Michael Cloud Duguay’s Succeeder is a powerful example of what’s possible when artists have the courage and conviction to follow their instincts and hearts.
What typically happens after I write a review for an album I have fallen in love with is that once the review is published, I stop listening to it as intently and frequently as I did beforehand. It’s an unintentional abandonment and not predicated on whether or not there’s another album awaiting review in the queue. The reason is that my task-oriented brain has conditioned itself to think that the primary purpose of listening to music over the last eighteen or so years has been to write about it. Writing about music has been a fun, rewarding pursuit, but it has cost me the pleasure and joy of discovering new music and new favourites, which is ironic because that sense of pleasure and joy from music is what spurred me to start writing about it in the first place.
Do you see my dilemma?
In all my years of writing about music, I have never felt the fear of letting go of an album as strongly as I have Michael Cloud Duguay’s Succeeder. There’s precedence here. Duguay’s last musical outing, 2023’s Saint Maybe, was beset with challenges and changes in plans from its inception to its eventual release, leading him to pull it from circulation, “frustrated with how distant it all felt from his initial intentions,” as he explains through a recent press release. From announcing it, though, Succeeder has felt more permanent; it is the first release—in both digital and physical formats—for Watch That Ends The Night Records, a label Duguay has launched alongside musician Andrew McKelvie, whose New Hermitage project is also on the label’s roster.
If Succeeder feels like a reset for Duguay personally, musically and thematically, it picks up where Saint Maybe left off. On that album, with trademark sincerity and frankness, Dugauy opened up about living with substance dependency and what it was like living on the razor’s edge of sobriety, searching for a sense of home and community. With Succeeder, Duguay’s search comes full circle, finding him back in his hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, after an extended period of nomadic existence. In 2020, with the world held hostage by the pandemic, Duguay set himself the task of writing a piece of music about every place he had ever lived, “anywhere he received mail or slept for more than 90 consecutive nights.” Collecting fifty-odd compositions, Succeeder succinctly looks specifically at songs connected to home and his hometown, both when he lived there and when he left it.
Recorded in Peterborough with a cast of local talent to flesh out Duguay’s compositions, Succeeder is a slow-burning record best experienced in one sitting. Most prominent among his collaborators is Cormac Culkeen, vocalist and one-half of the duo Joyful Joyful. Along with singing on almost every track on the album, Culkeen helped coordinate recording sessions for a nine-piece band at All Saints Anglican Church. Capturing the atmosphere and reverberations around such a reverent setting allows both a sense of space and sanctity to settle into the folky folds of opener “A Very Fine Start,” rootsy piano ballad “Port Hope,” and spritely, sing-along lead single “Someone Else’s Blues.”
As immersive as the first half of the album sounds and feels, Succeeder hits its stride mid-way through, with its sumptuous instrumental title track tumbling into an ecstatic collection of experimental pieces seamlessly flowing into each other. The tropical vibes of “Wonderwar Pt. I” hit like an ice-cold fruity cocktail served poolside by a bronzed bartender. Its sweetness dissolves into the intoxicating instrumental allure of its sister track, “Wonderwar Pt. II (Sacred not Sacred),” whose harmonica-filled hook will rewire neural pathways to ingrain itself on your psyche. As gorgeous as these two tracks are, they don’t prepare you for the emotional wallop “Crabtree” delivers upon arrival. Not only is “Crabtree” a high watermark on Succeeder, but it’s one of the finest pieces of music Duguay’s set down on record. Its swelling horns and gossamer melodies set the stage for the final and most unexpected installment in the second-half suite; “Sorcerority” is a somewhat startling left-turn into synthy prog that shatters any expectations you might have had about the album from the start. At 5:18, Succeeder’s second-longest and second-last track provides a platte-cleansing platform for poignant closer “He/Hymn” to bring the album musically and thematically home.
With Succeeder, Duguay says he set out to capture “the nocturnal sounds of coming of age in Peterborough: bar bands, rural fields, late-night kitchen parties, many voices joined in song,” a task he achieves in spades. Packed with the emotional sincerity he’s always embraced and peppered with contributions from friends who not only help him achieve his goal but hold him up and make him shine, Succeeder is a powerful example of what’s possible when artists have the courage and conviction to follow their instincts and hearts. In letting Succeeder go out into the world, Duguay has gifted listeners (and let’s be clear: by “listeners,” I mean me) an enduring treasure that’s not going away any time soon.
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