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Closer inspectionZooming in on Patrick Watson’s
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“Personally, I think the last album was a bit wishy-washy,” says Montreal’s Patrick Watson of Close to Paradise, his band’s 2006 debut. He’s referring not to the intentions but the actual sound—“a lot of reverb, a lot of things at once.” For the brand new follow-up, Wooden Arms, he says, “we wanted to cut a lot of the fat off.” “Everything pops out more,” adds drummer Robbie Kuster. “People feel like they can hear everything and point out what’s playing, instead of a sort of mishmash of everything.” This shift in focus—micro over macro, close-ups over longshots—is a reflection of how the four members of the band, rounded out by guitarist Simon Angell and bassist Mischka Stein, have eased into a more intuitive, inventive and at the same time perhaps theatrical sense of interaction over the many months since Paradise rolled out, a stretch that’s seen them snag a Polaris Prize and clock in countless tour hours across the globe. It does justice to the vast array of intriguing styles (“cartoon music to super-country to Bollywood in the vocals,” Watson muses) and unusual sonorities scattered throughout Wooden Arms. Above and beyond the harp, marimba, charango or digital Mellotron that might appear, the band and their numerous auxiliaries—including producer (and Besnard Laker) Jace Lasek—deploy such items as a bicycle, drawers, a plunger and a wind-effect machine. Never for novelty’s sake, mind you. Call it an “any weapon in a street fight” philosophy. “The golden rule,” says Kuster, “is that whatever sounds we use or style we go in, it’s for the sake of the music and not just doing something weird, pushing the envelope for its own sake.” Wooden Arms retains the Patrick Watson signatures—the aching falsetto, the textured, dreamlike lightness, the fuzzy fusion of jazz, folk, classical and Vaudevillian proto-pop. But the tunes this time tell more distinguishable tales (“I still think it’s more homogenous than Close to Paradise,” says Angell, ever the churlish contrarian). “Beijing” is arguably the album’s centrepiece, a busy, quick-paced gem on which the aforementioned two-wheel vehicle can be found—“I picture bike chases through the whole song,” says Watson, betraying his longstanding reliance on visual imagery as a wellspring of inspiration. “Where the Wild Things Are” is, yes, Watson’s nod to the Maurice Sendak kid-lit classic, presently being prepped for the silver screen by Spike Jonze. “It’s my favourite book of all time and it was my dream to score the movie,” says Watson glumly—the demo of the tune he sent in never earned a response, but that’s Jonze’s loss and Wooden Arms’s gain. The title track, meanwhile, boasts a visit from Lhasa, who’s done duets with Watson on occasion over the last half-decade. “We’re quite different people in a lot of ways, so it’s fun when we meet,” Watson chuckles before adding, “When she sang on it, it was like pillars into the ground. I don’t know how she does it. Everything sounds so much more solid.” Angell regards this firmness as universal on Wooden Arms. “All the songs on this album,” he says, “much more than the last—not the sounds and such but the actual songs—can be played on an acoustic guitar and still come out as a solid tune. Once you have that as a base, the only way you can ruin it is putting too much shit on it.” CD LAUNCH AT LA TULIPE ON |
