Jazz goes pop

Musician db Clifford. (Sony Music Canada)

Pop music is flush with pedestrian songwriters, so it’s bracing to hear a piano player who does more than simply rearrange the opening chords of Let It Be. While 27-year-old db Clifford is still a little green to stand shoulder to shoulder with aces like Randy Newman or Rufus Wainwright, the melodies and arrangements on Recyclable, Clifford’s debut album, reveal a musical intelligence that eludes contemporaries like John Mayer or Daniel Powter.

Recyclable features many moments of ingenuity. Give Me Another Day opens with big, blocky chords, working a neo-classical mode before softening (slightly) into a stormy ballad. One Track Mind commences with a finicky harpsichord melody underscored by trippy synth washes. The song teases the listener with a series of surging chords and buttery come-ons, but no apparent chorus — all in all, a pretty clever feint.

“It’s probably a bit of ego,” Clifford admits on the phone from his Toronto home. “I just think a part of me was shouting out, saying, ‘I want people to know that I’m not a 17-year-old kid who can play two chords on the guitar. I’ve got all this training and I know how to do this stuff, and I’m just going to do it.’”

Born in Bordeaux, France, Clifford started taking piano lessons at age five, fell under the spell of the Beatles, Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder, and at 18 enrolled at Bordeaux’s esteemed CIAM music school. While he has more schooling than is strictly required of your average pop star, Recyclable is neither bombastic nor self-indulgent.

“When you’re a musician, you’re always torn,” says Clifford, who answers to the name Daniel and speaks with a plummy British accent, acquired during a one-and-a-half-year stint in England when he was an adolescent. “One part of you wants to be the nerdy musician guy who can play all these fast notes and complicated chords, but then there’s the part of you that wants to play for hot chicks. That’s kind of a stereotype, but you come to a certain age when you have to decide what you want to do. I guess I always wanted to do both, so I guess I became a jazz musician who does pop.”

Clifford’s musical career began half a decade ago, when he and a childhood friend, William Cartwright, moved from Bordeaux to L.A. to pursue a recording career as a group called Supernova. Despite having signed a contract with Interscope Records, the deal never flowered into anything but uncertainty. Feeling no love in L.A., the pair took root in Victoria, where Cartwright’s brother owned a studio. Clifford found the seaside setting inspiring, but decided that musically, he needed to go it alone. Clifford and Cartwright split amicably, and the former hunkered down to record an album. (He moved to Toronto in September 2006.)

(Nettwerk Records/Sony Music Canada)

Clifford played every instrument on Recyclable, and didn’t let anyone in on the process until the songs were already recorded. Simple Things, Clifford’s confident first single, positions the 27-year-old singer at a junction between Ben Folds and Hall & Oates. While Simple Things is Clifford’s overworked attempt to emphasize positivity (“peace,” “love,” “chocolate cake,” “lemon pie”) in troubled times, the song has inspired a small squall of controversy over this lyric: “Power and religion / Are holding hands against all reason / Soon the politicians / Will be touching little boys with the Pope’s permission.”

“When I wrote it, I thought, bloody hell, should I really be writing this?” Clifford says. “It’s strong, in the sense that people can’t help but have an opinion about that line. A few people have had a problem with it – a few radio stations haven’t wanted to play it because they think it might offend their audience. It’s cheeky, that’s all.”

Clifford acknowledges Steely Dan as a formative influence. “I always enjoyed that intellectual, cliquey kind of vibe,” Clifford says. “The concept for [Recyclable] was to have songs that were funky, catchy and cute, and to have lyrics on top of that that were pointing the finger at stuff.”

His ambition is commendable, but he has neither the wit nor the storytelling flair of Donald Fagen. While Clifford is clearly concerned about world affairs, songs like All Alone and The World Is Coming to an End offer only trifling observations (“I’m watching TV / I’m scared of the things I’m seeing / It looks like the world’s gone upside down”). Not only are his lyrics dilettantish, but as a vocalist, Clifford seems to possess the lounge-act gene — too often, the word “baby” comes out “vay-veh.” Neither of these things should hurt his chances of success on adult contemporary radio — just look at John Mayer, who has made a tidy career out of smarmy sensitivity. But based on pure songwriting talent, Clifford is a far more inventive chap.

“There’s a lot of stuff on this album that I did because I like complicated stuff,” says Clifford, almost apologetically. “However, as it goes, maybe on my next album, I’ll be a little more pop and less contrived — not because I’m selling out, it’s because I’m growing up.”

db Clifford plays the Rivoli in Toronto on March 30.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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