We’re no closer to nailing down a Canadian musical identity, but our experimental music at least has one thing in common — we prefer acoustic melancholy to electronics and noise. Dixie’s Death Pool is Victoria, BC’s Lee Hutzulak plus a host of collaborators, and the sound of Scarlet Lake (the latest in a long line of discs) is like putting an area mic in the living room of a log cabin packed full of musicians. Campfire guitars and shuffling percussion drift through the mix, interrupted by the occasional straight-up folk ditty (“The Anklet of City Lights”) or Dadaist death drag (“Lady of the Broom”). Hutzulak points to The Residents as an influence on the latter track; their oddly shaped fingerprints pop up all over. (You could also draw links to Broken Social Scene and Do Make Say Think, though this is more sprawling.) But even though Hutzulak doesn’t always reconcile the weird and the wistful, most of the time Scarlet Lake makes perfect Sunday afternoon listening for those who like their folky pastoralia a tad off-kilter.

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