PDF version - Damian Taylor

A22
sec tion
the gazette
arts&life
· montrealgazette.com · T u e s d ay, August 13, 2013
ARTS editor: BASEM BOSHRA | bboshra@montrealgazette.com | Life Editor: EVANGELINE SADLER | esadler@montrealgazette.com
Album review
The tough
customer’s
vulnerable
farewell
Glen Campbell digs
into his catalogue
Glen Campbell
See You There
urfdog Records
S
µµµµ out of five
Mark Lepage
Special to THE GAZETTE
Mathieu Fortin
“I don’t want to bury my emotions under 1,000 metaphors,” says Marie-Hélène L. Delorme, a.k.a. Foxtrott.
Foxtrott doesn’t fit
a profile to a T
Marie-Hélène L. Delorme’s project has drawn comparisons
to other local electro-pop acts, but her heart often goes elsewhere
Michael-Oliver Harding
Special to THE GAZETTE
M
ontreal has many
talented music producers toiling in
relative obscurity, many of
whom are averse to the spotlight. For her part, MarieHélène L. Delorme spent the
past few years working in
sound post-production for
film, while moonlighting as
a producer under the vowelaverse MHMHMH moniker.
She has remixed, pimped
and otherwise bass-ified Quebec’s indie music A-list, from
Think About Life and Random Recipe to Bernard Adamus’s breakthrough single,
Rue Ontario.
Now the attention has
turned to her. Over the past
year, the 27-year-old beatmaking boss has seen her
solo project Foxtrott gain
traction beyond the confines
of Mile End with the release
of Shields, her emotionally
arresting electro-pop debut
EP. The vigorously moody
three-track affair came with
an illustrious stamp of approval from Damian Taylor,
local mixmaster to the stars
(Björk, Arcade Fire, Austra),
who agreed to work with Delorme on the strength of an
unmixed demo alone.
“I wanted to find someone
who could bring my sound to
the next level, because I was
pretty happy with my production, but mixing-wise, I’m
really drawn to sounds that
have a big booty,” Delorme
explained at an eatery in Little Italy.
“The people I met at first
didn’t really get it. They work
more with rock, whereas my
music has a lot of bass and
a hip-hop feel. I needed that
fatness. Damian instantly
understood what I was doing. He got my references and
where I was coming from,
which made it so easy to work
with him. Oh — plus, he’s a
genius.”
Delorme, who will soon
reconvene with Taylor to
work on the first full-length
Foxtrott record, registered
on the international indie
radar this summer after unveiling a sensual, shadowladen video for the song Colors and playing to great acclaim at Toronto’s North by
Northeast festival. Among
those who commended Delorme was the Line of Best
Fit, a British online magazine, which singled her out
as a festival highlight while
noting that “it’s all the rage
to be a solo female artist
from Montreal singing over
electronic pop beats.”
The musician admits to being caught off-guard by journalists’ easy shortcuts and
knee-jerk comparisons, but
understands that it comes
with the territory.
“People say it’s a trend
to be a solo girl electronic
producer from Montreal
because of Grimes and Mozart’s Sister,” she pointed out,
clearly amused. “I find these
comments so funny. … I only
recently realized that (writers) were making these links.
Let’s be honest, though: It’s
kind of sexist, because would
you connect, I don’t know,
Lunice with MC Mario just
because they’re two guys
from Montreal?
“Don’t get me wrong — it’s
far from being a bad thing to
be linked up with these girls.
They’re awesome. But it’s
not a trend — it’s a fact. We’re
musicians — end of story.”
Indeed, even a cursory listen to Delorme’s raw, lyrical
honesty makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t bear
much resemblance to other
homegrown indie acts. Delorme mentions names that
run the generational gamut
(for example, the Beach
Boys, Robyn and — wait for
it — Céline Dion) to illustrate what she intends to
deliver: a visceral musical
experience.
“I don’t want to bury my
emotions under 1,000 metaphors or make it sound too
obscure or weird, like many
artists do today,” she said. “I
like abstract stuff, but I’m not
a big fan of hyper-smart stuff,
as I take a really emotional
approach to music.”
Let’s backtrack to that nod
to the My Heart Will Go On
diva. Does Delorme — an
avowed gear nerd who crafts
warm melodies using a collection of organs, analog synths
from the late 1970s and foley
sounds culled from her postproduction work — really
nurse an unabashed affection
for our province’s peerless
ballad belter? Absolutely, the
discerning Delorme replied,
noting that one can reconcile
an appreciation for Dion with
a predilection for chunky
bass lines and sophisticated
arrangements.
“People think (my love of
Dion) is ironic, but it’s not,”
she insisted, visibly delighted to discuss the matter. “You
know when people talk about
the right (part of the) brain
as the imaginative, intuitive
side and the left brain as the
rational side? I feel like Céline’s only on one side — she
connects with everything
emotionally. It’s just amazing
and intense. She’s larger than
life — an Olympic athlete of
vocal range.”
While Delorme wouldn’t go
so far as to say Dion had a direct influence on her music,
she admires the Vegas-based
performer’s emotional honesty and earnestness.
“That’s also why I make pop
music — it’s how I express
myself. It’s not an intellectual
approach, but a very intuitive
one.”
“Galveston, oh Galveston / I
am so afraid of dyin’.”
Where do you want to start
with the poignancy? “I know
I need a small vacation …”
Since revealing in 2011
that he has incurable and
fatal Alzheimer’s, Glen
Campbell has toured the
world with a band featuring
three of his kids to leave fans
both devastated and exalted,
and released a supposed
farewell album, Ghost on the
Canvas, greeted with praise
similar to Johnny Cash’s
exit cheers.
Not a dry eye in the house.
Campbell would have been
a name for his session work
alone, for everyone from Phil
Spector to Elvis to the Beach
Boys to T.A.M.I. Show, had
he not become a legend as
countrypolitan’s golden boy.
He’d have earned the career
reappraisal of See You There
even if it were just a souvenir. Instead, it’s a musical
statement.
It can’t help but be an emotional one. “The road of life is
a long, long road / when you
walk alone”: the big opening
of Hey Little One sets the
bar high. There’s something
more loping to the arrangement, but the vocal — remarkably — matches the original. He briefly sounds old
in Gentle on My Mind, and in
a gentle Postcard from Paris,
and why wouldn’t he? From
there, the aural rewards are
surprising.
What I Wouldn’t Give has a
shot of Isaak Amerigothica
to it (“What I wouldn’t give to
make you stronger”). The original sprightly, overproduced
Galveston is heavier and
strictly country here. By the
Time I Get to Phoenix loses
all its blithe stringery and is
instead a deliberate, clopping
farewell.
Wichita Lineman is the
song of surpassing brilliance
here, beginning with the
song itself. What some may
mistake for bathos is instead
a great lyric jump-cut: “that
stretch down south won’t
ever stand the strain” to “and
I need you more than want
you” must have gone through
357 versions before Jimmy
Webb guillotined it down to
those two brutal verses, making it clear what’s really on
his mind. And here, we have
that work/duty/love dilemma resolved. Every line is
weightier. Stripping away the
studio bittersweetness, the
pedal steel sings, organ replaces the original studio accessorizing and the vocal …
trumps the original. I mean,
read that again.
The strings are also gone
from True Grit, replaced by
pedal steel. Rhinestone Cowboy is dark and hallowed
here, without percussion,
without the glitter of the
original anthem; it’s a brave
production call, and you’re
reminded of how many of
Campbell’s hits were concerned with sadness, but a
sadness that had time to be
enjoyed in youth and vigour.
Campbell was likely a tough
customer in his heyday, and
there were other stories. Well,
nice guys get washed away
like the snow and the rain.
He’s a player in an Arkansas
pantheon that includes Big
Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Ronnie Hawkins,
Levon Helm, Junior Walker,
Pharoah Sanders, Louis
Jordan, Charlie Rich. And
speaking of tough, “She just
didn’t know / I would really
go”: imagine being the primary audience for those lines.
Campbell’s wife, Kim, is a
brave woman, and henceforth
most of what they’ll deal with,
they’ll deal with offstage,
where the lights won’t be shining on them. True Grit indeed.
Podworthy: Wichita Lineman
CONCERT CALENDAR
For our Big Picture concert
calendar, which is updated
weekly, please visit our
Words & Music blog at
montrealgazette.com/
wordsandmusic
For more information on
Foxtrott, and to hear the
Shields EP, visit foxtrott.
Associated Press files
bandcamp.com.
Glen Campbell announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2011.
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