Folk music can only go so far.  There's never going to be a "OK Computer" of folk albums.   Well, mark that out.  "Now, More Than Ever" is the OK Computer of folk albums.   Sorta.  Okay not really.  But it's the best folk album I've ever heard.   Folk music comes down to three elements: a nice voice, good lyrics, and instrumental arrangement.   Jim Guthrie nails down those three things with what seems like no effort at all.   But above all, it's the arrangements that make this album so high on this list.   The feeling of floating that "All Gone" gives you in it's breezy vocals and guitars, which is only surpassed by the feeling of flying that "So Small" gives you in it's wistful flutes and violins.   Every song is so perfect, that I'm baffled by how this record went under the radar.   I mean just "You Are Far (Do You Exist?)" sounds like the missing song that would of made "There's Nothing Wrong with Love" perfect. -lonely panda-

Jim Guthrie, the namesake for Three Gut Records. Between touring the UK/US and Canada with the Juno nominated, Royal City, Islands and recording his own Juno nominated ditty (2004) he made wintery treks to London where he recorded with Andy Magoffin (2-Minute Miracles, Royal City, Constantines, Hidden Cameras) at the House of Miracles. JIM had some help this time around - Owen Pallet & Mike Olsen from the Hidden Cameras and Arcade fire added stunning string arrangements, Bry Webb from the Constantines played some banjo, Simon Osborne from Royal City & Evan Clark from Rockets Red Glare played bass and drums.

NOW MORE THAN EVER has broken dishes, string arrangements, sirens wailing in the rain soaked night, squeaky floors, empty bottles, and something wise & hopeful amongst it all. "Easy listening for hard times", says Jim. Yet another piece to a larger body of work that Jim has been building for the past 15 years with just about anything he can get his hands on.

"Sometimes words just sound like noise. Other times noise makes the prettiest sound and noise it gets around."

Guthrie's sparse, handmade works are lucid enough to save themselves from tedium and he shows an impressive sense of balance and structure, toying with the tension of pairing raw, un-tempered sounds with proficient song writing.
PITCHFORK

Don't be thrown by the twisted glitch-scape intro, as Morning Noon Night is more in keeping with the awry bedroom folk of Guthrie's A Thousand Songs debut than the abstract, playstation-generated compositions he's also know or. The Royal City recluse has crafted an unsettling, enigmatic follow-up set deep in the wee hours. and he saves his best for last: 1901 is Guthrie's most engaging effort to date. To hell with your bedtime. Guthrie's damaged, angelic, late-night confessionals are worth staying up for.
FOUR STARS_EYE WEEKLY

file next to: JIM O'ROURKE, TORTOISE, RAINER MARIA, BADLY DRAWN BOY, SILVER JEWS, PAVEMENT, ROYAL CITY, PINBACK, GRANDADDY, HIGH LLAMAS, FLAMING LIPS, THE SEA & CAKE, BECK, BEATLES, GASTR DEL SOL.

Toronto's Jim Guthrie, founding member of the lo-fi country-indie-rockers Royal City, has been releasing solo records on his own label (Three Gut) for three years now with a maturation process in his songwriting that is noticeably growing with each new offering. That's not to take anything away from previous efforts, as they both have numerous endearing qualities, but with his latest release, Now, More Than Ever, Guthrie has moved closer from his four-track and bedroom studio to fully realizing his potential as one of Canada's, and music in general's, brightest songsmiths of the future.

Recorded by the celebrated Andy Magoffin (Constantines, The Hidden Cameras, Two Minute Miracles), Now, More Than Ever mixes dreamy pop principles with tender, orchestrated lullabies that tingle and charm the listener like a soft kiss on the back of the neck. The anxious string-laden intro on the album's opening number, "Problem With Solutions", hooks you immediately--the calling card for any instant classic, within the first twenty seconds of the record you have already resigned yourself to listening to the whole thing.

Now, More Than Ever is not as fatalistically sad as Beck's Sea Change, as disjointedly ambitious as Sufjan Steven's Michigan, and not as naively entertaining as Badly Drawn Boy's The Hour of Bewilderbeast, but rather it forges its own sweetly skewed identity made up of small portions of all the very best qualities of all of those albums combined. It's a record packed with lovely, elaborate pop songs, lush with pretense-free strings on every cut and buoyed by Guthrie's plaintive undertones and subtle strums. Put simply, this is what Jeff Tweedy's first solo record should sound like and that's no hyperbole; one of the absolute best of 2003.

BY SARAH LISS

EXCLAIM! 11th ANNIVERSARY SHOW with the JIM GUTHRIE BAND, TANGIERS, the CONSTANTINES and TRANS AM at the Phoenix, May 8. Tickets: $13. Attendance: 1,080. Rating: NNNN

The phoenix is one of my favourite venues in the city: it's gorgeous, there are enough island bars to avoid waiting more than five minutes, the space is massive and the sightlines decent. Plus, its prime location at Sherbourne and Wellesley makes for excellent COPS-worthy people-watching antics if you're stuck outside the club.There's only one glitch. For some reason, the cavernous acoustics in the concert hall make for a pitiful vocal mix. Get a musician like Jimmy Guthrie, with a resonant voice and sweet melodies, up on that stage and it's impossible to make out what he's crooning unless he bears down and yowls into the microphone.

In spite of the off acoustics, Guthrie and his nicely fleshed-out band (Hidden Cameras' Michael Olsen and Owen Pallett added an excellent electrified string section) did a fine job of filling the space with tweaked indie rockers off Guthrie's recent Morning Noon Night disc.

Although I was disappointed that Guthrie shied away from more heartbreaking, bitterweet ballads like 4am and his older Sexy Drummer, it was probably a smart move on his part. Anything under a dull roar was promptly swallowed up.

Raucous post-punk kids Tangiers growled loud enough to be heard above the din, although their set was a bit loose and marred by an annoying guitar strap glitch. Axeman Yuri Didrichsons took forever to find a new instrument, to the chagrin of the waste-case leather-jacket louts beside me, who heckled.

Any disappointment, though, was blown away by the Constantines' set. Watching the Three Gut champions tear through the most energetic rock star performance I've seen in the last six months (aided by tambourine cameos by Three Gut doyenne Tyler Clark Burke and Guthrie, among others), I was floored to realize they've been playing mostly the same material since their last album dropped. It's a testament to their dead-on songcraft that the tunes still sound novel. Plus, judging from a few preview songs (one twang-infused love song killed), their upcoming album stands to eclipse their 2001 debut.

The cool thing is that by the time stateside post-rock whiteboys Trans Am took the stage at around 12:30 am, the crowd of media types and eager indie kids here for Exclaim!'s birthday bash had already started to clear out. They didn't miss much; the filtered vocals, throbbing percussion and double synth/double bass switch shtick gets tired after a of couple of tracks.

You gotta love a show where local talent trumps bigger-ticket headliners.



In the few short years of their existence, Toronto's Three Gut Records have established themselves as Canada's premier independent label. Not only have they not put out a bad record, but they have yet to release a mediocre one. The critical praise is building up in piles around them and their signature acts are now hooking up with some of the premiere labels around the world (namely Sub Pop and Rough Trade) for broader distribution.

A big part of Three Gut's surge to the top is the work of Jim Guthrie, best known for his work in the shambling Royal City. Though he plays sideman to Aaron Riches in that outfit, Guthrie is a fine writer and performer in his own right as he proves with "Morning Noon Night", his sophomore solo outing.

The fragmented songwriting that you'd expect from Guthrie is here in force, but what may surprise some is the prevalence of programming throughout the record. Guthrie built these songs - get this - around programmed tracks he put together on an old Playstation console.

The basic programming moves from glitchy to surprisingly smooth and organic. Meanwhile, Guthrie lays guitar and vocal tracks over top, with friends from the local scene adding touches of strings, choir vocals, and keys. Guthrie's understated blend of pure pop with experimentalism calls to mind the work of Sufjan Stevens in its ability to challenge the listener while also providing an immediate payoff.

Reviewed By Chris Brown Posted 02/19/2003

Vitrine du disque - Luxuriante, la pop de Jim Guthrie

David Cantin Édition du samedi 28 et du dimanche 29 décembre 2002

Titre VO : MORNING NOON NIGHT

Description : Jim Guthrie - (Three Gut Records - Outside)

À quoi rêve ce personnage masculin sur la pochette du dernier disque de Jim Guthrie? Dans sa bulle, on l'imagine en train de réfléchir à une pop luxuriante qui puiserait son inspiration quelque part entre les règles prescrites de l'indie-rock et l'électro artisanale. Sur Morning Noon Night, le guitariste de Royal City met en pratique un art lo-fi où la console Playstation et le programme MTV Music Generator sont devenus des outils indispensables. Tel un puzzle à résoudre, les nouvelles chansons du Torontois intriguent grâce à une légèreté qui met à l'épreuve la pertinence du propos. Entre humeurs et confidences, Guthrie invente de courtes pièces aux arrangements analogiques dans le but d'édifier un psychédélisme moderne plutôt espiègle. Avec des extraits tels Houndz Of Love et Trouble, cette musique laisse des traces radieuses. Au fil de 3am, il chante, entre deux accords : «Somewhere a love is lost / A love is won / Knowing it's far / From that / Are you having fun ?» Le ton enchante, sans toutefois verser dans l'expérimentation coriace. Ce deuxième album solo prouve que Guthrie a encore bien des choses à dire parallèlement au futur de Royal City. Une sorte de pendant anglophone au Petit cosmonaute de Jérôme Minière.



"WE acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Music Fund for this project."

Every time I read that acknowledgement, I shake my head. I just can't get past the fact that Canada actually gives grants to indie musicians. You'd never hear of such a thing in the States. In fact, we have it so backward that we're putting billions of dollars into destroying things, rather than creating something that would, quite possibly, make the world a slightly better place. But Canada has the right idea. Instead of defending a bogus macho image of a nation as bully, they opt for a better quality of living, which apparently includes good music.

Jim Guthrie, a Toronto native, is one such musician who has created a masterpiece for which the Canadian government signed the checks. Now, More Than Ever, the singer-songwriter's third album, shows just how well public money can be put to use. Lush, string-laden and chock full of vibrant instrumentation, Now is as gorgeous an album as an artist can possibly craft.

From the album opener "Problem with Solutions" to the closer "You Are Far (Do You Exist?)," Now, More Than Ever seamlessly transitions from graceful ballad to snappy ditty to triumphant anthem. Guthrie attempts twangy folk in "Problem With Solutions," offering insights like "sometimes noise makes the prettiest sounds," over some banjo plucks, courtesy of The Constantines' Bry Webb. The beginning of "All Gone" builds tension with a suspenseful cello intro, changing abruptly to a lovely chamber pop tune. "So Small" bounces along with grace and serenity, coupling a simple piano melody with some flute and clarinet harmonies.

One of Guthrie's strengths, aside from merely writing a great song, is his knack for stretching a four-minute pop song into a mini-epic with elaborate storylines. Take "Save It," for instance, with its main character, who "had a little plan/to build himself a ship/with a rusty old paint can/and an oscillating fan." The hero of the song later meets a garbage man who proclaims, believe in me/ I take the trash away." Quirky lines like these immediately bring to mind other inventive songwriters like Colin Meloy of The Decemberists and Robyn Hitchcock, an artist who both musicians most likely would list as one of their influences.

I don't know, exactly, how much money the crimson Maple Leaf gave Guthrie, but the fact that he had any assistance from his nation's lawmakers makes our northern border all that much more tempting. Funding is beside the point, however, because Jim Guthrie made a genius piece of music, and it would have been just as good had he decided to forgo a budget altogether and record it direct to minicassette.

Similar albums: Matt Pond PA - The Nature of Maps Eric Matthews - It's Heavy in Here The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts Jeff Terich 08.03.2004

http://indieworkshop.com/reviews/851

http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/music_review.asp?ID=488

On Jim Guthrie's third album (and first released in the U.S.), Now, More Than Ever, he begins with a traditional singer-songwriter approach. Joined by musicians from Hidden Cameras and the Constantines, Guthrie bases his music on accessible pop lines, but expands his sound by adding piano, banjo, ukele, and georgous strings, along with some odd noises on the instrumental title track. The orchestration and mixing work beautifully, filling out Guthrie's music without ever sounding muddled or distracting from his vocals. That's important -- the lyrics on this CD are smart without (for the most part) being too clever. He asks questions, and he accepts that answers won't always satisfy. With Now, More Than Ever, Guthrie takes a strong first step into the international market, and it looks like he's got the pop skills to stick around. — Justin Cober-Lake

Mon., Aug. 23, 9pm. $7. With Adam Arcuragi and Royalty + Bret Tobias. Tritone, 1508 South St. 215.545.0475. www.plainparade.com

Three albums in, Toronto songwriter (and Royal City player) Jim Guthrie has hit his stride with the aptly titled Now, More Than Ever. Following the hodgepodge A Thousand Songs and the budget inventiveness of Morning Noon Night (on which Guthrie utilized a PlayStation music-making game and cribbed a few Blonde Redhead lyrics), Ever is delicately dressed up with banjo, horns, strings and things courtesy of pals from the Hidden Cameras, Royal City and the Constantines. Guthrie's eccentric instincts take center stage, though, and the more direct delivery makes his lyrical ingenuity all the more compelling. The album's opening "Problem With Solutions" is an instant classic steeped in delightful turns of phrase like, "The longer the hesitation/ The smaller the celebration" and "Sometimes words just sound like noise/ Other times noise makes the prettiest sound/ And noise, it gets around/ I am lost and I am found." No wonder Tullycraft covered his early gem "Who Needs What" after discovering it in a mixtape trade. Guthrie is this year's Sufjan Stevens and then some. (D.W.)