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Canada is unique in that it’s artistic community receives a degree of support from it’s government that should be a model to the rest of the world, it is rare to find a Canadian CD that doesn’t carry a ‘with help from’ logo on its sleeve, but this is something of a double edged sword. Enviable In the sense of keeping an impecunious tradition afloat but less so in that the quality control, one step removed from commercial values, is weak. This is evidenced by the embarrassment of over earnest singer songwriters that are looking toward Europe for an audience. Thus it was that I approached Waldner’s ‘Found & Lost’ with an enthusiasm best described as stoical.

The opening track ‘Up against Goliath’ does nothing to allay my initial concerns, it is a bland re-working of the ‘angst in my pants’ school of song writing carried by a backing track that can at best be described as uninspired. What to do? I was raised in the ‘nothing good to say, say nothing’ school of manners and I can find nothing to recommend this track. But then, from the left field, something happens that changes the whole game

‘The wait’ is a beautifully engaged love song that just drips with the honeyed romance of promised love that John Sebastian explored during his ‘She is still a mystery’ period. This is pop music at its most intelligent and in the 2.56mins allotted I am seduced.

The game is raised yet further with ‘Too much of you’ in which we are treated to the first inclination that this album might be best filed under ‘Psychedelia’. Not the sonic boom variety that has assumed ownership of that genre over the last decade or so but a more subtle and refined variation. This is sonic seduction, informed but not dominated by the song’s narrative. This music would sit comfortably alongside Emitt Rhodes 1st album; perfect pop music for a Sunday morning. And then…

With ‘Found & Lost’ Waldner’s song craft is revealed in all it’s confident exuberance; any song that boasts the couplet ‘When Opportunity came knocking I had the headphones on, when opportunity came knocking I thought it was part of the song’ wins my vote and, added to the dense architecture of the keyboards and the crisply supple attack of the drums, you have a bone fide hit – a gem of a song.

‘Rude awakening’ is the album’s strongest track and the only one with a sense that this is a band as opposed to a solo album. A study in economic structure; it has it all, witty lyrics that fall tantalisingly short of sardonic, an arrangement to die for and the immediacy of a band that has finally been let of the leash, even the guitar solo left me wanting more. If ‘Too much of you’ displayed a ‘sonic seduction’, this song is a street corner ‘come on’, the stuff that fans are made of.

The album closer, ‘Wonderful Pain’ refers back to the orchestral triumphalism of Love’s ‘You set the scene’ filtered through a prism of demur ‘Englishness’ that belies the artists origins. I’m not sure that makes too much sense but neither am I sure that pop music is supposed to and that is what this album is, a great pop record marred only by the opening track. Highly recommended.

Tracklisting:

1. “Going Up Against Goliath”
2. “The Wait
3. “Too Much of You”
4. “Heaven Only Knows”
5. “Found & Lost”
6. “Rude Awakening”
7. “Undone”
8. “In Stone”
9. “Wilderness”
10. “This Wonderful Pain”

Review by Mike Cole

Waldner ‘Found & Lost’ Out May 9th on Blue Fleur Musik

Hear more from Waldner at myspace