Julie Doiron
I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day
Release Date: Mar 10, 2009
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Jagjaguwar
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Album Review: I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day by Julie Doiron
Great, Based on 7 Critics
Based on rating 5/5
It's a rare and amazing thing when an indie musician finds ways to keep chugging along on her own steam for years and then releases an album that brings together in the most powerful way everything she's learned. Moncton singer/songwriter Julie Doiron has accomplished this with her eighth album, which finds a happy medium between her sludgy Eric's Trip past and the confessional vulnerability of her Broken Girl days. [rssbreak] This new Julie is confident and buoyant, rockin' yet peaceful, blissfully singing her lungs out.
Based on rating 7/10
Julie Doiron's 2009 album I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day follows the same basic template as her previous album Woke Myself Up. Divided between quiet, austere ballads and gently rocking songs, the record is easily the equal of that album and has moments that rate with her best. While Woke Myself Up was a reunion of Doiron and her Eric's Trip bandmates, this time only Rick White is involved, providing bass, keyboards, and production.
Based on rating 7/10
“I’m living the life of dreams / I’m living the life of dreams / with good people all around / I’m living the life of dreams. . .
Based on rating 7/10
Bookended by the almost self-explanatory “The Life of Dreams” and “Glad to Be Alive”, Julie Doiron’s latest could hardly be more different from her recent, emotionally devastated and devastating work. A writer of intensely direct and personal songs (who also manages to be artful and moving rather than banal), Doiron continues to chronicle her life’s ups and downs with exacting detail and honesty, while moving further in the electric direction promised by 2007’s Woke Myself Up. Working as a trio with Fred Squire and Eric’s Trip bandmate Rick White, Doiron sounds looser and more playful, in addition to considerably happier.
Based on rating 6/10
Julie Doiron has been around the musical block for a while now, both as a solo artist and as part of a band. Either despite this or because of it – which one, I’m not sure – her music almost always sounds like you’ve heard it before somewhere else. At least that’s the case with her latest solo album, I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day.
Opinion: Very Good
Julie Doiron is living a happy life now, at least happier than most of her solo career would lead you to believe. “I’ve started to love life most of the time,” she says in anticipation of her latest, I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day. It certainly shows; this collection of songs straddles the line between cloying twee, exuberantly noisy indie-pop, and a K Records/Plan-It-X childish naïveté that has been all but absent from most of Doiron’s solo work.
Opinion: Very Good
This veteran Canadian singer-songwriter fits snugger in the Feist/Kimya Dawson camp than that of fellow Canucks Kathleen Edwards and Sarah McLachlan. She's the "keeper of the world's greatest and saddest voice," according to Phil Elverum, aka Mount Eerie, who dueted with the main attraction here on last year's Lost Wisdom. One way or another, Julie Doiron's a badass, spilling her witty and often-optimistic lyrics all over ninth solo album I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day.