For the first time, songstress Julie Doiron saw the finished product of her ninth solo album, So Many Days, at its release show at the Mod Club last night. The album, which officially dropped on Oct. 23, reflects on the past three years of her life on the road, when she moved between Sackville, Montreal and Toronto. With her mollifying banter and raw attitude, she stripped down to her bones, granting us a cathartic, organic experience.
While milling about at the bar, waiting for Doiron to start, I overheard several bursts of “Who’s the opener again?” and from the more impatient folks, “Shouldn’t whoever’s opening be starting soon?” So it’s probably fair to assume that this crowd was there to see the headliners, The Grapes of Wrath, whose ’80s folk-rock filled every inch of the hall as though they were playing at the height of their glory days. But Doiron threw (well, maybe gently laid) us onto a bed of roses.
She has a breezy, unrehearsed energy about her that won everyone in the audience over. So when she told us she changed her shirt twice because she was so nervous and sweaty, that she had been thinking of changing her hairstyle and that she would prefer to be on her second or third beer, instead of her first — the crowd couldn’t help from responding with a collective “awww.”
As expected, Tuesday night’s set saw Doiron play mostly from So Many Days, which the press release calls her “melodic opus,” heard especially in “By The Lake.” It’s true: she combines poetic songwriting à la Joni Mitchell with beautiful, warm vocals that resemble those of Feist or Regina Spektor.
So Many Days is about love, which Doiron has gotten some flak for. So what? It was good enough for The Beatles. And because much of this album was crafted on the road, there is a soul-wrenching nakedness that can only come from Jack Kerouac-tinged meditation. A cappella cuts, such as “Homeless,” have a graceful skin-and-bones quality, and the song’s lyrics — actually, most all the words across the LP — come off as an autobiography. Doiron has spent the last 20 years on the road. She moved across the country, was nominated for a Juno, played in Gord Downie’s backing band, The Country of Miracles, toured with her side project, Julie Doiron & The Wrong Guys and opened gigs for Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard.
So (to the haters), don’t think of it as a bunch of love songs; think of So Many Days a tour de force by way of exposure.
And though her soothing, skeletal whisper-singing managed to reverberate across the Mod Club last night, we would have much rather preferred to see the laid-back trobairitz unplugged, on a lone stool, in some seedy bar.
