Detroit stadium filled with 93,000 screaming fans. Imagine, in the dark recital Hall, large men in tight pink shorts and improvised music. “There are a lot of elements in wrestling to be mined, socially and emotionally,” Boyle explained. ”

As the night drew to a close, I reflected on his diverse influences, his ease performing and his comfort with silences. The audience was not overburdened with constant sound; instead, Boyle, utilized silence to give each chord, note and phrase deeper meaning. It is analogous to listening to someone rambling on without much substance, or listening to someone who has wisdom to share, without saying too much: we lean forward attentively in our seats and savor every word and sound.

Jennifer Messelink is a regular reviewer for The Coastal Spectator.

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting Room reflects diversity of society

The Waiting Room
By Anne Schaefer
Baker Studios 2012, Victoria B.C.
A MAPL qualified album (composed, performed, and recorded by a Canadian)

Reviewed By Kelvin Chan

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to categorize Anne Schaefer’s second album, The Waiting Room into any one musical genre. The styles exhibited in the 11 tracks are eclectic: each is linked to one of the 11 “patients” in the “waiting room,” reflecting a condition they suffer from. According to Anne Schaefer, who composed, sang, played, and produced the album herself, life is like a waiting room, where people of different ages, cultural backgrounds and walks of life have one thing in common: they all suffer variously from the human condition.

During my first spin of the CD, it became evident that Anne Schaefer is as multi-faceted as her imaginary characters. Take the opening track, Fragile, for example, where her raspy, thin tone makes Georgia’s condition, “acute sensitivity,” all the more delicate. Or Black Canary, where her playful, seductive teasing breathes life into Dinah’s dark super-heroine fantasy. Schaefer’s collaborators are a talented bunch as well: the prominent cello accompaniment in Elixir is played by Kevin Fox with robust, rich tone, sumptuously blending into the smooth vocal harmonies.

Although each track is largely unique in terms of mood, I noticed that more than half of the CD features prominent piano lead-ins, which helped establish the mood effectively but were just a bit predictable—the rigid timbre of the piano’s recorded sound didn’t help either. It was a welcome change when I arrived at Track 8, which began with the exotic sonorities of a bandoneon probably sampled from a folk band. Titled Chanson d’amour, it is also the only song in the album that is sung in French—in the intoxicating key of B minor, no less.

The whole production is polished: the tracks are well-engineered and recorded. I was especially excitied to read in the liner notes that the album was produced from beginning to end in Victoria’s Baker Studios. Musically speaking, The Waiting Room offers plenty of diversity to satisfy listeners of all types, especially indie enthusiasts who are tired of the predictability of mainstream pop.
The noble, we-are-all-different-but-we-are-all-in-this-together artistic concept behind the album comes across well and raises awareness about the heterogeneity in society. Schaefer reminds us that the human condition, like our options in musical taste, is perhaps more diverse than represented by blind worship of a barely-legal teenage boy or gaga responses to a provocatively dressed woman.

Kelvin Chan is a fourth-year Music student.

Wagamese’s novel delivers sorrow – and hope

Indian Horse

by Richard Wagamese
Douglas & McIntyre
221 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Candace Fertile

Richard Wagamese’s fifth novel, Indian Horse, is a must-read for Canadians as it marries two aspects of the country, one full of glory and one full of shame: hockey and the residential school system. Saul Indian Horse is a young boy when he is taken to one of the worst schools of a largely sorry lot, and he finds some salvation in the wonder of hockey.

Wagamese did not experience the brutality of a residential school, but his parents are survivors, and he has heard countless stories from others who endured horrific treatment, which everyone in the country needs to know about in order to have some small grasp of the challenges First Nations people face. Indian Horse offers readers the chance to see the harm caused by trying to erase another’s humanity, and this harm is not going to vanish quickly.

Saul’s early years are with his family in the bush of Northern Ontario, living a largely traditional Ojibway life. Naomi, Saul’s grandmother, is convinced that the family must hide the children from white people or they will be taken away. She’s right, of course, and the despair felt by Saul’s mother at the loss of children is heart-breaking. That Saul’s parents turn to alcohol is unsurprising. Their addiction further weakens the family even though Naomi tries her best to save Saul. Stories about his great-grandfather, who brought the first horse to Saul’s people, give him a sense of pride in his heritage, which is systematically destroyed when he ends up in the school. And Saul’s own story—the novel—may be his personal path to healing.

Wagamese excels at description. Saul’s narration of the harvesting of wild rice reveals his people’s connection to the land. It also reveals the split between his parents who have adopted Christianity and Naomi who maintains Ojibway beliefs. When cultures collide and one tries to crush the other, massive pain ensues. A belief system, such as Christianity, that celebrates suffering, tolerates and even encourages the infliction of suffering on others. The treatment of the children at the residential school is heart-breaking, and Saul shows how the degradation, both physical and emotional, affects the children and through them, whole cultures.

Relief for Saul comes through hockey, and the mysticism of Saul’s great-grandfather reveals itself in Saul as an extraordinary ability to see plays in hockey. The beauty of hockey motivates Saul to work hard, learning to skate, to pass, to shoot, and to move with an agility and grace that is the hallmark of the greatest hockey players. He does all this on his own after getting up early to clean the ice at the residential school. A kind young priest allows Saul to play hockey, and it’s clear that Saul has a gift.

Hockey becomes his salvation for a while. As Saul says, “We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we’d won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other.”

Clearly having a community is central to happiness. When Saul moves away from his community, things change. On-going racism and the festering wounds caused by the crimes committed against him at the residential school take hold of him, and an excoriating anger results in alcoholism.

This novel had me on the verge of tears at several points, some full of sorrow and some full of joy. Throughout the novel, Richard Wagamese delivers an aching sensitivity and a wondrous hope.

Candace Fertile is a Victoria reviewer and a contributing editor to Coastal Spectator

Memoir explores author’s transplanted life

Kamal Al-Solayee    Photo by Gary Gould/Ryerson

Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes
By Kamal Al-Solaylee
Harper Collins, 204 pages, $27.99

Kamal Al-Solaylee teaches journalism at Ryerson University and is a former theatre critic for the Globe and Mail. He answered Lynne Van Luven’s questions via-email at the end of September. He noted that his memoir has netted responses from “other Arab/Muslim gay men and women and they’ve all been supportive, inspiring.” In Yemeni media, he said, the book has been covered as a gay story, which he considers reductive. Mostly, Prof. Al-Solaylee is “disappointed in the lack of responses from the Arab community in Canada. They chose to ignore it. I was hoping that the book would kick-start a conversation about a number of issues: the pervasive nature of extremism here in Canada and back in our home countries, women’s and gay rights, and our civic participation in Canadian society. Maybe that’s a lot to hope for and maybe that’s to come.” Let’s hope so.
Clearly, you silenced and edited yourself for many years 
prior to writing this book. Can you look back now and see a “catalyst 
moment” that precipitated the idea of finally telling your and your 
family’s stories?

The idea for the book came to me after a particularly distressing visit to the family in Sana’a, Yemen, in 2006. It was my first trip in about five years and I couldn’t get over the rapid decline in both the material and emotional lives of my family. I also started to notice what I would term a disturbing level of religiosity. That visit put into focus the huge gap between my life in Toronto – a safe, privileged and even spoiled life – and that of my family. To illustrate the point, I returned to Toronto after that trip and within a few days I went to New York to review the Broadway opening of The Drowsy Chaperone, the Canadian-penned hit spoof musical about the roaring twenties. It took a few days and before I knew it a complete depression started to set in. A friend suggested I write about that experience which is how the book originated – in sadness and depression.

Towards the end of the book, as you worry on the page about
 your family members, and wonder about the viability of moving everyone to
 Cairo, I found myself thinking that you were suffering from something akin 
to “survivor’s guilt.” What can you say about that?

I never thought of it in such terms (survivor’s guilt) but I guess that’s how I felt and continue to feel. I believed that I betrayed the family, especially my sisters, and abandoned them when they needed me most. The events of the Arab Spring and the civil war in Yemen last year only exacerbated that. I can’t keep thinking that way, however, or I’ll go stir crazy. I have to accept that I made the decisions that were best for my personal, emotional and intellectual survival. Writing this book both helped me think through that and added to the sorrow associated with my decision to separate from the family and my helplessness about it all.

Do you think North Americans can ever begin to truly 
understand the complexity and convoluted cultural history of Arab culture, 
not just in Yemen, but elsewhere in the world? (I always remember
 Margaret Atwood’s veterinarian character Dr. Minnow in Bodily Harm, musing
 about the “sweet Canadians” who do helpful things like sending supplies of 
pork to countries whose inhabitants do not eat it.)

I don’t know if Arab people understand their own culture(s), let alone the North Americans. One of the most distressing aspects of the move to religious extremism in the Middle East has been the shutting down of debate and the marginalization of alternative and dissenting voices. Here in North America, I think we’re suffering from a kind of intellectual laziness. The idea of the general public educating itself on a part of the world by reading extensively about it has been replaced with the histrionics of 24-hour news channels and the banalities of the sound bites and the political messaging. Funny how having too much information – social media, cable networks, bloggers – has led to less not more real understanding of issues.

You comment several times in your memoir about how difficult 
your mother’s and sisters’ lives have been, yet at the same time you are
 frustrated by their tendency to self-sacrifice. Can you elaborate a 
little on how you feel about that now, in the wake of the memoir’s 
publication?

Writing this book has helped me understand the “choices” that all my family, male or female, have made. I put the word choices in quotation marks because I don’t believe that they had any. I should say “reactions” or “responses” because that’s more accurate. I must say that I don’t blame or accuse my family of anything. I’m just trying to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to where they (and I) are now. Strangely enough, the clarity that came with writing the book didn’t help mitigate my heartbreak or made the gap between us any less dramatic.

Had you not been gay, I wonder if you would have ever left 
your family and moved to England and then Canada. Do you ever imagine 
scenarios about what your life would be like if you still lived in the 
Middle East somewhere?

Being gay is so essential to my identity, to my life, that I can’t even think of one where I’m not. I came out of the womb gay! But, speaking hypothetically, it’s quite possible that had I been straight I would have settled with my family in Sana’a and led the proverbial life of quiet desperation. I’m glad that’s not what happened to me. I often say that being gay was the best gift that life gave me. I won the genetic lottery in the family. It allowed me to experience difference. I’m beyond grateful for that. Sometimes I think I would have been a very horrible straight man, given my instincts for self-preservation and my reluctance to sacrifice. My gay self made me more aware of the challenges and beauty of being a human being. I like to think I’m more empathetic because of my sexuality.

Lynne Van Luven is the Editor of Coastal Spectator.

 

Heart-breaking novel captures family disintegration

The Juliet Stories
By Carrie Snyder
Published by House of Anansi, 324 pages, $22.95

Reviewed by: Jenny Boychuk

Let me tell you what you need to know.

This is the assertive voice that, while it doesn’t promise to spare heartbreak, guides readers with a controlled hand through Carrie Snyder’s novel-told-in-stories, The Juliet Stories.

It is 1984. Ten-year-old Juliet Friesen moves to Nicaragua with her two younger brothers and peace-activist parents—who have moved the family from their Indiana home in order to protest American involvement in the country’s post-Revolutionary war.

The novel is composed of two equal parts. In Part One: Amulets, the stories progress over the family’s time in Nicaragua to cover a year and a half. Juliet’s father is often away with his troops, and her mother is left to care for her family, which is in its own state of turmoil. The Friesens are free to be killed in this state of destruction, but also to live without the rules they’ve been accustomed to.

Juliet is a restless child who is preoccupied with trying to understand the world, and her view is anything but isolated. She writes letters to Ronald Reagan and change settles easily with her. She asks questions and is not satisfied with definitions—she needs to know how humans connect. She senses her mother’s increasing distance and vulnerability, how the two are at war within a woman who is supposed to, above all else, make her feel safe. While Juliet doesn’t believe anything could harm her family, she is acutely aware of the endings of things (an eerie foreshadowing): “Imagine that someday everything in the suitcase will no longer exist.” Juliet slips through the home unnoticed as she sees and hears things a child shouldn’t. She asks adult questions but cannot come to adult conclusions; she is “a whole person who is only incidentally a child.”

“The children are watching, the fields are on fire, the animals are screaming from a shed where they have been shut up and set alight, and the bayonet digs into the mother’s belly and pulls out a baby. Tossed to the dogs. The children are watching.”

Part Two: Disruption begins when the family moves back to Canada because one of Juliet’s brothers is ill. It would seem there is no longer any need to fight for peace in this country that is already so “free.” But Juliet does not feel the same freedom she felt in Nicaragua. The Friesens stop fighting for each other and, as Juliet ages, the family falls further apart—one heartbreak at a time.

The stories often feel more like chapters, especially in Part One. The point of view and voice are consistent, the transitions are smooth and one story clearly sets up the next. Part Two covers a much larger span of time and more chaos. The point of view deviates, it seems, when the family is most vulnerable. While this is a bit jarring at times, the form matches the content of the stories wonderfully.

Snyder’s prose is sharp and controlled—simply poetic.

Reading this book was like watching a family after the dinner party is over, after the forced smiles are gone and no is pretending that everything is OK. This honesty is what it means to fill human bones with flesh and blood. It moves far beyond what is black and white and into the deep grey areas of life and of living.

The first sentence of the book is this: “Somewhere between Texas and Managua, their bags go missing.” This is how I felt after finishing the book: you know that things went terribly wrong, but can’t pinpoint where. The first half of the book is necessary for the second to exist, though it seems as though they never touch each other, tied to invisible threads. You can’t quite remember everywhere you’ve been, but you know you’ve experienced something profound. The book is remarkably human in this way. It is a story about humans as they stand next to each other—what they need to take from each other in order to survive.

Read the epigraph after you finish the book. It will shake you.

Jenny Boychuk is a recent graduate of UVIC’s Department of Writing now living in Vancouver.

 

Adventures of a TIFF First Timer

Adventures of a TIFF First Timer

By Connor Gaston

After being exposed to UVic’s student film festival in 2010, I thought, Hmm, maybe I can do that.
In the summer of 2011, I shot my first short, Shoulda Coulda. It got in the following year and, to top it off, received “best director”—but I was happy just to be there.

After that boost to my confidence, I decided to shoot a short every summer. Only one year later, my modest goal paid off: I received the magic phone call and an invitation to premiere my latest short, Bardo Light, at the Toronto International Film Festival, called TIFF by all in the know. I felt like the prettiest girl at the dance.

TIFF-bound on the plane, my giddiness still fresh, I banged away on my laptop, trying to pump out my first feature film script. I looked around the plane, my ego wishing for someone to ask why I was headed to Toronto so that I could adjust my monocle and pronounce, “I’ve been summoned to show my film.” The plane load of non-TIFFers would gasp collectively. In short, I felt like a big shot. When I got off the plane, a TIFF volunteer holding a sign with my name on it added to my euphoria. Of course, my ego quickly deflated once I met fellow filmmakers with more experience, bigger budgets and much better films.

My TIFF experience revolved around movies and parties. If I wasn’t teetering by an open bar, I was in a sold-out theatre. On opening night, I was 10 minutes late for the world premiere of Looper and, if that wasn’t devastating enough already, I missed Joseph Gordon Levitt and director Rian Johnson introduce the film. I was invited to lots of parties, and some bigger parties I was less invited to. I clung to my fellow short filmmakers at the bigger parties for the first few drinks. After enough liquid confidence, I ventured off to schmooze more openly. I talked to producers, actors, distributors, and all types of people in the biz. Nearing the end of the night, I usually was found hunched over the cheese wheel cart, which was somehow endlessly replenished. Every night I stumbled back to the hotel with a handful of business cards, fewer business cards of my own, a silly how-did-I-get-here grin on my face, my pockets bulging with Gouda.

My short film, which I shot with top-quality gear (RED camera) but with a budget of just $50 and a couple of cases of beer for my workers, was the very first one shown in the shorts program. (700 shorts were entered from across Canada, of which 44 were selected.) In front of 250 people, I mumbled an introduction to my film, mostly thanking TIFF and the short-film programmers. The theatre finally went dark, Bardo Light started playing, only to cut to black a few seconds in. Apparently, all last month’s nightmares were actually premonitions. But after a few long minutes of darkness, the projector hummed to life, and I got to see my film played on the big screen. The audience seemed to like it; I thankfully didn’t catch anyone checking their cell phone or whispering, “What the hell is this?” I was instantly humbled by the shorts to come after mine: some with Hollywood production values, others with perfect dark comedy and one expertly crafted experimental documentary which went on to win the short category along with the $10,000 prize. That night I went out in search of more cheese, happy just to be there.

Connor Gaston is in the first-year of his MFA in Writing. Needless to say, his focus is film-making.

 

Review of Auto Janz and Andrea June’s Latest Album

Musical collaboration provides lingering ear-worm

Auto Janz and Andrea June
13-track, album, (MP3 320/FLAC), $10
Released January 2012
Recorded in 1Ton Studios, Victoria, B.C.

Reviewed by Hanna Leavitt

Local musicians Auto Jansz and Andrea June deliver a highly entertaining collection of tribute songs about extraordinary, everyday women from Canada’s past.

The CD’s haunting title track, Red Lights, Money and Wine, is a tribute to the gritty realities of the dying days of Winnipeg’s bordellos at the turn of the century. The exquisite harmonies of the opening four songs are reminiscent of the Emmylou Harris/ Linda Ronstadt/ Dolly Parton sound of the Trio album of 1987. Ian Tyson comes to mind with the Canadiana mood evoked by I’m in Alberta. The harmonica intro of Hanna makes me think of Murray McLauchlan. And Sarah McLachlan could easily have sung Track 10, Tide.

This CD combines the singing/songwriting of Auto on the first half, Andrea June on the second. Spell-binding harmonies are showcased initially. The mood changes in the latter portion of the CD with more experimental songs such as Mary Shelley and Bon Nuit. Occasionally, rhyming schemes often feel forced and predictable, a little too easy.

I’m a writer of creative nonfiction, so I’ve got my own biases. If this album were a work of CNF, I’d commend it as an excellent first draft. Finding one’s unique voice is always the challenge, no matter what the creative endeavour. I’m anxious to hear how the pair’s musical identities develop in future efforts. And the good news is, the duo is taking the fall off to develop a new CD. Check out their new website autojanzandandreajune.com. They’ll tell you how to help them out.

In the meantime, I can’t get Track 6, Long Gone, out of my head. Now that’s a signature Jansz-June tune.

 

Hanna Leavitt is in the first year of her MFA in Writing