Dusted, Rick White, and New Chance
Dusted
III // Self Released
Alright listen up, friendos. It does not get any better than this. Should you read this review, should you then listen to this album, I'm sorry. There is no turning back. It will be your new favourite album of all time, unless you are completely heartless, in which case music cannot save you.
Everything about the whole album requires your full attention, repeatedly. Honestly I didn't think important albums would ever happen again, but here we are. To take a stab at describing it, imagine the timelessness of Paul Simon but with the far superior quality of, say, Damien Jurado. That description fails. Dusted is incomparably beautiful.
With his work with the band Holy Fuck, Brian Borcherdt is already a heavyweight champion of the Canadian music world. I personally have listened to Deleters about once a week since it came out at least SO I WAS EXPECTING this to be amazing but I DID NOT EXPECT to love it this much. Everyone I have played this for also loves it and then they recommend it to their friends. They recommend it TO THEIR FAMILY! Please believe me, you must listen to this. I don't know you but I still recommend this to you.
This sounds nothing like Holy Fuck by the way. It's catchy indie folk. I know what you're thinking, you're about to stop reading right there. Do not. Trust me, this is a genre that usually does absolutely nothing for me. (Except for the aforementioned Damien Jurado of course.) There's just so much of it already, and almost all of it is mediocre at best. This, however, is beautiful and real. Brian's voice, songwriting, and lyrics will make you cry.
Typical exchange; me, sharing bandcamp link to this album: "I love this album. It is so good. It is "make you cry" good." You: "Dammit you're right. Didn't want to cry today". Me: "sorry, not sorry". You: "haha". The first track alone, Not Offering will reduce you to liquid. It is a masterclass in heartfelt writing about codependency. Why have I gone to such extremes to convince you to listen to this? Why do you think? Because it's important.
- Joel Klaverkamp
Rick White
Where It's Fine // Blue Fog Recordings
I remember the first time I saw Rick White. Early 90's. Tall, slender, wearing a black t-shirt and faded baggy jeans. If you weren't paying attention, he resembled a shadow. If you were, you noticed a wry smile. There was a playfulness lurking in that long shadow.
Recorded at home between 2020 and 2021, and released on Blue Fog Recordings, Where it's Fine is available as a physical release on a Limited Pressing of 500, on purple vinyl through Independent record stores. Rick leans heavily on his decades of multi-instrumentalism. In addition, the experience gleaned from recording and engineering countless artists since the mid-90's enable Rick to craft an album that just sounds great.
Enjoy the popcorn rhythms of "Here it Comes". The steady driving and introspection of "My Self" and "Hurting" harkens back to all the best of Eric's Trip. My favourite, "Underneath" is the best kind of trip. Explorational and swirling.
On what should be counted as his sixth solo full length, Rick White uses a familiar pallette to craft a batch of seemingly simple songs. And yet, after a few listens, the production becomes noticable. While often cited as a pioneering lo-fi recording artist, Rick has found a way to keep the esthetic, and yet wonderfully layer in crystal clear parts and phrases.
Rick White's Where It's Fine deftly walks the line between darkness and playfulness, wryly smiling the whole time.
- Drew Cox
New Chance
Real Time // We Are Time
Whether or not you’re aware that you’ve heard Victoria Cheong’s haunting voice, it's likely you have. The artist--known as New Chance--has backed Jennifer Castle, Chandra, and 2017 Polaris Prize winner Lido Pimienta, as well as collaborated with Willi Williams.
Being a supporting vocalist is a distinct skill involving modifying one's own voice to embody someone else. Mastery of it seems otherworldly to me, like voice throwing or mimicry, one step from the uncanny Focusing on audio channels somewhere in the inbetween can be disorienting; complex sound hiding in plain sight. That’s one (among many) reasons why it is such a joy to hear New Chance’s debut solo album - it is wholly unique.
Rejecting the common high-postproduction of vocals, Real Time pulls from old-school harmonics in 60s pop and R&B recordings, as well as jazz influences with Karen Ng’s (Andy Shauf, The Weather Station) ascendant sax playing. Each track flows through stream of consciousness monologues and beautiful forest soundscapes - words adrift in a river of contemplation.
Water is a theme throughout the album lyrically, and is reflected in the music. Real Time points out the parallels between water and technology: both are beautiful, powerful, dangerous. What can be a tool for growth can be manipulated just as easily. Humanity’s dependence on algorithms has begun to drown us, and in “Adriatic” the album comes to a close in the empty repetition of one phrase: “it’s over.”
The ending is terrifying. It’s confusing. It’s great.
Because it’s not sad, or dramatic, or self-indulgent, it just...ends. Isn’t that how it usually goes?
Throughout the last year we (we is critical) have lived along our independent timelines, and maybe now it’s time to reconnect to real time, together. What better way than through this music, in all of its fleeting, floating, techno ponderings. Real Time asserts that through algorithmic rule and all we weather, we are intertwined.
So at once ambient and alien, pulling the listener through settings and philosophies as empty and abstract as outer space or the deepest seas, New Chance explores cycles of regeneration. The lyrics tackle big themes for secluded times: how does one navigate personhood in an age of technology? And most of all, what does that really mean?
Real Time may not offer answers, but it’s meditative reflections on time and identity may guide you somewhere as original as what you’re listening to.
- Chloe Lundrigan
