Dear Matt:

This week, you’re getting an album that I have absolutely no idea how you will respond to. Seriously, this could go to either extreme. Because Tanya Tagaq is not an artist who inspires bland indifference. Your assignment is Animism, Tagaq’s much remarked-upon third album. You know this album by reputation from its historic Polaris Prize win, where it beat two of Canada’s most significant musical exports: Drake and Arcade Fire. Rightly so.

What you’ll be hearing is, in my view, one of the most remarkable musical fusions in recent years. What I hear on Animism is a blend of industrial electronica and noise art, with a generous dash of free jazz and — most crucially — a variant of Inuit throat singing that only one person in the world can do.

As you’ll know if you’ve read anything in the Canadian music press in the last two years, Tagaq is an Inuk icon. Her vocal technique is derived from a traditional style of throat singing where two women face each other and sing together. Tagaq’s innovation was finding a way to produce those sounds on her own. And, you know, incorporating them into industrial music.

Tagaq is an intensely political artist and an eloquent commentator on aboriginal issues. (The tweets she sent out after the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation commission came out are an education in themselves.) As such, most of what’s been written about her music has focussed on the political elements of her art. That’s a valid and important approach to take — far be it from me to sideline that aspect of what Tagaq does.

But the side effect of that approach is that Tagaq sometimes doesn’t get the credit she deserves as a musician and an aesthete. The fact that Tagaq’s music relates deeply to her heritage and the current political struggles facing aboriginal peoples in Canada is a significant part of why she and Animism are great. But it’s also just massively good music, when you’re in the right headspace for it. It’s got drama and tension and changes mood on a dime. It’s brilliantly paced, with slow burns and payoffs strategically distributed throughout. And it has that timbral variety I was talking about last week.

So: a bit on what you can expect to hear.

Animism is anchored around a central trio of musicians: Tagaq, violinist/producer Jesse Zubot, and drum virtuoso Jean Martin. There’s all sorts of stuff piled on top of them on most tracks: industrial-sounding synths on ‘Uja,’ operatic vocals by Anna Pardo Canedo on ‘Flight,’ horns and strings on the Pixies cover that the album starts with for some reason. (It really is a fantastic cover, though. One of those ones that nearly makes the original obsolete.)

But for me, the most satisfying moments on the album are on tracks like ‘Tulugak’ and ‘Damp Animal Spirits,’ where you get to hear the central trio performing basically unadorned improvisations. Tagaq is always in the lead, but the other two are always doing something interesting, too. Martin in particular gives one of the most entrancing drum performances I’ve heard in awhile.

Animism is not an album that goes out of its way to be likeable, much to its credit. Nonetheless, I’ve found myself loving it all the same. I think you will too, at least in parts. But I could be wrong. This is way the hell out there. Channel the part of yourself that thinks that ‘Night Swim’ is good music and you should be fine.

— Matthew