Never let it be said that John Crossingham doesn't appreciate public displays of affection: In 2004, the part-time Broken Social Scene guitarist proposed to his fiancé onstage during the band's Coachella set in front of some 10,000 people. But when it comes to the math-rock lullabies he creates with his own band, Raising the Fawn, he's a much more insular soul.
Unlike so many bands orbiting planet BSS, Raising the Fawn isn't just another occasion for the Arts & Crafts extended family to get together for group handclaps. There are no backup vocal turns from Feist, no guest appearances by Brendan Canning on shakers. If anything, Crossingham is a rarity among his BSS peers for favoring a less-is-more approach: Since its formation in 2000, Raising the Fawn has downsized from a four-piece to a trio, and effectively trimmed any fat inhibiting a more powerful rock approach.
The band's self-titled 2001 debut was a delicate collection of porcelain pop songs that Crossingham openly admitted was one big long soppy mash note to his girl (ex-Fawn drummer Lesa Hannah); 2004's more accomplished The North Sea closely followed in Mogwai's footsteps, lamenting long-distance love and eulogizing the dead (Crossingham's grandmother and Acetone frontman Richie Lee included) in lurching 10-minute movements. But if new album The Maginot Line, the first Fawn full-length recorded as a trio, is decidedly less sentimental or cohesive in tone than its predecessors, it's all the braver for it.
Following a minute of sustained feedback (generously given its own title, "Pyotr"), Maginot opens in earnest with "Carbon Paper", a flurry of crashing grandeur that, like Death Cab's "The New Year" or Trail of Dead's "Relative Ways", heralds a newfound sense of clarity and confidence. While the latter band would've seemed like a laughably incongruous reference point for the Fawn five years ago, these days both strive for a similar balance of melody and menace, elegance and ugliness. Here, the Fawn's own gradual evolution is reflected in a handful of amorphous six-minute mini-epics: The title track sends Crossingham's coo on an upward surge of Sonic Youth-ish twinkles and tribal floor-tom thumps, slowly accruing a militaristic intensity before locking into nasty gutter blues; centerpiece track "Christmastime in the Fields" begins as a faint sea shanty that hitches onto a sinister bass pulse to brace us for the turbulence to come; and "Until It Starts Again" starts like a standard-issue Slint-esque prowl, only to evolve as it hits its soul-clap chorus.
Where Broken Social Scene's narcotic-pop floats effortlessly skyward, Raising the Fawn strive for the same heights through a painstaking, brick-by-brick effort: guitars short out, harmonies crack, and calloused fingers grind fretboards with each abrupt chord change. Unsurprisingly, the songs here with more modest intents-- the straight jangle ballad "The Cloak and the Veil", or the sullen, Sebadoh-like denouement "Nocturne No. 2"-- don't inspire the same degree of emotional investment, never tapping into the band's talent for subtle transformation. The Maginot Line is a suitably precarious, frequently thrilling high-wire act for a band that, back home in Toronto, can open for anybody from Mogwai to the Wrens. Still, Raising the Fawn's singular identity is truly revealed when they refuse to fully identify with either camp.
