Record Review: Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day

By Daniel Greenwood
via Ragged Words
Jagjaguwar
Release Date: 09/03/2009
Ragged Rating: ***+ (3.5/5)
In a Ragged Word: Charming

Julie Doiron’s appearance on Lost Wisdom – Phil Elverum’s latest as Mount Eerie – is the perfect pre-cursor to Doiron’s I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day. Both records clock out at around half-an-hour and each exude bedroom-to-basement, lo-fi auras. Perhaps Lost Wisdom’s best moment is Doiron singing “Emptiness prevailed/emptiness in the house“, following on from Elverum mourning a double-crossing. I Can Wonder feels like an alternate ending to Lost Wisdom. It begins with ‘The Life of Dreams’, with Doiron grateful for the “good people all around me.” These snippets of good humour and thankfulness never feel ugly – never over-sincere or sickly.

In 2009, Noah Lennox and Animal Collective have made familial love the zeitgeist, but Julie Doiron has been doing this stuff for ages. And on the latest album of catalogue that stretches back over a decade, it’s not so much euphoric but ataractic and tranquil. On ‘Nice to Come Home’, Doiron describes coming home from the cold to turn on a lamp and play guitar, only to think of a distant loved one who’s probably doing the same: “I can wonder what you did with your day/I’d like to tell you ‘bout mine but I’ll wait.” I Can Wonder isn’t simply a woolgatherer’s exercise, ‘Consolation Prize’ and ‘Spill Yer Lungs’ are mini-rockers with chugging distorted bass and guitars working wonderfully with Doiron’s layered vocal harmonies.

Doiron’s finest trait is her down-to-earth-ness, and it’s this aspect of her records that seems most affecting. Songs like ‘Nice to Come Home’ won’t invade your headspace immediately, but this is the kind of music that accompanies you away from a stereo or a computer, from headphones or even live performance. Doiron’s subtle and self-deprecating anxiety smiles at you from the fringes of your own solitude. Perhaps that’s what records like I Can Wonder and Lost Wisdom are for: music to listen to on your own, your right to be selfish. It’s difficult to pull-off a personal record, but Doiron has learnt the trick, the kind of skill she seems to have built-in: “I was forgotten, yeah I was forgotten” the singer claims on ‘Loves of the World’. This record isn’t for everyone but, like Lost Wisdom, it’s just for you.