"River of Gold" is the expertly crafted opener of this Toronto band's fourth album, third with Sonic Unyon; it's produced by Ian Blurton, who has previously worked with the Weakerthans, Amy Millan, and others. A mainstream rock contribution to ambient, the song is a stolid, Doves-ish trawl through the elegant muck of bass, soaring electric guitars, and relentless drums. What starts as a potential nod to the National leaves its mark as Explosions in the Sky at a slightly lower altitude, immersed in a haze of dark clouds.
On "Two Wives", the band hints at something completely different: prettifying the ugly and tarnishing the pretty, bandleader John Crossingham creating complex major/minor shifts of acoustic guitar and porous vocals. Is there any repetition in this song's melody whatsoever? The notes wander on forever, an example of what the fewest number of music tools (in this case two) can do. Unlike the overstuffed opener, "Wives" is sparse, almost barren, a crumpled little post-it note with a lot, emotively, to say. Similarly, "Focusfocusfocus" explores the highest ranges of the male voice set to the clock-tick regularity of a simple, tinselly drum machine's beat. Ruminative guitar and bass are drawn in during the wordless interlude for sonar pulses of long, drawn-out notes, a minimal little reminder of Prince (by tone) or early TV on the Radio (by harmony).
This is a far cry from the exit track, the eight-plus-minute "A Lion in Winter", yet the saunters and slouches of this sexy, engrossing, bass-driven number have much in common with the meanderings of "Focus" and suggest a little of "Silver Rider" by Low, another band that dozily flits between awfully depressing and awfully gorgeous. Still, like a number of Blur songs, this treble-free tirade gets boring, the pitchy, hollow vocals carrying no weight over the slow and plodding rhythm commanded by the guitar. With the help of an a cappella interlude the song stays afloat, but its pace wears the patience after the long set of passionate séances that preceded it. This finale almost tries to sum up the rest of the album by moving through several moody scenes, rhythmic structures, and melodies. The song's final minutes are a strangely pop-infused jam session, yet it's welcome for embracing standard prettiness-- which the rest of the album tries to avoid-- and its pick-me-up rhythm.
"Cypress Fields" tries its hand at country-tinged hard rock, which gives way to predictable sashays and nasal vocal yelps. Yet the band still constructs labyrinthine melodies around this more accessible and playful ambiance. It's often the case here that long songs are too long and short ones too brief, like a shoddily edited film. Why is the perfectly understated marching band percussion on "Palace Gates", accompanied by lovely, simply vocal harmonies, cut short at 2:44, while the tirade of "Cypress Fields" stretched on to 5:10? In any case, "Palace Gates" is mesmerizing, its two drums and three vocal parts carrying the whole thing as well as the guitar and voice did on "Two Wives". What's darkest here is best-- engrossing, imaginative, dramatic, and yet seldom overdone. The songs leave a strange imprint, being the kind of addictive pieces that one returns to, simply to try to nail the melodies in the mind's ear. The hazily recalled atmosphere leads you there and the intricacies of it keep you.
