Outside Music 25 Items

"Justin Rutledge could easily rest on his reputation. Eleven albums in, he’s accumulated a daunting body of work upon which one could easily coast. Instead, on ""Something Easy"", Justin Rutledge did the opposite. He made things exceedingly difficult for himself and decided to write, record and produce the album by himself at home. With one, then later two, bouncing baby boys underfoot, to boot.

The results speak for themselves. ""Something Easy"" is a serene, stately thing of beauty, a gently paced record that really rewards the patient listener with meticulous detail and unexpected instrumental happenings. It’s anything but Rutledge settling into a rut. It will surprise you.

That Rutledge can still catch us off guard should not come as a surprise. The man is very good at what he does. Accolades have piled up since he released his first album, ""No Never Alone"", via Six Shooter Records and Slowdive/Mojave 3 main man Neil Halstead’s Shady Lane Records in 2004. He’s won a Juno Award for Roots Album of the Year in 2014 for the album ""Valleyheart"" – which also landed him a Canadian Folk Music Award – and has since been nominated for three more Junos. He’s been longlisted twice for the critic-voted Polaris Music Prize.

“All of these songs are about youth, and I hadn’t realized that,” he says. “And it’s interesting because I feel that, as a new dad, there’s this transition that’s happening where suddenly I’m realizing I’m in my 40s. And what’s happening is that our wild-and-free years are suddenly over there, and our ‘middle-aged’ years are now right here. I feel like I’m at this apex where I’m thinking a lot about my youth, But I’m not lamenting anything. I’m not old, I’m just shocked at how suddenly this new phase of life has begun.”"

Toronto keyboardist R. Grunwald has played on sessions for hundreds of musicians, and has served as bandleader for jazz/pop chanteuse Jill Barber and country/folk songwriter Donovan Woods for the better part of a decade. Now he's ready to step onto the public stage with his own music'alone. Oma is an evocative and deeply personal solo piano record, inspired in part by the life story of his 96-year-old grandmother, a Holocaust survivor and pianist. Drawing from Erik Satie, Nils Frahm and others, Grunwald refers to his intensely melodic compositions as 'extended minimalism.'

'After quitting piano, it was my Oma who inspired me to get back into it. She survived the 2nd world war moving from town to town, hiding from the Nazis, and the Russians in Poland. Music was the one thing that tied her young life together. This music is a tribute to her.'

Enjoy in a quiet environment.

Walrus are here to play for the sake of the song. The Halifax based band's signature sound is a fuzzed-out electric blanket of soul with a few unrepentant strands of authentic heaviosity. Extensive studio experimentation can be heard throughout their sonically unique music, from varispeed warble to Spacemen-3 style saucer drone-attacks. Live, their low-key manner belies a depth and dedication to the craft. This band could be thrown on a bill betwixt Love and Sabbath and not embarrass the present.

Acclaim for Walrus:

'Long, languid stretches of spacey meanderings eventually wind themselves up into tight knots that beg to be undone, to be free again' Walrus bring about a magnificent explosion of noise and heat.' // CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND

''thumping, synthing wonder' mixes the best influences of the genre with the band's own studio experimentation' (4/5) // STEREOGUM

'The band somehow mix gentle, Brian Wilson vocal melodies and orchestrations with out-of-the- blue punk thrash parts that keep listeners guessing. The high, winsome vocals and chiming 12- string Rickenbacker certainly conjured late '60s cloudy folk-pop, but the rest of the band infused the songs with sharp edges. Some of it recalled the Sadies, and the musicians in Walrus are certainly in the same league.' // EXCLAIM!

'Best bet for an acid flashback' // NOW

'Pristine, fuzzed-up jams' // CLRVYNT

Outside Music will support the release with a full marketing and PR campaign. Big Hassle on board for US PR; Starkult for German PR.

Toronto ON - On Friday June 22nd Jill Barber will unleash her new album, Metaphora, on the Outside Music label. A bold entre into the world of contemporary pop music, resulting in a Jill Barber we've never heard before. Metaphora showcases her power and vulnerability as both an artist and a woman. Evolving over the course of many albums from folk to jazz, R & B and pop, Jill's success is defined not by genre, but by her undeniable songwriting chops and distinctive voice. Metaphora is a continuation of Barber's musical story that confidently tackles everything from issues of empowerment, sexual politics, the complications of love, and depression. It's introspective and personal. It's also a dance party. Mutual friendships and living on the same street led Jill to sit down with Ryan Guldemond, the enigmatic lead singer of Mother Mother, for inspiration and creativity. Ryan's commitment to Jill and unwavering enthusiasm garnered co-writing credits on four of the nine songs on Metaphora, including the instantly catchy lead single, Girl's Gotta Do, a hook-filled and very timely call to arms that aims to "challenge the patriarchal status quo, as we usher in a new era of equality" says Barber. "Writing with Ryan was a big departure for me, and very exciting. He's extremely creative and not afraid to push my creative boundaries" recalls Barber. "The sessions became part songwriting and part therapy because I was writing about things that felt pretty raw; politics, sexism, being a mother. I started to realize that this was going to be a very different kind of album for me. I had more that I needed to say and Ryan helped bring that out with his uncanny knack for melody and song structure." Metaphora's opening track, "The Woman" with its pounding bass drum generates a sense of anticipation, an urgent heartbeat for what is next to come from the fearless multi-Juno nominated performer. "It's a song about how a woman is

"It's the most personal album I've ever written, and it is very daunting to put such a raw, exposed, vulnerable part of yourself out there," remarks Tami Neilson of her new album Don't Be Afraid. Don't Be Afraid was nearly left unfinished. With two songs completed and six weeks left to write Tami Neilson unexpectedly lost her father, the patriarch of The Neilson Family band who Tami had toured across Canada with as a young girl opening for the likes of Johnny Cash. It was with her mother and brother's encouragement that she finished the record as a way of honouring her dad. "I actually inadvertently wrote the title track (without realizing it would be for the album) the week Dad died. 'Don't Be Afraid' was the last song Dad wrote, while in the hospital. He had written the melody, lyrics and everything, but he was on oxygen and could barely breathe to speak. He told me that it was driving him crazy that he had this new song stuck in his head, but had no way of offloading it. It's an awful feeling, I know, so I said I would bring him in his guitar so he could play it and I'd record it on my phone. He did a verse, so I got the melody, but then his levels dropped dramatically (that's the hidden track on the album, Dad's Demo'), but we didn't get the chorus, or the melody for the chorus." Don't Be Afraid finds the soul taking precedence over the country as Tami found herself listening to a lot of gospel around the time of her father's death and finding a kinship with the legendary singer Mavis Staples: "I've always been a massive Staples fan. I had ordered the new Pops album, it was released days before Dad died, and I ordered it in Canada so I could take it into the hospital for him to listen to. It arrived the day after he died, and of course I sobbed about that, but I will always be so grateful for that album helping me get through that grieving process." Recorded in Ben Edwards' New Zealand Sitting Room studio, the songs were again recorded live, the musicians all in the room playing together. The album features Delaney Davidson and all the boys that were on Dynamite! including harmonies from Marlon Williams on the soon-to-be classic 'Lonely'. The album features a Tina Turner throwback, 'Holy Moses', the swinging country of 'Only Tears', a bluesy swagger in `So Far Away' and the southern soul of 'Burn My Body'. The album is bookended by the title track, including the haunting hidden demo track sung by Tami's father. "There are a lot of reasons I chose Don't Be Afraid as the title, and one of them is that, musically, as an artist it's a departure for me. There are definite moments where I have had to go, 'Don't be afraid of this, this is who you are,- Neilson says. "This album is the guts of me. I guess 'departure' is the wrong word because it's all the same palette and same family, but whereas Dynamite! was a lot of light, bright colours, Don't Be Afraid is deeper, richer colours - still in that same family but a different level." Tami moved to New Zealand from Canada 8 years ago and has become one of the country's biggest acts. Tami is the most highly awarded artist of any genre in New Zealand, having just picked up NZ's highest songwriting honour, the APRA Silver Scroll, for 'Walk (Back To Your Arms)' off 2014's Dynamite!, which also won her (yet another) Best Country Album Tui in May this year. Don't Be Afraid marks Tami as a new soul staple. It's a raw, deep and hopeful album that finds Tami singing out her grief. "Last year was an insane year, I had the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows all in one year," she recalls. "And I guess that is what the album is, it reflects that constant cycle of life."

Award-winning Toronto songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Abigail Lapell returns with "Anniversary", an evocative collection of original love songs. Produced with Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker, the album was recorded at 200-year-old St Mark’s Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Dekker helped shape the sessions’ spooky, resonant sound and also lent his voice to a couple of spellbinding duets.

Lapell’s deft lyrics jostle with love song tropes, grappling with love’s finitude and the irony of how codependency and longing are revered in popular music. A ghost story is woven through the album: waltzing in the dusty barroom country of “Blue Blaze,” buried in the superstitious lyrical streak of “Rattlesnake” and audible in a wheezing organ as it shuts down at the end of “Footsteps.” Still, "Anniversary" emerges as an earnest celebration of commitment. Earworms like “Anniversary Song” and “Someone Like You” showcase intricately layered harmonies, while closer “Stars” affirms that there’s no place the speaker would rather be than with the one she loves.

Dekker and Lapell assembled a stellar cast of musicians to support Lapell’s powerhouse vocals, piano, harmonica and signature fingerstyle guitar. The core band includes Dan Fortin on bass, Jake Oelrichs on drums, and Tania Gill on the church’s piano, harpsichord and organ. Rounding out the ensemble’s sensitive orchestral arrangements are Rebecca Hennessy (trumpet), Rachael Cardiello (viola), Michael Davidson (marimba and vibraphone) and Joe Lapinsky (pedal steel), who also engineered and mixed the record.

On her new record Entre nous, Jill Barber reaches a new level of intimacy with the French language. An unabashed francophile, it all began at the Montreal Jazz Festival over a decade ago: she surprised her audience with a French translation of one of her songs, and the room exploded into applause and a chorus of bravos. Québec was charmed. In response, Jill was inspired to record her debut French album, interpretations of classics from Piaf to Gainsbourg on 2011's Chansons. Soon millions of listeners worldwide were discovering Jill's music through her french material, and she continues to earn spots on top french playlists with songs from Chansons across streaming platforms. In a bold move for an Anglophone, Barber now releases Entre Nous (2020), her first collection of original French songs, written with Francophone collaborator Maia Davies and produced by Montreal born, NYC based, Gus Van Go. Inspired by french pop music of the 1960's, Entre nous invites the listener on an musical rendezvous through champagne-soaked love songs like the title- track, cheeky yéyé-inspired songs like "Chat domestique", the psychedelic "Commes les fleurs" reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, the hooky pop song "Le monde est beau", a haunting interpretation of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne", and a steamy duet with Québec chanteur Yann Perreau on "Les étés de Montréal". Much like her predecessors, anglophones Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, the more Barber sings in French, the more she is embraced for her unique and pleasing accent. Singing in a second language lends a quality to her voice that is more vulnerable, tender, playful and passionate: it's simply charming. As a songwriter, Jill Barber is beloved in Canada and abroad for her talent and impressive body of work in English; in French she is irresistible and her star is only just beginning to rise.