The new EP Lo & Behold provides Toronto’s The Joel Affair with their new single, Honest Opinion. Like the rest of this third EP from Joel Phair, the man behind the band name, it’s a song that sits somewhere between power pop and americana, and, in places, might bring to mind Comfortably Numb or any number of songs by John Grant. And that’s no bad thing. It’s a song that has a simple message wrapped up in an intricate soundscape – how about we just talk things through and everyone gets their say, and maybe we cut through the crap and come up with a good plan. Well, that seems reasonable enough. Because Joel Phair is getting tired of the recent decline in human decency and he’d like to see that reversed. And as he says, “I write songs, sometimes about flash thoughts, sometimes about life themes, but always about something that I have experienced and/or have seen through my eyes and thoughts.”
How did Phair get into performing music? Well, he credits the Wilco frontman, telling that: “I have read and listened to many interviews with Tweedy and the thing that has stuck with me is a podcast where he was taking questions from listeners and one of the questions was ‘What advice do you give to aspiring artists?’ Jeff’s answer was, ‘Stop aspiring. Be the artist you want to be; you don’t need permission to be an artist, you don’t have to wait for someone or something to say you are, just create.’ That made me think, yeah, you’re right! What is anyone waiting for?” Indeed, that’s a thought we can get right behind here at Americana UK.
