We’ve been obsessing over a slew of great Canadian talent of late thanks to the likes of The Arcade Fire, Royal City, The Dears, Hidden Cameras and Stars, but most of these talented individuals hail from the Montreal/ Toronto/ Quebec catchment areas, so until recently British Columbia has been operating under the radar, so to speak.
KEVIN HOUSE, though, suggests the area should be scrutinised far more closely in future. Featuring guest slots from the likes of Samantha Parton (vocals – The Be Good Tanyas), bassist Russell Sholberg, Radiogram pianist Mike Derrick and Millennium Project trumpeter JP Carter, but mostly self-recorded, House’s debut album “Gutter Pastoral” is an eerie, unsettling record that strenuously denies easy pigeonholing, but with continued input reveals itself as a record of some depth and impact.
As befits a character who was born in England, emigrated to Canada with his family at an early age and has since spent spells living in Arizona, California and the prairies as well as his current Vancouver home, House’s muse is a restless, rootless thing, often prone to bouts of noir-ish fatalism and served by unlikely, arcane instrumentation. The end results are largely excellent, though, and the opening track alone (“Stories Without Words”) gives you an indication how adept House is at creating something minimal and magnificent from instruments as unlikely as vibraphonette, theremin and ‘fun machine’, whatever the hell that is. The track itself falls somewhere between Tom Waits, Calexico’s desert intrigue and the Young Marble Giants’ deliciously sparse abstraction and is as intriguing as they come.
Elsewhere, House evokes some unlikely ghosts, not least on songs like “Let Me Out” – which recalls the frailty of Elliott Smith as House sings of a lonely sojourn to New York (“Across the broadway line/ I’m just another stranger on a downtown train tonight”) – and “Twilight In Wilderness”: a skeletal and dusky affair featuring House credited with ‘birds’ and ‘crickets’ and recalls Nick Drake’s “River Man” when Russell Sholberg’s Danny Thompson-style upright bass slides into place.
As you’d imagine, Kevin House’s songs are usually somnolent, mesmeric things of wonder and often he seems to revel in the abstract qualities of his work (for example on the short instrumental “Duskpoem” which is every bit as enigmatic as Talk Talk’s “Chameleon Day” or one of Calexico’s little desert mirages like “Ritual Road Map”), but he sometimes hits a nerve in such a subtle way you only realise long after you’re becoming accustomed to hearing a track. For example, on the dignified “Black Smoke Rising”, you only begin to realise he’s discussing suicide (“tell everyone I love them so/ I didn’t take the time before”) when you really concentrate fit to burst.
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House’s guests often make telling, if typically subtle contributions too. On the wonderfully evocative “Waltzing With The Hellhound”, Enzo Garcia plays the most sepulchral of saws while Samantha Parton duets in the ghostliest of manners and on the album’s lone – and somehow fitting – cover, a skeletally magical version of Talk Talk’s “I Don’t Believe In You”, he’s given the most restrained of support by JP Carter’s muted trumpet and Mike Derrick’s haunted piano droplets.
As with all great fatalists, there’s also a wicked sense of humour at work here and no more so than on the macabre, but hilarious closing track, “The Fun Side Of Death”: basically “Stories Without Words” weirder, be-bop jazz cousin with a direct line to setting up an afternoon tea appointment for you with the Grim Reaper and a choice line in duelling banjos. And, yes, that is meant as a compliment, in case you were wondering.
Kevin House, then, is a singular and spooked entertainer who can wring the most curious of twists out of his superficially simple and surreal songs. He’s an oddball in the best possible sense and someone you should arrange a meeting with at your earliest convenience. Preferably during daylight hours until you get more confident, mind.
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