Christine Fellows, Ingredient, and Piss for Pumpkin
Christine Fellows
Stuff We All Get // Vivat Virtue
Since I first heard Christine Fellows's song Vertebrae in early 2021 I have been following the Winnipeg-based multi-disciplinary folk artist and musician as closely as I could. Her new album, cleverly titled Stuff We All Get (shortened to S.W.A.G) is a darker and lyrically dense album that still holds true to the delicate sound that Christine has worked hard to create.
Although Christine works in many different forms and styles as an artist, for me her work shines best as a poet. Stuff We All Get is filled with beautiful stories and lines. These turns of phrases would consistently have me stopped in my tracks to reflect. Some of the best lines include “Time is the best of the things we waste” and “Want my bags back!/ Trade our tickets for a Coke and a jetpack.”
Among the numerous cuts on the album, a shining pick from the bunch would have to be “The Rain”. This track starts out stripped back, highlighting the most crucial aspects of Christine’s songwriting and production; her gentle sweet voice, simple effective piano playing, and heartfelt lyrics. Throughout Fellows Discorpghy, she weaves an everlasting love and joy of nature into her work. “The Rain” captures this lifelong love affair. The song invites the listener into the natural world; “The rain will come again, sing you every colour, sweet and plain. What it brings you when it sings to you. What it brings you.”
Another highlighted track from the album is the song “Sisters”. This song creates a portrait of a small family and Fellows captures the unit with wit and jovial good nature. She jabs and jokes at Teddy, a sister in the song, quipping “Do you really wear lipstick to the grocery store? Yes you do”.
Sonically, S.W.A.G works best for me at its simplest. Call me a purist, but I like straightforward folk songs! Often the tracks are paired down to a simple arrangement, with a distinct focus and outlook on Fellows soft alto. Little Crow is probably the most sonically dense song on the album, and while at times the beautiful swelling of drums and odd instruments is beautiful, it can also be a little bit dense at points. Usually, though, the electric instruments on the album only add to enhance Christine's voice. The String work in particular on this album shines through, with specific emphasis on the arrangements on the same tune “A Little Crow”.
If you’re a fan of Canadiana and straightforward beautiful folk music with a highlight on storytelling and a fascination with nature you should definitely give Stuff We All Get a shot. The record maintains interest throughout its 30-minute long run time and is a catchy and easy listen.
- Ayden Elworthy
Ingredient
Ingredient // Telephone Explosion Records
Into the new year, we find ourselves full of hope and optimism. Will 2023 be the year everything falls into place? Only time will tell. Indeed 2023 will be filled with highs and lows, as well as all the top-notch Canadian releases that will accompany the forthcoming year. I’m accompanied by the new self-titled release from Toronto’s Ingredient for my far to early flight into San Francisco International Airport. This release came out on November 25th via Telephone Explosion Records. The record explores an enigmatic electronic avant-pop influence and a connection to the micro and macro perspectives of the natural world.
Ingredients show their myriad influences throughout the record, sampling different sounds and moulding them together to resemble something unique. This approach leaves their songs sounding fresh while still harkening back to the influence. By focusing on this method, Ingredient expresses both classic and contemporary in their arrangements.
Kuplowsky and Kehoe assembled the self-titled record for Ingredient over six months in a home studio they frequented daily. Amidst synthesizers and drum machines, they composed, re-composed, and workshopped a wide array of music, ultimately focusing on eight songs that lived in a shared musical and philosophical world. Recording days often ended in basketball games at a local court or a rooftop commune over a pot of tulsi tea and a crossword puzzle. Kuplowsky brought in the Blue Cliff Record – the classic anthology of Chan Buddhism – whose inscrutable and sublime insights remained constant throughout the recording process as an activator of reorientation and reflection.
The lyrics on Ingredient reflect the persistence of change, the infinite variability of nature where randomness and divergence are no accidents. In Daoism, duality, in the form of Yin and Yang, is not contradictory as it is in Western idealist philosophy, but rather composes the eternal and lived paradox of our changeless-changing universe: changeless because all change, and changing because of the dynamism of the Dao makes each moment transformational. Kuplowsky and Kehoe refract this way of seeing the world, as in Variation: “Variation in the natural world / there it is.” Ingredient is an experience of the various forms of saying there it is of the transformational world, and there it is, unfolding.
The new release from Ingredient has a lot of different flavours and would appeal to a broad listener base. Ingredient is an album whose lyrics are more poem than lyric and whose songs exist in a merger of house music, philosophically-minded lyricism, and contemporary R&B. One might recall electronic and art-pop luminaries such as Yukihiro Takahashi, The Blue Nile, and Arthur Russell, or connect it to contemporaries like Nite Jewel, Westerman and Blood Orange. A distinct world of dance, questions, secrecy and ultimate softness.
- Earl D
Piss for Pumpkin
Scared To Die // Self-Released
Grinding, raw, and energetic yet thoughtful, careful, and heartfelt. These qualities are immediately apparent when listening to the album Scared To Die from Montreal newcomers Piss For Pumpkin. This unique 3 piece featuring vocals, drums, and lead bass manages to fill sonic space and dazzle listeners better than most 5 piece ensembles. The energy leaps off the album right from the first track “July” with a foreboding and brooding atmosphere, and then we are immediately hit with 3 fast pace rippers letting you know this band can and will go hard. When it comes to the high energy tracks this trio crosses the bridge of hardcore and garage punk with a sprinkle of metal, wrapped in an avant garde pop package. Tracks like “I Get Scared” show the band is also willing to lay out simple, anxiety filled textures while the lead singer recites melancholic, yet beautifully crafted spoken word poetry.
The instrumentals don’t really change throughout the album, however the bass is layered and has a different approach on every track. The drums and bass flow perfectly in tandem. It's the kind of sound that without seeing them live you can tell these two musicians are incredibly in tune with each other. The vocalist has a poetic vibe that is reminiscent of art rockers like Kim Deal or Kim Gordon, however they can belt and scream with their own unique rhythm, timing, and melody. When they bring it all together we get a fresh take on what it means to be young and anxious.
What seems best of all with these three is the willingness to be different and unconventional. The songs aren't mixed in conventional ways, it's mixed by them, their way. They don’t have a conventional line up, they play their way with no guitarists, leads, or egos to stomp on their creativity. Make way for the bands practicing in damp, moldy, industrial corners since the few ideal practice spaces are gentrified and sold at a premium. In those dark corners bands like Piss For Pumpkin can be as weird and as loud as they please, all while helping shape a post pandemic future for rock music.
- Nigel Young
