Partner’s “Saturday the 14th” is much more than jokes

Cheeky Canadians simultaneously mock and pay tribute to uncool music genres

A band that clearly announce themselves as jokers should make you worried. They will likely give you cringe-worthy send-ups of stuff you may like, or not even care about. But there are the exceptions, clowns so musically talented that their joke songs are classics in their own right: witness Big Shaq’s “Man’s Not Hot” a couple of years ago, or the mother of them all, Spinal Tap. The two girls that compose Partner pass the test, and seal the success by pulling off a trick that’s so awesome it earns them a place in that pantheon.

The mini-album starts with two serviceable tracks that veer slightly towards the annoying. Third track “Tell You Off” walks a fine line, with a ridiculous pastiche of Country music (complete with clucking hens) that is supportable only because it is so infectious.

Things start to get interesting with the Weezer-inspired alternative parody “Long & McQuade”, a hipster-baiting track about hanging out in one of Ontario’s music gear institutions. The mastery of quiet-loud transition and crunching hard-rock shredding on display is impressive indeed.

Then, for an unexpected and frankly amazing finale, they venture on the territory of fellow Canadian Celine Dion, and leave you breathless! With impeccable melody, rich production and earnest bellowing, they deliver something that is better than anything Dion has ever done. Not content with that, they top it off with a hair-metal guitar solo worthy of Slash himself. In doing that they score two points: you will have to plead guilty to the pleasure of liking a power-ballad, and you will understand what Phil Spector meant when he quit working with Celine because of her “commitment to mediocrity”. They might be pranksters, but Partner are definitely worth watching if they are this good.