Beauty and Hard Times

http://www.mamadhorizondancer.ca/music/

An A-list cast of Toronto musicians and singers graces Beauty and Hard Times. They include drummers Rob Greenway, Lorne Nehring and Paul Antonio, percussionist Rick Lazar, cellist Kye Marshall, violinists Shelley Coopersmith and Marion Linton, guitarists Sherry Shute and Neil Chapman, keyboardist Evelyn Datl, accordionist and B3 organist Dennis Keldie, trumpeter Guy Few, and backup singers Marianne Girard, David Wall, Brent Titcomb, Jani Lauzon, Maryem Hassan Tollar and Marcie English. The scorching yet melodic electric guitar work of Chapman plays a key role on Beauty and Hard Times. “I wanted a different attack on guitar,” says Diem. “I have edges, and it was important to capture that on the record.”  

Lafortune covers a wide swathe of stylistic terrain on the album. Her sound draws from blues, folk, rock, gospel, country, Eastern European, and classical styles, yet remains coherent, thanks to her singular artistic vision. Diem accurately describes her music as “quintessentially Canadian. It is hyphenated music. Everything is there. It doesn’t disappear, it combines. I think this album represents an idealized version of what we think Canada should be about.”

Beauty and Hard Times can also be described as a dance record. Lafortune’s compositional style has been heavily influenced by dance music of the classic kind. “There’s a minuet, a sarabande, a rhumba, a bolero, a salsa and lots of waltzes,” she explains. Diem’s affinity with classical music is also reflected in the last tune on Beauty and Hard Times. “Peggy’s Waltz” is a beautiful original instrumental featuring violin, French horn, classical guitar, tuba, and cello, and Lafortune describes it as “the sweetest piece on the album, and a nice way to end the journey.”

  While a rich and lush melodicism provides the Beauty on the album, the lyrics probe deeply into Hard Times. Themes tackled with unflinching honesty include incremental fascism (“If They Take Us In The Morning”), the need for reparations for victimized indigenous peoples and mother earth ( the searing “And On The Evidence”), the unconsidered effects of alcohol abuse (the haunting “Minuet For The Staircase Children”), stolen childhoods (“Where Are All The Children?”), and corporate greed (“Mr. Businessman’s Blues”). That latter song, a rousing blues-rocker, was written upon the retirement of her hard-working adopted father Amedee, but three decades later it possesses great relevance in this Occupy-era.

As a lyricist, Lafortune’s approach is “to write from the scar, not the wound. I journal in the morning and that comes from the wound. It is my therapy. But anything that will go out there, I write from the scar.” There is genuine poetry in Diem’s songs. Here’s just one of countless examples (from “Ghostdance”): “She moves down the street in a windswept ballet to the sound of a mariner’s rhyme”). Partner that with a lilting violin and cello and trumpet/electric guitar-led melody, and the results are simply sublime.