David Usher: Strange Bird In A Strange Land

05/01/07 12:30pm

by Shannon Whibbs (CHARTattack)

In creating his fourth solo album, Strange Birds, David Usher made an unusual choice that took advantage of his relative anonymity in his adopted home of New York City. He booked a series of small, intimate club gigs to test-drive the new material — something he could never do in Canada, where he routinely sells out large venues to his well-established and adoring fanbase, who would probably cheer if he decided to sing the dictionary from A to Z.

Usher's band travelled down from Toronto and played gigs in bars such as Piano's and the Rockwood Music Hall on NYC's lower east side. The irony is that the basis behind this approach was that Usher intended to make a quiet, acoustic record and Strange Birds ended up being anything but that.

"We'd rehearse some songs and go play and over the process the whole thing progressed from being this more stripped-down thing to a rock record or a rock-band formation," Usher says of the process that shaped the album. "And so we worked all the songs live and sort of refined them from there."

These live experiences directly contributed to the outcome of Strange Birds. The combination of this musical workshopping mixed with Usher's lyrical inspiration being bolstered by his observations and experiences drawn from his life in New York resulted in a hugely prolific period of writing and creating. He claims to have enough songs left over to fill a second album.

Usher was in a period of his career where he felt he needed an extra challenge. That additional push that could take him to an uncertain place where things could go well or poorly, which is impressive considering he's successful enough to probably get away with a certain degree of complacency. But he chose to step out of the safe place to see what might happen.

"It's very refreshing to be playing right in front of people, because a lot of the songs were new," Usher says of the formative small live shows. "There's always the element of being out on a ledge and you're really not sure how it's going to work out, which I find frightening, but sort of the point.

"I love playing. The new songs, they either crash or they succeed and you really know immediately if things are connecting. But sometimes you play a song and it's so new, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, depending on the night, and how you're playing them as well."

As a result, some of the songs either changed direction entirely or were dropped from the album. As for the extra songs that didn't make the final cut, Usher plans to incorporate them into his live sets during his Canadian tour and beyond.

Strange Birds is a powerful record. The songs sound like David Usher songs, no doubt, but one can't help but feel that he's pushing beyond the usual tropes he employs. Some of the tracks are delicately crafted, but more often than not, the sounds are big and transcendent and seem to reflect Usher's fascination with the world around him and the characters who inhabit it.

As mentioned before, much of his lyrical inspiration was drawn from his experiences living on the lower east side of New York City. The people there are the "strange bird" he refers to. The title itself is a reference to a lyric in "Life Of Bees."

"I guess it's a reflection of the songs, but it's a reflection of people, too," Usher says, when asked about the choice of album title. "We're all these little creatures who are sort of muddling through the best way we can. It's funny how you'd think that the world would be embracing the diversity of it all and we would be a bit more supportive of each other because we're in the same boat, but it doesn't seem to be that way, does it?"

Living in the U.S. has given Usher a broader picture of the differences between Canada and his adopted home. Things like non-socialized healthcare.

"It really is enlightening to go to the doctor and it's like, 'Holy fuck, I can't believe this!'" Usher says incredulously.

"There's a different energy," he says of the American political climate compared to that of Canada. "It's really interesting, as well at the different attitude coming up toward Canada now. I think before the Iraq War and 9/11 and all those things, Canada was very much seen in many ways, by Americans as a backwater. But now people have started seeing Canada as socially enlightened, I think. And people with a social conscience are looking to Canada and saying, 'They have some interesting ideas up there.' Healthcare and gay marriage and gun control. We got all the good stuff. Legalization of drugs..."

Despite this utopian view of Canada, Usher seems settled in his New York life of writing songs and raising his family. Now he's going out on the road to let his strange birds fly and reap the rewards of the risks he took as he moves further away from his early days as a band guy to develop more fully as a solo artist.