Uh Oh
Scan the tracklist for Patrick Watson’s ninth studio album, and it appears to be a typical duets record, with the Montreal indie icon appearing alongside an array of female voices. But in this case, the casting wasn’t so much a novelty as a necessity. In 2023, Watson ruptured a vocal cord and completely lost his ability to speak and sing—and, at the time, the damage appeared to be permanent. As a Band-Aid solution, he outsourced the songs he was working on to a dream-team roster of vocalists that runs the gamut from famous Canadian chanteuses (Charlotte Cardin) to European Instagram discoveries (Parisian singer Solann). However, even after his voice miraculously returned to normal, he was too enamored with the concept to not see it through. Given his steady side hustle as a film composer, Watson has always brought a cinematic sensibility to his records, and on *Uh Oh*, that quality is amplified by the presence of guest singers who transform each song into a magic-realist vignette: “House on Fire” is a he-said/she-said portrait of domestic unrest with Martha Wainwright that’s intensified by a hair-raising string arrangement; “Ami imaginaire” is a match-up with Quebecois maverick Klô Pelgag that smears their francophone vocals over a jittery electronic pulse. But where the opener, “Silencio,” sees Watson directly addressing his health setback (“I think you like me better since I lost my voice,” he cheekily sings), the aftershocks of that experience are felt most acutely in the bittersweet title track, whose darkest-before-the-dawn sentiments are mirrored by the song’s slow march from fragile folk serenade to brassy, ticket-tape spectacle.