Mitch Davis, Joyful Joyful, and Anyway Gang
Mitch Davis
The Haunt // Arbutus Records
There's something very personal about choosing a single record to download and stew with for your Los Angeles to Edmonton flight. As a regular resident of the sky, I often complete reviews while in flight. These days, the window views and spacious nature of air travel lend themselves to this on-the-go reviewer quite well. This time around, I got the new Mitch Davis record, The Haunt, to keep me company during my time in the sky.
The song "Left Inside" stuck out to this reviewer. I love the layered nature of this song, at times chill and others growing in power with horn and piano layers creating a perfect hazy vibe. The songs instrumental breaks make the ideal soundtrack for the sunny ocean of clouds greeting me outside the window.
The Haunt provides a range of feels that gives the listener a lot to choose from as far as sonic experiences. It covers a wide range of instrumentation while blending jazz, funk, sunshine pop, & rock into a sound that often feels like a full band effort. Davis says: "I was always hoping I could find a way to blend everything together and get away with doing a bunch of different genres all at once because I don't like dwelling on a certain sound." The Haunt also has a personal element, focusing on how memories, both good and bad, can continue to linger long after the people and things that inspired them have disappeared into the ether—thus the title of The Haunt.
Davis is a mainstay of the vibrant Montréal music scene, with a musical background encompassing everything from rock bands (Faith Healer) to avant-garde (Elle Barbara's Black Space) to jazz and hip-hop (Cadence Weapon). Edmontonians might also remember Davis from his days performing under the moniker Mitchmatic.
The Haunt delivers as a highly keys-driven effort. The album uses instrumental choices to paint a colourful tapestry of different sounds and inspirations, making room for the use of warm retro sounds like Rhodes, clavinet, and synth. The Haunt has a sound perfect for any laid-back sunny playlist or long flight.
- Earl D
Joyful Joyful
Joyful Joyful // idée fixe
“Experiential” is a word I use sparingly when describing albums, reserved for a select few. But with their debut album, the duo of Cormac Culkeen and Drave Grenon teamed up under the moniker Joyful Joyful and went in search of music that inspires a spiritual experience. Driven in large part by their expulsion from the church for queerness, Joyful Joyful drew from their religious and spiritual background to create music that is felt more than it is heard.
Like Celtic folk songs from outer space, Culkeen’s vocals dance and swing effortlessly as Grenon follows along intuitively with ambient accompaniment that drones and swoons fervently. They carry their desire for evocative musical experiences over to their method - moving together intuitively, responding to each other’s subtle shifts of mood, tone, and inflection. There is a clear musical rapport, and yet, the music feels like it’s been inside of you all along. As the improvisational jazz greats searched for emotion over theoretical musical cohesion, so too does Culkeen approach their vocal method. Not unlike Arooj Aftab, Culkeen’s voice soars and plummets with ease and purpose. More important than melodic proclivities are the emotions behind them.
Like a tide that comes and goes, Culkeen’s Celtic ruminations ebb and flow softly and reliably. But where the listener may tend to drift into sanguine bliss, Joyful Joyful still demands a careful reading of the lyrics. Thematic heft and ambiguity abound, but JJ will provide plenty of cud to chew for weeks on end. The ruminations are the type that worm their way into your psyche, twisting, transforming, and fermenting as you return to their memory as the weeks go on.
“The hunter, you’ve seen him
The archer, his arrows are strong
And hunger, you’ve known her
I know the winter is long.”
Whether you project these lyrics onto a long Canadian winter, or apply them to the 8th century hermit about which they were written, Joyful Joyful pairs contemplative and entrancing musical proclivities with rich lyricism that will have you returning again and again to experience their surreal peace and ponder the weight behind the meaning of their space age Celtic folk.
- Clay Geddert
The Anyways Gang
Still Anyways // Royal Mountain Records
“What is this?… The Edgefest ‘99 line up?”
This is the question that ran through my mind when I first heard the line up of this band. If you get the terrible opening joke, you’re probably pretty excited about Canada’s coolest and newest supergroup, The Anyway Gang, and their sophomore record.
Consisting of Dave Monks (Tokyo Police Club), Sam Roberts (Sam Roberts Band), Menno Versteeg (Hollerado), and Chris Murphy (Sloan); this really is a super-duper-group with members (and longtime friends) plucked from some of Canada’s best rock bands of the last 20 years.
It started as a bunch of friends getting together to write and record some songs they all had laying around and it morphed into an actual band when they realized they had enough for a record. That record was 2019’s amazing self titled Anyway Gang.
The last tour this band of buddies went on was a single tour stop in, of course, Toronto (shakes a prairie fist). Well, cut to 2022 and they are back with not only a new record but a full Canadian tour to boot….. except Sask dates thus far….(shakes other prairie fist)….. but I digress.
The name of the new record is Still Anyways and it’s full of tasty musical treats. You can tell this group of players were having a blast right from the get go, once they got all of the dad jokes out of the way of course…. and apparently there was a lot.
In fact, the first single “Real Thing” was written in response of “Even Better Than The Real Thing” from a small Irish band called U2. The Anyways thought this such a great tune and wanted to write something almost as good but not quite as good so the U2 song made more sense. It absolutely couldn’t be better otherwise the entire operation would have been for naught. A very noble endeavour, to be sure.
This type of attitude fuelled the entire record but it’s also littered with positivity, cool licks (like really cool), and signature sounds from all the collaborators.
The songs “What’s Left of My Love”and “Don’t Give Up On Your Dreams” could have been plucked from a number of Sloan records, while on the track “Out of Nowhere” you can hear the Sam Roberts Bands influence oozing….. and not just because Sam Roberts himself is handling lead vox.
A little side tale about Mr. Roberts comes to mind. A friend went to a Sam Roberts Band show in Regina where the crowd had to wait outside in the rain for hours. The power eventually went out and the show got cancelled but not before Roberts came out in the rain and played an acoustic set for the rain soaked patrons. A truly amazing musical human experience and it speaks loudly to the type of peeps The Anyway Gang recruits.
This is about as fun a record as your going to find this summer and there is tons of great rock, great songwriting and of course excellent musicianship…. also all the fun, did I mention the fun? That’s what you’re gonna get from a maple soaked supergroup of nice dudes like the Anyway Gang.
- Chris Vasseur
