Album of the week: Jean-Michel Blais

In an interview with NOW last year, Dutch soft psych rocker Jacco Gardner talked about how cinematic instrumental or background music can be extra-powerful and influential in people's lives because they're usually doing something else while listening to it. How it can become a soundtrack to living. I get that. Over the last few years, instrumental - specifically piano music - has become my go-to weekend-morning music, the most pleasing way to ease into a couple of days to yourself, and the soundtrack to, say, pulling together breakfast or lazing in bed or whatever your choice of rejuvenating act. 

Jean-Michel Blais's slight debut album, Il, is perfect to listen to while doing other things, namely getting yourself into a calm mood. The Montreal-based pianist's eight-track album has the lightness and melodic pop sensibilities of Gonzales's work - pleasing, gentle and brief compositions that for the most part get by on piano alone. A standout exception is the four-and-a-half-minute Nostos, which has also received a dramatic video treatment and expands darkly like a dramatic sunset thanks to Montreal producer BUFFLO's eerier dramatic cello shadings. 

Hasselblad 4 and Hasselblad 2 are brief improvisations akin to domesticated field recordings, with extraneous noises like a door creaking and the small, fleeting voice of a child. Improvisation is at the heart of all the songs; Blais spent two years making the record in his home by improvising daily. Second-last song Casa is the longest, at seven and a half minutes, and that extra time allows it to shape-shift and take on a narrative quality that many of the shorter pieces are unable to achieve. That's the main criticism here: you wish the album were at least twice as long. 

Top track: Casa

Jean-Michel Blais plays the Art Gallery of Ontario Friday (April 8), April 15 and 22. See listing.