Gary
Glauber
Reviews:
October,
2001

Scroll down for Hawksley Workman

The Cash Brothers
How Was Tomorrow

(Rounder)

www.cashbrothers.com

Release Date: April 17, 2001

When you sing all about the weary ennui of a lonesome life, you’d better have the years to back it up. That reflective, wistful aura of melancholy just isn’t as credible when coming from someone still wet behind the ears. You need the experience to make the moods believable. Luckily, the Cash Brothers can.

This Canadian brother act has come together after years of separate musical experiences. Andrew Cash was part of the group L’Etranger during the early half of the 80s and then moved on to a solo career with three CDs released to a small audience in the late 80s and early 90s. Meanwhile brother Peter Cash was an integral part of the more acclaimed group Skydiggers from 1987 on.

As the millennium moved toward a close the brothers finally joined forces as a musical entity, writing over forty songs together that spawned the eventual release of Raceway. With that release, the Cash Brothers established themselves as that rare hybrid - a Canadian alt-country supergroup. The sound was good, moody and expansive, somewhere between soft rock and alt-country, inviting comparisons to The Jayhawks, Wilco, Son Volt, Blue Rodeo, Pernice Brothers and Uncle Tupelo. Two years later, Rounder has repackaged the best of that album for a U.S. audience along with three new songs as the new How Was Tomorrow.

The song “Raceway” gets this show underway with spare slow strumming and understated harmonies that convey effectively an overall feeling of distance, impending loneliness and loss. For the record, this was the actual first song the brothers recorded together - and they knew from the feeling captured here that it would work. They were right.

On such songs as “Nebraska” there is that voice of credible gruffness, of a man left with nowhere left to turn and a bleak atmospheric landscape that mirrors this, driving to escape his life and listening to Springsteen’s folk turn for some kind of solace: “Well my girl she told me last night I’m not the one/Half my heart was ripped out but I still got some/And if this light should stay red I’ll be sitting here listening to Nebraska.” Again on “Show Me The Reason” this desolate atmospheric moodiness prevails to relate the wonderful realization that “Hard is never easy but easy shouldn’t be this hard.” “I Am Waiting” is another hushed moody expanse of a song.

“The Only One” takes a musical turn that could be early BeeGees with organ that could be Classics IV, while exploring the idleness of youth and that feeling of being the only one left in a clueless world that’s unable to key in on what’s “living inside my head.”

“Nerve” piles on more of the jangly guitars to good effect in a very Jayhawks-like turn. In a just world, this song would get radio play but as Andrew Cash notes, his music is “too mainstream for the underground and too underground for the mainstream.”

“Take A Little Time” is a more upbeat guitar-driven number, a little more Tom Petty-like, or late era Byrds. Lyrically it tells of a woman’s smart advice, urging: “Take a little time out of your day before it takes you away.” “Night Shift Guru” examines the dead-end world of working the all night shift at a 7/11, with scathing lyrics that capture the sad pathos of the scenario: “Fluorescent ceiling light, well it’s alright in the day/But it lights the nighttime like a freak show parade/Grandmothers and lovers, kid brothers, bus drivers and whores/buy tabloids and hot dogs but they’re looking for more.”

“Guitar Strings and Foolish Things” is an upbeat homage to the silly salvation of small trivial memories, perfectly capturing the quiet mood of happy reflection. “Dream Awake” is Cash Brothers as Oasis, taking them into a slightly different musical realm of fuller production values, but with an end result no less successful. With a world of emotions contained within their voices and intelligent lyrics on top of that, you get more here than you might expect.

And no, they’re not any relation to Johnny. But these Toronto-based brothers only enhance the music legend of the Cash name. All told, this is a wonderful smart collection of poignant songs that capture moods both with music and words. The voices and arrangements tend toward the spare, but only gain power in the way that they create moody landscapes in effective three and four minute bites. If you are a fan of alt-country groups, you need to give the Cash Brothers your serious attention. In these uncertain times, How Was Tomorrow is a great CD that affords a chance to kick back and ponder love, loneliness and life in general.

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Hawksley Workman
(last night we were) the delicious wolves

(Isadora Records/Universal)

www.hawksleyworkman.com

Canadian Release Date: April 2001 (No U.S. Release date yet)

Normally when you hear about something cool coming out of Canada, it relates to weather. Perhaps some low pressure system or cold front or winter storm. Well get ready America, because the musical storm called Hawksley Workman is ready to descend in the land he refers to as “Canada’s pants” and it’s as cool as it likely gets. This sophomore effort from the young wunderkind who does it all is infused with the kind of energy and excitement that so much of modern music seems to lack, which I guess is the point according to Workman: “I love pop music and I used to love what’s on the radio. I don’t anymore. If the radio was kicking out music that I thought was brilliant, I probably wouldn’t make records.”

We should be glad that he does. This is music that grabs you by the ears and doesn’t let go, so compelling that people will stop what they’re doing and ask you what it is when they hear it. But before I get to the music, let me tell you a bit about the self-created legend that is Hawksley Workman. The fictional history involves a youth spent flying high on the tails of kites, cutting ice from lakes, and eventually finding work in a tap-dance academy, where he allegedly polished rental shoes, kept the turntable needle clean and mopped the dance floor for modest wages and a cot in the broom closet. From there he went on to join a class, which then propelled him into a tap-dance obsession, working day and night on his routines until he became one of the school’s top dancers, giving recitals and performing for many, including the Dutch Royal Family.

In reality, Hawksley Workman is Ryan Corrigan from Bay Lake, north of Toronto (Hawksley is his maternal grandfather’s surname, Workman is his maternal grandmother’s maiden name), son of a man who works for the phone company and a woman who is an artist and a hairdresser. But the colorful fictional history adds another layer of fun to the art of what Workman does. For instance, he published a book of prose poetry this past spring, “Hawksley Burns For Isadora,” a collection of fictional letters to his underwater muse. Additionally, his talents behind the board have given way to a number of efforts where Hawksley has produced albums and songs for other artists. But with all his many talents, I still think his music is what sets him apart.

His first album For Him and The Girls, gave hints at the wide range, musical promise and exuberant wackiness to come. In it, critics drew musical comparisons to Tom Waits, Jeff Buckley, and David Bowie, and pretty much agreed on the remarkable potential evident at times. On this new second effort, he gets more commercial without losing the trademark energy that propels the music forward, regardless of the style of the song.

Variety is the key to this collection. “Striptease” starts things off in a bouncy harder rock mode replete with driving rhythms and guitars. The commercial appeal of “Striptease” proves again that Workman can master any style, even something that yields to more likely radio play. He follows this with an even catchier second song, admittedly the one that first caught my attention when recently traipsing about Canada. I urge you to visit his website and take a gander at his highly amusing video for “Jealous of your Cigarette.” Though the song’s lyrics are semi-pedestrian compared to the poetry of some of his others (I’m jealous of your cigarette/and all the things you do with it/I’m jealous of your cigarette and the pleasure that you get from it and not me”), the hook-laden arrangement more than makes up for it. Here Workman’s sound is fun and upbeat, like something from Madness.

Workman, whose first instrument was drums, often is at his best with upbeat songs that depend on bouncing bass and drum backbeats. However, his work on keyboards and guitar also is quite impressive. Yet it is the operatic range of his voice that makes each of these songs work so well. Such is the case with “Little Tragedies,” another mini-drama of a song that boldly proclaims “I better be careful that I don’t slip into one more of your little tragedies,” while working its musical way into your subconscious.

You get a good sense of the fun and flamboyance of Workman’s live performances in the song “Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off.” First, you get vocal pyrotechnics with Workman double-tracking his own vocal with a falsetto higher octave, as well as a sense of how he loves wordplay -- “cacophony” is repeated as “caca phoney.” Even more of this wild cabaret-cum-glam rock style is evident on the song “Dirty and True.” Here Workman takes on his own sort of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” an impressive musical journey that has musical roots in classic Brecht/Weill as well as in Queen. With a little vocal help from Sarah Slean, Workman tells a riveting poetic tale of the sexual act in true music hall fashion: “We were beasts about to burst and the newborn night was ours/ all our singing turned to fire/ you could see the flames from here.”

He even does his own Alan Cummings sort of emcee/commentary to end the song in a vocal flourish.

In “Old Bloody Orange” Workman takes on more of the gospel/spiritual style, no less successfully. This mid-tempo waltz tells a tale of nostalgic remembrance of what once was: “I’m lost and I’m broken where the good word is not spoken/ please say that I’m not lost forever.”

In “You Me And The Weather” Workman does a vocal turn reminiscent of David Mead, while the underwater sonic eeriness of “No Beginning No End” calls to mind early David Bowie work. In “Clever Not Beautiful” he turns a convincing tongue-in-cheek philosophy into another catchy ditty, stating “If your goal is pure survival, just be clever not beautiful.”

At a time when moxie is in short supply, Hawksley Workman has charisma to spare. His impressive turn with (last night we were) the delicious wolves is nothing short of amazing. Aside from Slean’s guest vocals and some trumpet from Sarah McElchran, this is all Workman. He wrote, produced and performed everything here. This one-man show has energy and talent enough for what will be a long and interesting musical career, but only if he can continue to build a listening audience. Canada and Europe already have warmed to this formidable 26-year-old’s many musical talents (it’s even rumored that Prince Charles is a fan). Maybe soon the U.S. will warm to the coolness that is Hawksley Workman too. I, for one, hope it happens soon.

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