Patrick Watson
Wooden Arms
Release Date: May 5, 2009
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Pop
Record label: Secret City
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Album Review: Wooden Arms by Patrick Watson
Acceptable, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
Musical mastermind Patrick Watson—a recipient of Canada’s Polaris Prize in 2007—has returned in 2009 to offer up Wooden Arms. A dreamy collection of lush and inspired arrangements, Wooden Arms recalls Andrew Bird’s warm, delicate vocal range and intricate instrumentation. The title track’s haunting waltz opens up from a nostalgic piano into the ominous droning of pitched percussion, reminiscent of Tom Waits’s “Clap Hands”—all rimmed with melancholic plucked strings.
Based on rating 3/5
Close to Paradise, the 2007 album from the Canadian band named after their lead singer, saw off Arcade Fire and Feist to take the Polaris Music prize - Canada's equivalent of the Mercury. Their long-awaited follow-up covers similar terrain - pitching Watson's floating, almost moaning vocal against a quietly clattering backdrop of pianos, percussion and found sounds, including a bicycle being beaten. At times, it could be a long-lost Radiohead experimental project, or Antony Hegarty singing while doing the pots and pans.
Based on rating 3.3/10
Back in 2007, the easy literary comparison for me to make with Patrick Watson's out-of-nowhere Polaris-pinching Close to Paradise was Peter Pan. Like the ship in a jar that decorates the album cover, Paradise was a fantastical world in miniature, intricately detailed and designed to evoke imaginative flights of fancy. It was also too ethereal: all flying and no destination.