By: Tyler Wade
Imagine a beautiful night with a star-speckled sky and you’re watching the water roll in on the beach. You’re sitting, in perfect relaxation, by a comforting fire. It’s not cold enough to wear a sweater but you put one on because a cool wind is breezing through the autumn leaves. In this moment of ideal Canadiana, what music sets the mood just right for you? Maybe Neil Young comes to mind and probably “Harvest Moon,” or maybe Gordon Lightfoot, Hayden or The Tragically Hip. How about Craig Cardiff?
A 10-year veteran of the indie music scene throughout Canada, Craig is a traveling troubadour playing shows across the country, in small towns, big cities, neighbourhood pubs and even your living room. My lazy man reviewer comparison will yield Iron & Wine and Damien Rice. If one were to look up indie in the dictionary, before it was redefined into a genre or style, before it was hipster territory, you would find this humble yet outspoken man with an impressive word-of-mouth following.

Craig has 11 albums to date, including some self-produced and several live albums recorded at favourite venues such as The Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, QC, Ginger’s in Halifax and The Bombshelter in Waterloo. His new album, Goodnight (Go Home) has been garnering attention even before its release for his soft folk, lush tones, and his sincere and subversive lyrics. The title track is a happy, melodic tune with a dancing piano filling in the background behind Craig’s soft voice and a simple drum beat. It builds until its climax near the end when a chorus of people sings with him, “Goodnight, go home. There is nothing more to see.” Yet there is still a lot to see here.

He’s a singer/songwriter, left-leaning political activist and a philanthropist. He wrote the album track “Smallest Wingless” for a charity that takes pictures of premature babies with their parents as their first and last memories (check out www.nowilaymedowntosleep.com). It’s a sad song with a slow and spotted piano, beautiful harmonization on the vocals and a deep, dark and smooth cello to round out the track.

He’s also a husband and a father and when his daughter started asking questions about death and afterlife Craig wrote the song, “I met God.” A deep bass line and gentle drum beat back the piano and his heartbreaking voice. The lyrics weave a hypothetical story of meeting God and asking to swap places and saying he would stop Kurt Cobain from his suicide and God will have a good time, meeting people, having some drinks and even find a lover. It’s an interesting song from an artist “cynically undecided” on his religious views.

Out of concern for the environment, he is selling his new album as a download at shows for anyone bringing a USB key. He is conscious of the stats that 30 billion CDs and DVDs are manufactured every year, while millions of unwanted discs end up in landfill sites every month. Craig understands fans may have a collection and want the jewel case format so it’s still available, the choice is yours.

Craig sells his music on his own website, through Itunes, CDBaby and Maple Music. If you contact him he will play an intimate show for you and your friends in your living room because he connects to his audience better this way. He’s played a wide variety of venues and has great stories of the less than stellar ones. He is honest and sincere; he is not signed to a major label. This is indie.

The people involved in Goodnight (Go Home) read like a laundry list of other great people on the indie scene. The album was produced by Les Cooper (Jill Barber, Andy Stochansky) with the production assistance/musicianship of Paul Mathew (Hidden Cameras) and accompaniment of Mike Olsen (K-OS, Arcade Fire), Joel Stouffer (Dragonette, Jason Collette), Lisa MacIsaac (Mad Violet), Kieran Adams (Sarah Harmer), and Rose Cousins as well as a host of other talented musicians.

Goodnight (Go Home) is a studio album with rich harmonies and a smooth backing band, rare to Cardiff’s typical approach of him and a guitar. He starts his 60+ city tour through Canada and the US on October 11th and lands at Hugh’s room in Toronto on the 12th. His new album should be available then, however you want to take it home with you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 11:29 pm.