We live in an age when albums arrive unannounced and without warning, as if they were dropped off at our doorsteps some time overnight. So while it’s hard to say any album is “unexpected,” the following albums were all surprising, one even coming from the grave.
Tegan and Sara: Hey, I’m Just Like You
The identical-twin Quins Tegan and Sara, who never forget each other’s birthdays, just turned 39. It’s an odd time for a coming-of-age album, but here we are. It’s called Hey, I’m Just Like You, a synth-pop collection of reinvented songs recently unearthed from old cassette tapes of material written by the Calgary natives between the ages of 15 and 17. Twelve tracks of teenage melodrama were recorded this spring in Vancouver with an all-female team led by Australian producer Alex Hope. I Know I’m Not the Only One has a line about backflips and “I’m upside down,” which rhymes with Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down and sounds like it, too. The album, accompanied by the duo’s memoir High School, is something much more tame than Carole Pope’s High School Confidential, but, then, Pope wrote that postgrad.
Bedouin Soundclash: MASS
After a tour in 2012, the ska-rocking Bedouin Soundclash was “tapped out,” according to singer Jay Malinowski. He went on to pen an illustrated novella and release three solo records without bandmate Eon Sinclair. “Eon and I told each other we’d do something again only if we had something creatively to say,” Malinowski told The Globe and Mail. Not long ago, Malinowski was noodling on the piano when a song that sounded Bedouin-like came to him. He added a breakbeat and sampled some big-band swing and sent the demo to Sinclair. From there a long-dormant idea to work with Ben Jaffe of Preservation Hall Jazz Band was resurrected, resulting in MASS, a just-released contemporary-music experiment in electronica, Afro-pop and traditional New Orleans Jazz. The album (Bedouin’s first in nine years) was mostly cut in Marigny Studios in New Orleans, with one track (Edges of the Night) recorded live in two takes at Preservation Hall.
Céline Dion: Courage
“I would be lying if I said I’m fine, I think of you at least a hundred times/ 'Cause in the echo of my voice I hear your words, just like you’re there.” More than three years after the death of her manager-husband René Angélil, on Nov. 15, the pop diva Céline Dion will release her first English album since 2013′s Loved Me Back to Life. The title track to Courage (one of three singles released last month) is an earnest anthem sung to an arena’s last row, written by a song-crafting team that includes Stephan Moccio. Dion might well have drifted quietly into irrelevancy, but what we’re seeing is power-ballad perseverance. Health willing, mind you. The so-called Dionaissance was put on hold recently when a lingering cold forced the cancellation of a series of concerts. Hearts will go on, but a diva needs her voice.
Bruce Cockburn: Crowing Ignites
In these days of demagoguery and environmental angst, one might have thought the outspoken Bruce Cockburn would have something to say politically. Instead we get Crowing Ignites, an eloquent but voiceless album that is more safe harbour than soap box. “There’s some expectation that I’m supposed to come out with something that says ‘Donald Trump is bad,’ but we all know that already,” Cockburn, 74, told The Globe and Mail. The acoustic Crowing Ignites was recorded with producer Colin Linden in a former horse-and-carriage firehouse in San Francisco (where Cockburn lives with his wife and young daughter). There, Cockburn had a “run” of new songs, including Bells Of Gethsemane, an impression of a looming dawn, with gongs, chimes and Tibetan cymbals. And as far as the album not having lyrics? “Listen, the Amazon rain forest is on fire, again, 40 years after I recorded If a Tree Falls,” Cockburn says. “I mean, what else do you say?”
Brittany Howard: Jaime
With two albums under its belt, Alabama Shakes was on the rise as one of the top young Southern-rock groups on the circuit, led by the powerhouse guitarist and singer Brittany Howard, a Rosetta Tharpe-influenced revelation. Then Howard decided to make a debut solo LP, an unusually early career move. “Alabama Shakes was disconnected, though,” Howard told The Globe. "We had a hard time coming up with new material.” On her own, after a cross-country road trip to California, Howard wrote the material of her dazzling solo debut Jamie on laptop, MIDI keyboard and electric guitar, before presenting the demos to a band that included jazzer Robert Glasper. The result is an album of potent socio-political commentary and bold sounds that will please fans of Smokey Robinson, Parliament, D’Angelo and Average White Band. That it came together so quickly was a surprise to Howard, who had booked a month at historic Electro-Vox Recording Studios in Los Angeles but only needed two weeks. “There was no deliberation,” said Howard, who plays Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom on Nov. 19. “That it was so quick and easy was thrilling.”
Leonard Cohen: Thanks For The Dance
Vault-clearing posthumous albums are standard in the industry, but this coda from Leonard Cohen isn’t exploitative as most from-the-grave collections tend to be. Apparently, it was the dying balladeer himself, before he died three years ago, who requested that unfinished tracks from 2016′s You Want It Darker be completed. Producer-son Adam Cohen went to work within months of the funeral. Spanish laud player Javier Mas flew in from Barcelona to Los Angeles to use Leonard’s own guitar. Long-time collaborator Jennifer Warnes added background vocals. Other parts were recorded in Berlin, with guests that included Feist and local choir Cantus Domus. In Montreal, producers Daniel Lanois and Patrick Watson contributed. Nine tracks in all were created, among them the sparse lead single The Goal and the title track’s fedora-tipping farewell.
Brad Wheeler