03 David Clayton ThomasMobius
David Clayton-Thomas
Antoinette & the SRG ANT549 (davidclaytonthomas.com)

Veteran performer and multi-Grammy Award-winner David Clayton-Thomas has released a new album of original works. After veering off into covers on his last couple of albums, Clayton-Thomas has returned to what made him the force of Blood, Sweat & Tears and an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Although a few of the songs venture into mellow territory, there is plenty of vintage Clayton-Thomas here – rockin’ and soulful. With co-writing and arranging from some of Toronto’s finest, like Lou Pomanti and George Koller (who also co-produces and plays bass), Mobius opens strongly with Back to the 60s. No wallow in nostalgia, it’s a call for young people to come together like they did at Woodstock – and like the Parkland protestors who took to the streets to express their outrage – to bring peace to the world.

A great horn section and a lineup of musicians, who bring a diverse range of sounds and skills to the record, keep the tracks interesting. Eric St. Laurent’s work ranges from epic guitar god on the opening track to breezy bossa nova on Carnival, Hugh Marsh turns in a haunting violin solo on Long Night and Larnell Lewis’ funky drumming keeps all the tracks in the pocket. The roadhouse rocker Passin’ Thru is a fitting closing track and reminder of what made Clayton-Thomas the road warrior he is, still going strong after all these years.

Listen to 'Mobius' Now in the Listening Room

04 Rory BlockA Woman’s Soul – A Tribute to Bessie Smith
Rory Block
Stony Plain Records SPCD1399 (stonyplainrecords.com)

With the release of her fine Bessie Smith-centric recording, five-time Blues Music Award-winning guitarist/vocalist Rory Block is kicking off a series of projects under the umbrella of “Power Women of the Blues.” The subsequent CDs will continue to honour a group of brave, feisty women (like Smith) who irrevocably disrupted and transformed the status quo of the musical and gender-biased landscape. Sadly, many of these blues icons have fallen into obscurity – and for some, their recordings have been lost in time altogether. Block first heard the recorded voice of Bessie Smith in 1964, when she was just a slip of a girl, living in New York City. Some years later, as a mature artist, Block is finally able to realize her creative dream and record this historic material with her own soulful, deeply respectful stamp and acoustic musical skill.

Block serves here as producer (along with Rob Davis), arranger, guitarist, vocalist and percussionist. She has devised a brilliant, ten-track program of Smith’s more familiar work, interspersed with rarely performed gems. Up first is a sassy take on Do Your Duty, featuring some excellent guitar work by Block, as well as her husky, sexy, powerful pipes. She adopts a lilting, almost Music Hall motif on the naughty, double entendre-laden Kitchen Man and swings her way through a lush and funky version of the Smith classic, Gimme a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer. 

On every track, the authentic blues feel, the intricate guitar and percussion work (sometimes involving kitchen utensils) and Block’s multi-textured and irresistible vocal chops, deliver it all. No doubt, Miss Bessie Smith would be proud!

01 Curious Bards(Ex)Tradition
The Curious Bards
Harmonia Mundi HMN 906105 (thecuriousbards.com)

Hands up, those organizing an Irish ceilidh or Scottish Burns Night. Look no further for your music. These pieces were performed for the most part in the 18th century and what emerges is a highly individual blend. The Curious Bards received formal training in Baroque musical instruments. They have gone on to apply their expertise – and such instruments as the viola da gamba – to perform Irish and Scottish music which has emanated from a variety of sources.

The Curious Bards start with three Scottish reels collected by Robert Bremner in 1757: see if your guests can keep up with the raw energy of The Lads of Elgin! The Irish are not to be dissuaded, with their own opening trio. While some pieces are more melancholic than their Scottish counterparts, The High Road to Dublin displays the spirited quality of the works of Ireland’s renowned bard Carolan.

The most imaginative arrangements on the CD must be the Highland Battle. Just as other Renaissance composers, for example, Byrd and Susato, set the sounds of a battle to music, so the Caledonian Pocket Companion of 1750 conveys the battle via flute and violin, even down to the mournful Lamentation for the Chief.

And so the jigs and reels continue (not least the Reel of Tulloch), enough for an evening’s Irish and Scottish celebrations. This choice by Baroque-trained musicians is strange, but it should not deter anyone. There is a crispness to the interpretations, which that very training brings out.

02 Margaret HerlehyRosewood Café
Margaret Herlehy
Big Round Records BR8950 (bigroundrecoreds.com)

In Rosewood Café, a small band of Latin jazz performers, fronted by an oboe of all things, presents a sweet collection of songs in the South American popular idiom. Oboist Margaret Herlehy has a lively sense of rhythm and phrase. She matches well with the more typical elements of a Latin jazz combo: drums, guitar and piano.

The CD title gives a good indication of one likely market for this product: it’s exactly the sort of fresh sound one might hear for the first time over a latté in the local coffee haunt, played slightly below the surrounding murmur of conversation and clicking of laptop keyboards. One approaches the server to inquire and one sees that it does indeed feature the oboe in this atypical mix, and one revisits one’s sense of what exactly the oboe can or should do. It’s lovely to hear the pairing of oboe and flute racing to the finish of track six, Diabinho maluco by Jacob do Bandolim, the only really uptempo cut on the collection, by.

Apart from the final track, Astor Piazzolla’s Café 1930, the composers featured are fairly unknown to the non-aficionado of popular Latin music, and in spite of a promise of an online listing, neither the disc nor the website provide any great detail about them. Interesting to note that the one most often featured is Brazilian guitarist Celso Machado, who lives, according to Google, in British Columbia.

Listen to 'Rosewood Café' now in the Listening Room

03 Jeremy DutcherWolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa
Jeremy Dutcher
Independent jd003 (jeremydutcher.com)

Jeremy Dutcher is a multi-gifted artist who also expresses his humanity as an activist and musicologist. Dutcher is a member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, and he began this remarkable project by transcribing Wolastoq songs from vintage 1907 wax cylinders at the Canadian Museum of History in Halifax. The voices and souls of Dutcher’s people reached out to him through those cylinders, which were rife with unfamiliar songs and lore.

The 11 deeply moving compositions on this CD are the result of Dutcher’s “collaboration” with those ancestral voices, as well as his almost classical piano approach and dynamic vocal instrument. Each track is also enhanced and integrated with Wolastoq spoken word and singing that was preserved on those cylinders. Dutcher has surrounded himself here with a scintillating wall of sound, including himself on piano and vocals, Devon Bate on electronics and an array of strings, brass and percussion – all the voices of a classical orchestra. He has said that he is doing this remarkable work in part because there are only about 100 Wolastoqey speakers left, and “It’s crucial for us to make sure that we’re using our language and passing it on to the next generation.”

In the initial track, Mehcinut/Death Chant, Dutcher’s voice soars in power, strength and purity, moving contiguously with the voice from a wax cylinder recording. Other stunning compositions include Ultestakon/Shaker Lullaby, which has a simply gorgeous melody and sonorous percussion that evokes a comforting heartbeat; and also Love Song, which is arranged with angelic and complex vocals that act as sonic waves of uplifting awareness and oneness.

04 MazID
MAZ
Bleu 44 BLEUCD-4445 (mazworld.ca)

Montreal group MAZ has many accolades under their belt. With this, their third album, there should be many more to come as the group tastefully takes Québécois traditional music in a new direction, as the group self-describes, “in a flow of trad, jazz and electro.”

Each member is a superb performer/composer. Leader/electric guitarist/banjoist Marc Maziade plays and sings with confidence and originality. His opening zippy clear vocals in the traditional tune La guenille foreshadow what the future tracks will bring, with a fast-driving bass groove by Hugo Blouin, great fiddling by Pierre-Olivier Dufresne, and Roxane Beaulieu on keyboards. The rest are original tunes which feature interesting style developments. Love the club dance feel of Projet 4, as a touch of folk is supported by solid low-end bounce and electro music. Le fléau moves at a nice walking pace as traditional music is modernized with a nice accelerando, bouncy melody, instrumental solos and closing squeaks. Le cercle dives into more contemporary sounds with its larger interval leap melodic lines, multi-rhythms and quasi-atonal harmonic changes. The fun upbeat closing of ID 4/4 – reel du chemin moves subtly from pop vocals and grooves to a more traditional reel so we can all remember where their music came from!

MAZ members are so respectful of each other that the multi-genre styles they are transforming and combining never feel contrived and produce fresh, accessible, inventive Québécois world music.

Back to top