John Southworth & The South Seas
The Pillowmaker
Independent
**** out of 5

"I'm guided by dreams that have nothing to do with this world." From a perspective outside the genius of John Southworth's blessed mind, this certainly seems to be what keeps him going. Having built his apple-carting and general-storing empires from musical fortunes collected on his previous, backward-nodding trip to earnest, Southworth forges forward into new realms of cozy cocktail cottage nights on The Pillowmaker, rife with slow intimacy.

Relying on his developed strengths, he now applies his extended harmonic language, vomitously brilliant arrangements and significant vocal range with subtlety, taste, and a sense of romantic narrative in strict defiance of modern music. Some of these songs are extremely short vignets, the shortest of which is a mere 29 seconds. Southworth notably finds a suitable format for his writing, rather than forcing the varying durations of his clever wordplay into a four-minute standard. The resulting sense of freedom is a pleasure to listen to.

His previous release, Yosemite, was direct and clearly voiced, exploring the limits of songwriting clarity. On the Pillowmaker, Southworth integrates that clarity with his sophisticated manipulation of the avant garde. In doing this, he is able, without batting an eyelash, to pull off a hillbilly footcranker, "Field Town Morris" about an idiot village, and sing about dancing "around the Maytag May pole". Or perhaps that's "Ma-ple" - indeed this is patriotic, country music, and given the seal of approval by the Canada Council.

Fans of Southworth's previous records are going to notice a significant change on this record - his beloved nasal Twenties-inspired crooner voice falls into a deep holy chasm of depth; a smooth, dark, strangely-erotic and leveled performance reminding of Paul Simon and Chet Baker. In his vocal development, Southworth has made a dramatic leap with The Pillowmaker.

A mature, honest record of fascinating subjects, Canada's pride of the spectacular quirkworld has carried forward the successes of previous recording projects and has woven them into a strange sort of tempered masterwork, and has definitively stepped into his own.

2006/03/22 / Canada / Multibeat Records Submission Reviews, issue: [none] / Author: Karl Mohr