Grizzly Man

Don’t call Jason Collett a roots rocker. Or a singer-songwriter. If you do, you’re missing his point entirely. “I find [these terms] very linear. I think people can quickly write you off when you’re referred to in that way,” says Collett (via phone from Chicago during a day off from his current tour), who’s a central figure in Toronto’s thriving independent music scene both as a solo artist and a member of the ever-expanding and contracting Broken Social Scene collective. Although Collett’s solo efforts clearly echo the quintessential singer/songwriter Bob Dylan—with Collett’s voice a charmingly nasal whine—and delve into roots music, he resists attempts to confine his work to either genre, preferring the “rock ’n’ roll” umbrella.

“It gives you a lot of freedom as an artist,” Collett explains. “It encompasses anything from gospel to blues to country.”

On his fourth full-length disc, Here’s to Being Here, Collett’s “don’t fence me in” mentality allows him to traverse wide swaths of rock ’n’ roll history and become a conduit for all the influences that have come to bear on him. A Beatles-informed guitar riff winds its way through “Sorry Lori.” Collett channels some Mick Jagger swagger on “Out of Time,” with its string of “Ooohs” reminiscent of “Miss You”—not in melody but in emotion. “Papercut Hearts” contains the lyrics “imaginations running wild,” bringing to mind The Stones’ cover of The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me).” But Collett’s taken just as much inspiration from his contemporaries; for instance, he affectionately calls the shimmery, dub-inflected “Charlyn, Angel of Kensington,” with its haunting melodica and polyrhythms, “a direct Apostle of Hustle rip-off.” And he even enlisted Andrew Whiteman of Apostle of Hustle, his cohort in Broken Social Scene, to play guitar on the track.

Collett telegraphs his affection for what he labels “traditional” music; but his dynamic, yet seemingly effortless approach to his material imbues the record with a freshness that is simultaneously unexpected and inevitable. He accomplishes this with the help of Paso Mino, the band consisting of guitarist and keyboardist Mike O’Brien, guitarist Afie Jurvanen, bassist Michael Clive, and drummer Rob Drake that worked with him in the studio on Here’s to Being Here after backing him on the road. Although he’d never had a solid band during his solo career, Paso Mino boldly offered to take on that duty when he wasn’t expecting it.

“They had the nerve to come up to me and say they should be my band,” he says of their encounter several years ago. And since they had already learned and rehearsed much of his repertoire by the time they approached him, the first time Collett played with them, the pieces fell into place. “We hit it off right away, and it sounded like we had been together forever.”

April 9 & 10, Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (at Ave. A), 212-260-4700; 7, $12. (Also April 16 at Luna Lounge)