Shad’s latest album is a ‘total reinvention’

SHAD “A SHORT STORY ABOUT WAR” (SECRET CITY)

Two years ago, Shad collaborated with avant-garde Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq on a track from her album “Retribution.” On it, the rapper proved his stylistic versatility on music that didn’t resemble his own, or most other hip hop, for that matter. Not that Shad had ever fit into much of a mould to begin with; back when he was a business student at Wilfrid Laurier University, he’d often perform with just an acoustic guitar.

In the past three years, Shad has been the host of CBC Radio’s “Q,” as well as the Emmy-winning HBO documentary series “Hip-Hop Nation” (it’s on Netflix in Canada, and is well worth your time). He also dropped a smooth R&B album under a pseudonym, Your Boy Tony Braxton.

So for his first proper record in five years, Shad goes for a total reinvention. First single “The Fool Pt 1 (Get It Got It Good)” draws from the early ’90s hip hop that most influenced his early work, but after that he moves all over the map, from bright pop to dark electronics, with lyrics largely focused on conflict and violence in its many manifestations, and maintaining his rep as one of the richest, most poetic MCs working today. He gets musical assist from Kaytranada, Lido Pimienta, 2oolman of A Tribe Called Red, and B.C. rock band Yukon Blonde, with some lyrical assist from Toronto underground heroes Ian Kamau and Eternia on the municipal lament “Another Year.”

Only the Yukon Blonde track, “All I Need,” sounds like a potential radio hit, but it’s obvious that elsewhere his music is simply going wherever his lyrical fancy takes him. The only other rapper that springs to mind, who shares this level of lyrical density and musical agnosticism, to say nothing of overall talent? Kendrick Lamar.

Shad plays at Starlight in Waterloo on Nov. 1.

Stream: “The Stone Throwers,” “Peace/ War,” “Another Year” feat. Ian Kamau and Eternia

CAT POWER “WANDERER” (DOMINO)

A friend posted this Facebook status after Cat Power’s Toronto show earlier this month: “Cat Power was the worst show I saw in 2002. Cat Power was the best show I saw in 2018.”

Cat Power’s Chan Marshall has a terrible reputation as a live performer, for reasons that once had everything to do with a combination of crippling anxiety and alcohol.

But she went into rehab more than 12 years ago, and since then survived a major health scare, while putting out two of the most confident records of her career. “Wanderer” is her first album in six years, and first since becoming a mother. “I’m a woman of my word, haven’t you heard?” she asks, on a duet with Lana Del Rey — a major star who owes more than a bit of a debt to Marshall.

If 2012’s “Sun” was a daring pop album, featuring Marshall playing most instruments in the full-band arrangements herself, “Wanderer” finds her stripping down to mostly just her piano and guitar. It’s that sparseness that drew fans to her in the first place, whether on the stark 2000 album “The Covers Record” or the languid Memphis soul of 2006’s “The Greatest.” It’s that intimacy in which her voice truly shines, in which she found a kinship with blues, country and folk artists of the past; there is a timelessness to “Wanderer” that serves it very well — even on, in fact, especially on, the solo piano recasting of Rihanna’s “Stay.”

Every time you think Cat Power might fade away into oblivion, she surprises you yet again. “Wanderer” is no exception.

Stream: “In Your Face,” “Stay,” “Black”

KALLE MATTSON “YOUTH.” (ARTS AND CRAFTS)

Kalle Mattson made a splash with his 2015 video “Avalanche,” in which he walked through re-creations of his favourite album covers, spanning 40 years of rock music. He’s a 20-something songwriter who’s been known to fetishize the past, either that of popular culture or his own personal history. On “Youth.,” he writes about being on the cusp of ever-delayed adulthood, that weird purgatory period where one is no longer a student and not yet a married homeowner with a steady job (granted, that’s largely unobtainable for most demographics now, not just those 25-35). Mattson’s melancholy voice is well-matched for the subject, as are the musical textures he uses to evoke the feeling of emotional displacement. There’s an obvious debt to the indie side of Swedish pop music (Lykke Li; Peter, Bjorn and John), as well as the cinematic electronic instrumentals of Tycho. The core of every track, however, showcases his oldschool songwriting chops; you could recast any one of these tracks in any genre you want — which Mattson did, releasing the acoustic demos as bonus tracks. But the studio choices here are all very deliberate: Mattson doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as a folksinger. Nor will he be after this, which is a major leap forward for the songwriter.

Kalle Mattson plays Oct. 26 at Starlight in Waterloo.

Stream: “Kids on the Run,” “Ten Years Time,” “Back to the Start”