Album Details

• Artist: Julie Doiron
• Album: I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
• Label: Jagjaguwar / Endearing
• Year of Release: 2009
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: MusicCritic on 2009-03-09

Julie Doiron’s latest, I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day, finds her in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis. About half of the album is what you’d expect from her if you’ve followed her solo career. ‘The Life of Dreams,’ ‘Nice to Come Home’ and ‘When Brakes Get Wet’ all follow the pattern of her introspective, head-in-the-clouds acoustic folk. Her Kimya Dawson-like simplicity is endearing, even if the lyrics venture towards downright dumb at times. The other half of the album is a unique twist, revisiting the sound of her first band, Eric’s Trip, and her current side project, Calm Down It’s Monday. ‘Spill Yer Lungs’ and ‘Heavy Snow’ are sludgy garage rock, not unlike Pavement, a band she’s been known to cover live. What’s interesting is that there’s no happy medium – there are two types of songs on this album, and you know what you’re getting about 10 seconds into each one.

There are a lot of ways to describe Doiron’s unique no-plan-is-a-good-plan approach to songwriting. The songs are simple, loosely crafted and often sound unfinished. It wouldn’t be out of line to call her songs childish, but only if you don’t mean it as an insult. Listening to Doiron’s albums, you can sense her joy, no matter the particular subject matter at the time. It’s like looking at a child’s finger-painting and seeing art – even if logic dictates that it isn’t necessarily good, you suspect that it just might be genius.

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Nathan Atnikov

www.music-critic.ca

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