So, Matrix Magazine, who have been publishing my album reviews for some time now (under my real name and a few pseudonyms), and where I'd been the Music Review editor for awhile, have decided to give me my own column.
The Graveyard debuted in Matrix issue 74, and discussed the Exclaim Cup Hockey Tournament, and new albums by Destroyer and Raising the Fawn. Here it is in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it and pick up the next issue of Matrix.
I've just returned from 5 days in Toronto, having played in the Exclaim Cup Hockey Tournament--a tourney loosely (but gamely) organized around Exclaim Magazine and its community of ruffians. This was my seventh year in the tourney, playing with The Humiliation, a team of mostly West Coast ex-pats I started when I lived in Toronto. This year, we got sporty new track jackets, and our thumbs-down logo is emblazoned over my orange heart as I write this. We look awesome, in a Humiliating way.
I am clearly a big fan of the Exclaim Cup, and I marvel at its progression from a 2-team pond hockey game to a truly national, 30-team, 4-day extravaganza, rife with musicians and artists of all stripes. What I don’t understand, though, is why there’s such scant media coverage on the tournament, given our country’s obsession with all things hockey. It’s a tournament of colour and creativity, fair play and flair, and it stands in stark opposition to the tiresome controversies of big league sports. With each team gaining extra points for penalty-free games, supplying food to local food banks and instruments to youth-at-risk, and required to provide a solid 20 minutes of entertainment on stage or risk being tossed from the playoffs (and face condemnation by the rest of the teams), these games highlight what can happen when a bunch of creative people all do their part in a community setting.
Strangely though, most media coverage of this large, sprawling event tends to focus strictly on the involvement of the “superstars” of Lo- and Medium-Fi Canadian entertainment. Sloan’s Chris Murphy (a member of the Halifax-Dartmouth Ferries) appears in interviews and radio programs, the Rheostatics’ (and Morningstar defenseman) Dave Bidini appears on national TV talking about his new book about the tournament, and CBC’s George Strombolopolis (playing for the Chart Attack Hack) was featured in full-gear (minus gloves, oddly) on the cover of Eye Weekly during the Exclaim Cup weekend, despite having only played hockey for two years. Now, I have no issues in the least with these players talking about their involvement in a tournament they clearly love and respect, and each has just as much right to talk about the tourney as I do. What I am more concerned with is the media’s coverage of this expansive sporting weekend, which reduces it down to the participation of a few well-ish known individuals. If this is a tournament that, by its very nature, shuns the addition of ringers, why is the media coverage solely focused on celebrities, rather than the talented, sincere rabble of individuals that constitute each team? Let’s look at this in terms of music.
When we read about the membership of the New Pornographers, we tend to read about the involvement of alt-country crooner Neko Case, or pop craftsman A.C. Newman, rather than the lesser-recognized Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer. Likewise, when we read about Broken Social Scene, the numerous threads to members of Metric, Do Make Say Think or Stars are prominently displayed, while John Crossingham’s Raising the Fawn tends to be overlooked. While both Destroyer and Raising the Fawn could be considered less notable in the context of these sort-of-supergroups, each should be recognized in their own right, as both have recently made albums full of wonder, idiosyncrasies and intelligence.
Raising the Fawn’s newest album is called The Maginot Line (Sonic Unyon, 2006), named after the series of sub-terra fortresses erected by the French in World War II to protect their border from German invasion. However, despite the intense firepower in these French fortresses, the Maginot Line was easily defeated when the Germans simply drove their tanks up and around the fortresses’ cannon turrets, entering France through Belgium. Seems a fitting title for the newest Raising the Fawn album, given that its tremendous power, efficiency and undulating tension are qualities that could easily be ignored by music consumers due to the band’s fairly low profile. Hopefully small pieces like this will help broaden the band’s fan base, because for the last few years Raising the Fawn have been crafting some of the most mature and unpredictable music in the country. The Maginot Line forces the Raising the Fawn sound out somewhat, employing sustained feedback swells, falsetto vocals and the rolling thunder of floor toms to create a stormy work, dark and suggestive, then histrionic and emotive, then snapping back again. This album adds new elements such as Ebow and synthesizers to their traditional three-piece, to create a wintry album of fierce dynamics: howling, severe crashes buttressed against tiny, scraping burbles. If you have not had a chance to hear Raising the Fawn I highly recommend dedicating a week of your life to The Maginot Line; set yourself up in front of the band’s cannons on endless repeat, and let them pummel you into a melancholic submission. That shit will fuck you up.
On the other side of the scale we have Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge, 2006), a loose, rambling record of seemingly off-handed melody and wit. I remember first hearing Destroyer about ten years ago in a musty basement suite just off Commercial Drive in Vancouver. At that time, his work was really stripped down, and my impression was that he was trying too hard to be weird. Now, however, Destroyer has a full group around him, and seems to have hit his stride as a songwriter, ably weaving casual vocals over what are clearly deliberately chosen motifs. There’s an idiosyncratic balance of humour and seriousness here, in the lyrics, vocals and musicianship on this album, and I find it refreshing because of how solidly it sits in the rock tradition. Reminiscent of Dylan’s early electric period, Destroyer’s Rubies features 1960s-esque honky-tonk pianos and simple, driving rhythms around vocals with lyrics often tightly packed into verses—as if the ideas are coming too fast for Dan Bejar to fully realize in the set verse length. This is an album where the lyrics matter, a revitalizing switch from so many records that just build a hook over a phrase and repeat ad nauseam. Destroyer’s Rubies is a record that is deceptive in its intentions, wanting to both grab you buy the lapels and compel you to listen, while forcing you away with some rather heavy subject matter. Many people I speak to are unsure of this album because of Bejar’s (nasal, odd) voice, however, I’ve found that once you are acclimated to his vocal style, this album stands up on so many levels and marks a significant work by a talented artist just hitting his full potential. Perhaps Destroyer’s Rubies could be considered a great summer album, if you hope to have a very strange, somewhat unsettling summer.
Both The Maginot Line and Destroyer’s Rubies represent somewhat hidden gems found in the larger collectives of musicians known as Broken Social Scene and the New Pornographers. Much as how the Exclaim Cup Tournament is becoming known as a result of media attention paid toward a few of the better-known, hockey playing celebrities on the ice, Raising the Fawn and Destroyer can hopefully begin to enjoy some media coverage due to their own associations with their better-known collaborators. But make no mistake, Destroyer and Raising the Fawn are significant acts in their own right, unique, creative and worthy of their own praise. If you have not heard either group, I recommend you seek them out, and experience another two pieces in what could be called a renaissance in Canadian music.
(from Matrix Magazine Issue 74)
