Why Look for Good Times?
  • vinyl record
  • offset-printed
  • black-and-white
  • 31.2 x 31.2 cm.
  • [2] pp.
  • edition size unknown
  • unsigned and unnumbered

Why Look for Good Times?

Rodney Graham

Why Look for Good Times?

description

"This album was initially released in June 2008, but Rodney Graham was unhappy with the sound quality and immediately recalled it. It has now been remastered and repackaged to the artist's satisfaction. Limited LP in fancy embossed jacket. This Rodney Graham album continues his elevated brand of Smog meets Leonard Cohen smart but not too smart songwriter pop. The band this time featuring New Pornographer John Collins, Evaporator Dave Carswell, Kevin Beesley Hammond (Smugglers), and Pete Bourne (Copyright). Dan Bejar (Destroyer, Swan Lake, New Pornographers)) guests on vocals, as does Lois Maffeo (Lois, Courtney Love-the band, not the skank). 'Singer-songwriter Rodney Graham, like many other musicians, has a day job. When not making music, he produces art. In fact, he is a highly regarded, internationally recognized visual artist, working across a variety of media, including print-based work, sculpture and painting, but especially photography, film and video. Music often plays a part in his art as well, both as subject matter and content. But Graham's interest in music isn't secondary to his art. Instead, it often seems that he would rather talk about, listen to and actually make music than almost anything else. As a guitarist and songwriter for the UJ3RK5, which included other now-famous artists Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace along other Vancouver notables, he was an active member of the Vancouver post-punk and new wave music scene of the 1970s. Breaking to become established as an artist, he returned to music in the 1990s as a guitarist for the pop-punk 'super group' Volumizer with other early Vancouver punk and new wave peers Bill Napier-Hemy of the Pointed Sticks and Jade Blade of the Dishrags. He has been steadily making music since, releasing many singles, EPs and full-length recordings, both self-produced and in conjunction with various galleries internationally, as well as playing to support these releases, often as a guest of the same galleries. Yet, as appreciative as Graham's art-world audiences are, and as much as he appreciates them in return, they are a small community, sharing certain values and preferences. Significantly, to them he is an artist who also makes music, the one before the other. Such can be the weird paradox of a thriving art career: all production is received first and foremost in terms of the art-world. When it comes to Graham's music, which stands beyond such expectations, this is less wrong than simply not enough: it needs somewhat different ears. But there are important points of comparison. Like his visual art, his music combines accessibility with studiousness. Full of ideas, it is effective on multiple levels, as outwardly enjoyable as inwardly compelling. And the same is true in terms of craftsmanship: he puts as much thoughtful care into his music as he does his art. Attentive to the details as much as the whole of songs, everything is considered, everything works. More than anything, though, Graham makes music for people, like him, who love music deeply. His sincere enjoyment and encyclopedic-like interest is audible in the music he makes. In terms of sound and feel, his primary horizon as a songwriter is defined by the creative meeting of rock and country in the 60s and 70s pop middle-ground, where skilled, mature song-craft ultimately rules over genre or style. While informed by many luminaries from this prodigious time, the songwriters as much as the players, arrangers, producers and even key studios, Graham makes new, synthetic music, not nostalgically retrospective, akin to present Will Oldham or Bill Callahan, for instance, as much as past Bob Dylan or Neil Young. In the end, Graham is a dedicated contemporary musician, making music that is relevant now, but that will play right any time.'" -- distributor's statement.

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Why Look for Good Times?
Vancouver, Canada: Loudhailer,
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