#simone schmidt

New music Wednesday

Dan Bejar’s 14th album under the Destroyer moniker showcases his signature musical and lyrical style, delivering all the defining elements that have shaped his sound. Bold, exhilarating, and unrestrained, this record stands as perhaps the most unexpected of his career, blending a diverse array of genres with rich production and an undercurrent of subtle dissonance.

Fiver with the Atlantic School Of Spontaneous Composition by Fiver

Country songs turn into spiritual jazz reveries in this collaboration between Fiver, a Toronto-based singer named Simone Schmidt, and the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition, a free-jazz trio made up of Bianca Palmer (drums, percussion), Nick Dourado (lap steel, piano, vibes, sax), and Jeremy Costello (synths, bass, voice). The tension between the gentle lilt of country waltzes and free-wheeling improvisation colors the first half of the album, but by the end, the experiment gets out of the bottle to take hallucinatory shape.

Still Holding The Highest Order 2016, Idée Fixe (Bandcamp)

Extremely fond memories of the Highest Order, a cosmic country combo I must have seen six or seven times in the two years I lived in Toronto. If I wasn’t catching the band as an opener for a bigger touring act, I’d be seeing them headline at the Horseshoe Tavern, a venue they fit so snugly they might’ve grown on the stage like cowboy moss; if they weren’t playing a benefit for the local safe injection site, they were on the turntable at my best friend’s apartment, or I’d be a few booths over from their big, affable guitarist Paul Mortimer at the bar.

They didn’t have all that many songs, so their material got real familiar, real fast—but familiar in a familial sorta way. Songs like the Velvets/CCR choogle “Keep a Window Open” and the Allmans-y ramble of “Hardball” sound snipped out of timelessly stoned jams that rolled the night through. While the Order were a lot more economical onstage than many of their influences, they always seemed to find slightly new ways down the same old backroads.

Toronto’s country rock / alt country scene hasn’t really broken a big act since Blue Rodeo (with apologies to the Sadies), but thanks to venues like the Horseshoe, Cameron House, and Dakota, it’s always felt central to the city’s musical character. In the last ten or fifteen years, it’s been Simone Schmidt (AKA Fiver), the singer and songwriter at the heart of the Highest Order (and previously, One Hundred Dollars), who’s been its standard bearer. It feels good to know she’s still pushing herself in ambitious new directions and writing some of the best music of her career into the 2020s—though for me, as a quirk of the period I spent in town, it’s these songs that really stick with me.

If I’m honest, Still Holding doesn’t perfectly capture the band’s onstage magnetism. “Somewhere Out of the Way,” a driving psych number which builds to a blistering climax live, feels a bit sedate here thanks to a tentative vocal take. The mix as a whole doesn’t have much punch. But as a document of a pretty damned good band, taken at just the right time, it’s enough. If my heart gives them extra credit because the back cover is full of Polaroids from bars I drank at and receipts from grocery stores I shopped at, there’s no harm in that at all. 5/365

“Fiver is Toronto-based Simone Schmidt, whose deep discography explores the experimental fringe of North American folk and country. For their latest release, they posted up in Scotch Village in Mi’kma’ki, otherwise known as Nova Scotia, and teamed with the Atlantic School Of Spontaneous Composition, known for their collaborations with Beverly Glenn Copeland. The resulting eight tracks push Fiver’s psychedelic country tendencies into jazzy experimental territory.” Listen HERE // Fiver With The Atlantic School Of Spontaneous Composition is out 5/7 on You’ve Changed Records.

“For years I’ve been working in activist communities, and I’ve never wanted to use my music to talk about it. Activism wasn’t cool when I started music, and suddenly it became cool to be political. I don’t really want to conflate my work putting out music with the collective work that I do. But lately I’ve thought why should I lie? This is just the situation we’re in.“ Read the amazing interview HERE