Hard work
Also speaking of Canada*
I've been rooting through my various promos, post-my-song-requests and other foolery today, and keep thinking I've found something. Then changing my mind and going back to the stacks.
Well, one thing I've had with me for a week or more that I've been thinking about on and off is this guy, Hawksley Workman, one of our neighbors to the north. Today is his day. Workman, a talented multi-instrumentalist, originally hails from rural Ontario, and has been hard at work producing his new album, Treeful Of Starling. The record is basically pop music, but the kind of pop music that would fit a movie in the pre-disco-70s: pianos and keys, horns, strings, and his often-impassioned vocals. I guess a lot of peeps are calling this kind of stuff chamber-pop, right?
I really like this record a lot - it works really well, musically speaking, and his vocals and lyrics are pretty great, reminding me somewhat of Elliott Smith, and more-so of Bowie or Rufus Wainwright, with a bit of Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen thrown in the mix. I decided to go with the album-closer track here, because I'm a sucker for the saxamophone, and I love the changes in the song. What can I say? I'm in a strange mood. I'm not that big on the singer-songwriter stuff usually, but I know a good one when I hear it, and Workman is it.
Oh, and apparently this album was recorded in Workman's home-studio, with a rented piano and an 8-track, with him "holed up" there. I guess the place is this century-old, one-room schoolhouse that his grandmother attended as a child. Wacky.
Buy Treeful Of Starling here, and check out his Myspace page for more songs, and information on a set of LA-area shows he's doing this week and next.
*Maybe MFR celebrates Canada Day early?