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The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra leading the pack

The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra
Follow My Lead, Lead Me To Follow (2012)
Produced by David Travers-Smith

Reviewed by Noah Cebuliak

The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra is a dynamic folk-roots outfit hailing from Victoria, whose latest release, Follow My Lead, Lead Me To Follow, spans multiple genres and moods, delighting those who may have grown weary of the typical Canadian folk album. They’re up for a VIMA this year for “Island Artist of the Year” and they’re my personal pick for the award.

Follow My Lead is TTMO’s third full-length studio release since its inception in 2008, and is the band’s most polished and varied effort to date. The album has a distinct feel of being influenced by the exotic and the foreign, with dashes of celtic, gypsy, tango and flamenco, while at once retaining an accessible and catchy vibe. “Canoe Song,” “Lives Be Brave,” and “What We See” are my favorite tunes, all exhibiting best the crisp production of David Travers-Smith (Snowblink, The Wailin’ Jennys) combined with great songwriting and tasteful instrumentation that exemplifies the record as a whole.

Follow My Lead isn’t just a nice folk album with world flavors though–there’s a real sense of urgency present in the songs, a desire to tell stories that are meaningful, direct and distinct. These are traveler’s anthems, describing the wonder and disbelief of being alive and of being a citizen of this vast country, making it a clear choice as musical accompaniment for your next road-trip through the mountains.

Indeed, what’s so refreshing about Follow My Lead is that it’s not just a barrel of love songs with pretty metaphors and weeping violins (though there are some wild fiddle sections)–here TTMO seem to have matured far beyond the typical subjects into deeper waters: being a student of Life, pondering our ancestors, praising and respecting our mother Earth.

Apart from releasing a solid album in Follow My Lead, Lead Me To Follow, The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra is also involved in many community initiatives around land use and sustainability, indigenous arts and culture, and youth at risk. Beyond creating inspired and unique original music, as well as having become known for their juicy live shows, TTMO is a band that demonstrates their love for their community of which they have grown. In today’s music scene, it is rare to find bands that are committed to using their positions of visibility for the benefit of the entire society–through their music and values, The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra leads the field.

Watch for The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra on tour and at festivals this summer. Follow My Lead, Lead Me To Follow is available now on Bandcamp, along with their entire catalogue at www.tequilamockingbirdorchestra.bandcamp.com.

 

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.

Power behind performances convinces

Maladjusted
Theatre for Living
March 8-24
Firehall Arts Centre, Vancouver
Ended March 24, 2013

Reviewed by Mark Leiren-Young

Almost thirty years ago David Diamond began drawing inspiration from global theatrical innovator Augusto Boal, creator of “Theatre of the Oppressed,” to inspire his work with Vancouver’s Headlines Theatre. After working with Boal–one of a handful of people on the planet to have pioneered an internationally recognized form of theatre–Diamond created his own way to tell stories with local communities and developed his own form, “Theatre for Living.” It’s not as catchy a name as “Theatre of the Oppressed,” but it’s catching on worldwide. It’s the name of his book, written at Boal’s urging, and also the new name of the theatre company formerly known as Headlines.

Theatre for Living the company made its debut March 8 at the Firehall with Maladjusted–a show designed to explore the challenges facing Canadian mental health care in an age where all systems are becoming less personal and more . . . systems.

A Theatre for Living production works in two acts.

Act one tells a story full of complications. In this case a teenaged girl, who may be clinically depressed or may simply be grieving, is diagnosed by a doctor who looks at the chart without ever looking at the girl or her needy and likely alcoholic mother. Meanwhile the doctor’s co-worker–a social worker with a heart of gold but no time to have a heart–tries to help a guy off the streets and into home care. The catch? He’s on prescription meds and the only available room is in a place that’s all about drug rehab and takes his meds away to be assessed and approved by a doctor who’s never there. Problems ensue, followed by chaos.

In Act Two members of the audience get to yell “freeze” and insert themselves in the action, replacing the character they relate to in the hopes of finding a solution.

The actors are cast by Diamond after creating the material through a workshop process that translates their own experiences, and the experiences of dozen of others into theatre.

And while the acting in the show is uneven, the power behind the performances is unmistakable. Theatre for Living productions open with built-in gravitas–not just because they explore vital issues, but because they engage communities in searching for solutions.

In this case someone was on hand to record all the suggestions and interactions in order to create what Diamond told me is, “a policy document that suggests either implementation or removal of policies that would enhance human-centered care in mental health–the policies having been articulated via the theatre process, the voice of people living the issues.”

The results will be presented to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health and the Canadian Nurses Association. So audiences don’t just get the chance to see a play, but potentially affect public policy–which seems like the perfect ride from Theatre of the Oppressed to Theatre of the Empowered.

 

Mark Leiren-Young is a playwright, filmmaker and author who lives in Vancouver

 

Gratitude raises a roof

Hodaya! (Various Victoria artists)
Sunday, March 23, 2013
Alix Goolden Hall

Reviewed by Jennifer Louise Taylor

Hodaya! was an evening of musical entertainment which spanned the globe, flooding back to our small city in waves of joyous sound. The concert was a truly remarkable evening in aid of Congregation Emmanu-el’s much-needed roof repair plans. Victoria’s only synagogue  (that beautiful brick building at the corner of Blanshard and Pandora) is the oldest house of worship in B.C., as well as the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Canada.

Hosted by Jo-Ann Roberts of CBC’s All Points West, Hodaya, which means gratitude, celebrated community building through culture. Diverse artists  offered a smorgasbord of world-class samplings from spoken word, classical and jazz to Indian tablah, Portuguese Fado, new-world Celtic and traditional Persian music.

Victoria’s third Poet Laureate, Janet Rogers, began the evening with a beautifully composed piece written in honour of the evening and its spirit of gratitude. Ex-cop and former Pennsylvanian, jazz super-star, Louise Rose then  entertained with captivating piano and vocals. From there, Niel Golden and Vinod Bhardwaj transported the audience to the tea fields of Darjeeling, switching to a clever transition from Classical Indian music into Hava Nagila (Bhardwaj  pointed out that the same scale, using all flats, is common to both traditional Indian and Israeli music).

Violinist Mark Lupin and pianist Walter Prossnitz treated the audience to three pieces written by Max  Bruch. The three pieces, Vidui (Contrition,) Nigun (Improvisation,) and the Simchas Torah ( Rejoicing,) fit in beautifully with the theme of the evening. The Darya Ensemble, which includes Douglas Hensley and Faraidoun Akhavan, brought us to the break with a great sampling of traditional Persian music.

The Sarah Marreiros Quartet opened the event’s second half  performing traditional Portuguese Fado.  Next, Daniel Lapp performing solo was a real treat. A truly dynamic entertainer, Lapp was engaging from his extemporaneous instrumental musings to his fabulous rendition of Richard Thompson’s Beeswing, played with his bow literally wrapped around his violin. The evening culminated with the Yiddish Columbia State Orchestra waltzing up the middle aisle in a fine Klezmer procession. Their energy had the audience singing along and dancing through the aisles.

Rabbi Harry closed the evening by thanking the organizers of Hodaya! (Isa Milman, Annie Weeks, Barbara Pelman, Zelda Dean and Frances Aknai), saying this is what happens when five strong women get together. “Tikkum Olam,” says Rabbi Harry Brechner, “is the act of repairing the world and leaving our part in better condition than we found it.” Hodaya indeed!

 

Jennifer Louise Taylor is a Victoria-based musician and former world traveller who enjoys the sound of west-coast rain on a cold tin roof.

First novel explores life’s mysteries

Belinda’s Rings
By Corinna Chong
NeWest Press, 264 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Corinna Chong’s first novel, Belinda’s Rings, introduces us to a quirky, idiosyncratic family–but aren’t they all when you scratch below the surface?

Chong, who was born in Calgary but now lives in Kelowna, BC, has written a readable novel about what lies beneath, what the eye can’t see. Ostensibly, it’s about a mother, father, and three children. But the novel is also about the power of imagination, and the fictions we maintain about ourselves, in order to keep on being the people we are.

The novel’s point of view alternates between third- and first-person. Belinda, the mother, has been carrying all her family’s responsibilities. Her daughter Grace (who prefers to be called Gray) intuits that she’ll one day “get tired of being a mother to everyone.”

“You don’t need to go to a special place to prove you’re a good person,” Belinda claims. But she nevertheless abandons her three children and escapes to England, to study crop circles near the town where she was born.

Gray and Belinda, polarized as they might seem at first glance, are united by the desire to believe the impossible. They are dying to be amazed.

Deep sea life attracts Gray. Squid are fascinating as sunken treasures in the ocean’s depths. Belinda’s attraction is to crop circles. And UFOs. She finds a pseudo-peace looking for patterns precisely in those places the skeptics claim none exist. In fact, she clings to her illusions for survival. She’s been living a lie, convincing herself of her perfect marriage and a happy family.

Chong writes: “She had the ability to imagine feelings into being; if she wanted romance, she could convince herself that Burger King on a Saturday night was unconventional and sweetly modest.  In a way, it was empowering.” And it is empowering to tell yourself what you need to hear in order to get up in the morning.  Belinda tells herself her reasons for leaving her children (in the care of an unstable father) are “noble.”  She’s on “a scientific expedition . . . focused on issues far more consequential than the trifles of domestic life.”  In a van on her way to investigate a crop circle with fellow rag-tag “researchers,” she tells no one she has children back home. What if someone assumes her children are “her world”?

The image of a child’s grave lies at the heart of Chong’s novel. The image is delicate and transient–beautiful in the way all mortal things are.  Scholars puzzle over its purpose at the center of a crumbling wooden monument. Belinda’s lost connections give her more in common with her daughter than she might like.

Love is a feat of the imagination, Chong seems to say. And, as with all games of make believe, perhaps she’s also saying its strength lies in how hard you’re willing to fight for the belief. If you love reading about mothers and daughters, this is a book for you.

Yasuko Thanh has been short-listed for this year’s BC Book Prize in fiction.

 

 

Blackout Beach transforms tales of deep reflection

Blackout Beach
Blues Trip (2013)
Produced by Dante DeCaro and Carey Mercer

Reviewed by Johnnie Regalado

Carey Mercer is just one of many rock gods this isolated island has managed to nurture. Really, we’ve watched so many of these greats grow–consider Japandroids or Wolf Parade. We may have always known in the back of our ears that some day they’d need to move on.

But there is an exception: The “broken braying sound” of Carey Mercer and his guitar has always crashed upon the shores of Vancouver Island. Literary genius overdriven through a microphone and guitar amp, Mercer is Victoria’s sequestered minstrel. He is the hometown hero and front man of Frog Eyes, arguably Victoria’s biggest contribution to contemporary alt-rock. Instead of wandering, he barks and howls tales of epic lyricism and strings romantic era guitar hooks that send any listener on a journey. His songs strike a beat on your eardrums that echo deep in the pit of your stomach.

Blues Trip, the latest release under Mercer’s solo-project moniker Blackout Beach, marks his self-actualization as a songwriter. It’s a fleshy follow-up to an unusually sparse album recorded in near isolation. Now, on the other side of his father’s death from cancer, Mercer re-imagines the tracks originally composed for Fuck Death with the maturity of someone who sincerely understands death. Blues Trip supplants its predecessor as the true recording of this collection of morbid curiosity, leaving Fuck Death to sound like outtakes and remixes.

There is a new heartbeat on Blues Trip that starts with Melanie Campbell’s persistent support on percussion. The recording by Dante DeCaro at a studio in an old barn near the Cowichan River captures the catharsis of private journal scribbling to shared confession. Mercer’s voice is raspy with the beautiful weight of dark experience, a load lifted with the occasional help of an old friend, Dan Bejar. This is the album that finally canonizes Carey Mercer as the patron saint of Victoria rock and roll.

Johnnie Regalado is Program Director at CFUV 101.9 FM. He also contributes to WeirdCanada.com and has his BFA in Writing and English from the University of Victoria.

 

Journalist captures vitality of Indian lives

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
By Katherine Boo
Random House, 256 pages, $32.00

Reviewed by Frances Backhouse

Behind the Beautiful Forevers opens with sixteen-year-old Abdul Hakim Husain on the run from the police, hiding among the garbage he sorts for a living in an Indian slum called Annawadi. The one-legged woman whose home shares a wall with his family’s tin-roofed shack has been severely burned, and Abdul and his father stand accused of setting her on fire.

Falsely accused, as it turns out, in an ill-considered attempt by the victim to destroy her neighbours, but truth has little currency in the desperate, corrupt world in which the Husains live. Father and son, as well as Abdul’s older sister, will be arrested, imprisoned and tried in a system that is only nominally interested in justice. The waste-picking business that supported the eleven-member Husain family and made them among the most affluent of Annawadi’s three thousand residents will be lost. There will be tears and hunger and despair–and through it all, Katherine Boo will be standing on the sidelines, bearing witness and recording the details of this real-life drama.

Boo, a former Washington Post reporter and editor, is our eyes and ears in this story, but is never present in person. For the first twenty pages or so, the action was so compelling that I hardly noticed her absence. However, by the middle of the second chapter, the writer in me was demanding to know more about Boo and how she pulled off this remarkable feat of narrative nonfiction. I flipped to the back of the book and started reading the Author’s Note, a parallel story that begins: “Ten years ago, I fell in love with an Indian man and gained a country. He urged me not to take it at face value.”

As Boo explains, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is an attempt to understand the moral and practical implications of the profound inequalities she discovered when she moved to Mumbai, which differed only in scale from the kind of inequities she had previously reported on in Washington, DC. “To me,” she writes, “becoming attached to a country involves pressing uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.” And so, for nearly four years, she meticulously documented the realities of one “unexceptional slum”–a boggy, congested scrap of land surrounded by opulent hotels–and investigated the forces that shaped its inhabitants.

While Boo’s journalistic skills provide the solid framework for this book, it is her storytelling proficiency and thoughtful analysis that make it such a memorable and moving work. Thinking of places like Annawadi, I have often said I can’t imagine living like that. Without sensationalizing or sanitizing, Boo fills in the gaps in my imagination. She eavesdrops on Abdul and his friends as they talk about “the usual subjects–food, movies, girls, the price of waste.” She observes the ruthless ambition of a woman determined to see her daughter become the slum’s first female college graduate. She lets the Annawadians speak for themselves.

While some readers might take issue with how Boo conveys both the thoughts and words of her subjects, the author’s note convinced me I could trust her methodology and her respect for their “deep, idiosyncratic intelligences.”

This is not a cheerful book, but it is riveting, and I feel wiser about the world for having read it.

Frances Backhouse is the author of several non-fiction books and has her MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria.

Films worth revisiting: The Kid Stays in the Picture

The Kid Stays in the Picture
Directed by Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein
Written by Brett Morgen. Narrated by Robert Evans
2002

Reviewed by Joshua Zapf

1957: Robert Evans is plucked from the poolside by Norma Shearer to play her late husband and renowned producer, Irving Thalberg. From there Evans, driven by lust for the movie industry, works his way up to become producer for the lowliest movie studio around–Paramount Pictures. He goes on to pull the studio out of a nose dive with titles like The Godfather, Love Story, China Town, and Rosemary’s Baby. Having done the impossible, he falls in love and gets the home of his dreams.

Right there, we have enough drama to make a cute, based-on-real-life, film. But Morgen and Burstein follow Evans’ story to its bitter end–through divorce, alleged associations to a murder and drug scandals. We are privy to every up and down in the life of a man who seems to have had it all handed to him on a silver platter.

The Kid Stays in the Picture is more than thoughtful documentary. It is a heart-wrenching tell-all narrated by Evans himself. His growling baritone supplies the film with a seen-it-all veracity that leaves you–at least, it did me–sympathetic for every decision, challenge and heartbreak.

And that’s the satisfaction this movie offers. Everything that seems lined in silver is, in fact, coated with Evans’ blood and sweat. Each of those movies listed earlier was crucial to Paramount’s success and each was pocked with drama during all stages of production. The film’s ability to divulge freely is maddening at times. Honesty, as poignant as Evans, is the base of all sad stories.

The documentary is told almost purely in a photo-collage style, but Morgen and Burstein work cinematic wizardry by making scenes feel animated. They weave the exposition of personal life and career through motifs; by the end of the film, viewers are left feeling nostalgic, as if Evans were a close uncle they’d like to see more of. Despite Evans’ first-person narration, it’s easy to forget the movie is a documentary. Morgen and Burstein have masterfully adapted from Evan’s autobiography to make an enchanting, sorrowful movie to watch.

 

Joshua Zapf  loves to research older movies

Spaceport Union makes a solid landing

Spaceport Union
Flirting With the Queen (2012)
Produced by Michael Jack

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Seventies art rock, 80s synthesisers, and a neo-psychedelic–sometimes even world-beat!–groove. Spaceport Union delivers variety in its most artful, hybridized form. Here’s something truly eclectic.

Caroline Spence, from Victoria, BC, sings music with an experimental and innovative edge. She has this angels-in-the-church-rafters voice, which goes a long way to explaining why she’s nominated for the Vancouver Island Music Award Vocalist of the Year.

The stacked harmonies of “Fueled by Consequence,” a VIMA nominated Song of the Year, are reminiscent Paul McCartney and Wings. Soulful. Spence’s ethereal delivery in “Minnow” haunts us with a fourteen-minute tale.

Hypnotic songs vie for space with effects-laden tracks. Jazzy beats with funk echoes (think 70s Parliament or Bootsy Collins) take me on a journey through time. Fans of extended rock solos so popular in the 70s will appreciate “Yer Battery’s Dyin.” Lovers of Neil Young or Pink Floyd might find themselves right at home with songs like “Block.”

Many of the numbers appear vastly divergent on the surface–but they aren’t if you listen harder to hear the common thread. An underlying sensibility holds them together.  Imagine a bicycle wheel: every spoke can be different, but a strong core holds them together at the centre.

An album such as this could have become disconnected by its scope. But not in the hands of these musicians. As I listened, I found myself drawn to the music’s leitmotif the way something small gets sucked into a whirlpool. I found myself circling inward.

Songs such as “You” employ the technique of repetition–in the way that streams are repetitive, their ripples. Or mantras. Sunsets. Raindrops. You get my drift.

Too much talent can be a curse. These musicians definitely have talent to burn. But you don’t catch them gratuitously flaunting their gifts.  This is honest creativity.

I get the sense they’re having fun–but never at our expense. They don’t tout their talent.

When I gave myself up to the album, it carried me away.

 Fueled by Consequence

 

Yasuko Thanh’s short story collection Floating Like the Dead (M&S) was a Quill & Quire Best Books of 2012 selection.

Man Made Lake a bit murky

Man Made Lake
Murky Waters (2012)
Produced by Eric Hogg at Soma Studios

 Reviewed by Noah Cebuliak

Victoria alternative rock band Man Made Lake is up for a Vancouver Island Music Award this April in the Rock/Pop album of the year category for their debut LP, Murky Waters. The album is a collection of 10 songs loosely based around love lost and gained, battles with vices and living on the edge of society’s comfort zones.

While Murky Waters has bright spots, it’s for the most part an album that requires patience to decipher just exactly what Man Made Lake is aiming for. Lyrically, the songwriting could be tighter, with lines like “I want you/ and you want me/ lets dance, lets move/ my heart is free,” (from “An Unkindness”) along with other assorted clichés on rest of the album that invariably infect songs that could otherwise be quite strong. Looking past the less-than-subtle attempts at poetics though, there’s some catchy riffs and dreamy sections that warrant further listening–cuts like “Of We,” “Bourbon” and “Freeway” are the clearest windows into Man Made Lake’s vision.

The grittiness and honesty of Murky Waters suffers rather unfortunately at the hands of the production quality–it’s just a bit too loose and airy to really translate the capacity of the music. The drum sounds are thin, the guitars mostly tinny. There’s just so much potential with this band–it’s palpable in the vibe of the album, and in the emotion that does seep through–but one is left with the sentiment that Murky Waters almost hit the target, but not quite.

Lead singer and frontman Colin Craveiro manages to single-handedly reclaim Murky Waters from the above detriments though, with his fairly stunning vocal range and timbre that fits perfectly with the alt-rock style of Man Made Lake. Craveiro sounds a bit Bowie in many ways, and his strength as a singer begs to be showcased more clearly on this release. One is left wondering what a properly engineered, organic performance of these songs might yield–or indeed if Craveiro tried his hand at different genres. Nevertheless, Craveiro’s performances on Murky Waters are impressive.

Man Made Lake have made an enjoyable record, admittedly full of quirks, but a decent first outing. On further releases, it seems clear that just a little more attention to detail would yield a more solid and concise sound, but with Murky Waters, Man Made Lake indeed remain one of Vancouver Island’s “bands to watch.”

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.

Canadian premiere features classical guitar

Dr. Alexander Dunn, classical guitar
Faculty Concert Series, University of Victoria
Philip T. Young Recital Hall
March 15, 2013

Reviewed by Konstantin R. Bozhinov

Despite the professional rendition of four contemporary works in Canadian premiere, I did not leave humming any of the tunes I had heard. All four compositions displayed impressive effects, and I literally mean sound effects, but I still cannot recall a single melody. Much contemporary music tends to be quite unmelodic in nature. But one of the works, written for Alexander Dunn by local composer Liova Bueno, stood out because of its beautiful harmonies and passionate rhythms. Although the whole program featured classical guitar, no work was for the solo instrument. The different instrumentation varied between a guitar quarter, percussion, bass clarinet, mezzo-soprano voice and double bass. The guitar was always given a different function; sometimes accompaniment, sometimes soloist, and sometimes background colour instrument.

George Crumb’s The Ghosts of Alhambra was performed by baritone Steven Price, the wonderful Jay Schreiber on percussion and Alex Dunn on classical guitar. This piece demanded almost extreme awareness and sensitivity among the players, since Price had to drastically shift between almost a whisper, to a loud shout which filled the entire hall. The guitar here served the function of an equal soloist and not accompanist, while, as much as that is possible, the percussion played a supportive role. About a third of the stage was taken up by percussion instruments and, despite the extensive use of those, the balance was tastefully perfect. Everybody seemed aware that the guitar is the quietest instrument there.

Peter Maxwell Davies’s Dark Angels, performed by mezzo-soprano Susan Young and Alex Dunn, featured both parts as equally vocal and lyric. The guitar was not bound to its usual submissive accompanying role. The musicians took turns leading, alternating between brief solo guitar moments, as the suite unfolded. Overall, the music had a much more melodic quality, compared to the previous composition. The mezzo-soprano was much more expressive than the previously heard baritone, not because of the nature of the music, but because of what she did with it. The different musical gestures were much more balanced and transitions between different parts were made seamlessly. Because of this, a rather long composition was presented as a coherent whole.

Liova Bueno’s Poema Mistico bears the perfect title; just like a lyric poem, Bueno’s piece flowed from one character to another. At times, the listener was lead to believe that a certain pattern of rhythm and harmony had been established, but almost always that quickly faded.  Between these alternating episodes, more active and transitional parts took place, just like a play narrated by an actor. My initial comparison was to the structure of 17th century opera seria–passive arias provided emotional reflection on the action that was narrated in the connecting recitatives. In this way, the different episodes implied a grand structure.

At times I was reminded of the colourful harmonies of the king of tango, Astor Piazzola. Guitar, percussion, clarinets and double bass delivered varied tonal colours, but balanced writing prevented the dominance of any individual instrument. Overall, Liova Bueno’s composition stood out from all others on the program with its unique character. Definitely a local composer to keep an eye out for.

 

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