Celeigh Cardinal clicks perfectly with Everything and Nothing at All
It’s a hard life, so sometimes what you need is a dose of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, heartfelt and real, talking about the things that make us all tick and sputter.
Celeigh Cardinal’s boldlynamed new album Everything and Nothing at All is just this, a timeless summer jam of straightahead rockers, blues shuffles and a couple heartbreakers on the edge of country, each of which shows off Cardinal’s soaring and confident vocal range, which she deploys without pretension over a bunch of great lyrics.
A lot of things make this album click — we’ve talked about Cardinal’s voice, which is luscious, full and a little mischievous around the edges — but the playing on these straightforward songs is solid, too, with hints of the Tragically Hip on the acoustic side. Every song goes just a little further than it could. But the end, a bit of indie edge in a Giant Sand way with the group vocals, for example, on One Man, reinforces a theme of making it through bad relationships found throughout the record.
Would You Be My Dog?, a blues number, is charming and romantic, noting that we’re all each other’s dogs in partnerships, while the slightly raunchy Be My Man has lyrics which work on both superficial and existential levels: “Are you deserving of a lover? Did you suffer more than another? Or will you ever?” Great song, stem to stern. I really like the way she writes, and you can imagine her playing Interstellar or the folk fest with ease.
The sort-of title track Everything
squeezes a reggae beat in, mixing soul, pop and something else into something beautifully sad.
Perfect for bars — Cardinal’s release is Saturday at the Forge on Whyte — and festival stages, she’s one of the acts at Aboriginal Day at Victoria Park June 21 before heading off to Smurfland at North Country Fair that weekend.
Can’t wait to hear more — do yourself a favour and get on board, which you can do with ease here.