KEVIN HEARN -
Days in Frames
2014 Roaring Girl Records/Fontana
C.G. - bass, and backing vocals
Produced by GAVIN BROWN
Mixed by TOM ELMHIRST at Electric Lady Studios
Mastered by TED JENSEN at Sterling sound
Best Day Yet
You Wrecked Me
Melody Memory
Gallerina - with DAN HILL (vocals) & HUGH MARSH (violin)
Up Above - with JOAN as POLICEWOMAN (vocals)
Gallerina, live on CTV's Canada AM
Crossing Over, official video
Photos from cd release concert at The Piston
Photos from the recording sessions at Noble St. Studios
Gallerina, official video
reviews
Those who think of Kevin Hearn as the multi-instrumentalist in the Barenaked Ladies should get to know his songwriting. Hearn, who also spent a number of years as Lou Reed’s keyboardist and musical director, writes quirky, eclectic growers of songs. His third solo album is no exception.
Dedicated to Reed and Hearn’s late Aunt Lorraine, the songs on Days In Frames bring a light touch to serious subjects like mortality and religion.
There’s plenty of musical variation. Cathedral’s classical guitar, for instance, contrasts with the buoyant, very danceable synths in Up Above, the bright, bursting pop of Best Day Yet and the broken dub of You Wrecked Me. But there’s a softness in Hearn’s distinctive vocals that remains constant, along with a promise of renewal and a sense of being midstream.
Chris Gartner and Bob Scott, Hearn’s Thin Buckle rhythm section, play on many of the songs, and Hearn assembled a special band of Reed collaborators for Floating – a touching, irreverent co-write with Reed about dying, featuring a guitar part in the outro by Reed himself.
NNNN Sarah Greene, Now Magazine
Known primarily for his multi-instrumental work with Canadian alt-rock mainstays Barenaked Ladies, Kevin Hearn has a host of other impressive entries on his musical resume that should not be overlooked. Primarily a keyboard player, he has released a handful of solo records, collaborated with the Rheostatics and toured as a member of the late Lou Reed's live band, but Hearn's songwriting and arranging skills shine most on his solo works, and Days In Frames evinces this nicely. At only 37 minutes in length, the record is short, sweet and captivating, touching on themes of life, death, love and loss.
Hearn expertly navigates various genres in order to touch on each of these themes. The emotive, free-flowing piano melody of opener "Gallerina" is a stunning backdrop for a unorthodox tale of unrequited love between a portrait and an art gallery worker, while some downcast dub reggae is well-suited to the woeful yet humorous "You Wrecked Me." Delicate touches of classical music adorn "Sugar Water," while listeners can find some more pop-oriented fare on "Up Above" and "Best Day Yet."
Much like he and his Barenaked bandmates have been known to do as a group, Hearn succeeds in writing in these different styles without making the album feel like a collection of influences that were forced together...
A delightful and engaging record.
Calum Slingerland, Exclaim Magazine
Few Canadian artists have as fascinating a double musical life as Kevin Hearn. Best known as the long-time (20 years) keyboardist for pop heroes Barenaked Ladies (and a former Rheostatic), he is also a highly adventurous, accomplished and prolific singer/songwriter. His talent as a musician was recognised by Lou Reed, who made him musical director of his ace band for the last six year's of Reed's life. Hopefully that resume entry will place more focus on Hearn's seriously undervalued solo work. Days in Frames, his seventh album, is a masterful effort, featuring plaintive and poignant vocals, philosophical and poetic lyrics, and intriguing art-rock meets melodic pop compositions.
Cameos are taken by Reed (guitar and some lyrics on "Floating"), Ron Sexsmith, Dan Hill and Don Kerr, with clean production by Gavin Brown (Metric, Sarah Harmer).Hearn and an A-list band (including Tim Bovaconti and Hugh Marsh) launched the disc at Toronto's The Piston this week, with a brilliant set for an appreciative crowd that included Sexsmith and Brown. Let's hope for more dates to come.
Kerry Doole, newcanadianmusic.ca
"Kevin Hearn's main gig is with the Barenaked Ladies, where he's a multi-instrumentalist allowed to sing lead every once in a while. From 2007 to 2013, he was also the musical director for Lou Reed's band, becoming quite close with the notorious legend and his wife, Laurie Anderson, before Reed died in 2013. What most people don't know is that Hearn has quietly been making lovely albums of his own for much of the last decade, and "Days in Frames" might be his best. Hearn is a modest man; he sings like he speaks, with a quiet, inquisitive, conversational tone. His instrumental prowess is only evident on occasion; Hearn's solo records are all songs and textures, utilizing dreamy synths, folky mandolins, and his 22-year-old relationship with the rhythm section of Great Bob Scott and Chris Gartner
(all were once in the freaky prog-rock band Look People).
Losing Reed, as well as an aunt to whom Hearn was very close, has the songwriter in a more melancholic mood than usual ("Up Above," "Floating," "Crossing Over"). Not that Hearn ever gets morbid; after all, he already survived several serious bouts with leukemia more than 10 years ago, with his humour and optimism emboldened. "Life is a beautiful puzzle and then you fall to pieces," he sings; he sounds more bemused by life's turn of events than thrown off course.
Because of both his talent and his reputation as a mensch for whom people want to do favours, Hearn pulls in a lot of top-notch help here: violinist Hugh Marsh (Bruce Cockburn, Mary Margaret O'Hara), Ron Sexsmith, Dan Hill, producer Gavin Brown (Billy Talent, Metric), mixer Tom Elmhirst (Adele, Amy Winehouse), and the other members of Reed's band (who appear on the comical deathbed meditation "Floating"). Needless to say, it sounds like a million bucks.
Unlike Barenaked Ladies songs, Hearn's material will never bring a stadium of people to its feet. But it shares almost every one of that band's strengths: it's every bit as accessible, amusing and poignant, its subject matter more refined. It's more reflective and layered, to be savoured slowly on a Sunday morning. Based on the snapshot of his life heard here, Hearn spends his days in art galleries, in Canada's Far North, birdwatching, searching for the meaning he once found in cathedrals, and detailing a humdrum day with a wry eye. Hearn has stared down his own mortality and seen loved ones succumb to theirs; every lyric and note here is the work of a man who marvels in the tiny details and sounds of everyday life, finding the fantastical in our common experience — and then painting it with glorious sonic colours."
Michael Barclay, The Record
Kevin Hearn’s seventh album is sonically stunning, piano-driven, hauntingly melodic pop resplendent in space-age synths and ukuleles, and as grounded in the everyday as it is fascinated with the otherworldly. That’s true lyrically as well; Hearn describes the songs as being about “love, loss, life, death and renewal, with brief glimpses of the supernatural and the occasional darkly humorous observation.”
Hearn is best known as a multi-instrumentalist from Barenaked Ladies, the multi-platinum selling band he’s playedwith for almost two decades now. One of the most respected Toronto musicians of the past 25 years, Hearn’s solo albums always attract equally brilliant collaborators: here, they include singer/songwriters Ron Sexsmith and Dan Hill, drummer Rob Kloet (the Nits), Joan as Policewoman, and producer Gavin Brown (Metric, Tragically Hip, Sarah Harmer), not to mention his 22-year-relationship with the rhythm section of Chris Gartner and Great Bob Scott. The LP is also produced by Brown and mixed by Tom Elmhirst (Amy Winehouse, Adele). The ever-modest Hearn rarely asks for favours; people insist on granting them. Violinist Hugh Marsh (Bruce Cockburn, Mary Margaret O’Hara) happened to be visiting the studio where Hearn was recording; intrigued, he ended up spending 10 hours in the studio, playing on almost every track on Days In Frames.
One of Hearn’s closest relationships, both musical and personal, was with the late, great Lou Reed, for whom Hearn acted as keyboardist and musical director from 2007 up until his passing in 2013. Hearn assembled his friends from Reed’s band — bassist Fernando Saunders, drummer Tony “Thunder” Smith and guitarists Mike Rathke and Aram Bajakian — to play on this album. Several of those musicians play on a song that Hearn wrote about spending time with Reed in the hospital, “Floating.” “Floating, but my heart’s still beating,” sings Hearn, in an upbeat pop waltz, one defying expectations that a song about death has to be sad and morbid. Reed knew a thing or two about cutting through dark situations with gallows humour; Hearn sings: “Things get funny when your eyesight goes / Mistaking your fingers for your toes,” a lyric Reed actually contributed to the song.
The songs on Days In Frames were written in Hearn’s Toronto home as well as Muskoka, ON, Paris, Tofino, B.C.,and Cape Dorset on Baffin Island in Canada’s Arctic; he visited the latter in June 2014, a trip he describes as a “life-changing experience.” A longtime patron of Inuit art, Hearn was invited by the Dorset Fine Arts studio, home to some of his favourite artists, such as Shuvinai Ashoona, who painted a guitar for him; Hearn dedicates “Midnight Sun” to her.
His relationship with art also informs Days In Frames’ first single, “Gallerina,” sung from the perspective of a painting infatuated with a gallery worker—it’s not a tale of unrequited love, exactly, but it does illustrate Hearn’s unique outlook. Though Hearn has contributed songs to Barenaked Ladies’ albums in the past 10 years, the songs on his solo records are much more personal, both in subject matter and musical exploration. “It’s fun for me to make music that doesn’t have to fit a certain criteria, whether it be regarding the style or sound, or who is playing it,” he says. “I’m inspired by the works of artists such as David Lynch and Sun Ra, whereas going in that direction with Barenaked Ladies might not make sense. It all finds a home in the proper place. When I make my own records, I can follow my heart and curiosity.”
Roaring Girl records press release
