Over the last 25 years I've more or less watched from the sidelines. When Steven left Barenaked Ladies, I watched along with millions of Canadian their reconciliation that wasn't a reconciliation for the Canadian Music Hall of Fame back in 2018. That performance absolutely silenced any doubters that this, THIS was the version of the band we needed, but wouldn't get - and that's okay. As cool as that Hall of Fame moment was it somehow manage to exclude original member Andy Creeggan who was sitting in the audience cheering them on.
Barenaked Ladies are still out there doing their thing. I've listened to some of their post Page output before streaming and had downloaded from iTunes Silverball and Fake Nudes and thought they were pretty good. I've not kept up though. I also downloaded Steven Page's Heal Thyself Pt. 1: Instinct an album that apparently came out a decade ago, which is perplexing to me as it feels like last week ... bonus points if you thought I was going to say "One Week."
I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this. I suppose I'm trying to give a lens into where I sit with respect to Steven as a solo artist. Steven always struck me as a guy who lived large, wore his heart on his sleeve while holding his cards close to the vest and felt things deeply while thinking about things that would escape the notice of the average person.
Or not.
That's the box I have him in, so this is my truth.
Not that long ago (this coming from a guy who can't keep track of time, let alone decades) I remember seeing Steven with Moe Berg (Pursuit of Happiness), Chris Murphy (Sloan), and Craig Northey (Odds) talking about their side project Trans-Canada Highwaymen around the time they released Explosive Hits Vol. 1 (2023). The guys were being interviewed, and a casual comment Steve made about his solo career struck me as immensely melancholy and weirdly pragmatic. He was talking about how with each solo album he's released post Barenaked Ladies there was a sense of excitement and anticipation that this one would be a hit and propel him back to the top and while I suspect his album's sold okay, Steven was becoming a niche artist who was best remembered for what he had done, not what he's doing.
I'll admit, even here I'm calling it a solo record, rather than a Steven Page release. Old habits die hard. Excelsior is relatively new as it came out in 2022 and it is still at this point his newest release. I managed to find this Marco Polo Platter a month or so ago and I was actually pretty stoked when I found it. If I'd not seen the record I wouldn't have known it existed.
That excitement was short lived. I didn't want to wait to clean the record so I streamed it first. It was decent, and there were a couple of songs I thought were kind of cool but it sort of went in one ear and out the other. It just seemed to be missing something. Frankly, if I didn't have the physical album I doubt I'd have given it another listen ... and honestly the first pass was more cursory and I should have known better.
Oddly the record hardly pushes 47 minutes and was given the double album treatment which I thought was an interesting choice as he could have made it fit a single record. Yeah, the grooves would be a tad closer but dang it if TOTO could squish all of The Seventh One (it was over 50 minutes) onto a single platter (it looked like an old K-Tel record) what was the issue here with a couple of extra minutes? I suppose the allure of the double record with a blank side was too good to pass up. I wonder if that was part of his grant application to FACTOR? I'll never know. The FACTOR logo here is huge ... maybe it was.
The vinyl edition of Excelsior is a listening experience divided into three parts. If you've streaming the album you can safely skip this next bit, which frankly is skip-able anyway (a vinyl joke, ha ha. I have a warped sense of humour ... wait, there's more! Don't skip yet ... yet ... yet).
Side A
- Feel
- What'll I Do Now
- Human Doll
- How Much is Enough
Side B
- Look To The Stars
- Infinitely Light Years
- Safe
Side C
- The Golden Age of Doubling Down
- Xylorimba
- Zoom
- Something About Me
As you'd expect each side is more or less fifteen minutes long and the songs seem to fit nicely thematically into little chapters. Of course, I could be reading into it.
It was irritating having to get up every fifteen minutes, and change the record after half an hour but it made the whole experience interactive. Starting with "Feel" where Steven performs all of the instruments and provided his own backing choir. It's essentially a Hymn ... well it could be at least in a Unitarian Church.
Steven recorded the album himself, and while he did enlist some outside help this is very much a showcase for Steven's talents, and dagnbabbit he is a talent. His supporting cast included Craig Northey who appears on many of the tracks adding guitar. His brother Matthew provided drums throughout, and Kevin Fox played cello - I love cello in pop music. Doug Elliot played bass on a number of tracks. This is a really good sounding record and the performances are lush and full of passion. Steven's distinctive voice is front and centre, and boy howdy the boy can sing.
The album was recording during the dark and terrible years as COVID was waning and as a society we were seeing the best and worst in people ... sometimes in the same person. Excelsior has quite a few standout tracks, but the one that seems to cut deepest is "The Golden Age of Doubling Down" a song that sums up our ever increasing myopic focus on ourselves and the determined pursuit of our personal truth rather than curating an informed opinion. As Steven writes, "And if you can't say anything nice / My Advice / Is to Say it Twice" The cuteness "Zoom" should have been cute but I'd rather forget about those moments.
There's also a killer musical bookend that just gets me in the feels. The piano introduction that opens "Infinitely Light Years" is beautifully interpolated in "Xylorimba" a song where Steve plays, wait for it, a xylorimba and it's so good.
I'd be willing to bet Steven is a Marvel comics fan. In the immortal words of the very mortal, and now dead Stan Lee: Excelsior!
'Nuff Said.
Comments
Post a Comment