Friendships, life and loss inspire grunge-influenced slacker rock debut.
With their first album, ‘So Brand New’, Toronto singer-songwriter CJ Wiley (they/them) has gathered eight distinctive songs in a captivating mix of rock, grunge and americana that’s laced with wry humour and heart on the sleeve honesty. With lyrics featuring friends real and sometimes imagined, there are swirling guitars and infectious hooks aplenty as Wiley reflects on relationships past and present.
Frequently addressing their subject as if in conversation, the songs have a close-up and personal feel. Nowhere is this more evident than in ‘Don’t Die Charlie’, a eulogy to lost friends, its plaintive refrain drawing movingly on Wiley’s own drug-dependent years.
Elsewhere on this accomplished album, Wiley adopts a more playful stance, tackling the cost of living in ‘Get Paid’, the chorus hook having the feel of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, a big-seller for the Winnipeg band in the early-1970’s. It’s fitting that ‘So Brand New’ was itself recorded in that city, for there’s a tangible link to Canada’s rich musical history. Produced by Boy Golden and mixed by Grammy Award winner Mark Lawson, the record follows in the footsteps of Martha Wainwright, Alanis Morissette and with its playful touches, even Shania Twain. These all come together in the terrific ‘Adelaide’, which begins with gentle acoustic guitar and banjo behind the richly textured vocal before the dynamics build to a memorable hook underpinned by gorgeous instrumentation.
Wiley names Sheryl Crow, Blur, Nirvana and Radiohead among their influences and all can be found here. In opening track ‘No One Like U’ there’s even a trace of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sweet Jane’, a track so versatile it was once covered by Toronto’s Cowboy Junkies. ‘Cheap Therapy’ is deliciously grungy, like late 90’s Sheryl Crow, before the record closes with the hypnotic title-track, which the artist describes as sonically influenced by Elliott Smith, Radiohead and Blur.
As well as the considerable production credits, mention must be made of the fine playing by the ensemble of musicians. Julia Wittman and Maddy Kirby on guitar, Nick McKinley on drums and Kate Palumbo on bass polish off everything from bluegrass to slacker rock with ease.
Naming themselves after a professional pool player of recent fame, CJ Wiley has shown unerring aim and a cool nerve in taking on the challenges addressed in their songs. For a début album, this one deserves a maximum break.
