Manitoba Live Music Event

About

While drafting his debut solo album, Tamarock, Jesse Matas spent more time in a canoe than in a studio. He spent more time in silence in the bush. Over a week in December 2017, the album was recorded (mostly) live-off-the-floor in a small, warm studio in Winnipeg with some of the finest-natured humans in Canada. Tamarock is his first release since 2014, when his infamous band the Crooked Brothers’ released their third album Thank You, I’m Sorry. The album received nominations for CFMAs and WCMAs and was toured in 11 countries.

All the songs on Tamarock happen far from cities in woodlands and on lakes. Lyric and feeling come to the fore. Walking Human and Rock and Sand sound distant: a broadcast from a clearing far into the bush. They reveal some of the darkest elements of human to non-human interaction. Songs like Before, We and Footpath pulse with a rhythm and lightness of open kinship— that of regeneration and growth. Songs like Peace River Song and Hardline draw upon current issues like Site-C and raw milk production.

Another step further afield is Tamarock’s rock-poems. The Myth of Forests is something else entirely, like Serge Gainsbourg without the chauvinism, while Monarch is for the entomologist who has to dance. Both songs are for listeners seeking something very different. Jesse’s poems have been featured (or are forthcoming) in CV2, Event, The Fourth River and The New Quarterly, among others. A Few Stars in the River, his first collection of poetry, will be published in late 2019 alongside paintings by Kyle Scheurmann—responsible for Tamarock’s cover art.

The album’s range is vast. Many of a lot. But most of all— Tamarock sounds like where it came from... and that’s right where it takes the listener.