Top down, hit repeat..... drive
Two Hours Traffic
Little Jabs
Bumstead
It must be the proximity to the sea. How else to explain a recording that is a fisherman’s wharf of hooks. Little Jabs is a brilliant sea-shine-bright pop album, glaring in its luminosity. It’s future so bright shades may very well be required. It’s so sunny its deserves its own orbiting planets and may receive such in the form of glittering prizes.
The debut from the Charlottetown PEI quartet has been produced by Haligonian Joel Plaskett and I for one didn’t know Plaskett had a sound until I heard this disc. But many of these tracks would fit in well with the Emergency’s output or even indeed those from Thrush Hermit’s catalogue.
While the Pretenders, Elvis Costello, The Jam, The Cars were in top form elsewhere, Canada never had anything similar to that pub rock/new wave until the East Coast Pop explosion which was then pushed into the deepest parts of the Alterniverse.
There is a legacy of great Pop in this country from Paul Anka to Andy Kim. The Barenaked Ladies were always after the illusive three-minute miracle but lapsed into goofiness instead. The West Coast flies the skinny tie flag effectively these days with Immaculate Machine and the New Pornographers.
Two Hours Traffic stand on the roof of these roots with legs splayed and windmill guitar hand at the ready. Little Jabs punches far above its weight and each and every track here is embedded with catchy as a cold hooks. There is no weakness.... No Advances, Jezebel, Sure Can Start and Stolen Earrings all can argue for dominance, for single status but each is unique and equally a winner.
I intend to rent a convertible just to ride into the Great Wide with Little Jabs on deck and take the road as far as it goes... into the never-ending horizon that is contained in this record. Top down, hit repeat..... drive.
What The River Gave The Boat
Mark Berube
Kwalu Records
West Coast by way of Manitoba and South Africa, Berube plays a dusty piano in the style of Guelph’s Evan Gordon or Vancity’s Geoff Berner. There is a traditional style buried among the boneyard, a world music that is not built on imported exotic drumming but a common soul bond where memory is a cockroach, scrambling among the debris, its survival guaranteed but the reason uncertain. Closing track Barber Shop is a spoken word poem that crests on a visit to New York. Its adagio-like string-fuelled poignancy so stirring it could be renamed the Berber Shop.
William McGuirk is a freelance writer and longtime Oshawa resident. He can be contacted at wmacg@yahoo.com.