Keeping it tight
Brevity, a friend of mine once remarked, can contain most things. Two of my favourite pieces of music are “Stay” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs and “Desireless” by Don Cherry, which clocked in at 1 minute 36 seconds and 1 minute 22 seconds respectively on their appearances in 1960 and 1973 but lack nothing in richness and enduring fascination. Now comes a Canadian trio calling itself Tiny Sun with an album which consists of 18 pieces, none of them lasting more than two minutes.
I’m aware of Tiny Sun because their guitarist, Don Rooke, is a musician whose career I’ve followed with interest and admiration for many years through his work with Mary Margaret O’Hara and the Henrys. The other members of the line-up, all Toronto-based, are the film and TV composer Jonathan Goldsmith, who plays keyboards, guitar and bass here, and the singer Martina Sorbara, better known as Dragonette for her electropop work.
By contrast with the scale of these miniatures, the gestation of the album was protracted. Tiny Sun began when Rooke sent Sorbara one of several “postcard-sized” pieces of instrumental music he had recorded with Goldsmith and invited her to complete it. That was in 2014, and the pieces have been accumulating ever since.
There are echoes of folk music here, and country music, blended into something always familiar but never classifiable. Sorbara is a wonderfully flexible and expressive singer; the range of material reveals her fine technique and highlights her subtle switches of emotional register. At times I was reminded of the underrated Karla Bonoff. She makes me wonder what there must be in the water of Ontario to produce her as well as MMO’H and Tamara Lindeman. Rooke’s gentle mastery of various guitars — including his beloved Weissenborn lap steel — is employed with his usual economy and immaculate feeling for the moment. Goldsmith supplies transparent textures and warm colours that give each piece its own distinctive atmosphere, holding the shards of emotion that comprise Sorbara’s lyrics in elegant suspension.
Needless to say, nothing outstays its welcome. The conciseness adds point to the soulfulness of “Imagined Love”, the bright bluegrass of “Don’t Fault the Stars for Falling”, the rubato flow of “Fledgling Land”, the unexpected junkyard grunge of “Hieroglyphics”, the delicate balladry of “Silly Way the World Got Spun”, the diaphanous waltz of “Float on the Sea”, and the wry reverie of “Nobody Won’t”. Less is more, it’s sometimes said, and here’s proof.
* Tiny Sun’s album is on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/33kB8m7192adroRg69n4bA They play their debut concert, with guest musicians, at Koerner Hall in Toronto on May 14.
thebluemoment.com 