I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day

We Say...

Review by Douglas Wolk

At this point, Canadian singer-songwriter Julie Doiron has made more records without Eric's Trip than she made with them. The New Brunswick indie-rock quartet only recorded four studio albums, between 1993 and 1997, and this is Doiron's eighth solo album, not counting her recent collaborations with Mount Eerie and Calm Down It's Monday. As subdued and introverted as her solo work can be, though, Eric's Trip is still very much a part of her musical identity. ET's Rick White collaborated with her on this album, and at times (like the slow-and-fluid breakdown of "Heavy Snow"), it directly recalls her old band, with its varied, expressive, occasionally blunt or crude sonics.

Doiron's clearly paid a lot of attention to shaping the sound of each of these songs — a dozen different kinds of casual rawness set off her fragile, winsome voice nicely. "The Life of Dreams" sounds like it was recorded alfresco, among chirping birds, until the nature sounds abruptly cut off partway through; "Blue" is accompanied by the sort of reverberating guitar part most musicians would try to render as cleanly as possible, but Doiron lets it sputter and scrape. And "Consolation Prize" features a screeching free-noise guitar freakout that ends with a "Leader of the Pack"-style shriek of "look out look out!" and a crash.

That song's also about an emotional crash: "People insisted on telling you what a great couple you had been," she sings, recalling the marital-breakup theme of 2007's Woke Myself Up. As usual, Doiron's lyrics are finely observed and understated — she likes referring to specific places and objects and shades of emotion and a few songs, like "Nice to Come Home," are so clearly meant for someone in particular that listening to them almost seems illicit. The album's closer, "Glad to Be Alive," though, is addressed to herself. Nothing more than Doiron's voice and fingerpicked guitar, it isn't quite a straightforward song of delight, but it's not exactly ironic, either: it's a song about looking hard for joy in everyday experience.