For the second straight review we
get 90s Canadian folk music – this time from Quebec.
Disc 772 is….Matapedia
Artist: Kate and
Anna McGarrigle
Year of Release: 1996
What’s up with the Cover? A bad nineties collage, centered
around Kate and Anna, who have decided to set up a couple of chairs on the
railroad tracks. Typically you wouldn’t see someone sitting in a chair on a
railroad track unless they were tied into it, but maybe the sisters saw a mock-up of how the cover was going to look and decided to end it all.
How I Came To Know It: I know the song “Goin’ Back To Harlan” from the Emmylou
Harris album “Wrecking Ball.” Emmylou recorded it first, but Anna McGarrigle
wrote it and I wanted to hear her version. I figured anyone who can write “Goin’ Back to Harlan” can’t be bad.
How It Stacks Up: I only have this one album by the
McGarrigle sisters, so I can’t really stack it up.
Ratings: 3 stars
Sometimes an album can be really great but for
whatever reason it just doesn’t resonate with you, and that’s how “Matapedia”
is for me.
Kate and Anna McGarrigle are exceptional songwriters
and their stuff is often pilfered by other artists, which as I noted above is
exactly how I discovered this album. “Matapedia” is one of their better known
albums (meaning ‘hardly known at all outside of folk singers’ but all things
are relative). It even won a Juno. If there was a gateway McGarrigle album, I
reasoned, this would be it.
The album starts off well. The title track is a
pretty little song that I think is a father-daughter reunion, but never spells
it out. Regardless of what it is about, the semi-whispered vocal delivery sits
in perfectly with the rolling beat. This is a song that speaks to the quiet secrets
of ordinary people.
The song I bought the record for, “Goin’ Back to Harlan” is even more
haunting and fae than the Emmylou version. For Emmylou you can feel violence
and danger lurking around the corner of the narrator’s decision to go back to
Harlan. The McGarrigles capture the compulsion to do something dangerous,
rather than the actual danger.
After this the record lost me a bit. “Hang on to Your Heart,” “Arbre” and “Jacques et Gilles” are all
beautifully constructed but they didn’t hit me in the guts like I think they
were intended to. “Why Must We Die”
has some pretty language but the song needed less philosophy to work.
On the other end of the spectrum is the very mature “Talk About It” which is a sexy little
love song about a couple that cut the party off short to head home and knock
boots. This song has a nice slow build, and if I’m not mistaken the chorus has not
one but two double entendres, first with the morning ‘coming’ (‘it always does’) followed by a couple ‘pushing it around now’. I guess that
would be a double double entendre. How very Canadian.
Most of the songs have a production where elements
are added verse to verse, and I like the slow progression and the energy that’s
generated, although at times the whole thing felt a bit too slick. As for the
vocals, the sisters won’t win any singing competitions, but they get the job
done sweetly enough, and know how to phrase their songs for maximum emotional
impact.
I am sorely tempted to keep this album in my
collection and hope it grows on me, but the truth is I’ve already had it for a
couple of years now. Other than an initial three listens when I bought it I
think this is the first time I’ve taken it off the shelf since. Even though I
like it more now, I don’t see taking it down for another listen soon outside of
the Odyssey.
So although we now part ways I part with you on good
terms, Kate and Anna. You make pretty music but I’m goin’ back to Harlan – only
Emmylou Harris’ version.
Best
tracks: Matapedia,
Goin’ Back to Harlan, Talk About It
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