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By Dennis Cook
I’ll be shocked if this isn’t on mainstream radio, sandwiched between James Blunt and Dave Matthews, before I finish writing this sentence. Toronto’s Jason Collett (he's the guitarist in Broken Social Scene) makes multi-layered sensitive boy music, the kind that shows up on every Reese Witherspoon comedy soundtrack, probably during a montage involving a picnic, a goodbye in the rain, and a kitchen food fight that ends with the flour-coated leads kissing. It is very safe, a modern equivalent to 10,000 Maniacs or Toad The Wet Sprocket. That said, Collett isn’t unpleasant in his way.
Working with fellow Canadian Howie Beck, a popster in his own right, Collett builds on the modest charms of his last album, Motor Motel Love Songs, which got a lil’ indie press buzz in 2003. There’s nothing particularly new about Collett’s music. Ed Harcourt (Badly Drawn Boy) and numerous others have plowed this shimmering, gentle pop field. Maybe that’s the problem. There may not be a lot of crops left in a sound Coldplay has honed to almost scientific perfection. So, one is left to drift (or not) upon an unthreatening breeze. Even when it tries to be deep or significant (which unfortunately this does at times), it can’t overcome its intrinsic lightness.
Collett is not helped by a generic voice, which Beck uses all manner of studio trickery and some nice guest vocalists to supplement. Broken Social Scene’s Emily Haines turns “Hangover Days” into a bang-up Belle & Sebastian homage. Collett’s best-on-gentle-afternoon acoustic ditties like “Almost Summer” and “These Are The Days” benefit from his laid back, slightly twangy pipes.
It’s not that this is bad music. It’s got a nice, relaxing mood, and Collett swears well, which is always a virtue in my book. But it’s not far removed from Jack Johnson, David Gray, or The Wallflowers, and that’s not a place I like music to be. I want music to try harder than this stuff, which tries just hard enough.
JamBase | East Bay
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