Customer Reviews

Full of Light & Full of Fire

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There are a million bands these days. It used to be so simple. I had my circle of friends and we all liked mostly the same music and every now and then one of us would show up with a tape by some band we've never heard of and we'd have a new favorite band until the next new tape showed up.

Things aren't so simple anymore.

Every time I turn around or get on the internet there's some new band that everyone loves and the reviews are so good that I wonder what I'm missing. Usually, after having purchased said album, it turns out that I wasn't missing anything. Just another hyped up band with no substance.

The Mendoza Line does not fall into this category.

The Mendoza Line is one of those bands that other bands will be namechecking in interviews ten or fifteen years from now. Much like The Mendoza Line themselves have been known to namecheck The Replacements or American Music Club. And this new album is the latest in an increasingly long line of masterpieces they've recorded over the last decade.

This time around the songwriting has been split between just Shannon McArdle and Timothy Bracy with one achingly beautiful contribution from Paul Deppler. From the beginning of my infatuation with The Mendoza Line, it was Timothy's songs that I obsessed over more than the others, each one at one time or another I have proclaimed the best song in the world. But over the last several albums, Shannon's songs have increasingly been placed on that same pedestal. The first time I heard "Mysterious in Black" it stopped me dead in my tracks and I had to sit down on the curb in the middle of a late night stroll, unable to move until it was over.

But the real surprise of this album comes at the very end with Paul's song "Our Love is Like a Wire." I am not exaggerating at all when I say that this song is one of the fifty best songs of the last century. And yes, I have taken into account all of "Blood on the Tracks", "Rust Never Sleeps", "New Songs for the Old Ceremony", and Timothy Bracy's back catalog. I do not say this lightly. It made me cry. Not tears of sadness, just those rare tears when you hear something so beautiful it makes you hurt.

Do yourself a favor and worship this band now instead of later. It will happen one day anyway, so go ahead and buy this album and their others so you can say you were there when it happened.

This record really is a masterpiece. It chops and changes from political(Pipe Stories) to personal(Lethal temptress), from lament (goldenboy) to celebration (our love is like a wire), from country jamming (collapsing star) to electronic-ish (mysterious in black) paranoia. It reeks of the best bits of Dylan (collapsing star, rats alley), Waits (Settle down Zelda), Cohen (Love is like a wire), Velvets (Morbid Craving), The Stones (Name Names) and thats just the male vocals courtesy of Timothy Bracy and Paul Deppler.

Then you bring the dulcet tones of Shannon MacArdle into the mix, and you get an honest unflinching sincere delivery of heartfelt and topical lyrics to the unmistakeable sound of a band at the top of their game.

McArdle and Bracy are the definitive sound of this year. Their honesty and sincerity, dipped into a wellspring of humour, humility and irony betray their personality as the most likeable couple on record today.

For those of you who already have 'Lost in Revelry' and 'fortune' this is a fitting end to the trilogy that began in 2002.Pete Hoffman has taken a hiatus on this record but that doesn't compromise the quality of songwriting. If you want a record thats (a) Thought provoking and (b) rock 'n roll then you can't go wrong with this one.

Click the 'add to cart' button now. You won't regret it...