Canada’s Americana institution continues to build on family ties and somnambulist songs.
After a cover album and the first release of the dusty SHARON sessions, which were discarded in 1989, the traditional band from Toronto is once again concentrating on the present. SUCH FEROCIOUS BEAUTY tells of further (family) losses and the fleetingness of life, but also of the inevitable acceptance of those.
The ten tracks of SUCH FEROCIOUS BEAUTY are no longer quite as strictly committed to the puristic Alan-Lomax-Lo-Fi-concept of the late 80s-early days, but never lose themselves in the technical production-related mania despite a more condensed soundscape, the ten tracks of SUCH FEROCIOUS BEAUTY have an equally intimate intensity and expansive dramatic gesture.
Sometimes you have to think (again) of the no less wonderful Walkabouts, who unfortunately were not granted a lasting cohesion, and the occasional presence of Leonard Cohen cannot be denied. How singer Margo Timmins manages with her ethereal folk whisper organ, a song like “What I Lost”, which brother, guitarist and songwriter Michael wrote about the consequences of her father’s dementia, with the motivation and style staging a Nick Cave-certified murder ballad morality is unparalleled.