Whitney K, Kylie V, and Spencer Burton
Whitney K
Two Years // Maple Death Records
I used to travel between my hometown of Edmonton to the mountains of Jasper or Banff almost every weekend during my university days. There was a whole lotta HWY 2 and TransCanada driving. Sun beating into my music-filled Buick Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, a velvet-interior beast, big enough to keep me safe in the event of a crash. There was no better way to get to know an album or an artist than to take it road-tripping, but I unfortunately have this affliction where I fall asleep when I drive, so I took a lot of ephedrine (legal to buy over the counter at the time) and drank a lot of coffee. My legs would jitter and jolt and jump to the good tunes I was getting to know so well on my road expeditions. The first time I heard Whitney K’s “Trans-Canada Oil Boom Blues” it brought me right back to the sun-in-my-eyes days of highway driving, leg jittering, head nodding. It’s a swaggering rock n’ roll song that reflects that early 2000’s on-the-cusp of the oil boom mentality, opportunity and good times over-riding good sense. The song's lyrics make us look back on what we’ve sacrificed for those good times. A pillaging of the land in the heartland sun for the dragon on our back. Thus is the creativity of Konner Whitney’s latest album Two Years. He swings us between deep thought and humour, usually in the same breath. Sometimes a lonesome country-poet with a salty swagger and slide-guitar like in “Me or the Party #165”, or a stumbling garage rocker in “Last Night #2”, and sometimes hitting us with a quaalude-soaked sounding Lou Reed delivery like on “Maryland”. Whitney revisits a couple songs from his 2017 album When the Party’s Over bringing with it some languid honky tonk piano blues with “Cowboy City Rocker” and lonesome crooning in “The Weekend”.
Hailing from Whitehorse, Whitney has spent time in Vancouver, Montreal, Burnaby and Los Angeles. I don’t know Whitney personally, but I have an affinity for people from the Yukon for some reason. Could be the adventurous pioneer spirit of people who choose to live so far north that I gravitate towards. You have to be resilient and have a good sense of humour to live through northern climates. Never ending dark nights for months on end bring that deep-thinking, self-effacing awareness in a person. And with every long night comes a breaking dawn - and for the northern folk it’s a 3-month long party. You can hear this in Whitney’s lyrics and playful compositions. Whitney’s arrangements are fun and loose - acoustic strumming with frisky percussion and bar-room piano or organ. The whole album makes up a personal caricature of Whitney in what I can only imagine is a deep guy looking to break out and have a good time. As he says himself about the album - “Time to open your arms, I’m coming out of no fun city and aiming straight for you.” I don’t know about you, but I’m ready.
- Mo Lawrance
Kylie V
Big Blue // Self-Released
Debut albums by indie artists really have no business being this good. If Kylie V were 25 years old, I would still be taken aback by the relative sophistication and maturity of Big Blue. That they are still ensconced in the comfortable world of high school is a bit of a mindfuck. Their first release, the self-produced and recorded demo compilation Lotus Eater took the Vancouver music scene fairly by storm. That work in itself was a marvel of economic songwriting, clever wordplay, melodicism and vocal technique, belying a level of mastery far beyond the scope of their fifteen years. As impressive as that first batch of bedroom recordings was, Big Blue shows a level of growth rarely seen in an artist taking their first stab at a serious follow up.
Just about every aspect of this album is firing on all cylinders. The production by Kylie V and Harley Small (Peach Pit) takes the ethereal dimensions of Lotus Eater to a whole new level, adding lush strings and stacked vocals to a deliciously clean production aesthetic that really allows for Kylie’s impressive vocal chops to shine through. Similarly, the guitar work here has reached a new degree of intricacy. When I first saw Kylie perform, I was struck by the fact that their Telecaster was almost as tall as they were at the time, and it almost seemed as though they were writing guitar parts that were too big for their hands. It definitely seems as though two years has allowed them to catch up. The guitar work on the album is really beautiful, tasteful leads and delicate fingerstyle rhythm tracks that show a level of consideration and restraint that most musicians take years to figure out.
Similarly, the work by Kylie’s backing band, The Kings (twin brothers Christian and Benito Hobson-Dimas of Surrey group Sleepy Gonzales) is very impressive here. There’s clearly a genetic synergy taking place between the twins, and the tight, subtle rhythm tracks really mesh well with the vocals, allowing the songs to breathe and give a real sense of space. I can only imagine the potential places this band can go to given their relative newness.
There’s a great degree of melodic complexity as well, a knack for crafting sinuous passages and vibrant harmonies that give these songs a real grandiosity of scope, and a dimension of musical progressiveness that elevates them a good deal above the realm of bedroom pop. In particular, I was struck by the rich baroque counterpoint of “Cathedral,” my personal favourite from the record, but generally there’s a ton of stuff to stimulate the mind on Big Blue, and I found myself wanting to throw it on again almost immediately after my first listen.
All this is to say that Kylie V more than transcends any limits that their youth and inexperience might impose. Big Blue isn’t a good album for a young person to have made, nor is it a good album for a debut, it’s a great album for any person to have made, anytime, ever. That it was done without the support of a label or a big budget is a real credit to the artist. I had to continually remind myself that these songs were coming from someone who hasn’t yet been through the experience of post-secondary, or living away from home, or all the other life turmoils that artists typically require to achieve the level of emotional maturity and thoughtfulness expressed here. If Kylie V is already writing at this level now, I can only imagine the wealth of great songs they’ll be able to mine over the next few years of their life. It strikes me that this is an artist that one can and should invest in, because given their trajectory thus far, it seems that one can reasonably expect them to produce a glut of fantastic albums over the course of their career.
- Shaun Lee
Spencer Burton
Coyote // Still Records, Dine Alone Records
As a Westerner, listening to an Easterner's approach to Country and Western songwriting might come with a certain amount of trepidation. But then I got over that and realized that geography nor regionalism cannot hold court over a genre nor art. What a silly notion. In fact, I admire the talents of Sam Outlaw, a self admitted dude cowboy from Los Angeles.
Spencer Burton has released an album that respectfully states his admiration for the traditions of country music as well as the beauty of its namesake regions. He spells those notions out in his ode to Alberta "Nothing's Changed". Let us also consider that C&W may be more of a framework from which to build practice and his art.
Burton's previous offerings were much more subdued. Choosing to present the singer songwriter’s craft simply arranged with minimal embellishments. Coyote is a marked step up in both production and arrangements. Back-up singers calling out choruses. A pedal steel guitar dances around the melodies (played by the legendary Lloyd Green).
While not directly dealing with the current socio-economic and health crisis, it is clear that Burton chooses to embrace positive powers in his life. He calls out love and thanks for friends and family. He hints at the coping mechanisms that are getting us through in "Love at First Sight". "Further", the most upbeat and frenetic track deals with restlessness and a longing for moving on. There is a positivity and gratefulness that permeates Coyote.
Spencer Burton has brought together a collection of contemporary country songs that give perspective to our world. Coyote celebrates positivity in order to endure hard times.
- Drew Cox
