CREDIT: VICTOR PENNER
Martel is the tale of Jay Malinowski’s family history about a Huguenot war hero who settled in Canada in the mid-1700s.

I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. Music geeks are archaeologists in nature, digging through blogs and forums as easily as a crate of vinyl. Inspired by the search as much as the find, the thrill of the hunt lives in every music geek that searches for their next favourite sound, unabated by time or obstacles along the way.

So it was with great interest that I read recently about Martel by Jay Malinowski & The Deadcoast, an album rooted in mystery and discovery itself. Released on February 11, Martel is a departure from Malinowski's previous projects to date, and manages to be intriguing while deeply personal.

Half-concept album, half-biography, the record is inspired by Malinowski's discovery that he is a descendant of Charles Martel, a Huguenot war hero that survived persecution to settle in Canada in the mid-1700s. The Huguenots were a branch of Reformed Protestants that were driven out of France around the start of the 18th century due to religious conflicts. Fleeing their homeland, the Huguenots settled into nearby Protestant communities that could accept them, though for many it meant traveling as far away as Africa or the new United States of America.

Martel witnessed terrible persecution in his day, and saw his own mother beheaded in Lyon due to her convictions. After leaving France, he found the opportunity to fight for the British and received land in Cape Breton on which to build a new family, one that Malinowski discovered by perusing through detailed family journals.

“Before my grandfather passed he had mapped our family lineage in detail, in old books,” Malinowski explained. “That's where I found Charles' story, and these patterns of displacement that resonated in me deeply. The Martels after Charles became sailors, privateers and pirates for the most part. It was a dislocation I felt deeply having been continuously travelling for all my life.”

There are familiar echoes of Malinowski's previous musical endeavours present on Martel, but they are few. The album's 18 songs are divided between Pacific and Atlantic sides, at times delicate, at others raucous. The Pacific side begins with “Main-A-Dieu,” haunting and sweeping into the intimidating and ominous stride of “Meet Me At The Gate.” The album moves fluidly into “Patience Phipps (The Best To You),” its nimble string arrangements adding a flavour of whimsy that belies even its closing track, the playful and optimistic “Sloop John B.”

Malinowski's muse carries strongly into the Atlantic side, guided by highly listenable efforts, like the single “The Tall Shadow From Saint-Malo” or “Carnival Celebration #2,” which features Chuck Ragan.

Martel certainly doesn't play like a double album, consistently engaging throughout — a satisfying chronicle of the life of a wayfarer trying to find a place or purpose in this world, wherever it may be... a concept as easily relatable in the 1700s as today, hundreds of years later.

For more on JayMalinowski and the Deadcoast, visit whoismartel.com or follow along on Twitter @jaymalinowski. The band is currently on tour through the area, stopping in Hamilton on April 3 and Toronto on April 4.

These shows are close to wrapping up their Meet Me At The Gate album release tour that began in B.C. on March 20.

And for more of the latest music news and show previews, follow this column on Twitter @fsu_bobbyisms. All the best to you for your own discoveries, I'm out of words.