Dan Bryk: Lover's Leap

Behind the disk in the Lover's Leap jewel case is a great photo of a despondent Dan Bryk leaning, a la Charlie Brown, on a chain-link fence with his forehead in his hand. Over his shoulder, engraved above a doorway, is the word "Girls."

On the back cover of the album is the same guy, looking at the camera from behind his hair. He's almost smirking, and whether accidentally or not, he is casually giving us the finger. The best parts of this album share the tone and the theme of these two photos.

Piano-playing Randy Newman fan Dan Bryk enfuses his best songs with this bitter openness, or engaging sadness; this is a guy who wants you to know him but is prepared for you to blow him off. This is a guy who starts off the third track, "She Doesn't Mean a Thing to Me Tonight," with a brutally blown note, and doesn't rewind. He called his first album Dan Bryk, Asshole. This is a person with a certain attitude. He is totally fucking around, and he means it all seriously. Plenty of his songs fall into the Funny and Sad category, like "I Love You Goodbye" and "And Now Our Love Is Dead."

Dan Bryk deftly treads on some dangerous - no, unexplored - ground here. "Fingers" sadly and painfully recounts sexual abuse by a hero, and dives into a revenge fantasy for which all abused children will be grateful. "Mark Turmell V2.0" is an ode to a childhood programming hero, which could be a Very First. And the brilliant "BBW (Chunky Girl)" is a lovesong from an overweight guy to his overweight girl, which should be famous but will never be played on the radio.

	And when I'm ashamed of my weight
	Flirting with pity and self-hate
	She plants a kiss upon my lips 
	And slips her hands along my hips
	And when I'm afraid for my health
	(Mom says I'm slowly killing myself)
	My love holds tight, she won't say no
	And tells my Mom just where to go...
	

The album's best song, however, is the extended metaphor Spadina Expressway. For those of you not in Toronto, the Spadina Expressway was a planned and abandoned highway once meant to run through the centre of town, and Bryk harnesses it beautifully as a kindred soul:

	Spadina Expressway - Can I catch a ride?
	You ain't going nowhere, and neither am I 
	You fell apart right at the centre
	Old and hollow; sounds awfully familiar
	You hang suspended, up in the air
	They build around you like you weren't even there
	Now tell me: Is that fair? Is that fair? 

I was going to try to propose some Atwood-ish theory here, about Canadians and the lack of sunlight and the depressed humour we tend to pull off pretty well. But maybe it's not a Canadian thing; maybe it's just an honest persons thing. Or maybe it's the time of man. Either way, Bryk nails some sentiments here that needed nailing, and I am grateful to him. Lover's Leap is a fine album for people like us. (Assholes.)

 

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Dan Bryk: Lover's Leap. Teenage USA Recordings/Scratchie Records.
Review by jep clayton. Bad MonkeyX, 2nd issue, March 2001.

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