Tanya Tagaq’s back and she’s angry
MUSIC MONDAYS: Inuk throat singer leads a diverse list of new albums covering a variety of musical styles
TANYA TAGAQ Retribution (Six Shooter Records) This iconoclastic Inuk throat singing experimentalist closed her Polaris Prize and Juno Award-winning album release Animism with a track called Fracking, which might have been as close to the sound of the Earth Mother being torn apart as has ever been committed to recording. The title track of her new album is perhaps even more intense, promising “Our Mother grows angry/retribution will be swift/we squander her soil and suck out her sweet black blood and burn it/We turn money into God and salivate over opportunities to crumble and crinkle our souls for that paper; that gold.” What follows is nearly eight minutes of hypnotic, powerful rage. The mood set, the tone continues to be developed in the heavy pounding Aorta, the haunting Summoning with Jessie Zubot’s barely audible violin scratching away in the background or choking Sulfur. Retribution is an album about assault and violation; on the planet, on subsequent generations, on traditional ways of living, on native peoples and, ultimately, on women. Having covered Pixies Caribou on Animism, she closes Retribution with Nirvana’s Rape Me. The original anti-rape track’s potent message is expanded exponentially in her chant-like recitation. In light of the ongoing national shame of inaction on missing and murdered aboriginal women, it’s a call to arms. DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT Transcendence (New Damage Records) The single Stormbending is as good a place as any to start with the latest collection of expansive and exciting progressive metal from one of the genre’s finest proponents. The band’s meticulously crafted approach to riffage forays into surprising twists — the title track is an ever-escalating operatic workout that culminates in a gargantuan chorus — and odd breaks into everything from folk dances to Adrian Belew-style guitar wonkiness (Failure) are common. A six part YouTube “making of” video series is worth watching to see how the DTP achieves such density in its production. Huge, symphonic and epic. MARGO PRICE Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (Third Man Records) Price is generating major buzz with an Emerging Artist of the Year award at the Americana Awards, a Saturday Night Live appearance and best album of the year nod from her hometown Nashville Scene newspaper. It’s hardly surprising that her debut was rejected all over town before Jack White jumped on it for his Third Man Records label. This is what used to be called Outlaw Country — raw, rocking and about real life stories. Four Years of Chances is one of the best twanging kiss-offs in recent memory. And her boots probably have been made for both walking and working, not down the runway either. TEXTURE & LIGHT Inner Space Odyssey (textureandlight.ca/music) Still showing a penchant for good album titles, this electro/indie crew from Powell River expands its sonic scope considerably with the followup to 2013s The Hard Problem of Consciousness. “Recovering DJ” Trevor Refix (a.k.a. Mervyn) and multi-instrumentalist Lyell Woloschuk’s disarmingly polite songs about everything from environmental degradation (Theft of the Sky), isolation (Predators) and general ennui (Post Everything) likely pack far more punch live and the pristine production can’t hide a raging band waiting to cut loose. Yet it’s the most mellow and non-dance track (This Too Shall Pass) that worms its way in the best.