Quick hits: Thinking about the Polaris edition

With the Polaris Prize ballot deadline just a few weeks away, I'm trying to listen to as many albums as I possibly can to ensure that I make the most informed selection possible. I did a count a few days ago, and I'm up to about 250 albums in the last year -- which, dishearteningly, is only a fraction of all the qualifying albums that have come out since June 1st of last year. In any case, on we go...



I'd call The Orchid Highway Beatlesque, except their self-titled full-length debut makes it plainly obvious that's exactly what they want...and, quite frankly, I don't think they deserve that kind of satisfaction for an album so thoroughly indebted disturbingly and slavishly devoted to the past.

It's not that the band isn't competent, mind you; they're all clearly expert musicians, and I'm sure if any of them wanted to, they could have fine careers as session musicians or jingle writers or something. The problem is that there's not a song here that sounds like the band realizes there's been any music made at all since the mid-'60s, and as much as they may not like it, that's not a mark of particularly good songwriting. Consequently, there are so many low points here that it's hard to tell what qualifies as the absolute nadir. "Tea With Chandra" is definitely a tempting choice, what with it's awkward lyrics and naked attempt at recalling "Hey Jude" with its shouty outro, but I'd nominate "Time For A Change" as the clear winner. Over the course of four minutes they give their rhyming dictionaries a workout, using as many awkwardly worded excuses they can think of to fit in words that rhyme with "change", including: rain, lane, refrain, train, explain, plain, brain, drain, range, Cain, Mark Twain, again, complain, terrain, Spanish Main, red wine stain, strange, name, construction crane, game, wane, sane, fame, reins. I think I missed a few, but you probably get the idea. Realistically, The Orchid Highway should devote more energy to inventing time travel than they do to music so they can go back to 1966, thereby making one less Beatles-infatuated band for the world to worry about.



I really want to rave about The Tom Fun Orchestra. After all, You Will Land With A Thud has a lot of the qualities I like in my music: the band is huge, and they sound like they're having a lot of fun doing what they're doing.

Unfortunately, there's only so much camaraderie and fun you can take in one sitting. For the first couple of songs it's kind of enjoyable to hear all the ways band leader Ian MacDougall is able to weave in the contributions of about fifteen different musicians. The further in you get, though, the more you wish the band would take an economical approach to arranging, even if only for a song. In a similar vein, MacDougall's vocals are a spitting image (spitting sound?) for those of Tom Waits -- and, again, for a couple of tracks that's kind of cool, before you start yearning for a bit of a respite from it all. I'm sure The Tom Fun Orchestra put on a spectacular show -- I mean, listen to a song like "Rum and Tequila" and try not to imagine how they'd pull it off in concert -- but as far as records go, You Will Land With A Thud is a little more exhausting than it should be.



Lastly, it's kind of hypocritical of me to criticize two bands for sticking too much to one specific sound and then turn around and praise a Celt-punk band, but given that it's my blog, I don't need to show consistent thinking, even if it is just one post.

In any case, I'm not sure if Irish Punk Collection, the newest album from The Mahones really qualifies for the Polaris -- try as I might, I can't tell whether it's a greatest hits collection, a covers collection, all new material, or some combination of the three.

Regardless, I'll say that any album that can hold my attention for seventeen songs that clock in at over an hour in total is certainly worth checking out. The band may not stray too far (or at all, really) from the standard Celt-punk sound, but, eighteen years into their career, they don't really need to. All that matters at this stage is that they still deliver the goods with energy, and they bring their listeners along for the ride, and tracks like "Drunken Lazy Bastard" and "Down The Boozer (The Bricklayers' Song)" show they do just that. I'd be blown away if The Mahones even got a mention on the Polaris longlist, but when they're making music this fun, that doesn't really matter.