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Jenn Grant's Heartbreak
By Amanda Ash
"When I started making Echoes, I knew it was going to be a heart-wrenching thing, but I didn't really realize how much until I got there and was doing it," Jenn Grant says over the phone from Halifax, her frank tone a change from her usual starry-eyed demeanour. When the Halifax folk musician first started penning songs for her sophomore release, she knew the emerging product was nothing like 2007's dancing, dream-happy Orchestra For The Moon. She knew her tunes were taking a darker, more personal turn. She also knew they were sounding way too melancholic for her liking. But what she didn't know was that was writing a break-up record.
"I was still in this relationship that these songs were based on, and didn't really know what was going on. In the middle of recording the record, I realized it was a break-up album and I had to do the breaking up."
To this day, Echoes still reveals many of Grant's subconscious feelings. "These past couple of years, I'd been battling with trying to make [a relationship] work, and that was really hard on me," Grant says. "I always write about what I feel, and I was feeling a lot of pain about this situation, and then I listened to [my music] when I was recording and was like, 'Oh my God, what is wrong?' So it was a really full circle thing, to go through something for such a long time and then listen to yourself and go 'Wow, I need to make some changes' and then do them."
Grant recorded Echoes in the summer of 2008 on a farm in rural Ontario, the serene surroundings prompting a sense of much-needed simplicity in her music. There, she ended up cutting the album down from 18 tracks to 13, and chose to tape them live in order to capture the moment. Following the same vein of simplicity, Grant even said no to guests on the record (with the exception of singer-songwriter Rose Cousins) in order to avoid the jumble of too many opinions.
In the end, Echoes was all about making herself happy instead of catering to others. "It's about finding your own voice and sharing that with people," she says. "You only live once." Album opener "Heartbreak" highlights this search for identity in an ever-changing world, a steady wall of background instrumentals acting as a foundation for her crystalline voice and delicate thoughts. "You'll Be Gone" and "Where Are You Now" capture Grant's emotional wanderings, characterized by the recurring image of boats.
Grant feels Echoes is a fitting title for these drifting, introspective songs. For her, echoes represent the process of self-exploration she underwent and the life lessons she'll take with her until she's 90. Although Echoes stands as Grant's first heartbreak album, she hopes it'll be the last.
"If you see the album art, the painting, it's mountains and northern lights… I think they're symbolic of strength, and I picture echoes coming from the mountains and the beautiful sounds of nature," Grant explains. "It's also a reflection of yourself, and this album is obviously a reflection of me.
"[The title is also based upon] an old Greek mythology story based on a girl named Echo. She's in love with this guy named Narcissus. She loses herself because she falls in love with this guy who's in love with himself. In the end, she remains an echo and can only yell [to him] things that people yell at her. I think that's an interesting story. I don't want to become an echo."
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Antony and the Johnsons Transformed
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The Harmony of Bruce Peninsula
 If it wasn't true, it might come from a cheesy teen flick revolving around a high school band. Two friends are jamming away when another pops his head around the corner and says "Hey, that sounds good! Can I join?" It's not quite the origin of Toronto's Bruce Peninsula, but it's close. Friends Matt Cully and Misha Bower were re-interpreting rural folk and traditional recordings for a concert while roommate Neil Haverty listened in. "They practiced in the back room of our apartment," Haverty explains, "and it was, 'I like this and I want to join in' so I basically told them and they didn't oppose that." Two more joined — Andrew Barker and Steve McKay on bass and drums, respectively — and so did an amalgam of six other musicians known as the choir, which can include Katie Stelmanis and Ohbijou's Casey Mecija....Read More
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Fennesz's Farewell to Endless Summer
 "I think it is important that I'm not just in one very small genre that just a few 22-year-old men are listening to." Christian Fennesz had been carving a well-respected niche in the late '90s with a series of releases that mined the noisier bedrock of electronics and essayed the deconstruction of popular themes, like his covers of the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys on the Fennesz Plays seven-inch. With his latest, Black Sea, Fennesz continues to explore beyond the margins of laptop music, garnering acclaim in highbrow mags like The Wire and also in Pitchfork's year-end top 50. "I think what I do is still pop music somehow."...Read More
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Matt & Kim Get Ambitious
 "Keyboard and drums were what we could do a live show with, but that wasn't necessarily what we were as a band," Matt Johnson explains. The Brooklyn-based duo — Johnson and his band-mate/girlfriend Kim Schifino — are known for giving charming interactive performances and throwing hyperactive dance parties. But when it came time for their follow-up to 2006's self-titled debut, they realized their simple set-up needed to expand....Read More
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PPP's Home Audio System
 The group formerly known as Platinum Pied Pipers may have shortened their name, but it's no sign they are scaling down — PPP are going for bigger and better this time around. For their sophomore effort Abundance, producer Waajeed and multi-instrumentalist Saadiq have recruited soul singers Karma Stewart and Coultrain who wrote the bulk of the album's songs, to front the group. It's a marked change from the rotating cast featured on the hip-hop fuelled minimalism of their 2005 debut Triple P....Read More
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Timber Timbre's Time Travel
 Brimming with mystery, Timber Timbre is the enigmatic brainchild of Toronto's Taylor Kirk, whose unique brand of haunted, folk-blues is fully realized on his eponymous new album. Though previous otherworldly records (2006's Cedar Shakes and 2007's Medicinals) made him a cult favourite, Kirk's been purposefully elusive, rarely playing live and often distorting his image in Timber Timbre photographs....Read More
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