Full Album Premiere & Review: Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Second Skin
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on July 14th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Ian Blurton’s Future Now’s Second Skin in full. Album is out Friday, July 15, on Seeing Red Records and Pajama Party.]
Ian Blurton on Second Skin:
While not a concept album per se, it does have reoccurring musical and lyrical ideas. Lyrically it’s mostly about moving forward from things you don’t want to live with, hence the theme of rebirth, the idea of rejecting what you don’t believe in and also saving things worth saving from destruction and the idea of progress. Cover artist Jeremy Bruneel has taken a number of these lyrical themes and painted them into the cover so they are represented visually as well.
Once we had been accepted as Artist in Residence at The NMC in Calgary we knew that we would have a proper Mellotron at our disposal so I began writing with that in mind. That brought forward the idea of making a more proggy record than the last and having three or four longer songs.
One of the themes of the record is community and that became real-life when we put out a call for amps as we were recording in Calgary/flying there. Local Calgary bands and musicians (Woodhawk, Ramblin’ Ambassadors, etc) offered up gear and we are forever indebted to their kindness. This same sense of community also made us realize that this record wouldn’t have happened the same way without the contributions of the artists, musicians, engineers, mixers, etc each who believed in it and added their own touches until the project became a whole.
In a world and a time of antiheroes, Ian Blurton is a hero. Where so much of the art that surrounds us on a day-to-day, be it commercial creative work on television, movies, videogames, music videos, and so on, or the literature and fine arts we as humans engage with, authenticity is regularly judged by the darkness of a work, the ‘grittiness’ factor that makes things that are difficult, challenging or traumatizing feel truer to life than those that aren’t. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, and I’m not calling for a change or a reversion back to some false ideal of a time when it was different. No. All I’m saying is that Ian Blurton, based in Toronto and on the cusp of releasing the second album with Ian Blurton’s Future Now, is a hero.
This is because, where so many others are not, Blurton is willing to take the risk of creating something fresh that diverts from the expectations of its own era. Something that is neither fluff to be tossed off when done, nor saccharine in its sweeter aspects, nor void of substance or message because it isn’t violent or dark or depressing. Second Skin is the sophomore long-player from this incarnation of Blurton‘s long-established persona behind 2019’s Signals Through the Flames (review here), a sweaty-summer-sun collection of nine songs playing out across 44 minutes of brazen heavy rock informed by classic metal riffs — Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, ’80s-style dual-guitar grandiosity between Blurton (also vocals, keys, production) and Aaron Goldstein — and an abiding classic groove channeled through bassist/vocalist Anna Ruddick (City and Colour) and drummer/vocalist Glenn Milchem (also Blue Rodeo).
Blurton‘s storied history as an artist and producer — working in bands like Public Animal, Cowboy Junkies, and so on, as well as being who in Toronto you want to record your heavy rock album, as demonstrated through records by Electric Magma, Cursed, Blood Ceremony and many, many others — is on display in the songwriting and performance here. But the truth is that even if you have no idea who he is or what he’s done in his career going back nearly four decades, the barriers to entry on Second Skin are nil. It could not be easier to get on board.
Like the best of pop, Second Skin is able to turn a three-minute song into an epic and make a seven-minute track feel like a breeze. It does this immediately upon pressing play, with the careening “Like a Ghost” (3:13) and the subsequent, damn-near-power-metal-except-it-isn’t title-track (7:12) establishing quickly the spaces in which Blurton, Goldstein, Ruddick and Milchem will work. Urgent in their delivery but unhurried either in tempo or in their movement between verses, choruses and showcasing depth even unto Milchem‘s ride cymbal taps after the two-minute mark in “Like a Ghost” or perfectly timed snare nod amid the starts and stops of the later “Beyond Beholds the Moon.” “Second Skin” rolls out with leads over central riffs, and its shove isn’t to be understated, building metallic momentum with heavy rock fuzz and an according breadth of melody as it arrives at the title line, finally, that release. Keyboard sets up the movement into the second half of the track, and the balance in mix, the resurgent rhythm, and the intensity that ensues en route to the next chorus is nothing short of masterful. There’s a reason that in Toronto, so I’m told, he’s referred to as “Sir” Ian Blurton.
Second Skin is universally crafted at this grade. No letup. “The Power of No” (3:51) chugs and swings with graceful ease, rooted in rock traditionalism in their side A momentum build, and as the the stomping “When the Storm Comes Home” (3:12) hands out its Scorpions-via-grunge-jangle progression, the effect is a guitar highlight standing apart from a slew of compatriots, as well as a shift into “Orchestrated Illusions” (4:51). rightly placed as the centerpiece for its nestled-in groove, expansive melodicism and memorable, likewise open chorus. At the presumed end of the side A and peppered with gorgeously toned solos in its second half, “Orchestrated Illusions” feels very much like the arrival that the the first five songs of Second Skin have been pushing toward, and its long fade and resonant acoustic guitar/keyboard ending is wholly earned.
So too is the quick reset as side B’s “Denim on Denim” (3:57). “It’s like heaven on heaven,” according to the lyrics, and kind of like “Looks That Kill” in its midsection riff, and fair enough. Another righteous hook, another metal-turned-into-rock movement, and another strong showcase of craft, pulls the listener back to ground after the hypnotic finish “Orchestrated Illusions” and before the closing trilogy of “Beyond Beholds the Moon” (6:30), “Too High the Sky” (5:03) and “Trails to the Gate/Second Skin Reprise” (6:36) round out the offering by pushing farther outward from the foundation “Denim on Denim” provides — a Mellotron early in “Beyond Beholds the Moon” is a sign of the shift into the album’s next stage, but it’s by no means the first keys, as noted. Growing burly by its finish — the aforementioned snare groove included — there’s no dip in the quality of craft.
Rather, set up earlier by “Second Skin,” “Beyond Beholds the Moon,” the harmonized unfolding of the proggy and fluid but still in motion “Too High the Sky” (with guest Sean Beresford on guitar) and the ’70s-futurist-meets-slow-Slayer finish of “Trails to the Gate/Second Skin” (with Robin Hatch on piano in its latter reaches) are in clear conversation with what preceded them on the record as well as off, and the final lyric, “It’s just a second skin,” resounds with no less vitality than the opening line of “Like a Ghost,” which was, “Do you want to believe?” If you ever did, there are no shortage of reasons to in these songs. Because that’s what heroes do. They make you believe.
The narrative of Second Skin (blessings and peace upon it) tells that Ian Blurton’s Future Now made the album on the Rolling Stones Mobile studio — used not only by Rolling Stones to create Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers, but also ultra-classics from Mk. II Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and others — as well as a slew of accordingly pedigreed vintage gear at Canada’s National Music Center in Calgary, Alberta. Whether it was bringing energy from their live shows to this setting or Blurton‘s own vision as producer, Second Skin indeed communes with these spirits while boasting a level of class that is simply its own. Rock and roll is lucky to have it.
Ian Blurton’s Future Now, “Like a Ghost” official video
Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Facebook
Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Twitter
Ian Blurton’s Future Now on Instagram
