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Debut album complex and precocious

Mo Kenney
Mo Kenney (New Scotland Records and Pheromone Recordings, 2012)
Produced by Joel Plaskett

Reviewed by Natalie Zina Walschots

Waverly, Nova Scotia’s Mo Kenney displays precocious emotional awareness and subtlety on her self-titled debut. Released jointly on New Scotland Records and Pheromone Recordings, Mo Kenney alternately soothes and challenges, sweet but never saccharine, smirking but not impertinent. The album was produced by Joel Plaskett at his studio, Scotland Yard,  where Kenney has been collaborating since 2011. It also features Plaskett’s  input on guest vocals and instrumentation. Kenney and Plaskett co-wrote the songs “Scene of the Crime” and “Deja Vu.” While Plaskett’s influence is undoubtedly deeply felt, it is Kenney’s voice and vision that ultimately shapes the album.

And speaking of voice, there is no doubt that Mo Kenney’s vocals form the centrepiece of this album. The most immediate point of comparison is Cat Power, but her tone is at once deeper and more buttery, recalling an early k.d. lang. Emotive, expressive and deeply sensual, her voice leads the listener like a golden thread through the narrative of each track, adding cheeky defiance to “Sucker,” languid poise to “The Great Escape” and a complete re-interpretation of the David Bowie track (and only cover on the album) “Five Years.”

Though only twenty-two now, Kenney has been writing songs since she was much younger; indeed, the album’s plaintive opening track, “Eden,” was originally set down when she was only sixteen. It’s not necessarily her talent that seems remarkable–it’s not unheard of for skill to bless the young (and Kenney has been studying music since she was a very small child)–but her clarity of vision and direction. These songs have a sense of unity, sophistication and drive. While certainly Kenney has had the benefit of powerful guiding forces, such as Plaskett and Ron Sexsmith, her character and her heart define this debut: both as calming and stormy as the sea, complex as the sweet sting of salt water.


Natalie Zina Walschots is a music writer, poet, journalist and editor based in Toronto, Ontario.

A few gems at WORK

WORK: Annual UVic BFA Visual Arts showcase
April 19-27, Visual Arts building, UVic
Free and open to the public

Reviewed by Blake Jacob

The annual UVic Visual Arts showcase, WORK, is taking place until April 29. The show is curated beautifully in the many spacious rooms of the Visual Arts building, and features projects of over 40 undergraduate students. These are young artists who are finding their way, so the works on display demonstrate various levels of maturity. However, interspersed among the studies of marijuana paraphernalia and photographs of pensive-looking cheerleaders are a few unique gems.

One outstanding work is a series of untitled portrait photographs by Claire Aitken. The artist’s knowledge of light and shadow led to the successful execution of captivating photos. The portraits are black and white and  displayed in oversized frames. Several groups of showcase attendees lingered at length near these portraits, discussing them animatedly. It seemed clear that this work was well-received.

Another remarkable piece is an untitled painting by Mia Watkins. The painting is beautiful and jarring at the same time. The artist is attentive to detail and chose a fantastic color palette. Unfortunately, the lighting in the area was a bit dim and didn’t give the piece the justice it deserved.

A third noteworthy work is Brittany Giniver’s portrait series “My Mother at 21.” The work is a series of photographs which are recreations of the subject’s mothers. The subjects are styled, posed, and dressed similarly to the subjects of the original photographs, composed in matching settings. Some of the subjects look very much like their mothers; when they are posed in the same setting, the photos beg a double-take. Other subjects are so dissimilar in appearance to their mothers that the juxtaposition provokes thought. It would have been powerful to see more non-white families in the series, but the work still raises questions despite its lack of diversity.

The showcase is worth a visit to see the memorable pieces that stand out from the crowd.

Blake Jacob is a Vancouver Island poet whose essential nutrients are optimism, wordsmithery, and captivating melody.

 

Québecoise fable charms reader

The Douglas Notebooks
By Christine Eddie, translated by Sheila Fischman
Goose Lane Press, 178 pages,  $19.95

Reviewed by Arleen Paré

Charming is the word. The Douglas Notebooks is a charming story captured in a small, charming book. Fable-like and bitter-sweet, the narrative ends on page 160; the last eighteen pages constitute a useful set of endnotes entitled “Credits (in order of appearance).” Despite its size, Notebooks packs an ambitious punch. It not only tells the magical story of Douglas and Éléna, it also critiques a period of historical resource, urban and social development, describing the effects of human greed. At the same time it reveals the effects of the Holocaust on one of the main characters. None of the topics is out of place in this tale; they fit together to complete a very satisfactory read.

In addition to Christine Eddie’s deft integration of characters, plot and history, she seduces the reader with language. She writes, “After his second winter in the woods, loneliness fell on Romain like a bear on a butterfly,” using imagery so arresting that the reader is able to absorb the full weight of his sadness. In another chapter, Éléna reassures Douglas (aka Romain) that she loves him despite his difficult childhood by saying, “I would have liked you even if you were an earthquake.” Later, in the city, “the buildings pour their staircases onto the sidewalks.” This translation by Sheila Fischman, a well-established, award-winning Québecoise translator, is so convincing one could easily imagine it was originally written in English, except that the language is curiously heightened, enriched by a generous sprinkling of fresh poetic idioms.

The two romantic characters are misfits who find each other in a thick forest. They triumph over mean family backgrounds and physical challenges. Although the whole book is sweet (and I mean that only in the best sense of the word), the beginning is the sweetest and most poetic part of the book. I wanted it to go on and on–like a fairytale. But the story divides in two. Tragedy, also known as reality, crashes into their idyllic home. The fallout, the rest of the story, revolves around Rose, the daughter of Douglas and Éléna.

It is a fable, a fairytale with a substantial measure of contemporary social criticism. Like a good fairytale, it is hard to determine exactly where it takes place, which should make it solidly universal. And although it might be universal, somehow the place is important. I wanted to know where the story was happening. The place names are mainly French; I kept, picturing small villages on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. This is part of the mystery. Nevertheless, wherever it really does take place, it is well worth the read.

Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer whose forthcoming book of poetry, Lake of Two Mountains, will be released by Brick Books in Spring 2014.

Veggie video sure to satisfy

Trent Freeman
Hot Spot for a Hobo

Reviewed by Andrea E.

Sliced and diced vegetables are the stars of fiddle player Trent Freeman’s music video, Hot Spot for a Hobo. One of the six music videos nominated for a Vancouver Island Music Award (VIMA), it has flawless timing—Freeman’s fiddle and the camera move in perfect time with arranged, cut, transformed, and beautifully lit vegetables and fruits. These seeds, roots, tubers, and flowers of vegetables are melodious, and surely organic, for not only do vegetable-fruit puppets play instruments made of themselves, but they also move, respond, and cavort to Hot Spot for a Hobo’s jazzy melody.

Freeman’s album Rock Paper Scissors (2012) is also nominated for VIMA for Instrumental or Experimental Album of the Year (one of three in this category). “Hot Spot for a Hobo” is the second song off this album which twenty-four year old Freeman chose as the signature music video. Freeman explains, “the sound of chopping knives and the aggressive drum beat” were twin sounds he heard in the writing of “Hot Spot for a Hobo.” Logically, as Freeman “has played with food all his life,” this led to the concept of a vegetable-puppet video narrative, “a brain-wave that might be fun.” A day was used to create the vegetable-fruit puppets, they “rested overnight in the fridge,” and the following day the improvisation began.

With the assistance of his cousin Adrian Murray, Freeman directs, shoots and edits (with a Canon T3i) the video, demonstrating that to be a joyful artist is to first understand your art. The result: this crystal-clear video, sliced and arranged by Freeman, is the most musically and visually aligned of the six nominees.

Trent Freeman is one of those adventuresome musicians who returned to BC with an added layer of sophistication and finesse. The Hot Spot for a Hobo music video reflects Freeman’s artistic growth, and his quirky-sharp humour.  And there are riddles in this video, too–here is a clue from Freeman: “Are the puppets relaxing or being boiled?”

Trent Freeman will be playing the Vancouver Island Music Festival July 12th -14th

Andrea E., aka Country Heart, is a fourth-year UVic writing student who lives for any sound with a twang or a slide in it. You can hear Country Heart on CFUV later this spring.

Singers elegantly recreate early music

Stile Antico
Passion and Resurrection: Music for Lent and Eastertide
Alix Goolden Hall, Victoria Conservatory of Music

Reviewed by Konstantin R. Bozhinov.

Stile Antico’s recent interpretation of Renaissance vocal masterworks was elegant and polished without sounding too pompous. The singers combined great ensemble work with artistic awareness and deep understanding of the music.

In his introductory remarks, one of the singers called Goolden Hall a “rather intimate space.” Smaller than Wigmore or Carnegie Halls, the space is just fine for twelve a capella singers. The group’s  crystalline sound and vibrato was typical of the English choir tradition,  a sound established by the Tallis Scholars and King’s College choir a few decades earlier. This aesthetic can come across as restrained and conservative, but Stile Antico’s version suggested precision and attention to detail. Clarity of diction reinforced ensemble cohesiveness, although the style of the music dictates independence of each of the parts.

The program consisted mainly of English 16th century composers, interspersed with Spanish and French pieces. The concert was themed around Lent and Easter and most of the text was in Latin. Pieces by John Taverner, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd showcased the best musical achievements of the English Renaissance, while Spain was represented by Cristobal de Morales and Tomas Luis de Victoria. The only French pieces were by Crequillon and Lheritier. Since the overall style of the music was the same, Stile Antico provided diversity through insightful interpretation.

John McCabe’s Woefully arrayed, written for Stile Antico, was a surprising modern end to the first half of the concert. The performance was top notch, but the composition itself did not fit the overall program. The second half balanced this deficiency through more elaborate dynamics and musical detail. The last piece was the brief but virtuosic In resurrectione tua by William Byrd, a fine way to end. The encore offered Thomas Campion, a slightly later composer with a distinctly different style.  Its brief phrases and lack of voice independence almost mocked the complicated polyphony of the entire program, showing that there is beauty in simplicity.

To my ear, the group creates a brilliant Renaissance sound I’d call elegant and refined. Stile Anticoi is well on its way to becoming a leading early-music a capella group.

Konstantin R. Bozhinov is a Ph.D. student in historical musicology at UVic, as well as a professional performer on the lute and baroque guitar.

Steph MacPherson plays it safe

Steph MacPherson
Bells and Whistles (Cordova Bay Records, 2012)

Reviewed by Noah Cebuliak

Victoria Singer-Songwriter Steph MacPherson is up for three VIMA’s this year: BC-wide artist of the year, Island artist of the year, and Island pop/rock album of the year, for 2012’s Bells and Whistles. MacPherson has been working hard since 2009 to develop her own brand of infectious, radio-friendly folk-pop and is rightly gaining more notoriety for her efforts.

Bells and Whistles is Steph MacPherson’s debut full-length and was released in Canada last April, and in the United States this January. It’s an album that solidifies MacPherson’s direction and musical intent firmly in the mainstream, for better or worse, and demonstrates her ability to consistently write hooky and accessible songs. Bells and Whistles is exquisitely produced–I could not find one technical error throughout the course of the album. Her voice is perfect and mixed well, and her backing band and arrangements are equally tight–a clearly curated vision of a solid pop album made manifest.

I envy and honour MacPherson’s work ethic and her polish. At the same time, this is an album I can’t really dig into. Maybe that’s because it doesn’t offer much beyond the surface. It’s catchy and some of her lines were rotating in my head for days, but during the same period of listening to Bells, I was tethered to a host of other acclaimed albums, including: Lianne La Havas’ Is Your Love Big Enough, Wake Owl’s Wild Country, and Brian Blade Fellowship’s Perceptual. Comparing albums across genres is a dangerous move, but necessary I feel. And Bells and Whistles didn’t stand up. My attention went elsewhere. Maybe it’s because every song on the record sounds mostly the same, or doesn’t satisfactorily address themes of real depth, or because MacPherson’s voice is just a bit too affected (read: Sarah MacLachlan). There’s no room for mistakes, for the human quality, for vulnerable edge, that elusive puzzle piece I found on the other albums mentioned above.

Steph MacPherson could take her obvious well of talent to the feet of Neko Case or Kathleen Edwards and really learn to integrate her hooks and charm into something original and compelling. Bells and Whistles borders on an alternative country sound much of the time; I think she would do well to push it over the line. How would a Randy Travis or George Fox-produced sophomore LP from MacPherson sound, for example? Or a dusty, open and unhindered live-to-tape approach? I wonder if MacPherson has listened to Nebraska. Can someone get this woman a 4-track?

Bells and Whistles is a good album. And that’s just it. I long to see the gritty side of MacPherson—the dangerous, the unreserved—in future releases. If MacPherson can let herself go just a little bit, she’ll be onto something fresh and original. Feist’s Monarch wasn’t exactly a portent of what was to come either, so I remain hopeful, if not slightly impatient.


Noah Cebuliak is a Montréal-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who leads the indie-folk-pop trio Ghost Lights. He independently released his debut EP in November 2012. Check out www.ghostlights.ca.

Anniversary play inhabits past and present

Ray Frank: The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West
A 150th Anniversary Play
Written by Jennifer Wise
Directed by Liza Balkan
at Congregation Emanu-El Synagogue
Workshop Production, April 11, 2013

Reviewed by Leah Callen

My first honest-to-God reaction was: ooh, good title! Then I was amazed that I was watching a play about the real-life spectacle of a woman preaching at a synagogue back in 1895, inside the actual synagogue where it all happened.

Stratford, Ontario, actor and director Liza Balkan directed The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West, written by University of Victoria Associate Professor Jennifer Wise. 

The Hebrew Ladies’ Association is all a flutter about a female rabbi taking the helm at their synagogue. But who is this controversial Ray Frank? Is she a man-woman? Is she a preacher or a performer, a show-girl or a prophet of Israel? Will this Hebrew cowgirl really preach about heartthrobs of Israel or Milton or Shakespeare? Is she really *shudder* an actress? The newspapers of the day compared Ray Frank to Confucius, Moses, Buddha and Christ. In reality, she refused to be ordained to avoid taking orders, to have the freedom to speak her conscience. She was simply a gifted preacher.

The female characters in this play giggle and swoon as enthusiastically about suffrage as romance, deal with the money while the men argue; one even reads tarot cards. They persuade the men to give this female rabbi the unheard honour of leading the congregation at Yom Kippur, the holiest night in their religion. Despite gender expectations of the day, this crew was pretty forward thinking and pretty cool. In a clever stroke, the actresses switched into male roles with a simple costume change. The theme of this play was equality and the staging suited it. It was also exciting that the play took advantage of the whole building. I was seated in the balcony and had an actress sing right in front of me, as if I were time travelling to the past with her.

The build-up to Frank’s arrival stretched out a bit, but overall I enjoyed the verve of the star-struck actresses. Their characterizations were human. At first, the gender of the spiritual superstar is left a mystery. When Ray preaches, she surprises her fans with stage fright, far from the theatrics they’re expecting. I found it moving, seeing the past converge with the present as Canadian College of Performing Arts graduate Adriana Revalli channelled the feminist preacher from the actual altar of the synagogue, menorahs alight as she spoke. Frank’s message was an end to prejudice. She sees God in the forests and in art, and she makes a poetic prophecy that in the future, their “daughters will sing from the Torah.” The scene celebrated diversity and tolerance.

In the play, Ray Frank calls the synagogue a jewel in the city of Victoria that sparkles with enlightened minds and liberal hearts. But her presence polishes the place and casts “a radiant, golden light over this congregation,” helping others to see their own value. She encourages the women to go for more education, and the men to higher ambitions, for everyone to turn over new leaves. She made people “feel.” Samuel D. Schultz went on to become Canada’s first Jewish judge after she lit him up with the spirit, literally pitching ideas and a baseball to him.

For me, the highlight of the show occurred with the cast’s heartfelt folksong in Hebrew, Shalom chaverim: “Peace, friends, till we meet again.” It was gorgeous; Revalli’s vibrato itself was like warm honey. Is it strange to say it made me wish I was Jewish? I wished I knew the words and could join in as the audience harmonized with the cast. It was a gift to hear.

As I was leaving the synagogue, a young Jewish woman next to me rejoiced that the members would finally be able to fix a crack in the building with donations from the evening. Wise’s play made me appreciate this spiritual home, so I was glad to hear it. I really hope Emanu-El will keep shining in our city.

Leah Callen is an aspiring poet-playwright-screenwriter studying at the University of Victoria.

Vancouver’s Litany thrills audience

Litany Reading Series
Gallery Gachet,  Vancouver
Sunday, April 7

Reviewed by Dorothy June Fraser

The first Litany Reading of the year (back in January) was so well-attended it almost burst the small comfy surroundings of the Rhizome Cafe on E. Broadway in Vancouver. So well-attended that I couldn’t get in.  On April 7, Gallery Gachet on Cordova offered a larger space to house the queer reading series.  This larger-but-still-packed event was certainly a success for co-hosts Leah Horlick and Esther McPhee, both graduate students with the University of British Columbia’s creative writing department.

Horlick and I chatted briefly after the evening had wound down about the influences on the creators and the origin of the event. The series itself takes its name from Audre Lorde’s poem, “A Litany for Survival.” When co-creators McPhee and Horlick noticed a dearth of queer, anti-oppressive spaces and readings in Vancouver (with few exceptions, notably the thrilLITERATE series which was organized by Vancouver-based queer author Amber Dawn from 2007 to 2012), the two engineered the Litany reading series .

The evening introductions started with pronoun usage, identity and biography. Readers laid bare their histories in this safe space and were appreciated for exactly the person they identify as, whether the pronoun be she, he, or they. The showcase of five readers, with Adam Douba unfortunately out sick, contributed life experiences that most of the audience could relate to. First reader, Fayza Bundalli, explored rites of passage through coming out. Her frank, embodied performance of queer creative non-fiction was an excellent introduction to the Litany atmosphere. Kiran Sunar’s unfinished manuscript work about brown family queerness and diasporic existence in the Fraser Valley was impassioned poetry trapped in prose sentences. Nat Marshik’s short poems were sweet honey in my ears, a quick whisper of love affairs. Christina Cooke’s evocative short fiction brought sense memories of “home” into the gallery. The featured reader, Jacks McNamara, a Bay Area genderqueer artist, brought the house down with sexy queerotica. Jacks cooed short, punctuated bursts of radiant orgasm. I adored the high these writers gave me, and I floated out of the Gachet.

The next Vancouver reading will occur some time this summer. Check Facebook or Tumblr for updates.

Dorothy June Fraser is an MA History in Art student at UVic and the online gallery curator for Plenitude Magazine.

 

Author creates credible teen character

The New Normal
By Ashley Little
Orca Book Publishers,  222 pages, $12.95
 
Reviewed by Marcie Gray

Alberta writer Ashley Little really knows how to make an entrance.

Her first novel for young adults, The New Normal, jumps right into the crisis at hand: the main character, Tamar, is shedding. She’s 16 and is losing her hair–and not just the hair on her head. It’s falling out everywhere, from her private parts to her eyelashes. I say “private parts,” but she uses more graphic language. The first page is a bit of a shock for me, a mother who is thinking about whether this book is something I’d like my daughter to read when she hits her teens. I’m used to the softer, safer language of leading female characters in books like The Hunger Games and Twilight. Bella would never talk about her pubic hair. Hell, her relationship with the gentleman vampire Edward is so sanitized that even now I can’t visualize them naked.

Little has no problem exposing her character, but she doesn’t spend much time exploring why Tamar is becoming a “chrome dome.” It might be a rare disease. It might be from stress, as Tamar’s younger sisters recently died in a car crash, leaving her parents devastated.  The story isn’t about the mystery of the hair loss; rather, it’s about how Tamar deals with it. This quest broadens as she finds herself trying to make peace with her dead sisters and make whole her family once again.

The writing is clean and conversational; the book reads like a diary, as we listen to Tamar confessing her story in first person. At times the logic is a bit faulty, and the author, perhaps trying to show just how tenacious Tamar is, gives her an extra challenge–an unnecessary challenge, I think. But otherwise there’s not much to trim, as Little weaves tight, spare pictures. In one chapter, the writing is so vivid and piercing that you are in the room, having an acupuncture needle pulled out of your back with a “sharp sucking sound.”  No surprise that this visit to a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine began as a short story; the author later expanded it into the current novel. It shows that with close editing, Little’s writing truly shines.

Ultimately, I ask myself whether this book is one I’d pass on to my daughter, and there’s no doubt I would. Tamar shows incredible resilience, and that’s the one quality I think our kids need today as they enter the sometimes scary and always challenging world of high school. Although Tamar is, at times, too resilient to be believable (I just can’t buy the scene where she’s ready to skip the wig and go bald to the prom), she still comes across as an authentic character. She is a teen who tries, risks, fails, succeeds, and yes, swears. For a role model, I’d pick her over Bella any day.

Marcie Gray acquired her appreciation for spare, conversational writing as a reporter and producer for CBC Radio. Today she’s at work on her own young adult novel.

 

Wild Belle brings reggae into the city

Wild Belle
Isles (Columbia Records, 2013)
Produced by Elliot Bergman and Bill Skibbe

Reviewed by Blake Morneau

Isles, the debut album from New York’s Wild Belle, accomplishes an incredible task: It bridges the gap between the seemingly disparate genres of indie-pop and roots reggae. More impressive is how the familial duo transfuses the two genres without allowing any of the winking irony often associated with the lo-fi indie movement to invade their brand of sunny, love-torn reggae music.

The first moments of the heavy dub of the opening “Keep You,” complete with wailing saxophone solo, make it clear that Wild Belle knows their reggae. It’s not until the saccharine voice of singer Natalie Bergman enters the fray that we know this is anything different from any other reggae release. Though Bergman’s voice sounds overwhelmed by the powerful dub of the opening, by the second track, “It’s Too Late,” her voice is oozing with confident glam-swagger as she bids adieu to the lover who tossed her aside.

Bergman, with her sweetly disconnected voice, is the star of this album. Whether she’s urging a prospective suitor to let down his veneer of cool in “Take Me Away,” or singing from the view of a staunch materialist in “Twisted,” (“What’s the definition of love if it isn’t material things”) Bergman’s smoky sunniness is perfectly suited to the bouncy electro-reggae that permeates the album.

It’s a blessing and a curse that Bergman’s star shines so brightly because it means that her brother, multi-instrumentalist Elliot Bergman (co-founder of Afrobeat outfit Nomo), doesn’t get as much time in front of the mic as he deserves. When he does take lead vocal duties on “When It’s Over,” he brings an earthy, rock-tone to the music reminiscent of Canadian rock hero Sam Roberts. Sitting in the last third of the album, the song offers a welcome curveball from the New York-indie vocals his sister brings.

For all the vocal talent on display, the music the Bergman siblings have crafted to complement their impressive vocals is genuinely awesome. Isles takes its name from the genre-hopping spirit of the album, with each song representing its own little sonic island. This is an album where soul, funk and acid-jazz all fit neatly into the reggae mix, creating a sonic stew equally at home in the pitch black midnight of a Friday night or on a sunny weekend morning. It’s music for the party and the hangover.

Blake Morneau is a lover of aural pleasure who has been writing about his passion for nearly two years. Follow him on Twitter @MusicRags