Eamon McGrath/Sandro Perri/The Bobby Tenderloin Universe
Eamon McGrath
Guts // Saved By Vinyl
With age comes experience. Experience leads to perspective.
For those with the gift of prose, age yields works that become more eloquent than those that were preceded. Eamon McGrath has this gift, there is nobody in Canada better at inputting relatable emotions into song. Is he a writer that became a musician or a musician that became a writer? It’s becoming more and more apparent that he is both. His new album, Guts, is easily his most impactful release to date.
McGrath’s ability to sculpt personally applicable lyrics is a rarity in modern music. He can make a listener believe the words he sings were crafted specifically for them. Although I have read press-sheets and breakdowns of the songs found within Guts, I still can’t help but hear myself in these tracks. The album is said to be a bridge to breaking down toxic masculinity, and McGrath’s open and emotional soul-bearing heard throughout certainly backs up this claim. Perhaps, to help further this theme, I’ll admit to crying to multiple tracks on this record during my first listen. I first heard it while driving across the vast expanse of the prairies. With nobody in the car, and hundreds of miles of wide open road ahead of me, I allowed myself to fall headfirst into McGrath’s ruminations. No song hit harder than “Givin’ Up” which details the ongoing battle I face with aging and how the excitement once felt from favourite pastimes has become muted over time due to experiencing them so frequently. How does one cope when the things that once gave them joy no longer possess the same outcome? While listening, I know McGrath understands the pain behind this question. On “To Drink Only Water”, we writes directly to my ongoing life-fatigue by exclaiming:
“Exhaustion builds up like a think winter coat; takes its frozen hands, wraps them both round your throat; it sharpens its knives and it digs a deep moat, throws you right off the boat”
Goddamn…
A songwriter has never written directly to me before, but McGrath does!
Well…
He doesn’t.
But the power in his voice, and the relatable content he weaves so expressively makes the listener feel as if the songs were written directly to them. This is McGrath’s superpower. There are countless men just like myself that would weep quietly to themselves while listening to these words. An amazing feat no doubt, but even more amazing will be McGrath’s ability to get men expressing these feelings freely, starting with me.
- Jeff MacCallum
PS. I want to delete this review and start over, but I won’t.
Sandro Perri
Soft Landing // Constellation
As the seasons change here in Canada, we must brace for the worst. In this transition phase called Fall, melancholy and tranquility take hold, and what a better way to supplement this time than with a brand new record!
Sandro Perri’s Soft Landing is the record for your Autumn Sunday mornings. With its quiet reflective nature, it produces an airiness that is calming but intense. While it may seem like an oxymoron, there is tension found within the space of this record and how Perri uses it to their advantage.
The opening track “Time (You Got Me)” is a whopping 16-minutes! In that time, Perri weaves different sounds and abstracts to really drive home a sense of timelessness. The weightless feel of this track allows the listener to melt into the sounds and lose track of physicality. Seriously, it felt like this song was only 5 minutes long until I checked the run time.
The guitar playing is so full of emotional resonance. From the light acoustic fingerpicking to the electric guitars hitting notes that maybe weren’t supposed to be played but were kept in, the layers help add to the abstract wall of sound that Perri has constructed around his voice.
Soft Landing will definitely be on constant rotation during the cold seasons coming. It’s calming, but deeply soul-provoking nature will allow you to watch the falling leaves in serenity as the world passes by.
- Declan Paxton
The Bobby Tenderloin Universe
Self Titled // Keeping on Records
We are in the midst of a country comeback. In the form of bedazzled cowboy hats and the return of a chart topping Billy Ray Cyrus (thank you Montero) the aesthetic has become popular once again. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t thrilled to see the country landscape widen and definitions change, but I’m still a sucker for some pedal steel and the old tropes.
Keeping on Records latest release, the self-titled effort from Edmonton’s The Bobby Tenderloin Universe is reminiscent of the classics, only if Tom T. Hall and Ernest Tubb had gone cosmic. In this debut, Robert Tenderloin has managed to pack in: psychedelic guitar lines and backing vocals, a sickly sweet whistle, and properly imperfect acoustic guitar and piano (all sitting just over twenty six minutes). Tenderloin both croons and howls, wailing out on “Big Fat Mama”.
“tell me tell me tell me is your man making you happy? Will he kneel before thee in the evening and morning.”
The Bobby Tenderloin Universe houses many of the symbols we have come to expect in country western, with titles like “In The Combines” and “In The Mud”, Tenderloin excels in his wry, self-aware humour. “I Need A Lickin”, the minute and a half long fourth track, features the applause of a small crowd to mark the songs halfway point. Lyrics such as “I can’t swim so I just start kicking,” and “cattle lick salt until the heart stop ticking,” are equal parts subtle and outrageous. This theme continues throughout the album, with discrete wordplay and marked metaphor.
Robert Tenderloin has served us with a fresh and humble take on a genre that is rarely able to, in such a sly way, poke fun at itself. This is an album I will return to regularly, while I cross my fingers for the swift arrival of more from The Bobby Tenderloin Universe.
- Ella Coyes
