Ptolemaic Terrascope, magazine/webzine, UK:
The second album from Mr Pine is a rewarding collection of songs that take Acid-Folk as a starting point, but is not afraid to tread less
travelled paths.
With all songs written by Matt McLennan and Kevin Scott, there is a wonderful flow to the album, each song is enhanced by a full band adding bass,
drums, electric guitar, and female vocals, all of which maintain that acid folk tag. After the gently swaying opener “Ace of Cups I”, the band
get into the groove with the laid back west-coast feel of “Streets of York”, featuring guest banjo from Jay Churko. Building up the tempo, “Set
Piece” is a faster song with a more contemporary sound, that is, until the songs breaks down for a recorder solo, falling through time back to
1972, and doing so with great skill.
Featuring harpsichord and some lovely strings, “Blue Onyx” is a baroque folk delight, yet is obviously the same band as one the previous track,
something I find pleasing, a band aware of its own identity and sound. One of the album highlights for me is the pure folk-rock of “Glass Petals”,
acoustic picking and rocking electric chords blended perfectly, the top notch vocals, powerful rhythm section and twisted violin adding the tension
to a dark tale of murder, as it should be, and a sure fire classic.
Written as an homage to musical heroes Mellow Candle, the songwriters never expected that “Sleep of Ondine” would actually feature vocals from
Alison O’Donnell, but so it proved, the song a tribute so well written that it would sit quite happily on “Swaddling Songs” itself. Featuring a
small gathering of recorders, the wistful love song “The Enclave”, is so beautiful it will stop you in its tracks, another classic in the making
and another reason for you to buy this album now. Having unleashed their muse, the band do not let up for the rest of the disc, the rockier
“Cymbeline”, followed by the quieter flow of “Robin’s Breast”, featuring vocals, guitar, violin and tambourine, giving the song a pastoral feel,
with some exquisite lyrics adding to the joyous vibe.
At just over six minutes “Dirge” is a heavy guitar drone that slowly envelopes the almost chanted lyrics as the song progresses. This is folk with
a totally modern twist and came as something of a surprise, although it fits in with the rest of the album, again proving the bands ability to
retain their identity whilst changing their sound. To end this fine offering we get a string-laden instrumental reprise of the opening track, the
uplifting playing on “Ace of Cups II” leading us out with a dance in our feet and a smile in our heart, just wonderful.
-Simon Lewis
"Rootstime," Belgium:
(Thanks to Mark Jones for the translation)
The Canadian Mr. Pine is not a ancient folk figure, but an innovative sextet of musicians. The originators are Matt McLennan and Kevin Scott, who made a trademark out of
experimental folk music. The singing wandering angel along their side is named Leslie Oldham. And this "Rewilding" is a musical adventure from start to finish. You'll
see variations on the fairy tales of Grimm, Old-English ballads, diffuse memories of George Elliot and Thomas Hardy, and the bizarre brain spins of Scott/McLennan. These
last two met each other in 2003, when their musical collaboration started.
Matt played electric guitar since he was 14, and his love for avant garde and free jazz tried to find a way out in the rock band Cone Five, but that didn't seem enough for
him. Kevin, educated musically in a more classical manner, got to listen to a lot of folk music at home, and stranger music in the record store of his older brother, after
which he started to experiment with music as a DJ at the University of Manitoba. When such eclectic musical geniuses find each other, it has to lead to a first CD such as
their very noticed debut "The Gift of Wolves". Their lyrical music is since then described as mystic folk/chamber music, where classical and modern, Eric Satie and
Renaissance, Claude Debussy and Nick Drake, and the electric guitar and the harpsichord meld together in pure harmony.
In the seventies I was disappointed that folk rock bands like Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Amazing Blondel, Mr. Fox and The John Renbourn Group had to make room for
punk and hard rock. Now it seems as if in this second "Rewilding", some of those band members have risen again, but in a Manitoba identity. Richard Caners on violin, Jason
Peters on electric guitar, Ken Phillips on bass, and the duo of Matt and Kevin as the writers, form a reincarnation of these British acid folk groups as if their creativity
embedded itself in Mr. Pine.
Leslie floats as a singing nightingale on the melodies like an Annie Haslam, Maddy Prior or Jacqui McShee. Besides that, several musicians join in on violin, viola, cello,
drums, flute, tambourine and banjo, as if an entire orchestra has been formed. Yet Mr. Pine keeps its own spirit in the eleven songs in which it seems as if all the
characters that are sung about regrouped themselves in the current, more chaotic era, which is also beautifully illustrated in the cover inlay.
Soprano, alto and tenor recorders make it slightly medieval, and it's hard to choose between all this evocative poetry. All the songs have a timeless feel, which makes you
believe Scott and McLennan must have been touched by a magical wand of a beautiful fairy, maybe the slightly bizarre granddaughter of Euterpe and Melponene.
-Mieke Geukens
Mr. Pine: Bridging Wilderness (Stylus Magazine, Feb/Mar 2009)
(Article by Whitney Light, article reprinted with her kind permission)
On January 2, Mr. Pine played a rare concert to an appreciative audience at Aqua Books. It was rare because some 2000 km separate Winnipeg-based songwriter Kevin Scott and lyricist Matthew McLennan, who formed the band on nearly the eve of McLennan’s departure to Ottawa in 2004. They released Rewilding, their sophomore album, in October. This was the release party.
Between developing their progressive-folk songs via email, Scott (a DJ at 101.5 UMFM) and McLennan (formerly of Cone Five, Use Every Part of the Deer) solidified a six-member lineup. Richard Caners, Leslie Oldham, Jason Peters and Ken Phillips play violas, violins, recorders, tambourine and more while Scott lays down tunes on guitar and ripples across the piano (or harpsichord) and McLennan weaves reality and fantasy in potent, tenderly phrased tales. The combination makes an album that steps unnoticed between the traditional and the experimental and harkens back, as the title suggests, to a past far away from here.
What follows was constructed from two interviews, a conversation with Scott and an email exchange with McLennan. Talking about the making of Rewilding, both discussed the creative process, their common interest in ’70s British folk music and the mystical sound that is Mr. Pine.
Stylus: Kevin has mentioned that Mr. Pine exists in part to be a platform for musical experimentation. Is that your view also, Matt?
Matthew McLennan: Mr. Pine was founded on the understanding that Kevin and I would get to try out new things, so this is true. At its best, Mr. Pine is like Kevin’s Thursday night radio show, “The Electric Tongue”: we get to bring all kinds of strange things to the table and see how they fit when placed side by side. A good example is the song “Hey Presto” from the first album. Kevin brought me a polite, courtly-sounding harpsichord piece and I somehow spliced it with a raucous hoedown where the narrator rants against the institution of marriage.
Stylus: What was your vision for Rewilding?
MM: At the earliest, most abstract stage of things I envisioned an album referencing Steeleye Span’s 1971 album Please to See the King—something very stark, old-timey and loud. In some respects, Rewilding is true to this vision, and in some decisive respects it is not.
Stylus: What was your creative process for the lyrics and melodies?
Kevin Scott: I [write] the melodies. The way a song will start is I’ll have a musical idea. I don’t sit down and write a tune exactly. I have a vision in my head—what would happen if we had this group of instruments playing together? I’ll try to make that happen and then I’ll imagine the melody from there. I’ll record it and then I’ll send it through email to Matt and he’ll come up with the lyrics.
MM: I jot down phrases or images that come to me in my daily life, and these often serve as a basis for constructing larger, song-sized sets of images, or in some cases actual narratives. I am set off by all kinds of things: dreams, conversations, books, movies. Since I only come back to Winnipeg periodically, and am a chronic procrastinator, I often find myself having to scrape all of it together at the last minute. This sometimes leads to some pretty funny results, so I appreciate that there’s always been a place for humour, intentional or otherwise, in Mr. Pine.
KS: If you put Matt and I in the same room and said, “Write a song,” I don’t think we could do it. It has to be one of us coming up with a concept and passing it on to the other guy. I like working that way because something that I’ve written will take a completely different direction once I’ve handed it to Matt for lyrics.
Stylus: Some reviewers have used the words medieval and pastoral to describe what you’re doing. What does the music evoke for you?
KS: There is certainly an early music influence. I have a harpsichord and I use it on the album and I play in an early music group with some recorder players. I like Renaissance period stuff and I like Baroque. Medieval is the wrong word to use. We used to be called Celtic sometimes and we’re nothing like that either. It’s a bunch of styles and I don’t think one style overrides anything else. I keep coming back to certain words. I keep coming back to that word “mystical.” I keep coming back to “earthy.” Outdoorsy. I hesitate to say pagan, but that kind of idea, too. In the early ’70s you had bands like Led Zeppelin and [they wrote] “The Battle of Evermore.” It’s all mandolins and fair-maiden vocals and the words are taken right out of Lord of the Rings. So those early ’70s hippies were interested in fantasy.
Stylus: What is it about that era that you appreciate?
MM: I’m particularly enthralled by how various types of folk music can be so metal, and the ’70s British bands highlight this superbly—particularly Steeleye Span but also Fairport Convention, etc. Many of the old songs they interpret are about murder and adultery and suicide and so on, often all combined in the same song. What’s fascinating about this is that in metal, the form of the music actually reflects this kind of lyrical content—heart-pounding percussion, guttural vocals with much gnashing of teeth, terrifying volume—whereas in folk, I would argue [that] you can be just as disturbed by someone with a pretty voice and a gentle delivery.
Our own explicit nod to the metal-ness of British folk on Rewilding is the song “Glass Petals.” The character finds a freshly murdered body in the woods and has sex with it and goes to confess to his father (or perhaps to God). He then makes a pact to drown himself in the river. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s the devil speaking in the murdered woman’s voice that makes him sin. The problem with this song, of course, is the extent to which it risks replicating a negative quality of so much of the folk music we’ve referenced: it’s misogyny. In folk narratives, women usually set all kinds of bad things in motion, and they get killed. On “Glass Petals” the idea was to write a “deeds most foul” song in best folk tradition, but to make it more about the problematic understanding of women that sets off the collapse of reality for the protagonist.
Stylus: If you had to compare Rewilding to your last disc, The Gift of Wolves, what would be the difference?
KS: We didn’t know quite what we were doing when we did The Gift of Wolves. Listening to it now, there are good songs but they don’t necessarily sound the way I imagine Mr. Pine songs should be. For example, there’s song called “Edge of the World” and it’s very experimental, but it’s more of a song that the producer (Ryan McVeigh) had to do with because he took a poem of Matt’s and had Matt read it a couple times. Then he played with the sounds and added effects. It’s a very unsettling thing to listen to—very avant garde, very strange and that’s one aspect of what we’re into. The Gift of Wolves is half Mr. Pine songs and half out-and-out experiments.
Stylus: What’s your sense of the response to the new album?
KS: Wide-eyed enthusiasm mostly. Once in a while you’ll get someone who doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. We got one review that said this is a band that hasn’t found their sound yet, not realizing that the whole point of us is to do very diverse songs every time. So sometimes [people] will hear the album has so many different directions and they’ll assume that means you haven’t found a direction. We could make six or seven more albums and I can tell you they would all be just as wide-reaching.
Review by Anthony Toogood (UK)
MR. PINE
Rewilding
Whiskey Lad Recordings
* * * * * (5 stars)
The thing that is immediately striking about the sound of this Canadian band is their tremendous craftsmanship and attention to detail in their rich folk-rock sound. What is NOT immediately apparent is the fact that repeated plays of "Rewilding" yield tremendous rewards – after approximately six listens I am still unearthing new gems I hadn't previously noticed. Glad I am indeed that I afforded myself the chance to return to it – the life of the CD reviewer does not normally allow such luxury.
And luxurious music this is. The six-piece band focuses on songs penned by vocalist Matt McLennan and guitarist/pianist Kevin Scott, who contributes other instrumental touches here and there. Rounding out the band are female vocalist Leslie Oldham – whose voice is the ideal counterpart to McLennan's; guitarist Jason Peters; violinist Richard Caners, and bassist Ken Phillips. There are drums on approximately half the songs and guest players here and there throughout.
Like all classic albums, Rewilding seems to exist outside of time. It could have come straight out of 1974 or it could have shown up ten minutes ago. Stylistically it beggars description – is it folk? Is it rock? Is it art? It's none of these, and yet it's all of these. The album starts with "Ace of Cups I" - with its hypnotic acoustic guitar motif, soaring violin, and plaintive vocals, it is a meditation on fragile relationships and the music is suitably and compassionately fragile to accompany the narration. "I probably love you" sings McLennan, and improbably, the words remain with us, while the music conjures a brisk breeze across a barren plain.
All at once the mood is altered by a gentle, toe-tapping folk rock number, "Streets of York," sung with a carefree sweetness by Oldham. This is a song absolutely bursting with tunefulness; the vocal melody trades off with a violin melody which trades off with a melodeon melody. Utterly infectious and with another irresistible lyric, the song is pop perfection. Its followup is another abrupt change of style in an album full of surprises – "Set Piece" lyrically is a humorous take on government waste, but musically is a galloping acoustic rave-up, with a lovely (and utterly unexpected) instrumental interlude in the middle.
What follows came as a complete surprise – "Blue Onyx," with its gentle strings, looping bassline and Scott's crisp harpsichord, is a lovely, swaying baroque waltz, sung in beautiful harmony by McLennan and Oldham. This song truly transports the listener in time to an age of elegant ballrooms, powdered wigs and flowing gowns, and yet the Mr. Pine trademark sound is unquestionably there – masterfully done. Next is "Glass Petals" – a rather more grim tale with music which careens from solo acoustic guitar to rather intense electric power chords and a ghostly violin. The song could easily be mistaken for a traditional ballad from several hundred years ago, and it is a musical tour de force; and it is terrifying.
"Sleep of Ondine" was a personal highlight for me as I am a great fan of the Mellow Candle landmark from 1972. Written as a tribute to Mellow Candle and featuring Alison Williams (NB. Alison's married name at that time. -Ed.) from that band, the song sounds to these ears like an unreleased song from "Swaddling Songs," containing as it does several elements of their prog-folk sound, from the dual scat vocals to the muscular piano line; and yet, the song is very much the same band as before! Lyrically, McLennan captures a recollection of a battle so terrible the narrators cannot articulate it. And then we have "The Enclave" – my favourite moment on this fine album; a gentle tale about a fox, fingerpicked on dual acoustic guitars and bolstered with a consort of recorders. Absolutely spellbinding.
"Cymbeline" is a riveting number – more rock-oriented on one hand, but given a lovely delicate vocal performance by Oldham. Driven along by some fine piano playing and highlighted by a stunning flute/violin duet, this is really the sound of a band at the height of its powers. One almost wishes the group would deliver another album's worth of songs for each style represented here. "Dirge" starts off as a gentle tribute to a lost loved one but ends in grand style as a grandiose elegy with waves of guitar static and ghostly vocal harmonies; the repeated, insistent phrase "wake up hello" takes on a poignancy that brings a lump to the throat. The album's final track is an alternate take on the thematic material presented in the first track, rendered instrumentally. There is some dazzling playing here, and the six piece band, augmented by many guest players, doubles in size to go out in grand style, a chiming, quasi-orchestral epic. I didn't see this song coming and I am left in awe of its power and beauty.
Mr. Pine's care in creating such a multi-faceted album is rare in an age where albums are made flippantly and good musicianship is discouraged in favour of casual sloppiness. This band has clearly set out to make an album of top-notch music; one can actually hear how much they care about what they are doing. Sadly that has become a bit of a rare thing in recent years. They have injected fresh life and imagination into the fields of both folk and rock, and anyone who laments the complacency of modern folk will find endless delights in Rewilding.