Heather Rankin: Coastal to the Heart

Put on your red shoes; 

Heather Rankin dances a fine line!

12 October 2017 By Christine Leonard 

There are few surnames in Canadian culture that carry an immediate association with musical tradition like that of Rankin, and as a member of that line of East Coast entertainers, Heather Rankin has accumulated a half-century of unique insights and artistic inspiration. Gracefully applying her manifold talents, the award-winning singer and songwriter has now struck out on her own, simultaneously upholding her family’s multi-platinum country-folk legacy while taking the adult contemporary market by storm. 

“My live show is a combination of the songs I did with my family, my original material that’s on my debut solo release, A Fine Line (2016), and then a smattering of songs written by other people some that are familiar and some that are newer, but traditional. So, it’s a good mix,” Rankin explains.

“I travel with a trio; acoustic guitar, piano and stand-up bass, and we’ve really pared-down the arrangements for the songs that I would have performed with my family.” 

Although she’s certainly no stranger to the perils of a Cape Breton winter, Rankin has plenty of reasons to feel warm and fuzzy about the arrival of that bitter season this year. Reunited with producer/arranger Stephen McKinnon, who produced a handful of tracks on The Rankin Family’s 2008 album These Are the Moments, Heather has been busily crafting her next poetic gift to her fans. 

“I’m on the back end of a second recording,” Rankin divulges.

“They’re holiday songs, but they’re not all Christmas. It’s a very contemplative collection of songs… I think it’s somewhere in the middle of my solo release and what I would have done with my family. I’m really happy with it; I’m proud of the songs and I really feel a peace with the arrangements.” 

New doors continue to open for Rankin as she embraces her role as touring solo artist and elder stateswoman of Canada’s Celtic music heritage. Penning fresh melodies and promoting her performances would seem like more than enough to keep the average person fully occupied, but Rankin somehow finds time to squeeze the distinction of ‘venue owner’ into an already impressive list of accomplishments. And, having headlined at her fair share of establishments over the decades, she’s confident she knows what goes into running a successful show – from both sides of the copper rail.   

“I own the Red Shoe Pub with three of my sisters and this is our 13th season,” Rankin reports.

“It’s a great little old general store that’s been converted to a pub. It’s smack dab in the middle of Inverness in the County of Mabou, where I grew up. And it’s rocking and rollin’ this time of the year. We’re open for five months and it’s just slammed. We feature live music every day and have a fantastic menu and a great staff in our kitchen. It’s got a wonderful vibe there when you go you’re immersed in the kind of music that people of Mabou have experienced for generations. People seem to be flocking there; some to witness first-hand what we sing about in The Rankin Family songs.” 

She continues, saying “I’m always looking for an intimate setting where it’s easy to connect with the audience, and make eye contact, and has a nice acoustic ambience, and people are comfortable and that’s pretty much what we offer at the Red Shoe. It’s really cool and that’s what I look for when I’m going to perform, those little places are the ultimate venues where you feel the energy and there’s no separation between artist and audience – no grand gaping hole between you.”
 

HEATHER RANKIN performs October 19 at the Ralph Klein Trans Canada Centre (Olds) and October 21 at the Ironwood Stage and Grill (Calgary). 

Rosetta styles metal for astronauts

Rosetta: Exploring the Violence Beneath the Silence

09 October 2017By Christine Leonard 

Amalgamated in 2003, Philadelphia’s dronecore specialists Rosetta spent a decade building the momentum required to achieve their ideal cruising altitude. The spacegazing band reached escape velocity in 2013 when they tore away from their record label to go it alone. About that same time the four sonic cosmonauts, guitarist Matt Weed, bassist Dave Grossman, vocalists/synth-player Mike Armine and drummer BJ McMurtrie welcomed guitarist Eric Jernigan to the Rosetta crew. 

“I actually joined the band late, but I had been friends with the band for ten years, so we had a rich history together,” Jernigan relates.

“I would say that my role in Rosetta has been to help distill some of the melodic ideas that Matt or Dave will bring to the table and find the hidden hook that’s lying in wait.” 

Rosetta’s stormy compositions vacillate between mindful contemplation and reckless abandon. The result is a volatile yet intriguing dark-matter meets doom-rock dynamic that is as attractive as it is indefinable.  

“A lot of the early Rosetta stuff was equal parts melody and aggression, but sometimes they would sort of feel like a wave washing over you and the catchiness of it would only reveal itself after maybe a dozen listens,” Jernigan admits. “When I came into the band I wanted to make the melodic movements more obvious and still do a good job of hiding them.” 

Designed as a quartered cycle of songs that stretches across hemispheres and genres, Rosetta’s sixth album, Utopiod, is perhaps the most thematically-driven milestone in the quintet’s discography. Components ranging from ambient synth to hardcore sludge converge to formulate Rosetta’s atmospheric anthems and stormy eulogies. Or, “metal for astronauts,” as they like to call it. 

Jernigan says, “These days the influences are across the board. I think for all of us, the older we get the more interested we are in avant-garde and non-traditional forays into a sort of exploration of emotion through sound rather than the typical rock band format.” 

By Jernigan’s estimation, the stress-energy tension Rosetta generates in the studio becomes exponentially magnified when presented in the flesh. Thrusting artifice aside in favour of exposing the raw nerves beneath the façade, Rosetta insists on letting moments unfold, and occasionally explode, according to their isotopic nature.  

“Same as any given year of our lives, we have moments of unbridled intensity and hopefully moments of calm reflection and the record does follow sort of a protagonist through the character’s life and we wanted to keep that in mind – that there’s a whole breadth of experience that we all go through and we made a conscious decision to really let some of those quiet, less aggressive moments speak for themselves on the record.”
 

ROSETTA performs October 16 at the Brixx (Edmonton) and October 17 at The Palomino Smokehouse & Bar (Calgary) .

North: Post-metal trio talk about the importance of blurring genre lines

North: Charting a New Course 

 09 October 2017 By Christine Leonard 

There was a time when the future of Arizona-based sludge rock outfit North seemed as clear as mud. Maybe that uncertainty was okay with them at the time, but a lot has changed since drummer Zack Hansen, guitarist Matthew Mutterperl and bassist/vocalist Evan Leek first started jamming together in Hansen’s Tucson bedroom back in 2005.

“We were definitely offering an alternative. It also didn’t help that nobody else was doing what we were doing at the time,” says Hansen of the local climate for their post-metal experimentations. “We started out as an instrumental band, and this was around the time that Explosions in the Sky and Pelican were on the rise, and I don’t want to say we hopped on a trend, but we certainly helped start one, in the southwest at least. If you’re not playing radio rock, or pop punk, or something a bit more popular you’re going to have to establish your own mindset and your own scene.”

Expanding on the uniquely groovy doom constructs introduced on their self-released 2006 debut EP Siberia, North shifted a more vocal-dominated sound with What You Were in 2008. The band continued to tour and write despite line-up changes and karmic stumbling blocks. Down two members following the release of The Great Silence in 2012, Hansen, Mutterperl and Leek decided to recommit and relaunch the old and improved North as an ironclad trio.

“We talked about it as building up our arsenal and building upon the sound. It got to a point where we started to breakdown what we really wanted to do and we started to accomplish that with less and less people,” Hansen recounts. “From the moment we took the three-piece on tour for the first time, people were astonished that we could bring that volume and intensity with just the three of us… That made us really happy, because it’s what we had been envisioning for a couple of years.”

The band has emerged from the sea of feedback worshipers and fuzz-lords as a sleeker more agile version of their former selves. North’s latest offering Light the Way (2016), produced by Dana Fehr (Digger, Mandingo, Pelican) and mastered by Colin Marston (Genghis Tron, Kayo Dot, Gorguts), traverses the invisible lines drafted between progressive and classic metal soundscapes while foretelling that the true extent of North’s foray into sonic devolution has yet to be charted.

“We like being a chameleon and not being pigeon-holed into one genre, and being able to open our arms to as broad as an underground listenership as possible,” says Hansen. “Light the Way is our first full-length as a three-piece and that became the prevailing theme; figuring out the future direction of the band going forward.”

NORTH performs October 16 at the Brixx (Edmonton) and October 17 at The Palomino Smokehouse & Bar (Calgary).

Japandroids: Taking life and music at their own pace

Japandroids: Big City Small World 

06 October 2017By Christine Leonard   

One of the preeminent Canadian rock acts to emerge in the past decade, Vancouver’s Japandroids made a mission of taking the world by storm, when the band started up in 2006. By 2013 the duo, consisting of drummer/vocalist David Prowse and guitarist/vocalist Brian King, had racked up an impressive 500 live shows in some 44 different countries. Although they seemed to be riding high on the success of their ear-catching debut album Post-Nothing (2009) and its jubilant follow-up, Celebration Rock (2012), Japandroids was losing steam and becoming increasingly disenchanted with their non-stop schedule. 

“We covered a lot of ground and it was a blur at times. Our jam space is full of random memorabilia and sometimes I look at the tour posters of the shows we’ve played and it boggles my mind,” says Prowse. “The big thing that came from touring ourselves into the ground, was that it took quite a bit longer to get back into the studio and make another record. Running ourselves ragged took quite the toll on us mentally and physically and emotionally. Now we’re trying to do things in more of a measured way. We can pace ourselves and do a lot more than if we’re just going full-tilt and then have to slam the brakes on again when we’ve been on the road for months and our voices are shot and our bodies are broken.” 

Unfortunately, damage control has taken centre-stage for Japandroids with the unfolding of recent events.  

“Timing is a funny thing,” Prowse explains.

“Things have been good overall, but things are a bit strange at this exact moment. Brian is in Mexico City and there was a really big earthquake there, so things are kind of weird and fucked up. I can’t think of a better way to say it. He’s okay, but the city’s in pretty rough shape. Brian is in love with a really wonderful lady who lives down there, he’s down there a lot. I’ve talked to him briefly and it is obviously a pretty scary moment for them, but in the grand scheme of things they’re lucky.” 

Experiences like this one are exactly why Japandroids value having the flexibility to work when and how they want to. The pair effectively hit the pause button on their careers four years ago in the wake of whirlwind tours and media engagements. With the wires having fallen silent, Prowse and King were able to gather their senses and compose new material at their leisure. Working remotely and meeting in Vancouver or New Orleans to collaborate in person, they incrementally built-up the foundations of their third studio release, Near to the Wild Heart of Life (2017). And though Japandroids’ latest effort may have lifted its name from the prose of (the heeded yet unhappy author), James Joyce, the lyrical content, according to King’s design, is pure cross-continental poetry in motion. 

“Celebration Rock has a lot of movement to it and songs about being on the road and travelling, whereas this new record, Near to the Wild Heart of Life, is about feeling rooted to these various places we call home,” Prowse explains.  

And as for their return to form after a three-year layaway?

Don’t call it a hiatus, call it a social media cleanse. 

“I don’t think either of us thought it would take so long for the album to be finished! But I’m glad we didn’t post photos or vague statements that we were working on a new album because people would be like ‘Whatever happened to those guys? Did they break-up? Are they dead?’ It took some time to decompress and then Brian moved away, which slowed things down but also lead to a better album. I really enjoyed being able to reflect and then jump back into it. Being able to take that time apart was really good for us personally and for the band, so it was all worth it the end.” 

JAPANDROIDS perform October 13 at the MacEwan Ballroom (Calgary), October 14 at Union Hall (Edmonton), October 16 at O’Brians Event Centre (Saskatoon) and October 17 at Garrick Centre (Winnipeg).