Exposing the city's dark heart

Tuesday, May 29, 2007  |  ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN, globeandmail.com

There's no better spot from which to see into the dark heart of big-city living than a small town. Or so it would seem from the careers of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Nathan Wiley, all of whom grew up in burgs of 50,000 people or less.

Wiley, a 29-year-old from Summerside, PEI (pop. 14,500), seems in person like a let's-go-fishing-with-a-two-four kind of guy. Give him a guitar and a microphone, however, and a universe of unsavoury corners and seedy situations beckons.

"Hands on the bottle, fistful of throttle, go!" he sings on the last of 13 tracks made with Los Angeles producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos).

Wiley's third full-length album fishes in a foul stream of lost souls and gritty sounds, for his most sharply focused record yet.

The bluesy, down-and-out feeling of Sick Side passes like a Waits song without the melodrama. Needle in the Groove carries a whiff of Chicago blues, especially in Morgan Davis's truth-telling asides on electric guitar. Geoff Arsenault's precise ashcan drumming provides a perfect paint-flaked scaffold for the cabaret number Seven Reasons and for the menacing blues-rock invitation of Wouldn't You. Fistful of Throttle runs on an insanely catchy cold-funk groove by Wiley and drummer Dale Resroches.

Wiley's lightly scuffed voice is the sound of someone who still remembers what it was like to have illusions, and who could probably do nasty deeds without entirely losing his charm. His terse, atmospheric playing on electric guitar and lap steel seems to divulge all the things merely hinted at in the lyrics, but in terms that can't be summarized in words.

It's not clear who's responsible for the disc's occasional detours into the noir side of madcap. North American Dream, a bitter groove-based song about the paradise we're living in, ends with a coda on ukulele, and Getaway's cheery reflections on irremediable regret begin with a chorus of kazoos.

Berlin apparently sifted through more than 40 songs for this album, and chose the darkest ones. The only exception is the opening track, One of the Worst Ones, which, in spite of its title, is a nice pop song. Maybe that one's for the radio. The rest are for anyone who has looked down a dark alley and glimpsed a state of mind that may exist even in places a hundred miles from any downtown.

Nathan Wiley plays the Green Room in Montreal on June 7, the Supermarket in Toronto on June 8, and the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Que., on June 9.

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