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Joined:
Jun 25, 2007
Latest Activity:
Jun 25, 2007
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About Me:
I dont see it as the last song Im ever gonna write that people are gonna like, Wesley offers, some 18 months later. The soft-spoken 27 year-old singer-songerwriter tends to have a Zen-like disposition at the best of times, but with his recently completed new album - Wesleys first with 604 Records his composure is entirely justified. The self-titled album is a quantum leap for the industrious young artist, who found himself vacating the producers chair for the first time in a stridently DIY, three-album career.
Dave Genn took over the knob-twiddling on the new album, but the increasingly acclaimed producer wasnt the only luxury Wesley could finally afford. We were in the studio for five months, he says, his tone suggesting that he still barely believes it. On previous recordings we havent had more than five days to record the whole album, and with very small budgets. So that was a big part of the picture.
Genn also threw some particularly tasty keyboard parts into the mix, bringing Wesleys inimitably hummable songs to a nice boil on numbers like the dubwise and Space-Echo drenched Something That You Do, which arrives on a relaxed and bassy fade-in thatll remind more seasoned listeners of the Polices The Beds Too Big Without You.
Something That You Do is the most explicitly Caribbean sounding of the 12 originals. Determined to not place myself in a hole I cant get out of, Wesley - along with bassist Darren Parris bass, and drummer Tim Proznick - turned up the pop for numbers like Drunk and Stoned, and Itll Be You.
Wesley sees the latter as the whole classic pop love song, about a girl that you love and youre just telling her how much she means to you. The former, meanwhile, offers a bridge between Wesley then and Wesley now. The singer happily confesses that Drunk and Stoned is lightweight in conception if not execution, but theres no ignoring the force magnifying effect of a gang vocal that enters the picture at the two-and-a-half minute mark. Im probably gonna make Drunk and Stoned beer coasters, Wesley chuckles. I think people in Alberta would buy that.
As a constitutionally unpretentious man, Wesley claims that its kinda weird talking deep about songs you wrote, because theyre just songs. People can and should take them for what they are, but there is, of course, more to it than that. Its worth remembering that beneath its face-hugging hookiness, "Ooo Ohh" was a song about sexual abuse, while Wesley cops to an ongoing theme of escape in his music. If pressed further, hell open up about the fear and loathing that informs the remarkable Pilgrimage, with its take on the gang wars that have turned Wesleys hometown into a shooting gallery. Whats happening today, he says, it weighs heavy on some people. The last six or seven months have been pretty scary around here. Pilgrimage is a pretty big statement that I wasnt trying to make, but the song makes it. And I think it can pertain to anywhere in the world, where those kinds of things are happening.
On a strictly musical scale, Pilgrimage might be the most darkly expressive three minutes Wesley has yet committed to tape, with a universe of suggestion between its disco vibe, fuzzy riff, and a general increase in pace that eventually drops the listener into an evocative middle eight unlike anything else in the Wesley songbook.
Its the perfect bookend to Drunk and Stoned, and gives shape to the overall sense that this album is designed to open new vistas for a talent thats only just beginning to find itself. Fittingly, and like any natural born music-maker, Wesley appears to treat life and work as an indivisible thing, subject to the same rules, and the same core philosophy.
I want to have a career like Neil Young, or Tom Petty, or Dylan, he asserts. They could always surprise people. But your hearts gotta be in it. Everyone wants excitement in their lives, and theres nothing exciting about having no new experiences. Thats the whole idea pushing to see what else you can do.
Record Label:
604 Records Inc.
Label Type:
Independent
Band Members:
Daniel Wesley
Sounds Like:
no one else
Country:
Canada
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It Aint That Cool
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