In 2023, while the singer/songwriter/composer was touring in support of the previous year's
Better in the Shade,
Patrick Watson woke up after a show in Atlanta and couldn't speak. It turned out that he had hemorrhaged a vocal cord while singing. Uncertain, per his doctors, if he'd ever be able to speak or sing again, he continued to work on music in the months to follow and eventually had the idea to invite some of his favorite singers to perform the songs he was writing. With
Watson slowly regaining limited use of his voice after several months of silence, the resulting set of hushed chamber pop,
Uh Oh, consists of two solo songs and nine duets, each with a different guest vocalist. Using only two microphones and a laptop,
Watson traveled to places like Paris, Mexico City, and Los Angeles to collect these performances, and he later mixed the album himself (with help on a few tracks by
Rob Heaney) at his studio in Montreal.
The album opens with "Silencio," featuring Parisian electro-pop artist
November Ultra, who gives an aria-like performance of the song's mournful piano intro.
Watson takes over the lead on a more rhythmic, fully arranged second section with: "I lost my voice 'cause I talked too loud/Like an old friend that ain't hangin' around." The song goes on to explain that he couldn't stop making stuff up in his head. It should be noted that "fully arranged" in the context of
Uh Oh may mean guitar, drums, piano, modular synths, and backing vocalists, as on this song, or, additionally, bass, strings, horns, woodwinds, and percussion, as on many of the rest, but the album rarely if ever becomes lushly symphonic or rousingly poppy. Instead, its volume is limited -- ultimately to artful, intimate effect -- to center the songwriter's raspy, sometimes strained delivery. The most assertive track by far here is the clubby electronica entry "Ami imaginaire," featuring Quebec's
Klô Pelgag, which uses processing and effects to aid in their vocal interplay. In keeping with the rest of the album, however, even that song would be described as eerie or melancholy rather than bright or boisterous. Some of the other guests here include alt-folk maven
Martha Wainwright (on the bittersweet, quasi-acoustic "House on Fire"), Portuguese singer
MARO (on the Iberian-inflected, acoustic guitar-based "The Wandering," with its spacey close-harmony backing vocals), and Juno-winning Quebecois singer
Charlotte Cardin (on "Gordon in the Willows," a song so ethereal as to be evanescent).
Uh Oh closes with "C¿a va," a French chanson with Paris native
Solann that pays tribute to love and music. Perhaps the most notable quality of
Uh Oh is that, while its backstory is conspicuous in its lyrics and title, the album doesn't play like an accommodation or something that's lacking, even if its quietly haunting, dramatic character was born of necessity. ~ Marcy Donelson
