Tried and true
Old Reliable brightens up the Prairie music scene
PREVIEW
OLD RELIABLE
Saturday, October 5
Koko's (4712 - 13 Street N.E.)
After one of the driest summers on record, it’s easy to find parallels between nature’s yearly poker game with Alberta's farmers and what the province's bands are faced with when it comes to keeping gigs booked and momentum rolling. Alberta’s musical environment is increasingly dominated by the easterly powers that be. Canada’s vast geography has led the horse to water, but unfortunately the water has been tainted with the latest buzz bands from the same places that manufacture the culture we are forced to believe is the best this country has to offer.
Enter Edmonton’s Old Reliable, a band that currently includes primary singer-songwriters Mark Davis and Shuyler Jansen alongside bassist Tom Murray, drummer Scott Lingley and guitarist-keyboard player Shawn Jonasson. With their third album, Pulse of Light/Dark Landscape, Old Reliable has realized what the Prairie crooners that came before them, only hinted at – an epic tale of inspired creativity rooted deep in the fertile, yet volatile, landscape we call Alberta’s music scene.
An album of traditional country rock musings, Pulse of Light/Dark Landscape captures a sound that is equal parts Crazy Horse and Gram Parsons but also accommodates the occasional analogue delay and keyboard effect. The result is an uncompromised blend of old world traditionalism and new world technology in perfect harmony. In addition to unlikely instruments like rainsticks, polysynths, pianorgan and kabasa, it's no wonder the band members also chose to credit themselves with an assortment of environmental phenomena like tsunamis, hurricanes, thunder, tornados and lightning.
Pulse of Light is an album made up entirely of songs written by Shuyler Jansen.
"There was an agreement between the two songwriters that Mark would write one record and then Shuyler would write one," explains Jonasson.
It's a diplomatic agreement that shows the confidence the two principal writers have in each other. And while their outstanding second album, The Gradual Moment, was a foreboding tale of impending loss, Pulse of Light/Dark Landscape continues on a similar path with themes of the polarization of the human spirit.
Where this latest collection of songs surpasses the band’s back catalogue is in the variety of song structures and tempos. The listener is greeted with up-tempo country shuffles in the album's first track, "Must’ve Been the Devil," then catapulted through a two-stepper's paradise into the unforgiving but frighteningly intentional driving gallop of one of the record’s rockiest tracks, "Tight Knit Seams." From there the record deals a steady hand of fluid songs and snippet instrumentals.
And while the guitars, keyboards and effects swirl like tornados on the flat Prairie-like landscape of the band’s rhythm section, the album’s guest contributions pushing Old Reliable even further into lush, string-induced musical territory – not unlike that found on Alejandro Escovedo records.
When I spoke with Jonasson in August the band was on the verge of starting their summer tour with a performance at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.
"After this, we’re all focusing on the tour of interior BC ahead. We’ve all quit our day jobs to do this. We’ll see how long the shows can keep coming." |
