A person who shall remain nameless informed me that this album was pretty danceable before I heard it. Which struck me as pretty odd, as it should anyone who's heard North of America before. And of course, it's not really danceable, but I'll give this person the benefit of the doubt and assume they were just using "danceable" in place of the more accurate "rhythmic." You can kind of bob your head along awkwardly (mind those odd meters, though), but you'd likely wind up with contusions if you actually tried to move your body to the stuff. Perhaps it's just the musical phase we're all going through that has folks crying "dancepunk!" every time a shouty band with a competent bassist comes along-- even when that band predates this new footloose phase rock is going through right now-- but on their third full-length, North of America, as ever, remain pretty firmly entrenched in Dischord-inspired post-hardcore.
The Nova Scotian quartet has always just barely managed to avoid that tag by reining in the vocals, but anyone who ever worshipped at the altar of the D.C. scene will wax nostalgic when they hear the interweaving guitars, stop/stop dynamics, sorta-melodic shouted choruses, and brow-beating rhythms that make up Brothers, Sisters. The band has cleaned up some of the excess tempo changes that impeded last year's The Sepultura EP, but they still Drive Like Jehu from start to finish, and the relative sameness of their approach means that, despite their continued evolution, the new album still sounds mostly like a collection of variations on a single song, with little exception.
One of those little exceptions is unfortunately a formless noise swamp called "You Want to Join My Cult", but the other makes up for it. "All Actors Are Liars" is stunningly poppy and melodic for these guys, replete with female backing vocals to smooth the band's own rough edges. The song's spastic/melodic bipolar disorder makes it the first thing you'll remember when the laser sits idle in the stereo. They almost repeat this success on "Oh My God, Oh My God, Everybody, Oh My God" (my vote for best song title), a song that begins slowly, with the band slipping into a vocal call-and-response round of "thank you"s and "you're welcome"s that builds beautifully, but the payoff is a little disjointed, leaving you wanting more.
The band keeps the mix drier than the Atacama throughout, and leans toward the high-end to a degree that could make Albini himself blush. What I'm saying is, your subwoofer won't get much work here. Yet, as dirty as things sound sometimes, the band never fully distorts their guitars, aiming more for skin-prickling semi-clean tones that sound good playing dissonant patterns. "Voting 'No' on the Warming of Antarctica" barrels along with so much activity that the cymbals overtake everything at points, drowning the grinding guitars and metallic bassline in a flooding wash.
The vocals (handled by several band members; each goes only by his last name and none are credited with specific duties) fall about halfway between the bark of Ian MacKaye and the slack of Stephen Malkmus-- forceful enough to get away with overtly avoiding melody, but not so frenzied that it sounds like your dad. Would that North of America could squeeze a few more colors from their sound, I could give them a better, broader recommendation; as it is, folks who haven't quite had their fill of complexly layered riffage and heavy rhythm just yet will have a field day with Brothers, Sisters.
