CD Review: City and Colour, “Bring Me Your Love”

Much of the new music today relies heavily on new technology and an electronic sound.  While such music is certainly enjoyable it’s quite refreshing to take a break from the digital and listen to a boy and his guitar.  Dallas Green’s project, City and Colour has been on the music scene since 2003 recording music that is simple and simply great.  His aesthetic is melancholy meets insightful.  With lyrics that ponder life and guitar chords that delve deeper into the questions, City and Colour creates the kind of music that reminds one just how powerful the combination of raw talent, sweet vocals and an acoustic guitar can be.

City and Colour’s most recent full-length album, “Bring Me Your Love” was released earlier this year and has, deservedly, garnered much praise.  The single, “Waiting” has over 1 million listens on MySpace proving that people want to hear more music that isn’t overwrought with digitally enhanced bass lines and synthesizers.  It is with deeply thought out lyrics like within “Waiting” like, “Say goodbye to love/and hold you head up high/there’s no need to rush/we’re all just waiting/waiting to die” that are an superb example of Green’s talent.

What is most impressive about Dallas Green is his ability to take life’s experiences and turn them into songs so achingly sad yet strikingly beautiful.  Much like Iron and Wine and Band of Horses, there is something very rural about City and Colour: a complex sound that is seemingly simplistic.  Such a sound is, without doubt, difficult to accomplish yet City and Colour manages to recreate it twelve times over on, “Bring Me Your Love.”

“Bring Me Your Love” delves deep into those rainy day ideas of death, lost love and the seemingly meaninglessness of life without ever becoming pitiful or trite.  Much of the album echoes the gorgeous grief of Damien Rice’s “O.”While comparisons to many artists and bands can certainly be made, Dallas Green manages to find his own distinct voice in the singer/songwriter genre, a voice that feels like the a sky full of gray clouds requiring a cigarette and a cup of coffee.  City and Colour create the kind of music one desires at the cross-roads of life: anthems for the broken hearted.

If you’ve yet to be exposed to City and Colour, download the tracks “Waiting,” “The Gir,” “The Death of Me” and “What Makes a Man” off “Bring Me Your Love” for a very solid taste of Dallas Green’s talent.

Los Angles will have the awesome opportunity to experience two amazing Canadian acts when City and Colour plays with Tegan and Sara at The Fonda (Map) October 16-19 ($33 – Buy Tickets).  It is the perfect match of artists that will, without a doubt, be a truly memorable concert not to be missed.

Photo By: SamDunn