Here's to Being Here

Jason Collett is full of fresh ideas

It would be interesting to know why musicians leave their bands and dive deep into hard work trying to arrange their solo career? What is it, dissatisfied ambitions or displeasure with ex-band mates? Probably yes, but hopefully, the real motive in the most cases is the artistic fertility of a person. If you have a good deal of ideas, tunes and lyrics, so why not getting busy with your own career? Canadian musician Jason Collett was always successful in combining both of these directions. He releases albums of his own since 2000 and at the same time he is a member of a well-known art-rock band Broken Social Scene. Though, he actually decided to step away from the band for some time in 2005 to concentrate on his personal project, but this fact doesn't point to his overrated ambitions. Everything is much simpler. After four solo albums he has finished a long process of self-establishment as a solo artist and now he can offer some really worthy ideas to this world.

Here's To Being Here stands miles away from Broken Social Scene's style

Jason Collett is an excellent example of a really free and independent musician. He is like a peculiar universal indie-soldier, who can be a part of a group and who can also embody his personal ideas. Those years he spent in Broken Social Scene have undoubtedly taught him to apprehend very different ideas from different people with ease and influenced his own songs in a certain way. However, Here's To Being Here stands miles away from a bombastic works of this band. As a matter of fact Here's To Being Here is a classic-rock played according to the rules of a modern indie scene. The air, structures of melodies and songs resemble the style of rock performers from 70's but at the same time a fair share of material represented here is composed of the ideas created by alternative bands of late 90's. It is expressed in both the sound of the album and riffs that sometimes interlace into pretty intricate forms. But the brightest feature, which brings this mixture on the surface, shows up in Collett's vocal. His voice, by its nature, sounds very similar to Bob Dylan's but you can always feel the influence of modern indie bands in it at that.

Here's To Being Here is always ready to astonish you with unexpected surprises

The record comes in pretty easy. Basically, most of these acoustically driven songs are friendly and light. The first three reflect this side of the album quite well. However, even though the arrangements may seem simple they are always ready to astonish you with some pretty unexpected surprises. By the way, if Collett's unconventional ideas are that very thing you are interested in most of all than you may pay attention to Charlyn, Angel Of Kesington and Papercut Hearts – the only appropriate term you can use to describe their style is rock, you simply cannot think of something more concrete. However, the air of the majority of compositions inclines towards blues and classic rock. No Redemption Song, Through The Night These Days или Nothing To Lose are nice hearted, mid tempo acoustic songs, which make up a sort of a blusy-romantic center of the album. Here's To Being Here is a sufficiently strong record to arouse interest of both admirers of classic-rock and fans of indie music. Regardless that fact that these genres are completely different, Collett managed to tie them together and eventually created a sort of a missing link between them. Perhaps the balance sounds a little bit shaky yet and keeps on inclining towards one side, but Here's To Being Here is a worthy and very mature record all the same.