Toronto – I find myself in something of a music rut lately. You know what I mean: it’s the sort of rut that sees you making lacklustre mix CD’s for the car filled with tunes you played to death five years ago and filling your mp3 player with old Nas and Four Tet albums for something a little different, that kind of thing. I could be getting old and nostalgic, ready to make the permanent switch to oldies and “light favourites” stations. Or possibly ten weeks of diaper changes and spit-up has been a little distracting for me. One or the other.
The solution to these doldrums? Quite possibly a new Sunparlour Players album.
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, as I’ve gone on emphatically about the Sunparlour Players many times before. One of the best, most intense live acts I’ve seen, Us Little Devils is the band’s third studio album after 2007’s Hymns for the Happy and 2009’s Wave North.
As good as the band is in a live setting, it’s probably fair to say that their studio efforts have been a little hit or miss as far as capturing some of that live energy. So does the new album overcome the limitations of their past recordings and deliver a consistently good album from start to finish? Well…no, not really. It’s only got a couple of the sort of “storytelling” tracks that are one of the band’s big songwriting strengths, like the sample track below, “Green Thumb”. I can appreciate the band is trying a few new things, as they clearly went for a bit more of a mainstream pop/rock kind of feel on a lot of tracks, but this doesn’t always mesh well with their folksy, roots base. By my count, only three tracks out of twelve are really outstanding, with the rest ranging from “decent” to “ok.”
Of course, a Sunparlour Players album is really just something to listen to so you can learn the choruses to the new songs and sing along with them during the live shows. When I listen to this album I find myself mostly looking forward to hearing the live renditions and finding out how the band can pull off some of the harmonies and rich sounds with only the three of them on stage, where they’ll occasionally play five or six instruments at once between them during any given song. In the end, the new album is just ok, and probably not enough to shake me from my music malaise, but a new Sunparlour Players tour with new material to check out is something to look forward to. Check them out if you get the chance on their upcoming Ontario tour and the cross-Canada tour that’s likely to follow, you definitely won’t regret it.
Sunparlour Players Ontario Fall Tour Dates:
11/25 Ottawa, ON – NAC Fourth Stage
11/29 St.Catherines, ON – The Mansion House
12/1 Kingston, ON – Zappa’s Lounge *
12/2 Peterborough, ON – The Red Dog*
12/3 London, ON – Call The Office*
12/4 Guelph, ON – Van Gogh’s *
12/8 Windsor, ON – The Capital Theatre *
12/9 Hamilton, ON – The Casbah *
12/10 Toronto, ON – The Great Hall
*With the Sadies
Sunparlour Players – Green Thumb by Outside-Music
If you’re so inclined, you can listen to the entire album streaming at www.outside-music.com/backstage/sunparlourplayers