Kate Wyatt Trio, Murmurations

Jazz can span a wide spectrum, from “painfully bland background music” on one hand to “a bunch of (mostly) men furiously soloing over each other” on the other. On her new album Murmurations, Kate Wyatt finds a sweet spot—musically interesting, but still pleasant to the ear. You can find the Montreal pianist doing classic jazz at clubs like Upstairs, or further-out experiments at less traditional spots. Her new album is a showcase for that musical multiplicity. The album opens with a version of “Mack the Knife,” but the crusty chestnut is almost unrecognizable, with Wyatt only deploying the familiar melody after the six-minute mark. The phrases Wyatt conjures up on “Sunrise,” as elegant as they are idiosyncratic, evoke traditional jazz while branching out in harmonically dense directions. This is her show, but bassist Adrian Vedady and drummer Louis-Vincent Hamel offer able support, and on the album’s later tracks they get a chance to stretch out and shine, with Hamel vigorously letting it rip on “Succession.” The last track is entitled “Music is Beautiful,” and that’s certainly true in the hands of Wyatt and crew. Catch a live show if you can, because seeing her hands on the piano is a true joy, but as an experience this album is a close second.

Dun-Dun Band, Pita Parka, Pt. II: Nim Egduf

Toronto guitarist Craig Dunsmuir’s Dun-Dun Band, full of players from across the city’s various musical communities, has been perfecting its odd but compelling blend of minimalist composition, North African gnawa music, post-rock and jazz for the past decade. On this new album, the eleven-minute opener “No. 3 (No Chess Today)” sets the tone with its understated guitar noodling, complex time signatures and repetitive phrases from the four-piece horn section. Minimalism is a strong influence, but these songs don’t settle into repetition; not only do the phrases subtly shift, but the songs often change course completely once or twice, recalling a multi-chapter prog suite. That said, this is no ponderous nerd-rock; the grooves are deep and mellow, and when the tone briefly gets cacophonous on “Long Winter,” it has the effect of snapping you out of a trance. All in all, Pita Parka, Pt. II is the most musically dense and ambitious four-song record you’ll hear all year, an epic that leaves you wanting more.

Pang Attack, Tears for the Wave

Alexander Hackett’s trio-turned-solo studio project Pang Attack has been releasing records since 2011. He’s declared that this newest record is also the project’s last, having mined its particular blend of sleazy listening and psychedelic shoegaze to its fullest potential. Hackett goes out on an appropriately grandiose note, with string arrangements adding gravitas to his ballads whose twangy guitars occasionally evoke spaghetti western soundtracks. Deploying a low croon with more than a hint of Leonard Cohen and a tasteful dollop of distortion enveloping his voice like a fuzzy sweater, Hackett sounds both world-weary and wise. It might all be too precious without solid songs, but the album entrances with gentle guitar lines, languid melodies, and thoughtful lyrics (“I stole your eyes so I could see through you” is one characteristically poetic example). And when he breaks through the smoothness, rising to a scream on “Inside the Monsoon” or getting political on “Scum (Rose to Power),” you realize there’s bite behind the croon. 

The Gruesomes, The Dimension of Fear

Garage rock has a fundamental quality that’s both a strength and a weakness: it never changes. Outliers like Jay Reatard and Reigning Sound have expanded its palette with more musical complexity and/or lyrical depth, but generally it sticks to a firmly limited template: musically simple (deliberately or otherwise), and lyrically suspended in arrested adolescence. Montreal’s The Gruesomes—celebrating their fortieth anniversary with this first album in twenty-five years—are traditionalists to be sure. Lead singer Bobby Beaton still wears his hair down over his eyes like a sullen teenager, and on the back cover, beside the 1960s-style liner notes, a cartoon depicts the band enjoying vinyl LPs, comics and VHS tapes. 

But they keep things interesting, with psychedelic guitar effects and bursts of organ adding flavour to the familiar three-chord recipe. You get the sense they could do more musically if they wanted to—but that’s not their goal. One of garage rock’s recurring themes is a healthy self-regard (occasionally with undertones of traditional male denial), and “That’s Using Your Head” finds Beaton praising his romantic subject for her good taste—in choosing him. His snotty voice shows off bilingual prowess in “Laissez-nous vivre,” a cover of sixties Quebec band Les Lutins, a catchy highlight. Other than this flash of local colour, the album keeps things by the garage-rock playbook—but I for one am glad to see this venerable quartet joyfully doing their thing.