Categories : Miscellany, Music Reviews, Top Rated.
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Rating: 5 / 5 Reviewer: David Coats |
Charles Spearin (Do Make Say Think, Broken Social Scene) had long been fascinated by the musical qualities of everyday conversation. He gathered some of his Toronto neighbours and asked them their thoughts on happiness. He then gathered some of his favourite musicians, assigned lead instruments to represent each of his neighbours’ voices (tenor sax for Mrs. Morris, harp for Marisa, etc.) and constructed songs around the rhythm, melodies, and other vocal characteristics of his neighbours as they spoke. The result is a rare masterpiece, the kind of conceptual and artistic originality that makes you feel like you’re hearing music for the first time.
Knowing that the concept may seem initially foreign to listeners, THP opens with ‘Mrs. Morris,’ which introduces listeners to the concept by simply having a saxophone mimic her voice as she speaks. ‘Anna’ follows, and progresses the concept to an easy-to-grasp arrangement, with rhythms and melodies all its own. This would be the record’s obvious “single.” Better still, Anna offers genuinely wise thoughts on happiness, talking about her job working with challenged teenagers: “…some of their expectations are so simplistic – not to say simplicity because they’re challenged, no…It’s like they don’t ask beyond of what’s present.”
‘Vanessa,’ though, is the fully executed realization of Spearin’s vision, as Spearin’s deaf neighbour discusses having a battery-activated microchip inserted in her head, and experiencing ‘sound’ for the first time. The song’s tipping point is the lyric “All of a sudden I felt my body moving inside,” the musical accompaniment expertly capturing the emotional surrealism of the experience.
THP is a landmark album not only for Spearin, but also for Arts & Crafts, a clear reaffirmation of its commitment to producing community-oriented art. In examining what makes music music, Spearin has made the connections to the deeper concepts of personality, sociology, spirituality, life. Though not the kind of album you’d likely listen to everyday, it’s uniquely relevant – the kind of album that’s as valuable as an academic study as much as a timely resource for personal spiritual renewal.
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