The Musicgoer: That's Edmonton For You!

VARIOUS ARTISTS
That’s Edmonton for You!
(www.thatsedmontonforyou.com)
**** 1/2 (out of 5)

It’s hard to listen to Amy van Keeken’s “Northern City,” the leadoff track to this all-star seven-track suite of songs about Edmonton (which will be performed live at a special free concert this Sunday afternoon in Louise McKinney Park), and not think that Edmonton has an unofficial new civic anthem. The lyrics are short and sweet, but they manage to incorporate references to rock ’n’ roll, cold northern winds, and hockey — plus, there’s the killer couplet where van Keeken reveals, “When I see the puck go in the net / It makes me happy, it makes me wet.” Add in the rousing chorus of “I live in a northern town!” and you’ve got an instant classic.

But what’s exciting about That’s Edmonton for You! is that it’s not all fist-pumping expressions of civic pride. I’m not sure if producer Trevor Anderson (The Wet Secrets) encouraged his contributors to head in this direction, or if the artists just naturally headed there on their own, but again and again, you hear the same themes coming through in the lyrics: resentment of the oil industry, despair at Edmontonians’ inborn tendency towards apathy, the nagging feeling that maybe we should do what so many others have done and move somewhere else. “The mentality that contributes to the cold,” as Nik Kozub puts it on the excellent closing track, “and weighs down everyone I know.”

At the same time, the musicians’ love for this city is never in doubt — if they criticize some of Edmonton’s more frustrating tendencies, it’s only because they take enough pride in living here to care. And besides, the very fact that an album as terrific as this one even exists is reason enough to be happy to proclaim you’re from Edmonton. Highlights include Colleen Brown’s “Workin’ Hard for Easy,” a Heart-style rocker about Big Oil and the average joe; “Lazy for Everything,” on which Cadence Weapon trades in his usual quick-tongued rapping style for a laconic vocal that recalls Beck’s “The New Pollution”; and “A Devil in the Woodpile,” an epic-length track from Shout Out Out Out Out's Lyle Bell, with its memorable image of Edmonton’s dark and cold getting inside your bones and “burrowing like a devil in the woodpile of your soul.”

I can’t wait to hear it live. Download it now and get ready to sing along with it in the park this Sunday afternoon.