Friday Night Jukebox

(Ed. I’m cribbing this entire post from another, now defunct blog at which I was a contributor, so a few readers will recognize its verbatim.)

Often when we talk about great music we focus on musicians hailing from either the US or Britain. Watching a show like The History of Rock ‘n Roll, one constantly hears about the British invasion or the way that the blues of deep south was electrified to generate a Jimi Hendrix. But rarely if ever do you hear about great Canadian musicians and their contributions. And no, mentions of Gordon Lightfoot, love him though I do, and Celine Dion do not count.

Yet, there is a distinctive sound that a heart wrenching northern troubadour is able to produce that immediately transfixes me. It often times comes across as a lonesome winnowing shot through with a healthy does of perseverance that comes with living in as empty and brutal, yet hauntingly beautiful a country as Canada. Much like anywhere, those true artists are rare birds in what often seem like flocks of mediocrity, but City and Colour (Dallas Green) is one of those birds.

Green’s first foray into the Canadian music scene wouldn’t have led me to spy greatness, though it certainly has risen to a certain popularity. Guitarist and sometimes singer for scream-core band Alexisonfire, I first took note of Green’s penetrating voice in This Could Be Anywhere In The World,

Around the same time I started hearing commercials for a live album by some band called City and Colour featuring a song called Coming Home

After some time I started to note he singer had that haunting quality of life weariness paired with a deep yearning for the expression of beauty to which I am immediately drawn. Perhaps the archetype of that voice is the much revered Leonard Cohen whose brave acceptance of all things material and ephemeral gives him the ability to remain both grounded and transcendent like a sonic bodhisattva. While perhaps a touch premature, I thought I heard traces of that same sensibility in those two singers and couldn’t help being shocked at the odds. It wasn’t until I decided to dig a little bit deeper into City and Colour that I would find out they were, in fact, the same guy, City and Colour being Green’s solo moniker.

Diving into Green’s solo work (I’ve never really been able to get into alexisonfire) has proved extremely valuable. While certainly pinned against a backdrop of melancholy, I can’t help thinking every time I hear one of his songs that Green’s tendency towards darkness is an ardent exploration to find the elements of light that lay hidden in the folds. Life can be grim and we spend much of our time anesthetizing ourselves against that reality. It is refreshingly cathartic to find a human being with the courage to accept the serene flaying open of his/her soul and give voice to the witnessing of that process.

I have literally driven for hours across bare Alberta plains in the dead of night listening to nothing but that song and being constantly awed by the way it makes me feel. There just aren’t many artists who have the capacity for expression that is able to illicit such a response from listeners. This is the separation of wheat from chaff. I don’t want to deny the truth that the kind of singers produced by American/Canadian Idol have their place, that they function as entertainers. But when we talk about music as art, we’re really talking about transcendence. Transcendental expression of any kind is the stuff of highest realization, it is deadly hard to capture, primarily because the final achievement is a complete surrender – a letting go into that which is.

One might ask whether I’m giving Green too much credit in lumping talk of high art in with my post about him. That may be so, it is still early in his career. But I have high hopes, and the evolution that continues to run through his music leaves me feeling optimistic. Besides, you don’t get to sing something with this Canadian icon if you don’t have at least something going on…

Bonus points for the first person to name who that Canadian artist is.

Tagged as: alexisonfire, City and Colour, Dallas Green, high art, transcendence