When Michael Rault first emerged out of Edmonton, Alberta five years ago, he resembled the sort of matinee-idol rock star his country doesn’t really produce anymore, with a stylish, Ray-Ban-wrapped look and preference for retro album-cover design that blatantly advertised his allegiance to early rock ‘n’ roll pioneers like Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers. His initial ascent was guided through established industry channels by Pirates Blend, the Sony Canada-affiliated imprint founded by reggae-pop hitmakers Bedouin Soundclash (aka the proto-Magic! of the mid-2000s). But since relocating to Toronto in 2012, Rault has been acting more like the high-school heartthrob with straight-A grades and football-scholarship potential who ditched class to drop acid with the freaks beneath the bleachers.
After sharing bills and making friends with local eccentrics like Slim Twig, U.S. Girls, Actual Water, and Young Guv, it's probably no coincidence that Rault’s hair has gotten longer and greasier, his clothes more torn, and his face more razor-resistant. But most importantly, his traditionalism has been corrupted into wonderfully woozy, glitter-speckled power pop. Rault’s recently Tuffened-up sound makes him a natural fit on the roster of California’s Burger Records, a veritable Disneyland for retro-gazing rough-cat rockers. While Living Daylight was initially released last year in Canada on Pirates Blend in seven-song EP form, this enlarged 10-song version is being promoted by Burger as Rault’s proper introduction to the world. (His current website noticeably downplays his earlier discography.)
Rault belongs to a growing legion of modern-day garage-spawned rockers—The Smith Westerns and Foxygen among them—who seem less interested in mining the standard British Invasion/Nuggets/CBGB continuum than the phenomena that sprung up between those movements: bubblegum, glam, Rundgrenian soft-rock, solo-Beatle solipsism. Recorded partially at home and in an Edmonton studio with Rault’s cousin Renny Wilson, Living Daylight strikes a playfully wobbly balance between in-the-room rawness and cerebral strangeness. And when Rault pounces on the fuzz pedal—like on the T. Rex boogie of “Real Love (Yeah)” or the Plastic Ono blues of “Hiding From a Heartache”—the ensuing distortion feels less decorative than rhythmic, like the subliminal rev of a car motor. Rault’s simple lyrics sound as if they belong to a more innocent era, but while he may stick to tried ‘n’ true themes of looking for love and/or losing it, he’s as adept at conveying the hormonal frustration of the former (the taut, soul-stompin’ “All Alone (On My Own)”) as the crestfallen pathos of the latter (the lush, candlelit ballad “Lovers Lie”).
The three additional tracks on this new edition are dropped right into the middle of the original tracklisting, and they reinforce the perception that the record’s strongest songs are still its original ones. The expanded format is more of an opportunity for Rault to retrofit some of his back catalogue with his new sound: “I Wanna Love You” toughens up a sock-hop romp from Rault’s 2010 debut Ma-Me-O, while the sneering "Suckcess" is thrust into a “Jeepster” drag race. But Rault’s experimentation never tips over into excess: with songs kept to a tight three-minute average, and the singer’s winsome way with melody anchoring each, Living Daylight shows that it’ll take more than unkempt hair and production trickery to obscure Rault’s essential charms.
