Perhaps this might be reading too much into things, but it’s as though Watson is reacting to this one particular piece of criticism by withdrawing completely into himself. “Blackwind”, which follows, is a little more smug, with plucked violins and a jangly mandolin, but there’s still a permeating feeling of blackness to the proceedings. It isn’t until the final moments of the song that it blossoms into something pulled out of Western movie, full of panoramic wonder. You listen to it, and wonder if Watson needs some Prozac. The opening song, “Lighthouse”, is sullen and depressive with Watson’s vocals earnestly rubbing against a piano with the damper pedal pushed right to the floor. That review is worth mentioning because, based on the opening of Patrick Watson’s fourth long-player, Adventures in Your Own Backyard, which was recorded in Watson’s apartment, it sounds as though the artist is smarting and sulking as a result of that particularly overbearing piece of criticism. The follow-up album, 2009’s Wooden Arms, memorably got hammered in at least one quarter: Pitchfork’s Eric Harvey assigned the album a woeful 3.3 rating (which, in this humble critic’s opinion, was a bit harsh it’s actually a pretty good album, in my estimation, full of a few memorable and hummable songs) and kind of took the artist to task for writing and including a song on the album called “Where the Wild Things Are”, which had been sent to Spike Jonze, who was at the time adapting a film on the famous bedside children’s book, on a bit of a lark. On the upside, his sophomore album, 2006’s Close to Paradise, won the inaugural Polaris Prize, which surprised quite a few Canadian music industry observers, and placed him and his band in the same lauded plateau as future winners Fucked Up, Owen Pallett (as Final Fantasy) and Arcade Fire. The career of Montreal multi-instrumentalist Patrick Watson has endured its share of ups and downs.
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