Here's a very well researched and pretty epic review from Italian music magazine
Ondarock.it (my friends in
Winter Leaves tell me a 7/10 is really good for this magazine):
http://www.ondarock.it/recensioni/2009_dogisblue.htmHere's the English translation, as per Google Translator: "If you take off to tackle the ocean, who would you choose as traveling
companions? That is: to those who truly trust in the life? Paul Watson seems to have clear ideas about where the notes of
"Seacaptain" imagines sailing with a crew of friends into the unknown
as a sort of Ulysses from Dante's comic strip, ready to face the waves
with his company on board picciolo of an old station wagon turned into
an odyssey ship ... where weddings and funerals would have happily
banished for ever, in the name of the eternal here and now.
Dreams are made of the case, the songs collected by the
songwriter of Toronto in his debut on behalf Dog Is Blue: mild and
crazy like a scene from Michel Gondry, woven than the childish fantasy
that seems only possible "before the drift of continents, where the
seas were small and our unshakable determination "...
Punctuated by a guitar arpeggio, the chiaroscuro of voice, a
carpet of synthetic reverbs: just listen to the initial Borrowing Days
"to immediately realize that the essence Watson aims to sketch their
pictures. What you do not want, however, is to lapse into cliché yet
another singer-songwriter armed with acoustic guitar: this is then
emerge on the background of the songs keypad toy, circus organs,
rhythmic trastullanti even some occasional sliver of electricity in the
queue loureediana episodes like " Alligator Song "and" Raise Your Dead.
"
Echoes the voice of Laura Heaney - painter with a penchant for
skulls bearded - you book as the howling ectoplasms next to the stamp
of deep Watson, true to the noise spectral announced the title of the
disc, but in the best tradition eelsiana, this is spectra of
friendship, came to visit just to prevent the past vanishes into thin
air. "I like a good ghost story," confesses Watson in "Raise Your
Dead", "The kind that makes you worry as your roast marshmallows / But
a misconception I ought to mention is that we've something to fear from
our ghosts."
Among bozzetti style Mountain Goats ( "Happy Hallowe'en") and the
flaw, Herman Dune ( "Grandma"), Watson seems to enjoy the verses of
"Young Enough" to draw their own self: "I am not a poet in some travel
perilous / I am just a guy who is not ready / I am too old to join a
traveling circus / But too young to really know a lot of things / With
the right age to get by without purpose / young enough to never be
satisfied with nothing. "
For him, the first real shock came music in high school, when
she stole "Moondance" by Van Morrison from the collection of records of
his father. But 26 years is that he realized that it had not yet
realized their dream: thus, in addition to the online store of
independent Canadian music Zunior, Watson has decided to finally wear
the clothes of the songwriter. "I could have used my name," she said,
"but I would be confused with Patrick Watson or the founder of
Greenpeace ...". Abandoned the original idea of zoological moniker
"Wolves, Hawks And Kites" (unfortunately I have chosen more or less the
same time as bands like Wolf Parade, We Are Wolves, Wolfmother and
millions of others had already given an example of the zeitgeist
lupesco ... "), Dog Is Blue has become so his battle name: a name
which, while serving the early shyness, displayed a promising
personality to put on display.
The songs of "Ghost ... Makes Noises" alternate fatalism Bill
Callahan all'ironia of countryman Mathias Kom (The Burning Hell): even
when the tones become more reflective, as in the tinkling chimes of
"Wish", almost every able to smile down every thing brought my gaze to
the right perspective. "How do I know the flowers of my dreams will not
drown in over-watered graves? / That I translated from French, do not
ask me to explain."
There is no business of adventure, the journey of flaky
sull'imbarcazione Canadian songwriter, but small snares of navigation
of each day when you can not find almost a shooting star among the
lights of cities and in which love becomes worse than a fight a
wrestling match with an alligator ... But there is always a new port in
sight, where you can embark together to challenge the wind. "We're all
off on our own odyssey / Just need a place to rest or fall"."
- Gabriele Benzing