Dorothea Paas – Anything Can’t Happen
Telephone Explosion Records – 7 May 2021
So there I was on the morning of May 7th, feeling a tad emotional and contemplative having had my first vaccine jab the previous evening. On my daily breakfast routine scan of favoured music websites, I paid a visit to the impeccably curated Canadian Dominionated blog to find a new post concerning an album entitled Anything Can’t Happen by a Torontonian artist, Dorothea Paas, a name I’d not encountered before. Clicking on the Bandcamp link therein I noted the album was released that very day, and that among the contributors were Liam Cole of Little Kid, Paul Saulnier of indie duo PS I Love You and, be still my beating heart, Robin Dann and Thom Gill from Montréal’s wonderful Bernice – labelmates of Paas, and in my opinion one of the best and most inventive bands in Canada.
Curious if only for Dann’s and Gills’ presence, I pressed play on the new record and…oh my word.
At the beginning of each month my wife and I select a beloved artist or band and spend the next four weeks deeply revisiting their back catalogue in chronological release order; April was devoted to Low, and in terms of crystalline purity, timbre, and emotional heft, Paas’ beautiful voice draws comparison to the Duluth slowcore legends’ Mimi Parker. Think also of Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, Cowboy Junkies’ Margo Timmins and, notably – apparently a foundational influence – Hejira/Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter-era Joni Mitchell, and what we have here is one hell of a singer. That’s Paas’ arresting voice covered, but what of the lyrics and music?
In conversation with Dominionated’s Mackenzie Cameron, of her lyrics the seemingly somewhat self-effacing Paas said, “They’re not even lyrics, but a mass of thoughts and reflections.” In that respect, as if to serve as an introduction to that mindset and indicate the personal nature of what’s to follow throughout Anything Can’t Happen, the entire lyric of the 34-second opening track, One, is:
I’m not lonely now / Doing all the things I want to and working on my mind / Sorting through old thoughts / I go through them / One…
“My process for writing is sort of like a crystallization of the experiences that I have,” Paas continued in the same interview, and it does seem to these ears that whether consciously or not said experiences have led Paas to an abyssal dive into matters of the heart on this extraordinary album.
Concerning its sonic palette, belying the obvious sophistication of their composition, for want of a better description several tracks of the nine comprising Anything Can’t Happen possess a hypnotic, amorphous quality, as if they are occurring organically of their own accord, coaxing the musicians along to follow in their wake. In the best possible way, they sound cohesively improvised, somehow overseen and brought forth by a divinely inspired agent. That these songs generally lack any kind of traditional or standard verse-chorus-verse structure per se, the quieter material – while not ‘light’ – wafts by as if carried on a breeze, making for an intimate listening experience full of twists and turns that continue to thrill and delight with each successive airing. This exploratory approach is best illustrated on the impossibly gorgeous Container, the meandering Perfect Love, and the woozy, almost overwhelming closing double whammy of Frozen Window and Running Under My Life, both of which clock in at over six minutes. To thematically bookend the album, in its opening lines the latter repeats the lyric of One, picking up the story with …at a time, Oh one at a time (x2), then the book closes on Anything Can’t Happen with Paas’ final thoughts voiced over a tangle of tipsy synths.
As for the title track, there are no adequate superlatives. In the space of just 3 minutes and 11 seconds, Paas and company present a three-part composition that can only be described as epic. Kicking off as a conventional-sounding, jangly downtempo ballad, at the 50-second mark it collapses to morph into a distinctly Mitchell-esque pastoral passage before, bang on the two-minute mark, surging into a euphoric wall of spine-tingling harmonies to see the song home. It’s absolutely fantastic.
Presuming that, like myself, many reading may not have previously heard – or heard of – Paas, she grew up in a Christian household with a father who loved Steely Dan, The Beatles, and Stevie Wonder; sang in a children’s opera choir that promoted her now lifelong passion for harmonies and, when in high school, began writing and recording her own faith-based songs on a Fisher-Price® tape recorder. She’s been bopping around the Toronto indie scene for a decade or so, releasing a clutch of tapes and singles – which, while good, cannot prepare you for this official debut – and she’s worked both live and in the studio as a singer and/or guitarist with U.S. Girls, Jennifer Castle, Baby Cages, Marker Starling, and the Badge Époque Ensemble, whose Max Turnbull mixed this album alongside veteran studio technician, Steve Chahley.
Anything Can’t Happen started to come to life in 2016 and was recorded in Toronto and Hamilton during 2018 and 2019, so it’s been a lengthy process to get it out into the world for the self-confessed slow worker. As one until May 7th that was blissfully unaware of its existence and therefore evidently painstaking gestation, now I’m in love with this record I must say that every minute, dollar, and drop of sweat that went into it was extremely worthwhile.
Of how she assembles songs that usually begin with guitar noodling and a notebook of scribbled thoughts, Paas explained to Cameron that it’s an instinctual process, that she is “emotion-led,” and that, “If you make decisions from the heart, you’ll end up with something heartfelt…” – in which case in order to craft this stunning debut she made exactly the right decisions, and should consider the result a consummate triumph.
Anything Can’t Happen is available now on vinyl and as a digital download.
https://dorotheapaas.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Miriam Paas
Artwork: Vida Beyer