Willie Dunn, Daniel Romano, and KICCC
Willie Dunn
Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology // Light in the Attic
Willie Dunn was a Montreal born songwriter, politician, filmmaker and naturalist of mixed Mi’kmaq/Scottish/Irish heritage who passed away in 2013 with his musical legacy and contribution relatively unknown within the larger context of the Canadian folk music scene. Although he received his place on the Aboriginal Walk of Honour, his lack of interest in the commercialization of his music and distaste for music industry exploitation prevented him from reaching the level of media saturation achieved by many of his contemporaries. If, like me, you were born back in the days when Canada had about 4 television stations, you likely encountered the music of Willie Dunn through his award winning 1968 National Film Board short, The Ballad of Crowfoot. An NFB mainstay often shown between programs on the CBC, the ten minute film and accompanying ballad was my first significant exposure to unvarnished imagery of Canada’s ugly history of cultural genocide. That song, written in the 100th year of the colonial confederacy, chronicles the endless struggle and repeated betrayal of Canada’s Indigenous people, and wonders continuously with a world-weary sigh whether there will come a “better tomorrow.” One can’t help but stand aghast that over fifty years later the song is precisely as relevant as the day it was released.
Recent listeners may have first encountered Willie via the absolutely essential-listening box set Native North America Vol. 1, also released by Light in the Attic. That particular collection also contained “I Pity the Country,” the absolutely searing indictment of the Canadian state that proved undeniably the massive force of Willie’s political conviction and keen insight.
Perhaps sensing how very crucial the words and music of Willie Dunn are amidst the current generation-defining struggle against environmental destruction and Indigenous exploitation, Light in the Attic have released a long-overdue comprehensive collection of Willie’s music that truly displays what a mammoth musical talent we lost when he passed in 2013. A cursory listen to this extensive two LP collection will quickly convince the neophyte listener that Willie deserves no less a place in the Canadian artistic pantheon than other folk icons like Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot or Buffy Sainte-Marie.
There were many times over the course of my listening to this set that I was brought to tears by the simple, poignant and beautiful expressions of Willie’s struggle for justice and dignity. Some songs, such as the heart-wrenching “Charlie,” the tragic true story of an Anishinabe boy who perished of hunger and exposure after escaping from a residential school, are almost too emotionally heavy for casual listening; I was particularly struck to wracking sobs by the serene dignity of the Cree lamentation song that serves as the coda for “Crazy Horse.” Even at his most playful, as on the buoyant rave-up “School Days,” there’s an emotional weight to Dunn’s work that demands the listeners’ attention. A politically outspoken, staunchly uncommercial and unashamedly left-leaning force for positive change, Willie’s catalog stands as a frankly staggering bulwark against the environmental degradation and human rights abuses perpetrated under the colonial system, and never shies away from plainly addressing the kind of difficult truths that tend to make settlers more than a little uncomfortable. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to suggest that repeated listenings to Willie Dunn would be crucial for any Canadian interested in the process of decolonization.
Beyond his political commentary, one is also stricken by Willie’s depth of love and reverence for the natural world, reflected in a number of gently meditative pieces, such as the sublime “Pontiac” which incorporates field recordings of bird song, or the rambling piece “The Pacific,” which sounds nothing less than a Canadian companion to Van Morrison’s transcendental classic “Astral Weeks.” There’s poetic depth here that approaches the mystical, and reminds me of Walt Whitman in his most pastoral passages from Leaves of Grass.
By dint of the music alone this package would be essential, but in addition the collection also includes an absolutely delightful set of liner notes packed full of eloquent family tributes, stories, articles and photographs. It’s a massive info dump that gives essential context to the collection, and really drives home the idea that Willie was a truly unique and massive talent who deserves his rightful place among his peers in the Canadian music industry. I can’t give a higher possible recommendation for any reissue collection this year; Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies is an absolute grail for both fans and casual listeners, and a crucial entry into the under-represented canon of music from Indigenous artists getting renewed exposure thanks to the efforts of the good folks at Light in the Attic. You will absolutely not regret getting your hands on a copy.
- Shaun Lee
Daniel Romano
Kissing The Foe // You’ve Changed
While most of us musicians and recording artists have slowed our output since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel Romano has been busier than ever, dropping surprise releases within months or less of each other to keep fans (and Canadian indie music adherents in general) busy. Based on his Wikipedia page alone, since the start of 2020 he has released four albums and one EP under his own name, five albums with Daniel Romano’s Outfit and two releases as part of other recently formed bands. With so much being released in so little time, it’s a wonder he had any creative energy left at all to make his most recent solo album, Kissing The Foe, let alone for it to be as good as it is.
From the start, you’re greeted with production and composition reminiscent of the mid-1960s and early 70s. Romano’s familiar George Harrison-like voice, Byrds-esque vocal harmonies, hints of psychedelia here and there both musically and lyrically, and reliance on acoustic instruments match as well as you would expect with the warm era-appropriate EQ and compression. Ultimately the end result almost sounds like Rubber Soul but brassier and without the bitterness behind it. Besides the old-fashioned stylings his followers know him for, there are also some interesting twists thrown into some of the songs, including the ritardando occurring through the entirety of “Who Pulls the Sunlight”, the punchiness of the rhythm in the verses of “Into a Rainbow” that makes the triple meter sound more bizarre than it is, reggae-inspired elements in the verses of “I Don’t Fit In” and the instrumentation of “Whispers in the Garden” genuinely feeling hushed and secretive. Romano goes beyond elements that will please music nerds, however, because like a good pop artist there are tracks like “Keepers of the Polished World” and the aforementioned “I Don’t Fit In” featuring a chorus that gets in your head quite easily.
Kissing The Foe is proof that despite the massive surge in Romano’s releases in this still-young decade, he hasn’t yet run out of enough ideas to produce a full album worth listening to. Now that the vaccine rollout is underway, he’ll soon have the difficult task of deciding what to play from his dozens of new releases once he can hit the road again.
- Ty Vanden Dool
KICCC
Area 27 // MILO88
There has been a serious experimental pop and hyperpop explosion in Vancouver over the course of the last few months. And among this wave of releases, we have the latest from KICCC (aka. Carson Cheng), a multidisciplinary recording artist based out of Vancouver, BC. A graduate BFA in Interdisciplinary Performance Art, Cheng began working as an actor in Hong Kong and debuted as KICCC in 2019 with the singles leading up to the release of The Water Knows (2020). This time around, KICCC returns with a 7-track EP titled Area 27, which was produced at Helm Studios by Josh Eastman and released on April 1, 2021. With this follow up to the debut album, KICCC returns to his use of experimental pop to explore the liminal spaces at the intersection experiencing the world and its relationships both as an ethnic minority and a queer individual.
Area 27 marks a significant leap in the musical style that KICCC has been cultivating since The Water Knows - as opposed to the latter album, Area 27’s general aesthetic approach is more resembling of contemporary hyperpop informed by acts like Dorian Electra, Imogen Heap, SOPHIE, and Arca. The record opens up with “H.T.L. (Hard to Love),” a bubbly dazzling track that carries with it a cosmopolitan swagger culminating in the main hook. From the start, the production is able to make tracks that come across as KICCC’s catwalk for the fashion show. “MRKMI (feat. Lodia Mija & Kid Filthy)” is perhaps my favourite track in the whole record, and it comes as no surprise that this was one of the singles teasing the record. “MRKMI” is the only song to feature other artists, and they really help give this it a dynamic sense of motion. But right at the start, “MRKMI” starts off with these haunting vocal deliveries followed by a crisp bassline and some beats that slowly lead into the track opening up more and more with each vocal interjection. “DEAD TO ME” brings us back to the sparkly portamento-lifted synths that give KICCC some major glamour. The pre-choruses in “DEAD TO ME” bring a swaying and playful space from whence the artist bounces back to a hard-hitting chorus.
As a bit of break in the record, “softkisses” is a delicate piano interlude that includes some subtle atmospheric samples giving a sense of a debriefing space, where the melody can take the moment to get out of key to embrace the energy of this subtle piece. “Kings and Princes” is another one of my favourites , as it starts with this humming drum, bass, and vocal whisper driving the track to an energetically emotional song - and one of my favourite details in the song are the vocaloid interludes in between lyrical deliveries, only to culminate into a soft piano at the end. “Floating” is another of those strong tracks, picking up the energy after the discretion of the last two songs and having a beat reminiscent of cumbia giving it a driving groove - there was a moment where this reminded me of the incorporations of cumbia and reggeaton in Arca’s music. Lastly, “Pretty Please” takes the energy up a notch for a hard autotune pop song, where the production plays with high-end cutoffs to deliver a sense of moving depth back and forward - this part of the production provides some impact as the vocals start picking up again into the chorus, as the sound gets distilled to its finer details and then brought back together for a fuller sense of appreciation over what is going on in the song.
As a whole, Area 27 is a transformative reflection of KICCC’s sound as the artist comes to embrace the elements of queer glamour so defining of much hyperpop in this work - as a queer, immigrant artist exploring this very thing, it is exciting to see how this work of intimation into one’s music takes many forms over time, each time embracing that liminality to a fuller and fuller extent. As part of that development, Area 27 is an expression of this development and comfort by the artist in his work yielding one of the most notable hyperpop releases in Canada this year. With this leap in musical output, I am only curious and thrilled to see where KICCC’s experimentations take his interdisciplinary work next.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
