Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

This could be Osborne’s year. The singer, best known for the 1995 hit “One of Us,” is releasing a new album on her own record label and is launching a Lilith Fair-style women’s music festival. She is also recording a tribute album for Sister Rosetta Tharpe and is making her film debut in the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown.  Her label and festival will each be called Womanly Hips, as in “all good things come from womanly hips.” She promises “joyful music for these disturbing times.”

Canadian diversity at its best—guitarist Shaun Verreault is French-Canadian, bassist Earl Pereira is from a Filipino family and drummer Safwan Javed is of Pakistani descent—Wide Mouth Mason continues to defy expectations. On its fourth album, the prairie band comes up with surprising twists on its blues-rock sound. A tabla leads into the swinging “Reconsider,” while “Dry You Up” is raw, Weezer-like power pop. And “Lagavulin” is a hilarious stoner’s confession. No wonder they’re the pride of Saskatoon.

The cotton-patch blues of the late Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough are deeply disturbing. Full of exhortations of a violent and sexual nature, they speak of primal urges and human failings. Played over repetitive one-chord grooves, songs like “Release Me” echo droning, hypnotic Malian music, while “Done Got Old” has a plaintive simplicity. But nothing on this retrospective prepares for the harrowing title track, which begins as a tale of rape and ends as a love story. Mean blues, yes, but blues with meaning.

More proof that Canada produces the best guitar pickers on the planet. This long-overdue retrospective shows that David Wilcox possesses fast fretwork, evocative fingerpicking and mind-blowing string bending. He also has a wicked wit to match his lightning-fast licks. The emphasis here is on his raucous roadhouse material, including “Rockin’ the Boogie,” made famous by Olympic skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, and “That Hypnotizin’ Boogie,” from Tom Cruise’s Cocktail movie. But it’s all awesome.

Is Toronto’s suburban wasteland a breeding ground for punk-lite? First there was Sum 41 from Newmarket, and now along comes Not by Choice, formed in “the hallowed halls of a faceless Ajax, Ontario secondary institution.” Led by singer Mike Bilcox, the four-piece band performs peppy, wistful songs about unrequited love. Although the material is woefully one-dimensional, the band is as hyper as a teenager on a first date. Catchy choruses abound, especially on the Green Day knockoff, “Make My Day.”

This is cerebral jazz—think Diana Krall for eggheads. Chicago’s Patricia Barber loves inventive wordplay and unusual time signatures. “Lost in This Love” poses profundities over a syncopated guitar, while “Clues” clue rhymes off stark, snappy evidence like a gumshoe in a potboiler. In other songs, Barber shows off her interests. “If I Were Blue” references painters Goya and Picasso, while “I Could Eat Your Words” lists Aristotle and Descartes. But the singer-pianist is at her best on the sexy, bass-driven “Regular Pleasures.”  

Displaying immaculate schooling and musicianship, Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdés goes classical. A graduate of Cuba’s legendary Orquesta de Música Moderna, Valdés is best known as the leader of the great Cuban big band Irakere. But the Bluenote recording artist clearly knows his classical repertoire, as evidenced by these fluid interpretations of Chopin, Ravel and Debussy. While those numbers are tasteful, it’s his own compositions and his takes on Cuban traditional pieces that provide the album’s real spice.

Strange instrumental string music is what they play, leading gifted fiddler-mandolinist Jesse Zubot and virtuoso guitarist (slide, Hawaiian, Weissenborn) Steve Dawson to dub their style “strang.” Twisted takes on blues, bluegrass and western swing is what it is—tasty too. “The Chomp” is feverish, fiddle-fuelled jazz-funk, while “Paloma” is delirious, slide-driven gypsy music. But the Vancouver duo’s best track is “The King of America,” a haunting guitar-fiddle duet of breathtaking beauty and simplicity.

Anyone craving a tougher punk sound than numbered bands like Sum 41 and Blink 182 will hail this hardcore unit from New York City. Led by Cuban-born vocalist Miret, who also sings with punk veterans Agnostic Front, the Disasters borrow shamelessly from Sham 69, The Clash and Rancid. Songs like “Run Johnny Run” and “Timebomb” (not the Rancid hit) boast an infectious spirit, while “Screw You” and “Smash It Up” are expletive-filled anthems that bristle with rage. Anarchy for NYC, anyone?

The Flannel-Shirted One, a soul singer? Backed by Booker T & the MGs, you might think Neil has such pretensions. It’s a bad idea, an oil-and-water solution in which Neil’s squeaky, croaky falsetto never blends with the band’s tight rhythmic groove. Nor are the songs, including  “Let’s Roll,” Neil’s homage to the fighting spirit of Todd Beamer, the doomed hero of Flight 93, anything to write home to Winnipeg about.  But, like Dylan, the man’s entitled to the occasional dud.