Greetings, Gentle Reader, and apologies for my prolonged absence. It has been one hell of a busy week. However today, encouraged by my lovely wife Sheila, I left work at a reasonable enough hour to write a music review before my mental pumpkin bursts.
If the end of this review is an unfinished sentence that trails away in ellipses you’ll know my pumpkin burst after all. Should that happen, please take comfort knowing that my last conscious act was to ensure the punctuation was evocative.
Disc 1614 is…Victoria Day
Artist: Melissa McClelland
Year of Release: 2009
What’s up with the Cover? Melissa’s Giant Head, in profile. I see her hair is a bit be-“fowled” however. Get it? Get it?
Man, I crack myself up.
How I Came To Know It: I don’t remember. It might have been through Luke Doucet, to their shared project (“Whitehorse”) or maybe some other order. I was so uncertain about the origin I checked the last entry (almost three years ago) and discovered…I couldn’t remember then either.
Whatever the case, I am certain this was my first Melissa McClelland solo album so that’s um…something.
Hey, life is full of uncertainties, but it is also full of music, which is really why we’re here, so let’s just move on.
How It Stacks Up: I have three Melissa McClelland albums and “Victoria Day” comes in right in the middle at #2. Since this is my last album by her, here’s a full accounting:
- Thumbelina’s One
Night Stand:
4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1360)
- Victoria Day: 3 stars (reviewed right here)
- Stranded in Suburbia: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 1348)
Rating: 3 stars but almost 4
What happens when a woman with the heart of a folk singer decides to don the mantle of a fifties crooner? Good things. “Victoria Day” is Melissa McClelland’s last solo album before taking up fulltime with hubby Luke Doucet as one half of the band “Whitehorse”. She goes out on top, with a record that is more stylistically limited than 2006’s “Thumbelina’s One Night Stand” but nearly its equal.
In retrospect, “limited” is an unfair comparison. It would be more accurate to say that “Victoria Day” is stylistically focused. The record still has elements of folk, pop, jazz and all the other odds and ends that make up McClelland’s approach to music, but she’s distilled it down into a modern-day love letter to old forties and fifties vocal performances.
What you end up with is a collection of songs that feel at home on a fifties USO show, or maybe a performance at a smoky lounge frequented by Frank Sinatra. There is a full and rich quality to McClelland’s vocals, that helps you understand the joy of singing in its purest form.
We get started with “A Girl Can Dream” and the one song co-written with Doucet. The title alone gives you a feeling of a bygone era, and McClelland perfectly embodies a timeless flirtatious quality, while still portraying a self-possessed woman of substance. It is both modern, and also a window into a more fully realized reality than we sometimes give the mid-twentieth century credit for.
“A Girl Can Dream” has a Sinatra-like swing that is common to many songs on the record. There is a lot more going on than just that in these songs, and they are grounded in the burgeoning indie music scene that has since created music that makes folk, country and pop functionally indistinguishable from one another.
Other standouts include “Glenrio” and “Victoria Day (May Flowers)”. The latter of these tracks has a playful horn section that refuses to limit itself to a flourish, instead creating a semi-rowdy but agreeable hubbub around the edges of the tune. Think the scattered guests still out on the lawn after the sun goes down at a summer house party.
While this is majority of what you can expect on the record, there is one strong exception. “Brake” is folksy, understated and devastating in its raw emotion. While it isn’t a fit for the record’s overall vibe, it is still the best song on it.
Part of this is the simple but sublime acoustic guitar work. The Youtube video version of this song is not the same and is filled with a lot of production and excess instrumentation, but the studio track showcases a light and insistent acoustic strum and McClelland’s amazing vocals and little else.
The lyrics of “Brake” also favourably reminded me of 17th century Metaphysical Poetry, with its clever double use of “brake” and “break” and how in the context of the song they both apply to the narrator’s quiet, but restless heart. John Donne would approve.
Because of my aforementioned schedule, “Victoria Day” got a lot of repeat plays over the last week and while I think the record has a mix of great songs and those that are just OK, I never got tired of listening. McClelland has since gone on to make a lot of awesome records as Whitehorse, but this record is a final reminder she was just as good solo.
Best tracks: A Girl Can Dream, Glenrio, Victoria Day (May Flowers), Brake
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