LUCIE IDLOUT E5-770: My Mother’s Name (Heart Wreck/Arbor) Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
If your knowledge of First Nations music begins and ends with Buffy Sainte-Marie and Susan Aglukark, this debut disc by Inuit rocker Lucie Idlout will come as a shocker. With a sound reminiscent of PJ Harvey at her most ominous and sultry, Idlout cannot be pigeonholed as an aboriginal artist. Her passionate, atmospheric rock, submerged in soupy bass and crunched-out guitar noise, has a passion and urgency foreign to most rawk chicks north or south of the 49th parallel. E5-770: My Mother’s Name – the moniker comes from the government numbers used to register Inuit individuals in the North Baffin region – recalls some of the rawest moments on Crash Vegas’s killer Aurora disc, as Idlout’s voice growls and purrs over squalls of angular feedback. It can be a bit overwhelmingly intense at times, but then so can PJ Harvey. Lucie Idlout launches E5-770: My Mother’s Name tonight (Thursday, November 27) at the El Mocambo and performs as part of the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Friday (November 28).
