By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 14, 2012
This album came out last spring and I somehow missed it until now. I started being a Patrick Watson fan in my first year of university with Wooden Arms – and it turns out that Adventures in Your Own Backyard is a symmetrical bookend to that album. They’ve added more brass to this album than I remember them having before, but other than that, they’ve continued playing with the same elements of good old Patrick Watson classic sound.
Just so you don’t think that I have absolutely no grasp of verb conjugation, it’s probably important to note that Patrick Watson is a band (with lead singer Patrick Watson) and not just a single guy.
One of the core elements of both band and album is Patrick Watson’s whispery, soaring tenor. It’s a little dreamy and surreal, and it always makes me feel like he’s completely detached from the world, floating in midair somewhere and describing what he sees.
The new element that differentiates this album from past work is the addition of a brass section that makes an appearance in several tracks and is reminiscent of a mariachi band or Wild West soundtrack.
One of my favourite tracks from the album is “Into Giants,” which sounds like it belongs on a children’s show: I imagine real people fake-walking around a world cut out of paper. It’s that kind of uplifting sound that’s intended to get children excited about life, and Watson’s somewhat ghostly vocals make it just a hint of creepy and save it from being utterly sickly sweet.
Patrick Watson has a perfect blend of simplicity and variety that makes my heart crumble: the melodies are relatively simple, and often the background tune of guitar, violin or piano aren’t too complicated either, keeping one line of the song going rather than a chord. At the same time, each song climaxes into a complicated nest of an immense variety of instruments and weird percussion that knits together into an indie orchestra. When I put it that way, it sounds like a hipster’s wet dream, but it’s actually just cute.
“Jumping over all the bad times,” Watson croons, “it’s easy when I’m holding your hand.”
But then it gets weird again with “Strange Crooked Road.”
“There was a woman who sewed a man to a bed, took a baseball bat so she could talk to him instead,” Watson sings, “It didn’t take too long.”
Dear Patrick Watson, did you pull a Mars Volta and write these lyrics with a Ouija board? We’re treading into creepy children’s story territory, and I can’t say that I mind too terribly. I’m just afraid these odd and unlikely lyrics have a deeper meaning that’s going to make me hate the song when I find out what it is. (Like Sufjan Stevens’ most ultimately creepy “John Wayne Gacy, Jr,” although in hindsight I probably should have seen that one coming.)
Other than that, two tracks definitely jumped out at me: the title track, “Adventures In Your Own Backyard,” and “Step Out For a While,” both because they are extremely similar to tracks from the band’s 2008 record Wooden Arms. “Adventures In Your Own Backyard” has the same lead-in and the same selection of odd, unplaceable percussion sounds as “Beijing,” (albeit with a healthy portion of brass missing from Wooden Arms), and I would say that “Step Out For A While” is basically a reimagining of “Travelling Salesman” – it’s so close that you could play them at the same time and still make sense of the overlapping sounds. I’m tempted to combine the two into some kind of mash-up, but maybe I’ll just wait for the internet to do it for me.
I like to believe this is on purpose – hence the title Adventures in Your Own Backyard. The band hasn’t really explored any new territory, but sometimes the best adventures can be found in your very own backyard – by taking a look at what’s already there and reimagining it into something new.
Don’t get me wrong, I love it when bands and artists go exploring and push boundaries. Norah Jones, for example, has changed her sound every single album but has only become more herself. But at the same time, many bands are already themselves and have no need to change too terribly much. Patrick Watson is one of these bands.
I love this album just as much as I love Wooden Arms; they’ve taken what they’re good at and remade it. It’s a combination of sequel and second draft, with enough new elements mixed with the familiar to make it an irresistible combination. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put both albums on shuffle and call it Wooden Adventures in Your Own Arms.
