Swim over to Canada…
[Video][Website]
[6.70]
Dorian Sinclair: As an Indigenous Canadian (though from the prairie, not the North), I’m all too aware of the traps reviewers fall into when talking about our art. Words like “raw” or “savage” are easy clichés to describe something that is, ultimately, pretty alien to the European musical tradition. Much of Tanya Tagaq’s work is heavily improvisatory, yeah, but it’s no more “raw” than free jazz. Good improvisation takes discipline and understanding, takes art, takes clear vision — and Tagaq has all of these in spades. “Uja” is emotional, immediate, and above all vital, but dismissing the intelligence and care that went into it is a mistake that plays into centuries of bias regarding what counts as “real” music. With “Uja”, Tagaq is continuing to play a role in shaping modern Indigenous culture — creating a sound just as essentially Inuk as the traditional music she draws from and reimagines.
[8]
Alfred Soto: It’s hard to write about this Inuit wonder without adjectives like “tribal” beats or comparisons to similar women making monstrous electronic music like Karin Andersson or the Bjork of “Earth Intruders,” not when “Uja” uncovers something monstrous and primal in recent Aphex Twin.
[7]
Josh Langhoff: Well this is disappointing. Tagaq shackles a decent thwack of a beat to two unremarkable little melodies. Her several vocal tricks — the smoker’s wheeze, breath catch, demonic hook, cavernous echoes, and “Eeeeee” among them — loop and layer without climax. Tying avant-garde gestures to pop structure, Tagaq inhibits both, because the avant stuff only gets to gesture — “Hey, check out this sampler of what I can do!” — rather than overwhelm. I’m sure she kills it live. (For whatever reason, Björk, Galás, and Ono have all gotten away with uninhibited avant-pop, but even calling them “avant-pop” flirts with underhanded sexism: male weirdos get to define canons while females working similar turf receive arms-length appreciation and no radio play. Who do you think triple-A radio plays more, Thom Yorke or Björk?) And anyway, pop songs can handle the avant-garde gestures on their own, thanks. I mean, what does “Uja” accomplish that “Cry Me a River,” “Elastic Heart,” or freakin’ “Drop That #NaeNae” haven’t? Besides being one tenth as memorable?
[3]
Anthony Easton: I keep thinking that this is what the future sounds like: the refusal of ossifying traditional cultures, how her voice moves around and against those chainsaw beats, how the whole thing sounds bionic in ways that we had never before imagined. We cannot think of this as art, or as strange, because for so many people it is common music. It grafts the genuine folk music into the populist music of electronic production, intergrating both of traditions. There are also traditionally melodic portions that could even be considered pretty.
[10]
Micha Cavaseno: Vocalese turned into a powerful maelstrom that tears off your roof and sends your refrigerator into the next county with the eggs inside somehow intact.
[7]
Kat Stevens: Blends in perfectly with my washing machine’s spin cycle.
[5]
Mo Kim: Guttural growls circle around gasping breaths and escalating drums, while the tick of a clock measures all of the danger in 4/4 patterns. I like this: it gallops.
[7]
Mark Sinker: Having to fight my worst digressive instincts here, and not let this turn into a 40,000 word essay on Inuit voices and what happened to the Franklin expedition, not all that far from Tanya T’s birthplace. From any cultural distance, this is also about patiently find out how to listen — delicately disentangling what goes into it, almost all noises we’re not a bit used to organising or finding patterns in — before we really even begin reliably to recognise what count as qualities or values (or curses or jokes or come-ons) for the singer. Actually the start reminds me of “Instant Hit” by The Slits, Viv Albertine’s portrait of her friend Keith Levene (there are worse ways in); and the end is three or four urgent all-R grrrowls as the blizzard of layered buzzing abruptly drops away. The middle’s still all semi-impenetrable mystery though; I think I probably need fairly digressive excuses to spend the required amount of time there.
[6]
Madeleine Lee: “Uja” is an interior song, and listening to it has the effect of projecting that interior back at you: your secret fears and anxieties made into your surroundings, your inner rage made into your outer shield against them.
[9]
Brad Shoup: “Unearthly” is how RPM put it, and that’s clearly not right at all. “Unearthly” is the result of death metallers depicting gods that never were, ruling forests of the will. This is a very earthly skill, mastered and made as palatable as possible with a static rock/industrial backing. The piano line that eventually surfaces suggests where Tagaq’s talent may actually find a home.
[5]