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Tuesday, 31 January 2006 04:48

He isn’t trying to resurrect Gram Parsons, understands that the old Dylan has already made any new Dylan unnecessary, and, despite similar vocal mannerisms, shares little in common with Ryan Adams’ over-sensitive, under-conceived solo canon.

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We might as well get it over with: Jason Collett is one of the main members of the ubiquitous Canadian collective Broken Social Scene. For the most part, this fact would be irrelevant if the members of nearly every band in the Arts and Crafts family, from BSS to tourmate Feist to Metric and Stars, didn’t show up on most of the tracks. Idols in Exile makes complete sense taken in context of the Toronto-based scene, but, importantly, neither depends on the borrowed gravity of its guests, nor particularly needs them. Producer Howie Beck perfectly weaves in all the guest spots, with the horns, harmonies, and glockenspiels remaining just enough in the background to allow Collett’s show-stopping performance its justified turn in the solo spotlight.

The casual greatness of Idols in Exile almost goes unrecognized because it is so unassuming, and, well, easy to listen to. Maybe I’m just scarred from the banality and utter repetitiveness the terms “roots rock” or, God forbid, “alt-country” bring to mind, but I don’t expect much from albums with that faux-dusty feel, a weary, whiskey drunk voice over Gibson guitars and semi-true stories of loves lost in remote motels. It took a few listens to Collett’s latest offering to realize that he probably agrees. He isn’t trying to resurrect Gram Parsons, understands that the old Dylan has already made any new Dylan unnecessary, and, despite similar vocal mannerisms, shares little in common with Ryan Adams’ over-sensitive, under-conceived solo canon.

The album never takes itself too seriously, interspersing songs such as the haunted and hopeful “We All Lose One Another” with the jubilant indie-jam “I’ll Bring the Sun.” He understands how and when to mourn, lamenting in “Tinsel and Sawdust” that “the oblique pastiche of childhood memories/has got you down on your knees/you know you can’t escape these things[...]it’s not who you are it’s just what you’ve become.” Unlike many albums of its kind, the somberness is never calculated, the celebration never strained. The music is well conceived and persistent, the lyrics literate and often flirting with greatness, if not always achieving it. There is something to be said for artists so involved in various projects that they can’t give themselves completely to any one outlet. The pressure to be successful, profound, and life-changing dissolves, allowing the music to exist as itself without expectation. Jason Collett is fast becoming a patriarch of the Canadian music scene, one with a hundred buzz bands but only a shallow history to hang itself on. Collett wears his role comfortably: Idols in Exile plays like a prolific songwriter arriving at his peak with nothing to prove, offering a gift both singular and universal, private and infinitely listenable.