Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2.5 / 5 Reviewer: David Coats |
A website recently ran a poll asking which Canadian artist was more likely to become “the next Neil Young†– Dallas Green or Matthew Good. (This is clearly ridiculousness – would Young ever start a song with the words “cross my heart and hope to dieâ€?) Bring Me Your Love proves City & Colour isn’t just a flash in the pan, and conclusively demonstrates maturation from Sometimes, but still has a long way to go before any comparisons to Canadian legends can be taken seriously.
While Sometimes relied on overtly emo lyrics and sincere, atmospheric melodies, Bring Me Your Love relies on more lo-fi performance and production values, opting for a smaller, more muted sound. The music is less immediately affecting, but more sophisticated, as Green opts to emphasize his folk side more than his emo side. This proves especially successful on lead single, ‘Waiting…,’ and the subdued ‘Sensible Heart,’ though at times, the record suffers from questionable production decisions.
Unlike Sometimes, this record also has moments of outright joviality, such as (the intolerable) ‘The Girl.’ At other times, Green opts for a more sensitive, intimate lyrical style, rather than the lonely, heartbroken one of Sometimes. Unfortunately, Green still writes with a high school poet’s touch, and about concepts that are either clichéd (‘Body In A Box’, ‘The Death Of Me’, ‘Against the Grain’), or rely more on uniformly first-person emotion than depth (‘Constant Knot’).
In 2001, a Backstreet Boys concert in Calgary was attended mostly by teenage girls and their mothers, and it dawned on me that pop music was now less about rebellion than about generational bonding. The way Bring Me Your Love combines teenage angst with adult contemporary melodies and romantic sentiments, it’s clear that City & Colour is quickly becoming a modern example of The Backstreet Principle. Green’s success has always been rooted in his ability to give young or casual music fans something universal to relate to, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing particularly profound about it, either.
