Fine Canadian Forces

4. FINE CANADIAN FORCES

“Jessie’s Girl”

Conceptually, this is probably the least ambitious, though most accessible, of a quartet of covers that serve as a lure to a raft of fascinating original material written or co-written by Toronto multi-instrumentalist Jordan Fine. (The others, by the way, are Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love,” The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and “Log Driver’s Waltz” by late folkie Wade Hemsworth, but more familiar to most of us from a 1979 NFB cartoon short of the same name.) After you’ve listened to this recording online, click back one track and check out “Underfoot.” That should be enough to send you to the beginning and hold you till the end. (From Hebrew Lessons) - Toronto Star

Jordan Fine (primary member of the Fine Canadian Forces) advertises himself as a loop pedal specialist. It's a pursuit that's both a blessing and curse for this long-player; it enables one man to sound like a full band, but it's an approach that's founded on repetition.

Hebrew Lessons consists mostly of Fine's creations, though he injected a motley handful of covers to keep the mood light: a minimalist version of Steve Winwood's "Higher Love," a faithful recreation of Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl," and an almost-metal remake (desecration?) of "Log Driver's Waltz." Then there's "Volcano" (a Fine original) and its candidate for lyric of the year: "V-O-L-C-A-N-O yeah!" It's a wonder Hebrew Lessons doesn't occasionally fall apart under the weight of its nonchalance.

If there's any one thing holding the disc together, it's consistent imagery. Most of these songs exist in a wooded setting and bring to mind the earliest incarnation of Timber Timbre's live show, when the Toronto outfit was nothing but Taylor Kirk and his pedals.

On the whole, Hebrew Lessons' folky offerings alternate between hits and misses. Several of its lesser songs consist of little more than one sentence fragment repeated past the point of enjoyment. Fine is at his best when he has a story to tell. - ChartAttack

Jordan Fine's full-length release, Hebrew Lessons, might be a lesson of another sort: you have to make things match up. For example, over the three "acts" of this record, Fine takes us from minimal folk dirges and impeccable arrangements to some fuller experiments. There's an advance, but it's a slow build, striations of the earliest tracks readily visible near the end. The album switches somewhere, but never loses you. The beginning and end match up perfectly, which is why the vocals on this record are so strange ? they don't. Jordan Fine is a talented vocalist, but the music behind the crooning is so transcendent that the strength of one completely overshadows the other. From "Volcano" to a cover of Canadian classic "Log Driver's Waltz," his musical sense is fascinating, to the point of making his voice a distraction. If he could match them, we could replace comments of "gorgeous" with "Polaris." - Exclaim.ca