Cruisin'

トロントのBerniceによる2ndアルバム。15曲にわたって、ジャズの影響を受けた現代的なポップスが展開され、感情的な共鳴の名の下に、楽しさと音楽的冒険の両方が奇跡的に表現されています。

Bernice won widespread acclaim -- including a place on the Polaris Prize longlist -- with Eau de Bonjourno, an album that brilliantly expressed the relationships between people and the world around them with surprising sounds and intimate songwriting. On Cruisin, singer/songwriter Robin Dann and company reflect on how the need for communion only grows stronger in difficult times. Written and recorded during the COVID-19 global pandemic (with two of Bernices members, Dan Fortin and Felicia Williams, contributing remotely), the groups fourth album sprang from missives to the people they missed the most. Bernice are as unmoored on Cruisin as they were connected on Eau de Bonjourno. Dann wonders, "Where did my people go?/Are they playing a secret show?" on "Underneath My Toe"s fusion of soft rock and jazz; on the lingering instrumental "7," the whole band contributes to the feeling of not-so-splendid isolation. Danns images of the albums shrunken-down world are typically detailed and lively. Coyotes, trees, and even items of clothing play major roles; on "Yoohoo," she confides in her favorite sweater over clicking and clanking percussion. Cruisins hallucinatory sounds ably illustrate how memories and people can grow and shrink in the minds eye and how thoughts drift in isolation. Without warning, songs slip and slide into different melodies, keys, and tempos, or dissolve into fragments. This sense of impermanence gives a mercurial sweetness to the tender acoustic sketch "Barbara, Its Your Tree" and an underlying tension to "Always a Lover," a portrait of a tenuous relationship with a "minimum man" thats barely held together by guitar harmonics and wobbling synths. Resembling a melted 80s power ballad, "Are You Breathing" brings the albums smooth and disorienting extremes together with heartfelt results, as Dann asks, "How can I puff up your halo?" while shiny keyboards and gated drums tumble around her. Despite Cruisins experimental bent, the albums best song is also the most straightforward: "Begin Again"s understated expression of surviving everyday monotony is a flawless example of how eloquently Bernice capture the subtlest emotions. ~ Heather Phares