In recent years, I’ve become obsessed with Nicolas Cage.
Unlike other A-listers, Nick isn’t trying to be the version of the character you expect him to be, instead he makes each character so uniquely over-the-top that his performances feel like walking art installations.
When I listen to the songs Mutt has penned in his new effort Fuzzy Folk Gems, I’m reminded of this same sort of passion for uniqueness that Nick Cage has on screen. Both are doing something. That something might be hard to put a finger on, but it’s special, it’s different and it’s refreshing.
Mutt, whose new collection of songs is – in my opinion – a great excuse to wax poetic about all of the beauties of Ontario, is an artist that seems to embody a character in his work.
Often soft-spoken with a bit of drawl, Mutt carries us into his world where meaningful truths and hilarities collide with hazy psych-folk, geographic poetry and affirmations of peace. Weaving in and out of reality and fiction, through stories of robberies, road trips and camp cookouts, listeners are taken on a joyride through the winding roads of Colpoy’s Bay, to the mountainous head of Sleeping Giant, and everything in between.
Sometimes trippy, sometimes ethereal, often both, Mutt manages to exist in the spaces between whimsically playful, seriously thoughtful and contemplatively romantic. Lyrically, his songs often feel like open letters to his younger self, an old friend, or like excerpts of fiction being read to concerned locals at a townhall meeting.
Sonically, Fuzzy Folk Gems mimics this dance between whimsey and sincere. Often using simplistic acoustic guitar parts and bouncy synth sounds to hold a steady rhythm, then introducing sections of complex counter melodies and lead parts that carry on long enough to allow us to sink into feelings, rather than being told how to feel.
Through harps, flutes, Casio keys, synths, nylon strings, warm rhodes, tambourines, the tapping of feet and dreamy backing vocals from Buster: this record feels like something you’d hear live in a kitchen while drifting off into a semi-stoned sense of oneness with those around you.
In ABLAZE, he sings “I’ll be your ride or die” as he professes this airy love to someone dear to him, while distractedly honing in on scenarios where he and his lover nearly escape close brushes with death. I’ve never experienced a folk Bonnie and Clyde fairy-tale like this, where everything feels like the resolution scene in an action film, where the anti-heroes speed off into the setting sun in an impossibly cool convertible.
Mid-record, Mutt finds a new way to talk sweetly with the words “who cooks for you?” It’s easy to say “I love you, baby” or “I’d do anything for you,” but to capture the essence of what a soulmate feels like takes simple, routine-like honestly. While the rest of the song Who Cooks for You? is a meditative exploration of the visual and spiritual beauty of Northern Ontario, and the images in books atop cottage coffee tables, the chorus anchors us in a feeling of searching for a “grow old together” kind of love. Visually, this song takes me to billion-year-old shoreline rocks, black spruce in crisp air and to birds, flying unhurriedly above the freshwater sea.
Sometimes it feels like modern folk music takes itself too seriously, forgetting the importance of levity. Headbanger is a reminder that comedy is alive and well in folk song writing, at least in Mutt’s world. Depicting scenes of mall t-shirt shops and grimy Canadian bars in the early 90s, we’re taken on a tour through band dressing rooms and misadventures in Super 8’s. This song will catch you off guard, and you’ll love it.
Fuzzy Folk Gems defies the notion that folk songs are boring, as Mutt and his collaborators don’t seem worried about making something that fits into a genre. Instead, they’ve exemplified what making songs for fun can sound like, and in doing so have captured a collection of visuals, feelings and spaces that feel fit for a new generation of listeners. These songs are for tired ears in search of something restorative and those who long to lounge in Ontario’s summer sun.
Written by Marshall Veroni
