Canada Needs You Volume 2

Chester Brown's 2006 graphic novel Louis Riel proved that not only could the comic strip medium retell history with a compelling narrative velocity, it could take the biography of a 19th Century Canadian revolutionary and present it in a way that was both informative and entertaining at the same time. Which brings us to Mike Ford's Canada Needs You, Volume II. The follow up to the former Moxy Früvous member's successful first volume of Canadian history set to original songs, the next installment in the series focuses on the many politicians and revolutionaries that populated and changed the Canadian landscape in the last hundred years. Armed with a dazzling musical diversity and a peerless command of Canadian history, Ford is a history professor, folk singer, vaudeville comedian and national bard, digging into Canadian lore and coming out with twelve numbers that tear through the last ten decades faster than Forrest Gump on speed. Ranging from the techno folk of "Tea Party" to the jitterbugging jazz of "Let's Mobilize!" to the psychedelic shimmy of "Expo '67," Ford matches musical styles to the time period that each number addresses. Elsewhere, the stock market crash of 1929 is retold in "Talkin' Ten Lost Years" which sounds like Woody Guthrie by way of Eddie Izzard ("They didn't see it comin'/You can't blame 'em, though/They didn't have text messaging in those days/Depression coming: lol"); "Joey Smallwood," which sounds like Johnny Cash and Ennio Morricone backed by the Sandpipers sings of the political folk hero who led Newfoundland into the Confederation ("He never slept...he had eyes on the back of his head"); "Open For Business" comes across as a swinging confluence of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and R.E.M.'s "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Later, the ballad "Maurice Richard" sings compellingly of the hockey great; "The Giants (Clayoquot Trials)" speaks of civil disobedience in the name of anti-logging and the gentle reggae of "I'm Gonna Roam Again" is positively rousing. If any of us had had the good fortune to have Ford as our history teacher and the Canada Needs You series as our textbook, we'd all have gotten A's.
-Alex Gree