Jon McKiel has given us greater cause to revoke his status as Atlantic Canada’s best-kept secret with his latest album, Bobby Joe Hope. An ambitious psychedelic record, Bobby Joe Hope, steps well beyond hand-holding, or even aligning itself all that closely to genre or style, instead, McKiel masterfully manipulates wild elements into producing a projection of mode and mood.
This is the first time I’ve ever listened to an album by Jon McKiel all the way through and I was able to dive into Bobby Joe Hope enthusiastically without any preconceived notion of what I would be greeted with. I’ll be frank: This album is fantastic.
McKiel composed each track using elements of found tape that were included with the purchase of a reel-to-reel deck. This limitation has produced inspired work. Pairing himself with avant-garde improviser Jay Crocker as a producer was a bold choice that pays off. Playing with 60s psychedelia, one can hear a touch of The Zombies in tracks like ”Mourning Dove” and “Object Permanence”. These are the catchiest bops presented with hooky basslines and melodies arranged with warm, inviting production.
McKiel strays and spins out into “Cold Hand is the Master” and “Secret of Mana” which have the delicate folk quality of Nick Drake songs, but McKiel, as a musician after my own heart, has infused them with deep-dive Nintendo references. All of this feels at home together with the Musique Concrete experiments found in “Night Garden” and “What Kind of Light”.
What strikes me about Bobby Joe Hope is that it is too weird to be a genre album but contains genre music.
Sure, comparisons can be made to other works and pastiche of time and place is present track-by-track, but like a Magic Eye, something special happens when one steps back a bit. By softening their gaze the listener reveals a new image. Bobby Joe Hope sounds complete and unique and operates as its own universe with its own physics.
What works here for Jon McKiel might not for another artist. Any attempt to reverse-engineer the genius of Bobby Joe Hope would produce a Frankenstein’s monster; a thing without Bobby Joe Hope’s special sauce. It’s the magic in the sausage-maker that results in an addictive listening experience.
Summer, I present to you a most welcome soundtrack that needs no qualifiers. Its character is soundly it’s own and its catchy pop melodies disguise deceptively dense and fruitful art. Self-isolators enjoy this great enigma Jon McKiel has gifted us.