British Columbian singer/ songwriter KEVIN HOUSE produced one of the most startling and memorable debut albums of recent times in 2005's 'Gutter Pastoral', but just as 2007 slips away he's back to remind us it was anything but a fluke.
Admittedly, there's little here to rival the eerie, cranky, Tom Waitsian carny of 'Gutter Pastoral"s best moments, but that's not a problem, for what his sophomore effort 'World Of Beauty' may have jettisoned in terms of good, old-fashioned weirdness, it more than makes up for in a gorgeous, new-found serenity.
Admittedly, it probably helps when your fellow sonic sculptors include the likes of string arranger Jesse Zubot (Kelly Joe Phelps), pianist Ida Nilsen (Mike Scott/Waterboys), guitarist/ pedal steel player Paul Rigby (Neko Case, Garth Hudson) and engineer John Raham (Be Good Tanyas), but ultimately it's the strength of House's idiosyncratically attractive songs that again draws you in so rapidly.
The title track kicks us off and offers a potent glimpse of much of what follows. More plangent and linear than much of 'Gutter Pastoral', it's built around House and Rigby's fluid, finger-picked guitars, ripples of piano and Skye Brooks' patient, brushed drums. House's voice is dry, shaky and just about spot on as he opines that "everyone is invited to the party celebration/ with the love of God, we are all living and dying" and wrings every drop of resigned, fatalistic beauty from the song.
A similarly glorious, understated loveliness underpins much of what comes along in its' wake, not least on sparse victories like 'All The Planets And All The Stars' and brittle, roots-y affairs such as 'Chamber Music'. Songs like these are full of wonderfully unexpected treats, too, not least the lazy, Chet Baker-style trumpet solo on the former and Alison Jenkins' excellent textural clarinet on the latter.
Intriguingly, parts of 'World Of Beauty' also recall a West Coast south of House's Canadian home patch. Built around a ringing, cyclical guitar figure and fantastically heart-rending peals of pedal steel, 'Song of A Cloud"s tale of a disappearing girl ("she took a walk down darks roads and she never came back") vividly recalls the Red House Painters at their abjectly aching best, while the ghostly atmosphere of the tremendous 'Waterfall' is redolent of American Music Club's still-majestic 'California' album without ever sounding anything other than its' own entity. Arguably even better again is 'Down River': a subtle stunner with a whiff of Calexico in its' dusty execution, baritone guitar and the first of several of Jesse Zubot's stirringly perfect string arrangements.
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But really, there's riches galore to explore for the duration of this fine, restrained album which seldom sees the point in hurrying whether the songs are peopled by more familiar oddball characters like Jo-Jo the Dog Boy and his circus cohorts in the nostalgic, but never schmaltzy 'Carnival Song' or the nocturnally personal closing tune 'Where I Want To Be', where the last of Zubot's stately string arrangements carries us gracefully to the tape.
'World Of Beauty', then, is certainly a departure after the brilliant, but sometimes arcane folk-blues of 'Gutter Pastoral', but there's never any doubt that its' author is anything but at one with the new landscape he so vividly evokes. An impressive piece of artistic envelope shoving and then some, you might say.
(www.kevinhouse.ca)
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