Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thrush Hermit at the Red Dog in Peterborough

“Do what you have to do before you leave”, Thrush Hermit sang during their second encore, yes, second and that line could well have been the impetus behind the Halifax band’s reunion tour.
Ian McGettigan, Cliff Gibb, Rob Benvie and of course Joel Plaskett played the intimate setting of the Red Dog in Peterborough Wednesday night and in the words of the cliche-ridden music writer they rawked the joint. It was part of a tour that brings them to Lee’s Palace in Toronto for three shows this weekend.
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Best vinyl – Joel Plaskett, Three – by Sue Carter Flinn

To say that response to Joel Plaskett’s ambitious 2009 triple album Three is positive is as big an understatement as Lady Gaga’s lightning- bolt headpiece. Shortlisted for the Polaris Prize, Plaskett now has a bunch of ECMAs and Best of Music awards to add to the mantle too. Recorded with “talented family and friends,” Three is the magic number—a spell of personal storytelling, easy-breezy harmonies and Westerbergian rock.

It’s hard to imagine but Plaskett says, “I knew it was a bit of risk.” Another future Canadian classic, Three has struck a chord with new audiences, too. “This album has taken me into different places—at the shows I see young kids and virtual seniors.” He admits to being a bit overwhelmed by the opportunities, and even though the phone doesn’t stop ringing, he says, in his own Plaskett-like way: “I feel kinda blessed.”

Tags: Best vinyl of 2009, Joel Plaskett, Three

Thrush Hermit flies again

That’s when Joel Plaskett, armed only with his acoustic guitar, showed up for a quick three-song interlude that had more charisma and flavour than most of the evening combined.

Plaskett, even by his lonesome, can rile up a crowd like no one else, and on Nowhere With You and Wishful Thinking, the entire hill became one big, dancing singalong.

As Plaskett waved goodbye to thunderous cheers and applause, one was left wishing the Halifax rocker would’ve been able to just keep on going — there was just too much potential there.

The power of Three
Joel Plaskett launches his new solo triple disc tonight, then heads out on the road

SITTING DOWN for a quick double espresso before dashing off to visit Breakfast Television, Joel Plaskett has a bit of that thousand-yard stare going on this grey Monday morning.

It’s been a busy weekend getting recordings he’s produced for P.E.I. guitar-pop band Two Hours Traffic ready for mixing in Vancouver, and he’s coming out of a long hibernation in his Dartmouth studio working with other acts, including Steve Poltz, Tyler Messick, Myles Deck and the Fuzz and Yellow Jacket Avenger.

But the bulk of his time has been spent putting the finishing touches on his new project Three, a solo triple-disc set of new material that goes on sale today and gets launched tonight with an invitation-only event at The Carleton in Halifax. (more…)

Joel Plaskett THREE CD Review

Sure as the heart is a muscle made up of chambers, valves and arteries, beating in all our chests, there will be artists singing from, of and to the hearts-symbolic in all of us. Before you groan, give a listen to Joel Plaskett’s Three.

Each of the three discs clocks in around 30 minutes. Over the course of them, the tall man tells a story of going, being gone and going back—pausing to consider the associated joy, melancholy and sadness and the tension of staying to stand ground or searching out beyond Nova Scotia. At last, the artist draws on his tripartite form: the punchy troubadour heard on the horn-pecked “Through & Through & Through,” from disc one and the perky pop of “Deny, Deny, Deny” on disc three. The acoustic balladeer sings us into stillness, silence, as on “Heartless, Heartless, Heartless” from disc two; and the roots-rock romantic on “Sailors Eyes,” with its east coast folk motifs; the moody electronic beat of “In the Blue Moonlight,” both from disc two, and the spilling closer on the third, “On & On & On.”

Rose Cousins and Ana Egge, who staggered with an In the Dead of Winter set in February, sing harmonies and responses and complete the conversational storytelling that is this fine, defining album. Sean Flinn

Sean Flinn