A thousand bugs adorn my grill
I’m not trying to steal Tanis’ thunder or anything, but she’s right: Danny Michel is totally awesome. But for those who haven’t had a chance to hear it, he was pretty awesome before he was Danny Michel too.
In the summer of 2000 Michel was merely a bass player in a pop-rock band called Starling, years away from striking out on his on. Hell, he wasn’t even the primary songwriter in this band, deferring the bulk of those duties to one Ian Lefeuvre.
The group had a healthy buzz about them with the release of what would be their one and only album, Sustainer. They toured fairly extensively for a while and ended up opening for groups like the Tragically Hip, Veruca Salt, and even Cheap Trick, snagging a modicum of radio airplay along the way.
After their label went belly-up Michel went his own way, thanks to the classic “creative differences” and inter-band tensions. Obviously the assumption is that he was getting himself psyched up to put his own stuff out there. Lefeuvre went the other way, producing and playing various instruments on albums by Jim Bryson, k-os, Andy Stochansky, and even Regina’s own Jason Plumb. He also continues to perform with bands like the Supers and the Hundreds and Thousands.
Sustainer still stands up though. The classically-structured pop-rock songs work well in the greater context of the genre and benefit from Lefeuvre’s smooth, bright vocals (you can practically hear him smile as he sings the chorus in lead track “Don’t Deflate”) and crunchy guitar tone. He’s got a knack for simple, clean phrasing and lovelorn but not hopeless lyrics.
Tucked away in the middle is Danny Michel’s sole writing contribution to the album, “Everything In The World.” Lyrically it’s a bit scattershot, sort of chronicling a road trip meant to escape lost love that he’s not quite ready to let go of yet. Of course, that’s interspersed with lines like the one you see in the title of this post that kind of leave you wondering if you just heard that correctly. The music pulses along, punctuated by a whirling keyboard loop and a slightly-distorted vocal that punches up an understated singing performance. Perhaps not the best representation of what was to come for Mr. Michel, but a perfectly acceptable track.
On the whole it’s a great debut that had a lot of promise, even among the stellar pantheon of one-off ’90s/’00s Canadian pop-rock “success” stories. You can file it right alongside your Bloody Chiclettes, Pluto, Gandharvas, and Killjoys CDs and wait for nostalgia to strike again.
Starling - Everything In The World [3:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Starling - Don't Deflate [4:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadI have no idea if/where you could find this album, aside from the land of superfluous bargains and reasonably unreasonable shipping. I guess there’s also certain digital retailers.
Actually there was an even earlier appearance in a Toronto area band called the Rhinos. I was put onto it by a friend who had gone up against them in some radio band wars type of contest. Stupid. And the album is goofy early 90’s pop… until you get to the Danny Michel-penned number that won them the spot on the radio compilation: a song called “A Fantastic Place To Be”….
I think that’s what it’s called. I haven’t seen my copy of the cd in years. The song really was memorable for it’s truly outstanding quality. It stands out within that Rhinos cd… it stands out as a an honest to goodness “song” amidst alot of the other shit that was released in Canada at the time… and I dare say it still stands out compared to Danny’s more recent material.
I wonder if he ever pulls it out from time to time.
Anyway - highly recommended.