Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

First off, I feel like a dumb ass. I puzzled for days (okay, for three minutes, but still…) over how to pronounce “fauxliage” (a word that my spell checker just hates) until I figured it out. It’s “foe-lee-ej,” like that green stuff that grows around your house and that my neighbors keep insisting that I need to trim periodically. So. Fauxliage is a trio from Canada, consisting of vocalist Leigh Nash and multi-instrumentalists/producers Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber. I was a bit unsettled at the opening bars of the first track, thinking that maybe the man behind the curtain at music-reviewer.com had slipped me a soundtrack CD for one of those murky teen horror-suspense films that had a producer too cheap to shell out for some decent tunes and instead hired John Williams or something. No. After a few seconds things settle down, the band gets into its groove, and it’s not bad, not bad at all.

Now one thing that we have to get clear here.. When I take long car trips, I pack a bunch of CDs but usually by the fifth or sixth hour of driving I start hunting around for…Dido. Or Everything But The Girl. Or Sade. Yes. And I’ll start playing “Thank You” or “Smooth Operator” or “Mirror Ball” and singing along. Fauxliage is in that groove, maybe not so much Sade as Dido (I mean, Nash is a blonde, from Canada) but still in that groove, especially tracks like “Let It Go,” which has a minimalist arrangement comprised of piano, drums, synth, guitar, and the occasional loop percolating slowly under Nash’s angst -infused vocals, singing of loss and regret, and. There’s even an instrumental, on here, entitled “Magic,” which is catchy enough, and ends just before it wears out its welcome.

All is not entirely wonderful. There is a track titled “Rafe” which is included as a regular track (“Nice work, folks. Thanks!”) then as a “Gabin remix” (“Got it fellas. See ya.”) and yet a third version, a “Pacha remix” (“THAT’S ENOUGH! The blonde can stay but the rest of you get OUT!!!”). The “Gabin remix” is all…well, it’s kind of a rock version that answers the question of what would have happened if Berry Gordy had started Motown Records in Windsor, Ontario instead of Detroit, Michigan. The “Pacha Remix” is what you’d get if George Clinton had been born an attractive white female from Montreal (yeah, yeah, I know, George has been working on one of those for awhile now). Given that there are eleven total tracks on FAUXLIAGE I could have done with some different tracks instead of nine and two remixes. Generally, however, FAUXLIAGE is a worthy disc, and I’m bringing it along on my next long distance trip. Just don’t tell anyone.