Local Heroes
9 Local CD's Reviewed
John Kendle and Mike Warkentin

Sweet Jesus, there’s a lot of these things in here!’ was the exclamation heard in Uptown’s fortified compound when the local-discs drawer was opened in late May.

Turns out we had 24 brand new discs waiting to be praised or panned, so we set to work plowing through the pile.
Here’s the results of a whole lot of listening. We hope you’ll enjoy discovering this quarter’s gems as much as we did.

If you’re a Manitoba musician and want your disc reviewed in Uptown, the next Local Heroes will run in September. Send your submissions to:

Local Heroes @ Uptown
1465 St. James St.
Winnipeg, Man.
R3H 0W9

Please note: We don’t accept demos. People must be able to purchase your disc somehow in order for it to be reviewed. (Offstage and online sales are cool.)

All reviews by John Kendle and
Mike Warkentin

Arctic Circle
Forcing the Astral
(Profound Lore Records)

B

Website: www.arcticcircle.memebot.com

Ashland Court
Ashland Court
(Grumpy Cloud)

C+



Website: www.myspace.com/ashlandcourt

Winnipeg guitarist Gerri Riggs is one of those guys who’s been in what seems like a dozen bands over the past 15 years or so — and every one of them has been pretty good. This time out he’s working with a traditional rock ’n’ roll lineup — two guitars, bass and drums — in a straight-ahead rock outfit that wisely pays no heed to trends or fashion. The five songs on this EP are the sort of stuff that gets fists pumping in the early evening at day-long outdoor rock shows, when up ’n’ comers take over from complete unknowns to rev fans up for the night’s headliners. Opening cut Hell’s Sweet Hands, a blues-based modern rock ’n’ roller with a catchy chorus, is the best tune here, but even it indulges in the lyrical clichés that are found throughout these tunes. If the writing doesn’t step up a notch, neither will the band. — JK

The Consumer Goods
Pop Goes the Pigdog!
(Grumpy Cloud)

A



Website: www.myspace.com/theconsumergoods

Aided and abetted by Paper Moon’s Alison Shevernoha (keys) and Chris Hiebert (drums), along with bassist Ken Phillips and guitarist Ian Jeffrey, Tyler Shipley delivers 14 multi-faceted pop/rock songs that offer more than the pointed politics the disc’s title might suggest. Yes, with titles such as Good Thing (for Bourgeois Nationalism), Adam Smith (look him up, fuck!) and Ghost of a Suicide Bomber, this is a decidedly intelligent leftist, anti-imperialist album. But it’s one which avoids the eff-you rants of most punk acts and also stays clear of didactic theory. Instead, Shipley writes personal songs of doubt and dread, in which he imagines dead tourists after a terrorist attack (London Bombs), becomes a ‘restructured’ Detroit auto-worker (Cars for Cogs) or conjures the otherworldly return of a jihad warrior (Ghost of a Suicide Bomber). The swelling, epic arrangements of many of these tunes match the subject matter blow-for-blow, making this the most impressive debut from a Winnipeg act for many years. — JK

D. Rangers
The Paw-Paw Patch
(Dollartone Records)

A



Website: www.drangers.ca

Despite the traditional folk tune which gives this album its name (and bookends the music), this ain’t your grandaddy’s bluegrass. Tom Fodey, Aaron Goss, Jaxon Haldane, Chris Saywell and Don Zueff can hoedown with the best, but they excel when they’re rollicking with hell-bent energy and pushing the limits of their instruments to create a boot-stompin’ racket. Singer/banjo player Haldane takes the lion’s share of writing duties here, and he’s developed an eye for detail and a turn of phrase that enables him to take specific elements and relate them to universal themes. Dirty Dodie, Social Season and June off of Drinkin’ are all head-bobbin’ smile-bringers, while New Year’s Blues and Love, Lust and Loneliness will be familiar laments to those who’ve lived the life (if you have to ask, then you haven’t). Elsewhere, Goss’ Watching Her Dance is a beautifully bittersweet lament, while the rousing Trois Rivieres is about as straightforward a roots tune as these guys will ever play. — JK

Katelyn Dawn is just 16 years old. Her favourite performer is Michelle Branch, and she has a catchy single, Whatcha Got, in rotation at Hot 103. Is there more to this project than meets the eye? Well, yes and no. Katelyn is indeed doing the singing and she is playing acoustic guitar. She’s also credited with writing all 11 songs, and she even gets a co-producer’s credit but — unless she’s as precocious as the young Stevie Wonder — she hasn’t put together an album this polished all on her own. The real lynchpin is John Paul Peters, the former guitarist with The Undecided, who is house producer at High North, a Joe Riccardo-owned studio near Grand Beach. Peters, who has also worked with the likes of Comeback Kid and Every New Day, not only produced and arranged but also played lead guitar, keyboards, percussion and even bass on eight tunes (Riccardo plays the fat strings on three cuts). All this points to the notion that Katelyn is both a pop construct and a high priority for High North — an act that Peters and Riccardo think will help raise the profile of the company. Will she make it? Well, Whatcha Got and Fallen show potential — but most of these maudlin pop songs about love, longing and regret need faster tempos, simpler lyrics and bigger choruses. — JK

Two guitars, a great big drum sound and Mark Stretch’s furious bass… After yer first listen to Bottle Rocket you’ll wonder what took the FK’s so long to figure out that four means more. Never mind that, though. This FK sound is here, it’s now and it’s a fantabulous drunkpunkapoparolla roar that lays waste to at least half of what has passed for the same in the past six years. Just check the end of Bloodstains for proof of this band’s essential credo: “Bloodstains, fast cars, cheap thrills, great skills… bleagh!” What the hell else do you need? To be semi-serious for just a moment, new guitarist Nathan Napalm adds a whole new dimension to the Kildonans — so much so that they may want to consider a better adjective than ‘fabulous.’ This shit rawks with capital letters. Check out Track 7, Mark’s New T.V., and then try to argue that it sucks. You simply can’t. — JK

A sophomore release, Flavour vs. Eric Nicholas finds the funk-rock band playing eight of frontman Nicholas’ songs and four group cuts. Nicholas’ portion is fairly downtempo, with songs about love and the meaning of life, while the group jacks things up a bit for the closing quartet of tunes. The group section is probably the better of the two, simply because of the energy and grooviness of songs such as Trippin’. The first eight songs are solid pop numbers but lack any real imagination or vocal vision. Nicholas is a decent songwriter, but he’ll need to expand his horizons a bit to make waves in a music world saturated with songs about romance and rain. That said, it’s nice to see the singer still sounds sweet despite a vocal injury that curtailed Flavour’s live career. Nicholas might have lost a bit of power, but the pipes are otherwise in fine order. — MW

She grew up in Winnipeg, learned to play piano here and spent more time living in this burg than Neil Young ever did. Still, Jody Glenham wrote and recorded her debut album of piano pop in Edmonton, where she moved at just 18 to study music at Grant MacEwan College. But there’s good reason to be claiming Jody as one of our own, as this is a debut which resonates in the same way Sarah Slean’s earliest material once did. Glenham avoids Slean’s overwrought romanticism, though, in favour of an earnest and at times sarcastic lyrical approach that tackles subjects as broad as rampant consumerism (the title track) or as idiosyncratic as pop-star foibles (When I Grow Up). Produced by veteran Edmonton musicians James Murdoch and Chris Wynters (Captain Tractor), the album also features electronic programming by former Watchmen and Thornley bassist Ken Tizzard. Not that Glenham really needed the enhancement. These are songs which could happily flow freely with Glenham’s voice — which is by turns full and vibrant or thin and tremulous — and her piano. — JK