Album Review: Patrick Watson's Wooden Arms is Nothing Short of Incredible

Winner of the Polaris Prize in 2007 for Close to Paradise, Patrick Watson's new album on Secret City Records, Wooden Arms, will truly leave you spellbound, especially if you're a fan of progressive/experimental (and even classical) music that utilises the whole gamut of the musical spectrum for pure sonic ear candy. Any instrument you can think of, it's probably on here, with just about every style, save perhaps Latin American. Though originally from CA, like me, he lives in Montreal and this album could be easily classified under the new weird America tag that you might've seen on last.fm.

With a tenor-like/falsetto voice similar to M. Ward, Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, Nick Drake, and Bon Iver, Patrick Watson serenades with you sweet nothings and lullabies, but these songs are anything but simple, rather they are meticulously layered and composed with complex arrangements like Animal Collective, Yeasayer, and The Microphones, leaving you with unlimited opportunites to explore this album's exciting depths like an undiscovered gold mine. Every song on this incredible album will take you far on a journey somewhere that you never knew you could go to or even wanted to. Whether it is the stunning barrage of Kodo drums thundering in your ears on "Beijing" taking you to fog drenched hidden mountains in the farthest depths of Asia, the Cabaret-like Tom Waitsian numbers, the beautiful classical arrangment of "Hommage", the exquisite alt-country/folk harmonies of "Big Bird in a Small Cage" against a backdrop of quiet guitar fingerpicking and banjo, or the utterly exciting track, "Where the Wild Things Are," this is easily my favorite album of the year, one I will play constantly on The New Spin.

Having also released last year's Polaris Prize-nominated Plants and Animals to well-deserved critical acclaim, Secret City Records are clearly a label that wants, deserves, your attention, and Patrick Watson's Wooden Arms is their latest secret weapon, one that will shoot you straight in the heart and leave you begging for more.

--Dashiell Brown, host of The New Spin, "the best music you've never heard."

Toronto's The Weather Station, Avant-garde laptop folk noir

Four years in the making on a Toshiba Laptop using Sonar 4, Tamara Lindeman's project The Weather Station is a true lo-fi wonder complete with all sorts of organic soft spoken instruments which combine to give us a dark, desert-like, haunted record about loss and loneliness. The Line is a lovely blend of folk ballads along with a taste of the avant-garde, with Tamara's voice slinking and slithering on top. For fans of Patrick Watson, Nick Cave, Woven Hand, Cat Power, PJ Harvey, you get the idea. It's dark, noir folk at its finest.

Hear some of it tonight on my show, which will be streaming online 9-11 P.M, 7:30 EST.

in sound,

dashiell brown

host of The New Spin, "the best music you've never heard."

Other Canadian music featured tonight:

Headache 24, Patrick Watson, Olenka and the Autumn Lovers, Japandroids, Ghost is Dancing, Steve McBean's Pink Mountaintops (of Black Mountain), and St. John's Mountain and the Trees

www.myspace.com/dashiellbrown