Marin Patenaude - Sex & Dying (2023)

On her last album, 2020’s excellent Sight Unseen, Vancouver’s Marin Patenaude explored topics as diverse as building a home and genetically modified food, but – as its title clearly telegraphs – on Sex & Dying, she gets right into the nitty-gritty essence of human existence, and from an intensely personal perspective.

In order to do so lucidly, Marin has divided the project into distinct halves, but of the album as a whole, she says, “This is an attempt to normalize talking about these basics of life that, as of late, have taken up a lot of space,” and that it is “a mid-life reflection of cut-throat honesty.” Of the opening section, she continues, “The first half of this album looks at my relationship with sex and the healing redefining of it – an unexpected and fascinating journey.”

Concerning the second part, Marin says, “I am not afraid of death or dying, but still deeply affected by loss. I miss my friends. Every day I fear the news of another. Where I live, drug users are in serious danger. There is a powerful evil in Fentanyl and the poisonous drug epidemic, and we need to keep talking about it for something to change. For now, I want to honour these precious lives with song, and provide support for those who are grieving.”

As one might expect, with such subject matter, this album bears a particular mood. As an interlinked two-part project, it would be reasonable to think it could present a dedicated atmosphere for each half, but as it begins, so it continues throughout. It’s reflective, dreamlike, and melancholy, with minor chord songs all the way. Lyrically, it’s poetic and rooted in memories and reminiscences from the more contemplative range of the emotional spectrum. With such intimate material about or directed at persons unknown, when listening, I cannot help but feel at once like a voyeur, an eavesdropper, and – having myself lost two acquaintances to the opioid crisis – a fellow mourner. That said, it’s also rewarding to step back, detach from the emotions, and simply admire the beautiful 42-minute sonic tapestry Marin and her stellar band have crafted (largely live off the floor), against which their performances and her wonderful vocals are set.

As has become evident across her three solo albums to date, if there’s one thing Marin does brilliantly, it’s the composition of classy, impassioned material. This high level of songwriting is unquestionably maintained on this new opus, but it’s certainly a different, more restrained affair than Sight Unseen. I guess sex and death will do that to a writer.

Played by Marin (as are all keyboards here), a Wurlitzer electric piano picks out the motif driving the opening title track, which bears the album’s mission statement in the pensive chorus:

I give it all for love and living / But it’s all just sex and dying

At the three-minute mark, a stunning guitar solo takes flight to take the track home, although I cannot be sure who’s responsible for it: Marin employs the services of two fabulous string-benders in regular contributor Cole Schmidt (Pugs & Crows / Copilots / Sick Boss), and Paul Rigby (Neko Case / Carolyn Mark / Matt Andersen), who also co-produced Sex & Dying alongside Marin.

The mood thus established, Right from the Start injects a little sexual tension to proceedings in the subtlest way, right from the sultrily conveyed opening verse –

Still out of reach / Sitting right next to you / Thoughts of you and me / Oh, the pretty things we could do

The band, completed by bassist Pete Froze and drummer/album mixer John Raham (The Be Good Tanyas / Old Man Luedecke), are joined here by Matt Kelly (City & Colour / Chris Stapleton / The Deep Dark Woods), whose silky pedal steel glides all over the song. Of this track, Marin states that, alas, it “tells of a love at first sight that won’t amount to anything; a love that will remain a mystery.”

The first two singles trailing Sex & Dying were both released on November 17th, one being Right from the Start and the other, Nameless. A country-rock epic, it’s veiled in mysterious imagery that, for some reason, puts me in mind of Bobbie Gentry – though more in atmosphere than sound. Enigmatically, and presumably alluding to a form of catharsis, Marin says that the writing, recording, and performing of this song “felt much like buying a box of old plates and smashing them in the backyard,” and that “it explores decades and phases, carrying a name that few pronounce correctly, and at times I really didn’t like.”

Stylistically, at least to these ears, it’s Anaïs Mitchell and Kate Bush flavouring the following Out of the Woods. Led by Marin’s strident piano, it’s a beautiful track that shuffles languidly along, bedded on Raham’s delicate percussion. Next up, at the album’s midpoint, comes the breathtaking High Teeth and Nicotine. A majestic, funereal piano ballad, it’s graced by a sublime, bereft vocal and heavy lyrics –

Overindulgence in everything / You follow death’s advices / Taking all the fatal chances / Till it catches consequences

You will glean that we are now into the second part of Sex & Dying, and it’s the album’s third single that takes the thematic baton, the title alone indicating what to expect. While Fentanyl Waltz is hardly easy listening in terms of its cogent lyrical content, it is nevertheless performed with appropriate sensitivity by the band as Marin delivers verses such as this –

You hit hard and heavy, just enough / To warrant your weaponry in the forces of crime / You weed out the weak ones in the hardest of years / Nobody’s safe, not even you

This is not merely lip service paid by a casual observer to a generic situation: as Marin says of this haunting piece, “My city is grieving, and it’s not the only one. The poisonous drug epidemic has stolen countless lives and left holes in the hearts of almost every person I know. I’ve watched a mother lose her daughter; an unfathomable pain. I’ve lost beautiful people closest to me.”

On June 25th, 1988, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ founding guitarist, Hillel Slovak, died of a heroin overdose. Continuing the thread of Marin’s personal loss to the tragedy of opioid addiction, she has chosen to cover the band’s Taste the Pain, from their 1989 album, Mother’s Milk, and written for Slovak by Anthony Kiedis he was desperately battling addiction himself. Marin’s version is a radical reinvention, elegant and dignified, performed with gravitas by this wonderful group of musicians. It’s totally de-funked, stripped right back to a psych-tinged folk arrangement in keeping with the material that surrounds it, and if anything, considerably more suited to the lyrics than the raucous original. Dare I say that she has claimed it as her own?

Despite its forbidding title, Reaper is a pretty and gentle song that seems to echo Marin’s aforementioned full acceptance of her own death, when it eventually comes, in the profound final verse:

I think you’re here / You’re here to kill me / I think you’re here / To take me away / Is it my time now / For me to be leaving / Still believing in what comes / From yesterday

Again featuring Kelly’s glistening pedal steel, the beautiful Avalanche brings the curtain down on this exquisite collection.

From some of what I’ve written here, I’m sure that, before hearing it, an assumption about the directly titled Sex & Dying is that it’s a depressing, morbid, or even self-indulgent listen. Far from it. Recorded at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver in the Spring of 2022, it’s a gorgeous offering that, simply stated, is, as Marin intended, being a contemplation in song on these ‘basics of life.’ Everyone that is, has ever been, and ever will be is a product of sex, and, as dear George Harrison phrased it, all things must pass. It’s as simple as that. So, please don’t be intimidated by the subject matter, or shy away from this album. Rather, revel in its luxuriant sonics, acknowledge its poetry and, as you listen – just as Marin Patenaude has – maybe ponder what it is to be human.