- Terra Lightfoot
- Sonic Unyon
- 3 stars
With her thoughtful, rustic, indie folk material, Terra Lightfoot, no relation to Gordon, makes an earthy debut. The Hamilton singer-songwriter’s voice is rich, malleable and melancholic; her material is grey-coloured, a shade of November. Sleep Away the Winter, a swelling waltz about social hibernation, is the album’s biggest track. Head, Tails, Tails is sparser and sweeter. The rest of the material is fit for sweaters and cellos, providing those in a mood some measure of comfort. Brad Wheeler
Terra Lightfoot plays Thunder Bay, Ont., Oct. 15; Wawa, Oct. 16; North Bay, Oct. 17; Hamilton, Oct. 27; Toronto, Oct. 30; Wakefield, Que., Nov. 5; Laval, Nov. 6.
ALT-COUNTRY
Ashes & Fire
- Ryan Adams
- Pax Am/Capital
- Three and a half stars
“Nobody has to cry,” Ryan Adams croons, possibly to himself, on the sparse, steel-guitar-accented Come Home, “to make it seem real.” It’s a revelation from a drama-struck singer-songwriter newly content, married now to the actress Mandy Moore, who also sings occasionally on a lightly textured album of lingering melodies and sweet emotion. The gifted Adams, whose career has been marked by wild prolificacy and inconsistency, here presents some of his best-ever work: His high tenor on Dirty Rain recalls Loudon Wainwright III; Rocks aches beautifully. Keyboardist Benmont Tench supplies colours deftly on gentle material – an affecting outpouring from a man who no longer necessarily equates love with hell. B.W.
CLASSICAL
Alfred Schnittke: String Quartets
- Quatuor Molinari
- Atma Classique
- 4 stars
There are several reasons why this recording of Alfred Schnittke’s four string quartets measures up so well against its few but prestigious competitors (the Arditti, Alban Berg and Kronos quartets), but it has a lot to do with the way the Quatuor Molinari has normalized expressive material that might easily have been hyperbolized. The ensemble avoids insistent emotionalizing (affect is exposed within the material, but extremes of affect are not imposed upon it), and one appreciates a general sense of spaciousness. The blend is marvellous, something both players and the sound engineers can take credit for, and whether the textures are dense, abrasive or spare, we relish the sound world – even as we work at comprehending what’s happening within it. These interpretations don’t just challenge us; they welcome us, too. Elissa Poole
JAZZ
Spectacle: Live!
- Peripheral Vision
- Step 3
- 4 stars
It’s always great to hear a jazz group live up to the promise of its debut, and Spectacle does that in spades. Although the writing is colourful and evocative, and the improvisations so tuneful they sound like compositions, what really sets this Toronto quartet apart in its second album is the confidence of the playing, which exhibits the sort of semi-telepathic communication you’d expect from musicians who had been together for a decade, not just a year or so. At its best, Peripheral Vision recalls the cerebral groove and melodic lyricism of John Abercrombie’s recent bands, and its best is mostly what Spectacle: Live! delivers. J.D. Considine
