CD Review: Marbin's Breaking The Cycle

This review originally appears in THIS Literary Magazine

Marbin
Breaking The Cycle
Moonjune Records, March 2011

The two Danny's behind Marbin - saxophonist Danny Markovitch and guitarist Dani Rabin - must be basking in the sun following the release of their second full-length album, Breaking The Cycle. The record, out on Chicago's Moonjune Records, follows up their 2009 self-titled debut, which helped establish the duo in the contemporary jazz scene.

Compared to how they stood in 2009, the shape of Marbin changes on Cycle. Getting a decent share of the limelight is Paul Wertico, Marbin's new, seven-time Grammy winning drummer. They've also picked up Steve Rodby on bass, and a slew of special guests including vocalists Matt Davidson, Leslie Beukelman, and Daniel White and percussionists Jamey Haddad and Makaya McCraven.

With the bountiful additions, Marbin's range expands. Much of their debut's sound, a unique and distinct guitar-saxophone serenade, resonates on Cycle. But along with it is Wertico's constant, integral back beat, more outgoingness from the two frontmen, and newly ventured vocal dimensions.

The near six-minute "Loopy" opens the album with a massive big band feel. Wertico's upper toms whap around behind the roaring melody of fat stomps and contrasting musical breaks. Markovitch is quickly front and centre for a wailin' solo, followed by a psychedelic offering from Rabin.

"A Serious Man" would go well backing a sixties undercover detective chase scene with Markovitch's elusive saxophone and Wertico's space filling high-hat technique. Markovitch's sound runs up and down the scale so non-chalant, James Bond's perked eyebrows and erect pistol seem a natural fit.

"Mom's Song," the shortest song at just over two minutes, features Leslie Beukelman on vocals. The acoustic interlude is easy to digest, and the female vocal presence is refreshing.

"Bar Stomp" keeps the shades changing with a ratty distorted guitar tone dancing around blues riffs and slide innuendos. When Rabin is compared to Hendrix, this is what people are talking about.

Other songs on Cycle revolve around the same structures, an acoustic ballad here, a rock and roll tune there. "Winds Of Grace," an eight minute song featuring Daniel White on vocals, is indeed the best capturing of Rabin's ability to raise traditional spirits on his acoustic. The song is enchanting, and White's vocals sail high and wide with integrity.

Review: Barney's Version

This article originally apears in THIS Literary Magazine

BARNEY'S VERSION
directed by Richard J. Lewis
Screenplay by Michael Konyves, based on the Mordecai Richler novel
December 2010, 134 minutes

It's too bad Barney's Version, the motion picture adaptation of Mordecai Richler's 1997 Giller Prize-winning novel, didn't hit the big screen nine months ago with the Montreal Canadiens waist deep in a run for the Stanley Cup. Richler, a Montreal native and cultural satirist, used the legendary hockey team as a symbol in all his novels. In Richler-lit, the Habs hover around as the epitomic hometown heroes, a cultural constant to believe in and stick by.

The film's Barney Panofsky (played by Paul Giamatti) is then, what you would say, Richler's Rocket Richard. Epic, nostalgic, filled with valour, Barney's is the story of an underdog with brute strength against all odds, fighting for dignity to win back those he loves.

A memoir told to set the record straight about the suspicious death of his lifelong friend Boogie (Scott Speedman), the story opens with twenty-something Barney living the artist life in Rome in the seventies. Here we meet the Barney that loves life, fine Canadian rye, a Romeo y Julieta cigar, Israeli hash. But things quickly sour when his first wife Clara (Rachelle Lefevre), a brazenly modern poet, commits suicide.

After this, Barney craves his hometown Montreal. He returns there to a job at a relative's TV studio, Totally Unnecessary Productions (zing!), through which Barney is introduced to the Second Mrs. Panofsky (Minnie Driver), a business-daddy's-girl looking to settle down. Barney jumps at the prospect of family and financial stability, thinking a quick marriage will mend his tumultuous life.

That's when Barney's issues really multiply. In literal love at first sight during his own wedding reception (night of the 1986 Stanley Cup final in which Montreal defeats Calgary for their twenty-third championship), Barney finds Miriam (Rosamund Pike). He ends up marrying her after he catches Boogie in the sack with his current wife, perfect grounds for divorce.

But getting to Miriam means losing Boogie, who eerily ends up dead amidst a raging booze-fest, and the only thing keeping Barney from a murder conviction is the absence of Boogie's body. It's an odd subplot that haunts Barney's life with Miriam, hinting that murder may be within his capabilities. He ultimately maintains his innocence, but the whole debacle brings light to how we should view Barney: he is a limit pusher, an excess junkie. So, in philosophical terms, what does this represent?

This question is key to Barney's Version. Barney, himself, offers us his last word when everyone around him no longer cares. Surrounded by feminism, modernism, generation X-ers, and other things that threaten him, Barney's habits are politically incorrect. He's slipperier than a bottom feeding carp; it's no wonder he ends up alone. If it weren't for his downfalls, his loved ones would drift from his pessimistic, grain-pushing ways. But for some reason, like Miriam, we still love him.

We, the viewer, do want to know Barney's version, because Barney gives all the underdogs, forgotten and obsolete, a model for redemption. This is sly Richler style. He, too, was an underdog, a Jewish Montrealer trying to make it in a literary business neglectful of his opinions. In his novel, Richler successfully brought the Jewish immigrant story out of the closet with all its shameful skeletons. He denounced Quebec separatism when an English shop sign in the Francophone province meant jail-time. He liked being the pickle up popularity's ass. Richler-lit is underdog-lit in its purest form.

And that's where the Habs come in. No matter how many contenders threaten their integrity, they always pull through. Like a rock, they prevail through ups and downs, grow tougher with every bruise. That's Richler, patriarch of custom, believer in what's right through what works, in a world too polite to appreciate him. Hollywood would love a movie about the Los Angeles Kings, but it just wouldn't have the same squeeze.