I spend a lot of time focusing on the stories behind songs, and that’s usually what I try to shine light on for these Delorean reviews. I have plenty of stories about albums and songs left to tell. But today I revisited an album from a few years ago, an album that means so damn much to me, and I felt compelled to share it with those of you who might’ve missed it the first time around in 2008. In our internet age of ADD-obsessed transient fame, there are so many bands who undeservedly slip through the cracks.
I was sold on Entire Cities the first time I heard their should-have-been-a-hit Deep River opener “Talkers.” Horns swell in and out while the bass and electric guitar trade notes over fast-moving drum fills. The song has a sprawling anthemic feel to it. The words are religious in a hypnotic and reflective way, while the melody/chorus is as catchy as anything you’ve heard in the last three years. If the song is not their best, it is at least the most friendly entry point to their diverse catalog.
Entire Cities hail from Ontario, Canada and they play “cow punk,” a hybrid of psychedelic and experimental alt-country music. The members vary from five to ten, and they’ve been known to put on high energy live shows with trampolines and sweat and whiskey. (Full disclosure: my best friends drove from New Jersey to Canada to see them last year.) Musically, Deep River includes all the instruments you’d expect from a large psychedelic folk band whose members enjoy shouting and drinking. There’s accordions, singing saw, keys, violin, banjo, electric guitar, lots of percussion instruments, flute, lap steel, all kinds of horns. One of the things I love most about the album though is that almost every song is grounded with riffs instead of chords, a feature that’s not so common for alt-country albums. The musicality of the band adds a certain level of calculated chaos, making the music that much more interesting of a backdrop for singer/band leader Simon Borer.
Borer carves out a cozy niche for his speak-singing in the midst of the band’s ruckus. The lyrics vary from poignant, terse poetic asides to mini-narratives about love and watching life go by from your lawn. Naturally, a rural focus surrounds the whole album, capped off by haunting closer “The Woods.” At their best, the lyrics contain those particular micro-observational details reminiscent of early Mountain Goats or Smog records. There’s a touchy uncle (“Cop Song”) who “keeps his damn hands to himself,” a waitress flirting with a patron (“Coffee”) tied together by the deadpan line “two creams no sugar,” and a sprawling praise of brotherhood (“I am my brother’s snakeskin motherfucker, and we are blood”) that seems drunkenly prophetic and brutally honest.
The most experimental song on the album comes in the form of “Waiting,” a short track seemingly written for aimless youths (“What fools are we, waiting 2000 years/ They all laugh and rightly so/ Still we’re waiting, impatiently waiting.”) The song revolves around a flute and a singing saw for a while, but eventually the dynamics pick up as it crescendos into a beautiful mess of horns, strings, and shouted group vocals. It’s a song that tells the story of the band itself: a bag of musical surprises hiding unlikely folk anthems. Deep River and their 2010 album I Hope You Never Come Home are both still available to buy, so do yourself a favor and get lost in some Canadian Americana. You will not regret it.