Joel Plaskett‘s got balls. I get dozens of submissions a week, and this motherlover sends me a three-CD album? I’m already annoyed at the guy, since I honor my promise to artists that I will listen to everything that is sent to me.
But I’m one-and-a-half discs in before I realize how long I’ve been listening. And my kid is singing along, even though he’s never heard it before (and tends to be finicky).
Plaskett is (another) Canadian singer songwriter, who sounds in many ways like Jackson Browne—straight ahead, easy rock—but he throws curveballs sometimes. “Rewind” ends, literally and abruptly, with rewound audio, goes straight into “Precious, Precious, Precious,” which ends, fittingly, with the line, “I just wanna rewind.” The three-CD set is a composition. Yes, it’s pop songs, but there’s thematic content throughout. Lots of songs with titles (and choruses) consisting of one word, repeated three times. But it’s not gimmicky—he’s capable of jumping through styles, from indie pop to light rock to light country-pop, and several shades of grey between, showing a breadth of pop skill.
