Emma-Lee+Harlan Pepper+Motel Raphael @ Le Divan Orange February 21, 2012

Last Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of production managing the Emma-Lee + Harlan Pepper + Motel Raphael show at Le Divan Orange. This review will be a short one, but I felt like I couldn't not express a few words of praise for these acts.

Montreal's Motel Raphael opened up the show. Having missed their previous shows in Montreal, I was especially excited to alas see these three lovely ladies play. I was blown away. If managing the Oh My Darling show last September didn't already make me want to be in a country band, Motel Raphael sure does. These girls have perfected their harmonies to the T. Their songs are sung like country classics with the addition of an upbeat tambourine, making their melodies infectious. Clara's warm vocals are complimented by Emily and Maya's that carry a sweet country twang. This evening, Motel Raphael was happy to introduce new member, Robin, upright bass player, to their band. Motel Raphael's music makes me want to lay down in a long grass field for a while.

The young Toronto boys, Harlan Pepper, followed. Hearing their music, I almost couldn't believe these boys have only just turned 19. They have even landed themselves a record deal. It is easy to see why. Adorned in cowboy shirts, these boys play blusie-country/rock 'n' roll music as if they lived several decades ago themselves. I'm sure you'll be hearing much more from these boys in the future. They're going to make you want to start learning how to play that harmonica that's been sitting in your drawer for years.

I wish I could have seen more of headliner Emma-Lee's set! From what I did see, Emma-Lee comes with a bold voice and along with her band, has many catchy pop-ie folk songs. I would be sure to see any of these acts next time they're playing a show in your town.

Motel Raphael:http://www.myspace.com/motelraphael

Oh My Darling: http://www.myspace.com/ohmydarlingmusic/music

Harlan Pepper: http://www.myspace.com/itsharlanpepper

Emma-Lee: http://www.myspace.com/emmalee

Welcome back!

Welcome back, readers!  It has been some time since my last entry, but the blog is up and running again!  Forgetting old passwords has locked me out of my now old blog, Free After Four, so I greet you again under a new name, The GoatHeard.  This time the blog’s name comes from the song “The Lonely Goatherd” found in my favourite musical, The Sound of Music.  Wanting to avoid the “lonely” from the song’s title and wishing to create a blog that’s name is in tune with my love of puns, The GoatHeard was born.  If you scroll down just a tad, you’ll find my first entry up under this new name, a CD review of David Roy Parsons’ “Time And Travel”.  And as always, thank you for reading and happy listening!

David Roy Parsons "Time And Travel" (2011)

I love receiving mail, so you can imagine my delight when I found a parcel waiting outside my door when I was about to enter a snowstorm.  I opened it at once to find that my copy of David Roy Parsons' fourth album Time And Travel (2011) had safely arrived.  Time And Travel is a collection of songs written from the inspiration of Wells, B.C., Ottawa’s Chateau Laffeyette, Vancouver’s Railway Club, Vancouver’s Our Lady of Constant Sorrow School, Guatemala, Botswana and the people who inhabit these places.  While a wide geographical landscape inspired Time And Travel, the sounds from this album makes me crave a rural destination.

The storytelling of David Roy Parsons makes me feel as if I’m in a cozy bar or on a road trip through Canada’s interior, tracing the landscape of Parsons’ songs.  On the first track “Joel And Elsie And The Ballad Of The Giant Radish,” the fairytale-like sounds of a flute whirl through the garden of the ballad.  Parsons’ voice is in conversation with supporting female vocals (Karyn Ellis) as they play the parts of Joel and Elsie, a couple sharing stories about growing the best vegetables they can for one another.  This track features shakers, congas and an accordion that together lend a more mysterious sound to Parsons’ music.   Time And Travel features these more eclectic sounds with those from typical bluegrass instrumentation-viola, banjo, mandolin, and the slide guitar.

In “The Chateau Laffeyette,” inspired by one of the oldest still operating bars in North America, Parsons sings a country song of the bar’s place in Ottawa’s history, those who frequent it as well as his own experiences there playing music, sometimes getting money, sometimes getting black eyes.  Each song is crafted in rhymes and consistently melodic.  I’m a sucker for the slide guitar and the pedal steel guitar, so this album is a real treat for me.  The more I listen to this album, the fonder I grow of it.  “Shopping Girl Friend Blues” is one of my favourite tracks.  The sweetness of the banjo, slide guitar and clarinet used in this song remind me of songs from the young Daniel Johnston. 

Parsons acknowledges all the people and places that inspired him in detail on the back cover of his C.D.  His sense of community travels everywhere he does and is as evident here as it is in his honest storytelling.  

David Roy Parsons: http://www.myspace.com/davidroyparsons

Daniel Johnston: http://www.hihowareyou.com/

Bryan Keith Lanier @ Galerie Rye

It has been too long since I have been to Montreal’s Galerie Rye. It is just as lovely as I remembered it. Galerie Rye’s current show features a solo exhibition of artist Bryan Keith Lanier. Filled with glossy Hercules’s, ships in turmoil, buildings stripped bare and more collaged/graffiti-like pieces, this show features several genres of Lanier’s work and personal iconography.

Raised in a Christian family in America, the image of a dignified, godly figure sporting a curly beard references those idealized men of Greco-Roman origin familiar to Lanier in his childhood. These images are transformed into pop culture icons. Glistening with epoxy, these Hercules’s have leather masks in place of their traditional laurels. InWhite Rhino Hercules wears a head decoration featuring a rhino horn that protrudes from his forehead. Juxtaposing the confidence intrinsic to this decoration, Hercules’s head hangs in submission. Perhaps this gesture speaks to the struggle every icon has between being a personified object and an objectified subject.

Like Lanier layers his pieces with paper mache, acrylic, and epoxy, each work is rich in layers of souls. While living in Japan, Lanier acquired an interest in the “Shinto” whereby a soul is present in tactile but non-living matter. This is materialized in the glow of colour that is emitted from behind each Hercules. Lanier refers to the Shinto as “emotional radiation,” whereby the spirit of the maker is present in the work. With this in mind, Lanier’s works evoke the spirit of the sculptors of the Hercules sculptures he references, and we as the audience in turn are invited to feel the radiation of Lanier’s spirit. Our own connection to each of these images completes each work.

The second series in Lanier’s exhibition are the White Ships. These ephemeral ships carry an unsettling air of despair. They face the terrors of being pushed to the edge of the world or being swallowed up in its collapse, in a metaphorical sense as opposed to a depiction of Armageddon. In Rogue Waves and Cold Front the waves represent the matters in our lives over which we have no control. Similar to cross-sectioned scientific diagrams, the catastrophic waves that host the ships have been cut laterally so as to expose a limit to each wave, cloud and the universe.

Other works present in this exhibition explore the notion of placing a toy ship in a bottle. Here, however, we see a ship in a light bulb and sailors in a bottle. Lanier succeeds in creating works in which his viewers can existentially try to measure the limits of space. Each container-the bottles, the light bulb, the empty space behind each cross-sectioned wave pattern, reveals mankind’s struggle and inability to measure and contain space beyond Earth.

The limitlessness of space is illustrated in one Hercules piece, HOLYGHOSTFACE. Against a spotted paper mache background, this Hercules turns his face down and away from the viewer. In this act Hercules casts a shadow across half of his face. Alternately, his shadow exposes a continuum of the white spotted marks from the background, revealing these white specs as stars in an infinite space receding into his face. If this makes you intrigued and dizzy, you are sharing your relation to such existential thoughts with the artist.

These shiny Hercules’s expose the fatigue and exhaustion of pop icons, mirroring the struggles the White Ships undergo while they simultaneously reign over the gallery to inspire hope amongst our inability to bear the unknown and loss of control in such waves.

I’d like to thank artist Bryan Keith Lanier again for speaking with me about his work and sharing his very beautiful remarks regarding his experience with each piece.

Bryan Keith Lanier's solo exhibition runs till February 6th.

Bryan Keith Lanier: http://bryankeithlanier.blogspot.com/
Galerie Rye: http://www.galerierye.com

Originally posted January 17, 2011 (under my previous blog http://freeafterfour.blogspot.com)

Aidan Knight @ L'Esco August 9, 2010

I’ve realized it to be common amoung many Victoria musicians to refer back to their home when speaking about their songs. Beyond references to the habitual rain as found in the banter of Vancouver musicians, Victoria musicians consistently allude to the slow lifestyle of B.C.’s capital. Victoria’s folk artist Aidan Knight made his Monday visit to Montreal no exception.

Filled with sincerity and humour, Aidan expressed his gratitude to his audience, letting us know that he hoped we were ready for the show with “a beer in hand, smile on face, and pal at side”. Aidan and fellow guitarist Dave joked about their absolute lack of the French language, suggesting they should try to fulfill entire conversations with “Je suis Dave” and “Jambon”. The crowd enjoyed their humour.

“So this song-guess what? It’s about Victoria! You asked for it.” This tender ballad beared a more direct reference to his hometown. Singing about his local corner store, Aidan sang gently, letting the notes making up “sour key” sustain. In addition to singing about Victoria explicitly, Aidan sung of knitting for loved ones, an Alberta river and the tale of his hotmail correspondence with the girl of his affection visiting Hawaii in his younger years.

The show featured three musicians (Olivier Clements, David Barry, and Jonathan Anderson) who played the guitar, bass, violin, flugelhorn and organ to join Aidan on his guitar. Aidan Knight’s vocals are soft, yet gripping. His voice bares a resemblance to the haunting quality of John Vanderslice and the rich tones of Andrew Bird. This comparison translates most effectively in Knight’s live performance.

After providing a supporting role in several bands on the West Coast, Aidan Knight is celebrating the release of his own debut album,Versicolour.

Aidan Knight: http://www.myspace.com/aidanknightmusic 
John Vanderslice: http://www.myspace.com/johnvanderslice
Andrew Bird: http://www.myspace.com/andrewbird 

Originally posted August 11, 2010 (under my previous blog http://freeafterfour.blogspot.com)

Jenny Holzer's Solo Exhibition @ DHC/ART

Old Montreal’s DHC/ART is hosting the work of text-based artist Jenny Holzer until November 14th, 2010. This solo exhibition features Holzer’s recent work and work from her Truisms (1977-79) series.

When one enters the DHC/ART, they find themselves in a room with declassified US government documents, made accessible though the Freedom of Information Act, blown up and silkscreened over canvases. The first declassified e-mail the gallery visitor reads is concerned with interrogation and torture techniques imposed by the US military. A disturbing tone is set for the rest of the visit. This e-mail correspondence is spread across several canvases. Our eyes trace over the black blocks that cover up what is still confidential to the unsettling descriptions of these interrogation techniques. Large maps are found on the adjacent and opposite walls. They feature plans of attack on Iraq and are coloured a haze of florescent pinks and purples, intentionally akin to the colour of bruised flesh. As one travels up the stairs to reach the other rooms of the exhibition, one travels further and further into these exposed truths. The second floor contains “Ribs” (2010). Text travels across each horizontal LED sign, the respective ribs, where testimonies of US soldiers and detainees are transcribed. The inconsistent movement of the LED signs is discomforting to say the least. I became slightly nauseas from the text’s movement and the information alike. This theme continues on the next floor with “Thorax” (2008). We are isolated in these small white-museum box rooms, left to encounter and negotiate the meanings of one LED projection per room. Our senses are disrupted in a similar vein to the goal of interrogation techniques applied to prisoners of war.

The final floor features additional declassified memos, e-mailes and testimonies silkscreened onto canvases. These canvases encircle a table low to the ground in the rooms centre. It is adorned with bones, arranged systematically. They do not appear in a memorializing way, rather numerical. Upon closer attention, metal tags inscribed with text can be found attached to select few bones. The tags, however, are not Holzer’s commemorative words but are instead the words of victims and offenders of sexual crimes committed against women during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995).

The exhibition carries into the second of the DHC/ART buildings. In it, the one-liners from Holzer’s LED sign series Truisms (1977-79) are featured. Truisms once infiltrated the advertisement space in New York City with its messages that do not urge one to buy, but instead to comply with ones hearts desires and Holzer’s advice for life. Each of the two works occupies a different room. Trying to keep up with all the messages running across each LED sign is dizzying as the flashes of contrasting colours alternate, appear and reappear from their tracks. One can become entranced when aiming to absorb as many of the consecutive statements as possible. The ever-changing text dislocates our moral codes as we read the proverbs laid out by Holzer.

Jenny Holzer’s chilling exhibition plays with language, censorship and our senses. Upon leaving the exhibition, one can feel the freedom of being exposed to natural light, removed from the hypnotizing texts Jenny Holzer has challenged us with.

DHC/ART: http://www.dhc-art.org/


Originally posted August 3, 2010 (under my previous blog http://freeafterfour.blogspot.com)

Maylee Todd + Hooded Fang @ L'Esco July 27, 2010

Steamy as a sauna, L’Escogriffe welcomed energetic musicians and an audience that embraced all kinds of dancing last night. Toronto’s Maylee Todd and Hooded Fang made Montreal the last stop of their summer tour together. Beginning the night with a full venue, Hooded Fang charmed us with their pop music, orchestrated with horns and equip with gentle harmonies. After their first song, they urged their audience, “Come Closer!” The consistent pace of the drumming encouraged dancing amongst the audience. As a dace party ensued, we learnt that despite some bad luck with animals earlier that day (a bird relieving itself over the bass player and food-poisoning-by-mussels experienced by the lead singer), Hooded Fang was in good spirits. Fans of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros would be fond of Hooded Fang’s harmonies. Fans of Stars would enjoy Lorna (main female vocalist of Hooded Fang)’s soft voice. Hooded Fang makes pleasant and catchy music for any mood. The reptilian monster-like figures employed as the band’s graphics nicely juxtapose the sweet nature of their music.

Another creature could be seen in the venue-a plush lion’s head. Boasting a fluffy mane, this lion’s head is usually found worn by Maylee Todd in promotional photos, but last night this lion’s head damped the sound of the drum. Being much to warm for any costume, Maylee instead delivered her majestic performance barefoot. She claimed to be tired at the beginning of her performance, but I’m not sure if I believed her. Sharing boundless energy, Maylee began her set with her harp before moving to the guitar and later dancing with her vibraslap. Hooded Fang horn players Lane and Julia accompanied Maylee for the second half of her set. Her music is a fusion of Bossa-jazz and funk. Delivered with confidence and charm, Maylee’s jazz infused music makes us feel as though she has taste and style beyond her years. The freedom of her spirit is implicit in the title of her debut album Choose Your Own Adventure. As the end of the evening approached, Maylee called for a good ol’ “soul train”, whereby two lines formed and the individuals at either end met to groove back down the line aside one another as Maylee acted as the MC. Sad to see the evening reach its end, we all breached the thick air of the venue towards the refreshing feeling of the cool air that met our bodies outside. For these musicians, dancing in this humidity is worth it.

Hooded Fang: http://www.myspace.com/hoodedfang
Maylee Todd: http://www.myspace.com/mayleetodd
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: http://www.myspace.com/edwardsharpe
Stars: http://www.myspace.com/stars

Originally posted July 29, 2010 (under my previous blog http://freeafterfour.blogspot.com)