As I write this review, it seems that the world’s burning has accelerated. It’s not that it wasn’t already burning, but this moment in time has brought us, inter alia: Syria; refugees; Brexit; a coup attempt in Turkey and the unsurprising and merciless purge that followed; incessant and systemically rooted police shootings of black citizens in the US; Donald Trump; and — literally going on right now — a mall shooting in Munich where so far at least 8 people have died. An awareness of the greater context can help us understand (capitalism, neoliberalism, environment at saturation point; systemic “malfunctions” occurring more often), and remind us that others in a less privileged context have experienced nothing but this for years, decades, perhaps forever, and much more directly. Still, it feels as if there’s precious little in the world that’s worthy of our appreciation right now, so the things that are deserve to be emphasized.
Michelle Willis is an enormously talented singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Toronto. Her debut solo record, See Us Through, demonstrates her fine voice and keen ear for songcraft. It’s a quiet and relatively short record with very high production values (if you’re equipped to listen to it, you can get a wonderful high resolution audio version). It’s always a toss-up whether to provide references to other artists as stylistic anchor points, but it can also help highlight some of the subtleties. See Us Through exists somewhere along the spectrum between folk, R&B and a quiet version of “rock.” On balance, Willis’ songcraft occasionally reminds me of Sarah McLachlan (the good bits), Joni Mitchell (some of the more surprising key changes, e.g. in ‘Persimmon’), and a slightly out-of-time, gospel-informed R&B, similar perhaps to Lizz Wright’s.
Michelle Willis makes music for grown ups, music that is unashamed of its musicality and the craft it takes to fully convey that. It flirts with genres but ultimately works hard to dodge being slotted into any one niche: it’s not pop; it probably holds limited appeal for “indie” rock listeners; it’s not quite “Americana” (though some of the spacious instrumentation could definitely pass for it); it’s not quite jazz (the songs are too “folk-y”); it avoids the simple earnestness of folk and country; and so on.
As such, it strikes me as a very “Toronto” album — this being the city of mass participation in Choir Choir Choir, for example, an initiative whose broad appeal and enthusiastic public support are touching and astounding in equal measure. We have much history here with, and a soft spot for, music that doesn’t quite fit into normative genre definitions — even music that flagrantly, joyfully disregards them. I think the “tolerance” of Toronto’s public imaginary (it is, after all, the “most fascinatingly boring city in the world”) helps its music scene, too: perhaps slotting neatly into a trend here is not as important as being recognizable as a deep music geek, as someone who works hard to define her own niche — a path Michelle Willis seems to be on. The downside is that it’s especially hard to gain visibility for this kind of work: Willis’ album seems to have garnered only two or three reviews from “the press,” and the Youtube videos should have more than a few thousands views each.
As the closer, ‘Solitude,’ rolls around for a second or third time in my headphones today, I notice that I’m breathing a little more deeply and that the burning world has, at least temporarily, been pushed to the outer reaches of my mind. And while I avowedly share Laurie Penny’s skepticism about the pursuit of “wellness” as a response to the world’s issues, I think Michelle Willis’ music offers solace and (temporary) reprieve in myriad welcome ways, “escape” being the least of them. We could all use a bit of musical self care right now.