Monique Barry and the surreal hierarchy of "Coyote"

 

"I can't tell if I'm insatiable or just starved all the time"

I remember living in Laguna Niguel, California, and for one particular month I would routinely see coyotes sauntering down my neighborhood as I would get into my car to go to work. Their heads down low as if doing so would make them less noticeable as they would not even hesitate moving slowly past me. They always look sad to me like strays, like interlopers even though they were not. We were. As suburbia encroached on the South Orange County hills and foothills they had no other place to find rodents, fruits or berries to consume so they became scavengers. I guess that is why they looked so sad.

I thought of them as I listened to "Coyote", an askew piece of dream pop by indie singer-songwriter Monique Barry based in Canada and from her upcoming album HAAK. I love the kind of scratchy broken beginning that feel like different passages of time converging. When Barry's voice comes in, it is spoken word, not singing. A surprise, a pleasant one for me, which in and of itself, is surprising. Sometimes I want to run from spoken word pieces as often times I find it less than rewarding as it is oftentimes used to vent rage. While that is commendable (venting rage that is) it is hard to do well. Here Barry's spoken word is sublime, feels dreamy, feels surreal. The music supports it well and when that music shifts, after a single piano note punctuation, and soars, Barry is full voiced singing and you feel like you are floating too. There is something about this woman's voice, presence, reverent in her words that cast tingling sensations on my skin. Different, surreal, artistically vague yet deep in it's layers of sounds and of meaning, "to nature, it's our nature".

Joining Monique on “Coyote” are some of her most trusted and vibrant collaborators: Kevin Lacroix on electric guitar; Alisdair Jones on bass guitar and synth bass; Michael Wojewoda on drums and vocals; and Emma Campbell, also on vocals. As well as giving us the lead voicework, Monique also plays Native Instruments Noire piano with particle engine.

-Robb Donker Curtius

Monique Barry · Coyote

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One of the great pioneers of the independent music scene, singer-songwriter Monique Barry is an intriguing creative contradiction: she has been hailed for her “delicious sounds and shadows” (Queens Journal) that place her in her own category yet she has been praised as being ‘so many artists rolled into one” (Yummy Mummy). She writes and performs without imitation, striking musical and emotional notes from the past, present, and future while staying defiantly in the now–which makes her essentially unsolvable, and all the better for it. Classically trained in voice and piano, and keenly interested in the power of pop songwriting, Monique has forged a style that marries the everyday to the otherworldly, resulting in musical dreamscapes teeming with innovations, oddities, emotional echoes, and the many stops and starts along the human journey. Her aesthetic range is captured on a quartet of CD’s: the supernaturally minimalist campus favorite moody (1998); Tripping (2003), which brings together an ambitious mix of folk, lounge, rock, classical, ambient soundscaping, and techno pop; the haunting Carbon (2009), which saw Monique hitting new levels of musical expression; and Wake (2013), a bewitchingly vivid musical mosaic. Monique is presently working on her 5th album, HAAK being released single by single in order of album appearance. She has released seven songs to date, Open Road, Freedom and High As a Kite, New Eyes, Dance, Gone + Eagles and Coyote. A well-recognized figure on Toronto’s club scene, she has performed at the Fresh Wednesdays at Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto Jazz Festival, the Gabriola Island Dancing Man Folk Festival, Winterfolk, May Works, and at numerous Ontario and Quebec dates with Indigo Books. She was the founder, impresario, and host of The Songwriters Expo, a regular performance event celebrating the talents of Canadian songwriters for ten years. Always broadening her horizons, Monique recently scored Jonah Greisman’s film Recital (2016). She also collaborated with Alex Mine in scoring the Colin Carter documentary Fight for the Planet (2009) and was a guest producer on the Arlene Bishop CD Twenty Four is Twelve Twice or Twenty Four (2011). She teaches music as well, and has her own line of skin care products, Aunt Bird’s All-Natural Skin Care.

Monique Barry, Shoegaze / Dream Pop, Lo-fi Rock, Indietronica, INDIE ROCK, indie pop, "Coyote", album HAAK, spoken word, dreamy vocals, surreal atmospheres,