Julie Doiron : Woke Myself Up

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/juliedoiron.jpg" alt=" " />While just about every artist is introspective to a degree, some achieve richly endearing levels of it.  To do so, they strip away production and...
6.8 Jagjaguwar
2007 

 While just about every artist is introspective to a degree, some achieve richly endearing levels of it.  To do so, they strip away production and performance antics to present a less molested sound, and match it with first-person detail that's more vivid than 99% of everyday conversation.
Canadian Julie Doiron does so with a mellow-rock backdrop and loose, songstress vocals, in a much more melodic and gripping way than any coffeeshop performer.  The lax style in her album, Woke Myself Up, hides something deeper in the forms of pillowy acoustic poems and skirty rock memoirs.

If Woke Myself Up was a painting, it would generally be blue, black, with speckles of red for the glimmers of passion that occasionally push otherwise pensive tunes.  The blue would represent the first half of the album, the majority of which carries a cool, appreciative tone.  The title-track is a lilting, sidewalk-gazer where Doiron wakes herself to reflect on some of the small things in life ("I woke myself up/Just to see you sleep").  She puts an awed accent on "Yer Kids", in an ever-so-slightly cheerful mood ("My mother told me/To look up and down and all around/And to be thankful for all you've got").  "You Look So Alive" is a glassy serenade that is both complenting and sad, an example of the emotional juxtaposition that carries throughout the album.

Starting with "No More", the album pushes negativity into the forefront with a laundry list of no-mores to enjoyed.  "Don't Wanna Be/Liked By You" is a grunge-laced grind with pauses of solemnity that's a firm dismissal of some miserable romance.  A similarly resounding rejection is the down-tempo alt-ballad "The Wrong Guy".  While it's a renouncement of relationship, it's also a guilt-ridden contemplative song ("I opened my eyes in horror/To see what I've done"), like putting on dark sunglasses to look inside herself.  Keeping with all of the glass-eyed introspection, Doiron squeezes in a longing acoustic strum, "Me and My Friend", which softly wrapped the album up before she included the untitled, echoed eleventh track before pressing. 

While melancholy and condescension can be more easily expressed with slowed, acoustic songs in general, Doiron takes the mood and runs with it, as her low-key electric progressions and raven vocals flow liked a jagged knife through butter.  Woke Myself Up is a graciously unbecoming self-observation that is touching enough to remind us to keep ourselves in check and appreciate the little things.  

Categories
Album Reviews
  • Anonymous
    at
  • No Comment

    Leave a Reply

    Album of the Week