In recent times, your reviewer has been won over by an influx of new music from The Canadian 'Maritimes'. Geographically the Eastern Canadian seaboard taking in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, it's been rather overshadowed in critical terms by the more famous Ontario and British Columbia districts, yet as recent albums by Share and Grand Theft Bus have demonstrated, there's creative gold being mined in them there hills.
THE OLYMPIC SYMPHONIUM'S second album 'More In Sorrow Than Anger' suggests the seam remains rich. Of course, we're already familiar with OS'S personnel as they feature Share's Nick Cobham (guitar) and Kyle Cunjak (bass) though both swap instruments and share vocals with third full-time member Graeme Walker while Grand Theft Bus drummer Bob Deveau has been drafted in for the sessions and the talented Catherine MacLellan (who has also guested with Share) steps in for some sublime vocal support where requested.
So OS are something of a family affair and their warm inclusiveness has already found something of a niche as their 2007 debut 'Chapter 1' sold well worldwide. It's out of print apparently, which seems strange, especially if it's in the same league as 'More In Sorrow Than Anger', but anyway, we're hear to discuss '...Sorrow' so let's promptly get to that.
The album was recorded in a seemingly ad hoc fashion, with sessions taking place in a clothing store, a house, a shed and in a field as well as in studios. Although there's a gentle, unassuming – and sometimes truly melancholic – vibe to many of the songs, everything sounds finished and the low-key surroundings don't necessarily equate with lo-fi amateurishness.
Intimacy's always there, though. Opening track 'You Win Some, You Lose Some' is a simple guitar and piano duet, elegant and unruffled, while the vulnerable and lovely 'Malleable' is the sum total of one nervously plucked acoustic guitar and three tremulous vocals. 'The Note', meanwhile, adds a few Americana-related tinges to the shadowy plot, with ghostly gossamers of lap steel and some sweetly impassioned Crosby Stills & Nash harmonies billowing through the skeletal song's sails.
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Elsewhere, the album is enveloped by a stillness akin to the Red House Painters at their best. Songs like 'Dead Man's Inn' and the aching 'Side By Side' are dredged from the same kind of wracked, emotional channels Mark Kozelek flailed around in, although 'Side By Side' is lifted by the spectral vocal harmonies of Catherine MacLellan, Jenn Grant and Amelia Curran. At a tangent, perhaps the album's most winning moment is 'Blood From A Stone' where Dale Murray's pedal steel joins forces with a poised Graeme Walker and Catherine MacLellan vocal coveting hints of Gram and Emmy Lou.
The pace only occasionally picks up. The determined 'Intentions Alone' (“I don't intend to guide our light alone/ I don't intend to snuff this candle”) is about the closest the album gets to succumbing to a groove, while the bracing 'Travellin' Song' is hung upon a framework of Bob Deveau's rattling, railroad rhythms. After his display of immense pounding on Grand Theft Bus's album, Deveau's restraint is quite startling here, but then 'More In Sorrow...' is very much a case of democracy in motion and the entire cast's desire to create something emotionally greater than the sum of the individual parts wins through time and again. The third excellent release from The Maritimes within a fortnight then? You betcha.
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