Review by: james pacanowski
A real nice one here. Stalwart Sons are an emo trio from Calgary, Canada and this here is their first stab at an LP. They nailed it pretty hard first time out too. Obvious frames of reference would be gruffmo like True North or Twelve Hour Turn and mathy indie-rock like fellow Canadians North of America.
There’s not a whole lot of variation on that theme here, but there really doesn’t need to be; there’s just enough going on in each song that it remains interesting, but they don’t really deviate from what they know best either. In particular I enjoyed ‘Canadian Rail Road Epitaph’ (trainmo!) with it’s soft, insistent jangle, the poppy math of ‘Flags & Bells’ and the jumpy squall of ‘Wisdom Teeth’. Its mostly consistently good throughout though, but admittedly it does sort of slog around the middle before getting to the aforementioned tracks.
Good record, a good one for winter too (particularly with song titles like ‘Northern Lights’ and ‘Frozen Ground’, zo Antarctica-mo). Also props for the totally Midwestmo album cover.