Patrick Watson

"Okay, easy prediction here, since the best show I saw at SXSW was Patrick Watson: I predict Patrick Watson will release one of the best albums of 2012. Unlike the brilliant 2009 release Wooden Arms, this new record Adventures in Your Own Backyard is going to be a hit. Watson is going on the road opening for Andrew Bird, and Bird’s audience will appreciate his story songs — tales wrapped in finely arranged swatches of piano melodies perfect percussion and the right does of guitar and violin." - Bob Boilen @ NPR Music

Patrick Watson first broke through to audiences in 2006 with his album Close to Paradise. The album went gold in Canada and won numerous awards, including the Polaris Prize. It saw international release in September 2007 and has since sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Watson also began to receive attention around the same time for his song “To Build a Home,” which he performs with Cinematic Orchestra on their 2007 album, Ma Fleur.

Fittingly, the seeds of his own band were cinematic and collaborative in nature, having begun as a multi-media project entitled Waterproof9 with Quebec visual artist Brigitte Henry. His core four-piece band of Watson (vox, keys), Mishka Stein (bass), Simon Angell (guitar) and Robbie Kuster (drums) began to take shape in the wake of the self-released Just Another Ordinary Day in 2003, and before long buzz on their live show had lead to performances with an impressively diverse group of artists, from Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, to Feist. In the summer of 2006, they were invited on a European tour with the late James Brown, just before the release of Close to Paradise.

His 2009 album, Wooden Arms, saw the band expand in the live setting to include a string quartet—not surprisingly, considering the lush arrangements present on all the albums. Indeed by this time Watson himself had established a reputation as a producer and composer of film scores, in addition to role as, band-leader, piano-player and singer-songwriter. The Wooden Arms tour fittingly culminated in 2011 with a collaborative performance with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, which saw the renowned symphony performing Watson’s songs alongside the band.

Watson’s latest offering, entitled Adventures in Your Own Backyard, is in his own words, an effort on the band’s part to “make the kind of music we would want to listen to at home.” The album’s title is both a nod to this sentiment, and to the fact that it was recorded almost entirely in Watson’s apartment in Montreal. Both Close to Paradise and Wooden Arms were recorded over long periods of time, in many different places—Wooden Arms is especially scattered in its geography, with a number of the songs having been informed by the band’s extensive travels in the wake of the success of Close to Paradise.

RIYL: Jeff Buckley, Andrew Bird, Plants & Animals
TRY: #2, 4, 5, 9

Patrick Watson - Into Giants by DominoRecordCo

Full Album Available Here:
https://www.piratepirate.com/downloads/

More Info Here:
http://www.adventuresinyourownbackyard.com/
https://www.facebook.com/patrickwatsonofficial
http://twitter.com/#!/patrickwatson
http://www.dominorecordco.com/artists/patrick-watson/
http://www.secretcityrecords.com/albums/adventures
https://www.piratepirate.com/437/patrick-watson-wooden-arms/