by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Most people are creatures of habit, but many like to break habit now and then, if only for an exception that proves the rule. You might say that's the principle behind Just Another Ordinary Day, the new CD and multimedia show (in what promises to be a wider, epic series thereof) by Montreal's Patrick Watson, singer, keyboardist, composer and sound designer.

"This album is about someone who wants to go outside the context," says Watson. "You have this guy who's stuck in an ordinary routine. For me, this album's the debut of that story, the introduction. In the trailer on the Web site, you see this guy walking and at one point, falling off a bridge. Most people think it's about suicide. There's nothing new about that. It's about this guy leaving the context. Everybody else sees him jumping off the edge, but for him, he's just going outside to find something else, outside of that ordinary day."

There's nothing ordinary about Watson's obvious talent and drive, nor about the music on his CD. Straddling the lines of classical and pop, jazz and folk and the avant-garde, Watson's compositions at times reach sublime heights, achieving an emotional resonance matched by few of his local peers - a few of whom share credits on the CD.

His core band includes jazz drummer Robbie Kuster, Russian émigré Mishka Stein on bass and a pair of pals from Watson's days in the Stomp-signed ska-jazz outfit Gangster Politics, Simon Angell on guitar and Louis Nagy, occasionally, on piano. "There are also string quartets, horn ensembles, all kinds of instruments in there."

Furthermore, Ordinary Day benefits from the vision of Watson's collaborator and girlfriend, photographer Brigitte Henry, as well as that of video designer Gabriel C.D. Watson's last project Waterproof9 tied particularly murky, abstract soundscaping to Henry's kick of the time, underwater photography. Now she's fixated on photos using trampolines to catch her subjects mid-air, dovetailing nicely with Watson's theme of "leaping off."

The bottom line, though, is the music, about which Watson has plenty to say (and more he'd rather not say). "There are extremes in the music, going from pop songs to instrumentals. The pop songs are the story and the cinematic parts are where the story takes place. I tried to write the songs to build a place and then tell the story inside it. I'm trying to get the best of both worlds. None of the pieces sound alike, but as a whole, it's very homogenous. So it does have a flow to it."

That flow leads one through an array of emotions - fear, elation, melancholy, quiet euphoria - before it arrives at the playful "Gealman."

"That's the first time on the album we start putting humour in the song. Everything up to there is rather dark and heavy, but this one I wrote with Louis Nagy, and he writes really cartoon-type songs. That's when we're introduced to the character Gealman."

Gealman being the central bridge-jumping protagonist. But what the hell is he doing only popping up as the album eases into its final lap? "Well, it's a dream, right? I don't think it's necessary to understand every little sub-detail. Obviously it's a dream, it's himself everywhere and he's not really going anywhere to take this trip. It's just within himself. In the long run, as I'm developing the albums, I want to tell that story."

CD launch at SAT on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 9:30pm, $9

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