Joyous Porous, the 4th disc by Toronto band The Henrys

Joyous Porous is from 2002, and has a nice
lineup of Toronto musicians - the great bass
player David Piltch (now in Santa Barbara,
but he grew up here), Jorn Andersen, a
fantastic drummer; Hugh Marsh, master of
the violin, John Sheard, a longtime Henry
and keyboard ace, Michael White and his
beautiful trumpet sound, and of course Mary
Margaret O'Hara.

There are several tracks from it on the
listening page, and reviews below.

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Reviews

Among all the infectious noise being made
by acoustic slide guitar players in recent
times, Toronto kona player Don Rooke and
his ensemble of like-minded abstract sound
architects stand out on their fourth album as
the high-minded intellectuals in their class,
the quiet scientists scratching away at the
borders of the folk/time continuum while the
other guys are staging a hootenanny. "Old
instruments, new sounds" is the way Rooke
describes what The Henrys do - they use
sophisticated recording and playing
techniques and elaborate audio processes
to extract from a resonator guitar and other
plucked acoustic instruments the harmonics,
overtones and oblique noises behind the
rustic notes to create landscapes that are
astonishingly romantic, frightening, sexual,
spiritual - and quite beautiful. Brave new
music.

-Toronto Star review by Greg Quill,
December 14, 2002

=====================

The Henrys have never been a band keen to
sacrifice quality for quantity. Centred on the
compelling fretwork of bandleader Don
Rooke, the enigmatic septet has released
four albums since 1994's excellent debut
Puerto Angel. It's been more than enough to
secure The Henrys a place as one of
Canada's most intriguing ensembles. The
long-awaited followup to 1998's Desert
Cure, Joyous Porous again delivers the
goods in grand fashion: the haunting slide of
Rooke's National Steel darts in and out of
the cinematic, dream-like instrumentals like
sharp bursts of essential dialogue - always
refined, soulful and to the point. The Henrys
all-inclusive sound - a flickering fusion of
languid blues, darting jazz, ambient musings
and fragmented folk - is a subtle, organic
thing of beauty.

-Ottawa XPress, review by Steve Baylin

==============
Music became a thing when the first
recording was made, and music ever since
has tended to become more thing-like and
less situational. A studio recording that feels
like a situation is truly a rare entity, and
eventful in the fullest sense of the
word.Music as situation requires rules, and a
shared approach, but also demands enough
freedom for sounds to find their way to the
places where they need to be. In a word, it
needs to be porous, and that's a joyous
state indeed on the best tracks of this fourth
album from the Toronto-based ensemble
The Henrys.

Don Rooke, the group's main writer and lead
guitarist, has a soft spot for front-parlour
roots music. But he's equally drawn to a kind
of cool abstraction that creeps up on his
old-seeming tunes, and subjects them to an
analytic, postnostalgic fondling.

The rough outlines of the method will be
familiar to anyone who has heard a few Bill
Frisell records, though the tone and the
temper are quite different. Frisell mainly
plays electrics, but Rooke's core
instruments in The Henrys are the kona, the
Weissenborn and the National Steel. These
are all vintage acoustic guitars, and they
provide him with a range of throaty,
atmospheric sounds, and the basis for a
meditative slide style. The Henrys love thick
natural sounds like those of the pump organ
that clacks and surges at the start of the title
tune, and juicy old electronics such as the
Mellotron, the Theremin, and the Arp
synthesizer.

The density of the timbres allows for a kind
of short-hand that suits the group's brainy,
yet sensual, style. With just a few chords on
the Weissenborn, Rooke can open a deep
blues space in VF61,the opening track, then
follow the groove into a strange pentatonic
octave unison with bassist David Piltch,
while trumpeter Michael White peppers the
scene with distant aphorisms. It takes only a
few acid guitar chords and a hustling rhythm
line to set the stage for the drawling bluesy
arioso that Mary Margaret O'Hara drops into
One Body. This track feels like the antithesis
of the neatly made studio number, though
only on the groove-based Li'l Ms Demeanor
did O'Hara (who contributes to six tracks in
all) apparently wing it straight to tape.

There are two covers: Maria Elena,a
genuinely old and sentimental tune from the
thirties, and Charles Mingus's Goodbye
Porkpie Hat,in a version so brilliantly
understated as to make virtually every note a
poem. Almost everything here works on first
hearing, and works even better after that.

Globe and Mail, Robert Everett-Green

====================

The Henrys are at it again. And it's glorious.

In a world full of wannabe slide people and
instrumental crapola, Don Rooke and
company have again distinguished
themselves as one of the most outstanding
and original outfits we've ever heard.

Why is it so hard to find music this original?
Because it takes talent, first of all, and
because it's damn hard to make a living
when you're this musically fearless. God
bless the Toronto Arts Council (and the
Music Section of the Canada Council for the
Arts), what a civilized country that is. I swear,
half of the great music I hear anymore is
coming from Canada.

"Recorded at Cellars and Spare
Bedrooms," Joyous Porous finds our sonic
heroes in outrageous form. As you might
have gathered from our previous review of
this stellar band, The Henrys are essentially
comprised of slide master Don Rooke (yo!),
trumpetist Michael White, and bassist David
Piltch. The unbelievable guest melodies and
vocals of Mary Margaret O'Hara send chills
right up my spine every time, Lord Almighty!

The compositions are as good as the
playing is, and that's saying an awful lot. On
top of that, the renditions of Charles Mingus'
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and the 30s classic
"Maria Elena" are right outta this frickin
world. These folks are deeply whacked and
profoundly talented.

I'm not kidding. Get this album, it will help
you open up your mind and your spirit. Most
records today will not do that. They're
conceived with too many parameters and
expectations in mind. I don't get the
impression here that there's anything
necessarily hanging in the balance of the
CD's acceptance, and the unique beauty of
the work is, on the other hand, unmistakable.

Don Rooke's tone on the kona makes me
wanna cry, it's so pure. It's an antique
instrument from the 20s made of koa wood
and played with a steel bar. I love The
Henrys, and wish there were more groups
like them around. Instead of all these
knuckleheads.

PureMusic, Frank Goodman, October 2002

====================

The Henrys, il progetto del canadese Don
Rooke, sono certamente una band unica nel
panorama attuale. Mischiano il suono di Ry
Cooder con le ricercatezze di Bill Frisell. Il
risultato è un collage, in parte strumentale, di
musica solare e sperimentale al tempo
stesso. E poi, come ciliegina sulla torta, c'è
la dolce Mary Margaret O'Hara.

-Buscadero Magazine, Italy, review by Junior
Bonner

====================

When they're on their game, the Henrys
sound like no one else. After establishing
and refining a sound over four albums,
largely built around Don Rooke's woozy
slide guitar, the Toronto group are now
happy to gurgle away in their own peculiar
language. In its best moments, Joyous
Porous's mix of twanging steel, wheezing
pump organs and Mary Margaret O'Hara's
elastic vocals is completely disorienting. A
cover of Mingus's Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
only reveals itself a few minutes in as the riff
peeks out from behind a haze of guitars,
while more straightforward moments, like
the O'Hara-driven Strangel, verge on pure
pop. Utterly alien but oddly familiar at the
same time.

-NOW Magazine, review by Matt Galloway

Don Rooke is a master of two distinct
sounding guitars: the Weissenborn and the
Hawaiian Kona. From both he extracts
sweeping and exquisite beauty, and he's
best known for doing so on Mary Margaret
O'Hara's recordings (she returns the favour
by vocalising with The Henrys). Past Henrys
records have been intoxicating rainy day
records, even if they occasionally ventured
into CBC musical segue territory. Joyous
Porous, however, finds the Henrys taking a
leap into considerably more experimental
waters, where it's all about languid texture
and much less about traditional song
structure. It makes Friends of Dean Martinez
sound like Blueshammer. In the
cinematically capable hands of Rooke and
company, including O'Hara, bassist David
Piltch, violinist Hugh Marsh and others, just
about anything is possible.

-Exclaim! magazine, review by Michael
Barclay

====================

Either The Henrys see the eerieness of their
world through a haze of nostalgia, or they
see nostalgia through a haze of eerieness;
either way, their music has a strangely
timeless feel. The group weaves webs of
sound around Don Rooke's spidery National
Steel and Weissenborn guitar lines. Often,
beguiling patterns emerge as melodies and
rhythms jump out; elsewhere, quirky
atmospherics get stuck into cobwebs. Fans
take note: Mary Margaret O'Hara appears on
six tracks, the best of which, "Strangel," will
induce Miss America flashbacks."

-Eye Magazine, review by Mike Doherty, Eye
Mag

====================

Those with a reasonably intact memory will
recollect the Henrys' excellent earlier
albums (ref fR158/9 and fRoots 6 CD).
They're an intriguing Canadian output mixing
progressive rootsy sort-of-acoustic sounds
centred around various slidey things played
by Don Rooke (Weissenborns, Konas,
Nationals, lap steels etc.), and always
including some vocalisation by the enigmatic
and reclusive Mary Margaret O'Hara.

Well, if you do, and if news of another - their
fourth, and first since 1998's Desert Cure -
tickles your fancy, then you'll be very
pleased to know that this one could be their
best yet. What the Henrys do is put across
the ambience of roots music without actually
playing trad. Indeed, O'Hara's singing
manages to give the impression that she's
singing some torchy country blues without,
quite often, actually uttering a conventional
word (who needs language to communicate
anyway, as any fule world music fan kno?).

It's deep into virtuoso textures on slides,
acoustic bass (now David Pilch), trumpet,
pump organ, violin, kalimba, drums,
mellotron, theremin and all sorts - mostly
original compositions (apart from Mingus'
Goodbye Porkpie Hat and the old standard
Maria Elena), and all beautifully recorded. If
you're looking for musical fellow travellers,
then probably Bill Frisell or David Lindley
would be your nearest points of reference,
but in all honesty, this group's pretty much in
a compartment of one. Telling you that it's
among the few records that would be
equally at home in fRoots and The Wire
might also give you a pointer, but then so's
Shirley Collins. hmm.

-Roots U.K., review by Ian Anderson,
October 2002

=================

Listening to Joyous Porous, the fourth
release of Canadian group The Henrys, is
akin to reading one of those books of short
stories where every tale transports you to
places you had never imagined, to worlds
rooted in things you know and have
experienced, but at the same time are new
and surprising and just a little weird. On
Joyous Porous, you recognize the
instruments, and some tunes sound vaguely
familiar, but you've never heard instruments
and rhythms and timbres put together in
quite this way. It's all a little ramshackle,
slightly off-kilter, wheezy and rambling. One
moment the song is going along as you
expect it and then, quietly it's gone
somewhere else, in a way that you never
anticipated.

The centerpiece on Joyous Porous, for the
most part, is the playing of The Henrys'
leader Don Rooke, mainly on vintage
acoustic slide guitars like the National Steel,
the Weissenborn, and the Hawaiian kona.
Rooke's playing is pure, inventive, and often
confounding of expectations. To my mind,
Rooke is most impressive on The Henrys'
cover of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat." It takes
awhile to figure out that this dark song, with
Rooke's national steel and David Piltch's
double bass foregrounded, is the famous
Mingus tune. With the slide guitar slipping
and meandering everywhere, it's jazz from
some other dimension.

Although Rooke's various guitars are the
instrumental focus, The Henrys on Joyous
Porous are nine musicians playing twice as
many different instruments, some of which I
had never heard of (sonar zombie, modcan).
On the title cut, John Sheard's pump organ
is used brilliantly to creaky effect. Michael
White provides jazz-inflected trumpet bursts
to the opening cut "VF61." Throughout the
album, White also offers up various
squeaks, whines and moans from vintage
electronic instruments like the theremin, arp
synthesizer, and mellotron. The jacket cover
states that Joyous Porous was recorded at
"Cellars and Spare Bedrooms,
Toronto/Santa Barbara," but this is no
amateur sounding release. The careful mix
of instruments and tonalities rather lends
Joyous Porous the flavor of some
avant-garde basement tapes.

As on The Henrys' previous releases, Mary
Margaret O'Hara delivers the vocals on a
few numbers. "One Body" is a jump-country
blues penned by Henrys' bassist David
Piltch, coming from some alien delta, with
O'Hara moaning incomprehensible lyrics,
backed by eerie and subtly distorted slide
guitars. As if to demonstrate O'Hara's
versatility, the very next song, "Strangel," is,
by comparison to the rest of the material on
Joyous Porous, fairly straight-up folk-pop,
with up-beat and clearly-enunciated vocals.
Then there's the aptly-titled "Lipstick,
Ferrous Scrap," suggesting a female
muttering to herself at a junk heap. It's all
jerky, clanging percussion and restrained
feedback, as the woman utters words you
mostly can't make out, but the phrase, "I got
lipstick, I'm a better lookin' chick," comes
through clearly.

Joyous Porous could be characterized as a
kind of Flannery O'Conner Middle
Americana. It's like watching your first
spaghetti Western, when the Old West you
thought you knew all of a sudden looks
weirdly distorted. It evokes the haunting
atmospherics of John Fahey or of Tom
Waits when he uses his invented
instruments to take us to some other offbeat
time and place. It's in the best tradition of
those brilliant Canadian forerunners of
what's now called Americana, The Band
(okay, 4/5 Canadian) and Neil Young. And,
when the prevailing sentiment in the US is to
get government out of everything except
surveillance and war, you've gotta love this:
the recording of Joyous Porous "was made
possible through the assistance of the
Music Section of the Canada Council for the
Arts and the Toronto Arts Council." Thank
you, Canada.

- Ted Swedenburg, CD Roots