Here is a proposal as satisfying as it is singular: Are You Here to Help?, the first album by a Montreal trio formed by Aaron Dolman on drums and Sarah Rossy and Eugénie Jobin on vocals. Two voices, percussion, a touch of vibraphone (courtesy of Jobin), that’s all, and a lot at the same time. Treasures of imagination that arise from constraint, while the famous playing of Dolman – composer of the pieces, except for this cover by Joni Mitchell – serves as a percussive backdrop for performers playing at inventing captivating and dynamic harmonies. The album opens with two sublime jazz songs (Two Boats and the Lighthouse Keeper, Giving (With)) before taking a crossroads in the direction of contemporary music, Jobin and Rossy croaking mysteriously on The Mountain Sighs a Heavy Breathstudying their own vocal timbres over the seven languid minutes ofApart. Never hermetic, the trio has this gift of pulling our ears even in the most meticulously studied passages of their complex, but enchanting music.
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