Lesser (Known) Lights #7

Trans-Canada Highwaymen – Explosive Hits Vol. 1

I’m always a bit surprised when fans of a band don’t follow former band members when they set out on new musical adventures. If someone has given you joy as part of one outfit, it only seems logical to me that they might be able to do it again with another. Barenaked Ladies have 2.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and I think we can all agree that a big chunk of those people (myself included) are mostly listening to music made when Steven Page was the band’s co-frontman. (I wonder if there is still some bad blood there, since you would never know from the band’s Spotify bio that he was ever one of them.) Page on his own, however, has just over 5,500 listeners, and Trans-Canada Highwaymen – his supergroup with Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness, Craig Northey of Odds and Chris Murphy of Sloan – has a mere 3,115 at this writing. And in the case of the latter at least, that means a whole lot of people are missing out on a giant heap of fun.

Now, even the idea of a Canadian supergroup seems pretty un-Canadian to me. Considering the gang’s middling commercial success, they’ll have to do until Drake, The Weeknd and Bieber join forces with whoever they pick to play George. (Sorry, Biebs fans – he’s Ringo in this scenario.) Mendes? Avril? Shania? Buble? My pick is Celine, medical concerns permitting – I’m pretty sure the album would be an unlistenable mess, but what a glorious mess it would be.

This album is wall-to-wall joy, starting with the throwback cover art in homage to those messily bright K-tel collections of the band members’ (and every other Canadian of the era) childhoods. After an entertaining opening track setting out a possibly fake story about how the band even exists, we get nothing but cover versions (my kryponite!) of classic Canadian pop songs of the 1960s and (mostly) 1970s. Part of the fun – assuming you share my definition of that word – was learning about the songs that were unfamiliar to me. But there was plenty I already knew here – many of them from those same K-tel collections – and hearing them in these faithful renditions was both nostalgic and revelatory. I never cared for Lighthouse’s “Pretty Lady”, but something about Berg’s clogged sinus delivery opened me up to its charms. Joni Mitchell’s “Raised on Robbery” is a honky tonk roof raiser, the cheese of Paul Anka’s “(I Believe) There’s Nothing Stronger Than Our Love” becomes less of a threat to your cholesterol level, and I apologise to Larry Evoy and the rest of Edward Bear for not recognizing that “You, Me and Mexico” is, indeed, a classic. And if they hadn’t already won me over completely, they sealed the deal with a high energy and not even slightly ironic take on “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat” by, in the words of Mr. Pink in “Reservoir Dogs”, “Little Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco family”.

I haven’t had the chance to see them live yet, but I really hope their calendar and mine will align while they still feel like doing this. In concert, the band liberally mixes in tracks from their past bands, and any show where the setlist might include “Brian Wilson”, “She’s So Young”, “The Rest of My Life” and, especially, “Heterosexual Man” is a night that I’ll happily take a chance on. You should, too.

The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds

Growing up, I believed that the music you listened to was a product of your chronological age. In younger years, you gravitated towards rock ‘n’ roll (the idea of “pop” didn’t even occur to me, and anything Black – soul, R ‘n’ B, blues – simply did not exist as a category in my corner of the world), followed by a dalliance with country before you settled into old age – which I suppose I imagined began around 50 – with the kind of stuff that Marg Ellsworth played on CHER on Sunday mornings, which was what Johnny Fever was rebelling against on that classic first episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati”. Classical and jazz were not considered – I knew they existed, but no one I knew was listening to them openly to any significant degree.

So, now that I know that all of that is a lie, and that I was not in fact destined to become musically boring, I am still left with the question of what it means to “act your age” musically. My father would sometimes say to me that I had to grow up and stop listening to that noise. Keep in mind, I was, like, 15 at the time, and years away from growing up. But that message fed into my mindset about what kind of music was proper at a given age.

Thankfully, The Rolling Stones never met my dad.

What are we to make of an ass-kicking band of actual and borderline octogenarians? Well, first there is a sort of amazement that they are even doing this, no doubt with their hearing aids cranked up to 11. The Stones will, like all successful acts, be faced with the reality of being compared to the better records they made when they were younger, and, god, I am so over that garbage. Yes, this is no “Sticky Fingers” or “Exile on Main St.” or whichever album tops your ranking of their canon. But, dear god, I had fun listening to this album. It’s a saggy balls out, smash/bang howl of a record, and if the Stones are now little better than a honky tonk bar band playing the nostalgia tour (and I don’t necessarily share that assessment), they are still the very best at that. The songs have solid melodies, Mick still sounds great, and Keith, Ron and the rest of the band deliver on every track. My favourite tune is probably the British grannies bitch slap “Bite My Head Off” with Paul McCartney, but you could talk me into favouring the opener “Angry” or “Whole Wide World” or “Live By The Sword”, the last of which includes contributions from former band mates Bill Wyman and the late Charlie Watts. Even the slower tunes, like the Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder team up on “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”, should feel no shame when sitting next to “Angie” or “Wild Horses”.

This might be their last gift to us – ending with an honest cover of the Muddy Waters classic that gave the band its name seems a signal – and, if so, it’s a very honourable ending. It’s a good record, even a great one at times, and if you disagree – I’m looking at you, Pitchfork – please, for your own sake, pull your head out of your ass and give it another spin.

Olivia Rodrigo – GUTS

The biggest challenge for any musical artist is the sophomore record after a brilliant freshman outing. The first record is made in relative anonymity with a lifetime of creative efforts to draw on: its follow up is made in less contemplative conditions, with the world watching and a whole lot less time. More than a few acts have faltered.

Those acts weren’t Olivia Rodrigo.

I, to my surprise and a little bit of dismay, enjoyed her first album. But I love “GUTS”: it just feels like a massive leap forward in figuring out who she is, which right now feels like a way smarter less scruffy updating of Avril Lavigne for the influencer generation. I don’t really care if a lot of this is derivative, as others have suggested. That just makes her part of a line of great repurposers, and since I don’t know most of the artists she’s borrowing from, Olivia can be my gateway drug.

The ballads are fine (except the closer “teenage dream”, which kicks), and probably a necessary bloodletting for Olivia and her similar-aged fan base, but where she truly excels here is when she rocks. She’s still angry at unappreciative exes, but instead of just lamenting the loss, she’s in revenge mode. “get him back!” starts out like you think a song with that title would, but the chorus soon makes it clear why she wants that: I laughed out loud when she sang “I wanna meet his mom / Just to tell her her son sucks”. Her narrators are young women taking control of their messy lives, and, yes, being in charge means you screw up sometimes (“bad idea right?” is a howl), and you live with the consequences and move on. Other favourites are “all-american bitch”, “ballad of a homeschooled girl” and “love is embarrassing”. When the record ended, I paid it the ultimate compliment: I moved the needle back to the beginning.