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Jack Carty will break your heart strings

Posted by Amy Bastow on 20/05/2012

Amy reviews Jack Carty’s latest album Break Your Own Heart

Break Your Own Heart sees a darker, more dynamic turn in Carty’s song writing coinciding with a year that was, in the words of the man himself: “Simultaneously one of the best and worst of my life.” From the rolling guitar line of opening track  The Length Of Canada (co-written with Grammy Award Winning Songwriter Dan Wilson), through the gritty directness of Everything, Unhappily, the immense longing of songs like Travelling Shoes and She Loves Me to the ironically upbeat swagger of Waiting, Waiting!, Break Your Own Heart is a stunningly unified, moving and thoughtful collection of songs that effortlessly captures a time and place in a young man’s life. A time and place I’m sure most of us can relate to.

Carty explains When I think of the year 2011 in the future I am sure I will overwhelmingly remember airports, highways, train stations and other people’s couches. This record is about that. Not the travel necessarily, but about giving up a lot in one area of your life in order to try and achieve your goals in another. I think that is a crossroads most people come to at some point along the way.

Jack Carty is a story teller and a poet. His stories are honest, sincere and engaging.

In his latest album, Break Your Own Heart, Carty takes us on his personal journey of an eventful year of self-discovery. Throughout this journey, we see twists and turns, we feel heartbreak, we experience the uncertainty of life and the beauty of existence.

As is quite often the case with folk music, we get a sense of time and place, of storytelling and of a journey. With tracks titled The Length of Canada, Travelling Shoes, A Point on a Map and Waiting Waiting we definitely get the sense that Carty was traveling a lot during the writing of this album, which gives the album a real freshness.

The opening track, The Length of Canada is a truly remarkable piece of musical art. The triplet rhythms in the guitar riff over the top of a steady 4/4 beat on the drums gives us a feeling of movement, travel and exploration. In my minds eye, Carty evokes a scene of traveling down an endless highway, full of twists and turns that take us on a journey through the Canadian countryside. Carty’s enchanting voice and great use of melodic shape sends goosebumps to my arms every time I listen to this track.

The second track, Too Many Things In Too many Places, shows us how thin Carty has spread himself throughout the making of this album. We feel his homesickness, but also his desire to travel and experience all the sights and sounds of the world. With lyrics like “He wants too many things in too many places, a comfortable home that I’m always away from. I want the Williamsburgh Bridge, the Tower of London, I want the mountains of Germany, I want you there to want me –  I just want to come home, there’s so much to run from”.

In the track Traveling Shoes, a subtle guitar line quietly follows the shape of the vocal melody on the word “traveling shoes”, which is absolutely magical. In verse 2 when Carty sings the melody up an octave, we experience the sheer beauty of his voice in this register, and I can guarantee you, your heart will break at this point in the song. Strings slowly wrap their warms arms around us, so subtly, yet so convincingly. Everything in this album is there for a reason. Carty never clutters the space with unnecessary sounds, electronics, reverb or other effects. All the instrumental lines have been thought of and carefully crafted to match his incredibly poetic lyrics. Carty says a lot, with not much! Now that’s talent.

In the track, A Master of All Things, Carty uses a repeated note on the guitar, which acts as a pivot to some really beautiful and colourful chords and I couldn’t help but be reminded of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude at this point, perhaps because Carty also makes lovely use of a piano in this track, particularly in the high registers.

A banjo and harmonica take the stage in the track Waiting, Waiting!, which reminds us that although Carty is experimenting with different styles and feels, his roots remain firmly planted in folk.

Some unusual and interesting rhythmic phrases are used in the track Break Your Own Heart, which keep us guessing as to what its time signature might be. Carty also introduces a trumpet, again, very subtly, almost as though it’s coming from another room in the distance.

All this from a young man who always performs with his shoes off!

In this album, we also see a young man out in the world, following his dreams, but making sacrifices to do so. Just to reassure you Jack that you’re doing the right thing, I love what you’ve done with this album and give it 4.5 out of 5 kisses. We all think you were born to write music, and with lyrics like “I want to play this guitar until the day my heart fails me” we’re convinced there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing either. So please, keep on traveling, keep on writing and keep on bringing us the joy of your music.

To Listen to Jack Carty’s mucic visit his website www.jackcarty.com

Written by Amy Bastow for the Kiss My Arts Show on Joy 94.9 – All opinions are mine. Copyright 2012.

Yann Tiersen is a musical architect in his latest album “Skyline”

Posted by Amy Bastow on 10/04/2012

Yann Tiersen has a unique ability to create music, sounds and timbres that are constantly evolving, changing and growing with every new album that he creates. It’s as though the instruments he writes for are a part of him…breathing with him and manifesting themselves at just the right moments in his music. These sounds are alive, and in his latest album Skyline, create a masterpiece of exquisite colour and personality.

Tiersen may be most well-known to the masses for his sound of piano, violin and accordian (famously used in the film Amelie), but in his latest album, Skyline, these instruments take a break, with a focus now back on guitars, vintage synths and experimental timbres. Let’s live in an enormous world of sound we can use randomly, with no rules at all. Let’s play with sound, forget all knowledge and instrumental skills, and just use instinct – the same way punk did says Tiersen. As a teenager he was influenced by the post-punk culture of bands like The Stooges and Joy Division and at age 13, after years of classical training, broke his violin into pieces, bought a guitar and formed a rock band.

The opening track of Skyline, Another Shore, begins with child-like bells, playfully tinkering underneath an acoustic guitar, before a wall of noise rises from the looping musical cogs and washes our ears with pleasure. The looping structure continues to develop, with layers upon layers forming a snowball of musical texture. About half way through the piece, this texture is dramatically cut and a bass clarinet emerges, wandering around the lower registers for a moment, before an explosion of sound launches us into the remainder of the song.

You may find yourself becoming hypnotised by the continuously developing layers in his music, which seem to be a structural and developmental focus throughout the album. Little musical fragments unobtrusively begin quietly looping in their own organic time…then throughout the duration of a piece, start to take on different forms, changing shapes and intertwining together so intricately. The little animation by Ivan Rusev to the track Monuments reinforces this notion of layering sounds. The animation slowly rises upwards, guiding us to look into the different windows on different levels of a building. Although there are different scenes in each of the windows as we rise upwards through the layers, they are all somehow connected. Essentially, Tiersen creates a musical tower by stratifying individual sounds. Perhaps this attention to looping layers refers back to the early days when Tiersen would pour over records looking for appropriate loops to use in his music?

The way Tiersen combines sounds together shows a master at work. Sometimes the sounds are beautiful, sometimes nostaglic, sometimes haunting and sometimes frightening, the latter being especially evident in the opening vocal screams of “Exit 25 Block 20”. But whatever he does, he does with 100% conviction. He has a story to tell and through the diversity of instrumental sound combinations, draws us into an incredible musical journey.

I’m particularly drawn to the track The Trial. The lyrics include the line someday my girl, in your mirror, darling, you will face the trial. I can’t help but think he might be referring to the ultimate trial, as in our mortality. The ‘siren’ sounds that finish the piece, to me, are also clear evidence of this. But after asking Tiersen about this piece in an interview with him on Kiss My Arts last week (Monday 2nd April 2012) surprisingly he said the piece was about…an ex-girlfriend! Well there you go!

He is often mistaken as a composer of soundtracks and although being most well-known for the music of the quirky little film Amelie, Tiersen’s real focus is on touring and studio albums (which sometimes, just happen to be suitable for film).  He himself says I’m not really a composer and I don’t really have a classical background. Although Tiersen doesn’t like to call himself a composer, he certainly treats all of the instrumental timbres in Skyline like a well-seasoned musical architect, with precision of design and confidence in execution. This album is a symphony of sounds. I give it 4.5 out of 5 kisses.