Minotaurs - Discography (2010-2016)

After spending years keeping his true musical passion at bay, Nathan Lawr transcends indie rock for the Afrobeat-inspired funk grooves of The Thing. As a drummer for Royal City, Feist, Jim Guthrie and FemBots, among others, Lawr has exhibited remarkable feel, infusing the most seemingly straightforward white rock beats with swing and panache, as though he was all but dancing in his seat. His approach is partially due to his deep interest in the music of other cultures ― a United Nations of rhythm flows through Lawr's brain, even if much of his collaborative efforts and folk rock solo work haven't drawn from it. With the gifted hands and encouragement of producer and fellow drummer Don Kerr, Lawr has thrown caution to the wind, rebuilding his Minotaurs into an all-star jazz funk orchestra whose soaring horns, sunny guitar stabs and bouncy rhythms are meant to shake you up and get you down. Gone are the doe-eyed romantic platitudes of a charming rascal, as Lawr has instead tapped into his nuanced thoughts on socio-political causes and issues for subject matter. The result is a curiously dark set of songs, which are packaged in ass-shaking, instrumental cases, subtly parcelling out joy and rage in ambitious swoops. Engagingly provocative lyrically and stirring musically, The Thing is Lawr's uncompromising masterwork.

New Believers is the stellar new album from Toronto's Minotaurs. This, the band's sophomore album, hit the streets today.

The band's sound is large. They are a large collaborative collective with an improvisational feel, which immediately makes the brain skip to thoughts of Broken Social Scene. Of course, Broken Social Scene was never quite this jazzy or Afro-influenced.

New Believers is a record that both surrounds you and gets you moving. The album kicks off with the title track, a number which boasts a discombobulated ska rhythm punctuated by a vivid horns section. It's the danceable "Flashbulb", with a sultry seductive aura, that will truly inspire you to shake something.

The band never lets "Split The Atom" roll out of control as it balls up and gains momentum. The kinetic sound of "Make Some Noise" is all-encompassing. "Strange Fire" features the record's sharpest hook, as well as the tough-yet-cutesy sounds of Ohbijou's Casey Macija.

"Open The Doors" is a compelling and track, largely due to the vocal contributions of Sarah Harmer, as long as you don't pay too much attention to the lyrics. Those are the biggest flaw in the record. There's a naive and simplistic politics to the songs. Fortunately, the arrangements are strong enough to keep you from analyzing the words too closely.

Weird Waves, Nathan Lawr's third album under the Minotaurs moniker is self described as "apocalyptic-psychedelic afro-folk epic" and I dare you to find the lie. There are elements of everything you'd ever want to listen to in just the opening track ("Underground Age") alone and the album gets better and better from there.

The whole album sounds like sitting in on a epic jam session but the songs never get noodle-y or bogged down in technical musicianship that lacks soul. In fact, it's quite the opposite, the subtle but highly skilled playing hinging on a deep understanding of musical grooves only serves to propel the album and the listener forward.

The space aged opening of the title track invokes the past and the future at the same time. "Blind Luck" featuring Jonas Bonetta (Evening Hymns) is five and a half minutes of the best kind of sinister. "Gold Rush Lady" featuring Tamara Lindeman (Bruce Peninsula, The Weather Station) might be the most gentle of the handful of songs on Weird Waves and it's still a total jam and the funked up jazz influences on "Echoes" are all but guaranteed to brighten up your day and get your back end in motion.