Reviews
Dearly Beloved
You Are The Jaguar
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2006-08-08
This is quite the album, if you ask me. I have had it for some time, but I don't think I entirely knew how to review it until right now. This is Rob Higgins' new vehicle; you might remember him from his well-received work with Change of Heart, or his not-well-received work with Doctor x (featuring Daniel Greaves of The Watchmen). Dearly Beloved uses a variety of vocalists throughout the songs -- male and female -- so it has its own unique sound. It walks the line somewhere between rock with punk energy. The band is from Toronto, Ontario so they are in the right spot if they want to try and make it out of Canada. They do a lot of touring it seems, as their website shows; I noticed that they are coming to London and that is good to know. Some of the music has a rock groove in it and I think that is crucial to how much I am liking the music that I'm hearing from Dearly Beloved. When they do come to London I should find someone to come with me and see them play Call The Office -- that's usually my problem though, finding someone to go to shows with me and that makes me upset sometimes. I think I should just start to go to shows by myself, however that would probably be borderline weird and then alcoholic if I drank at all.
The first track, "The Ride," is pretty standard. I like it -- it has that rock groove that I was talking about -- but it may not be something that would get everyone would get excited for the rest of the album. Don't worry though, because this CD has loads of wicked tracks. It actually reminds me of what I liked about Change Of Heart. They use dual lyrics with male and female vocalists and they use them separately and at the same time; it's pretty serious if you ask me. It has a great effect on the sound. I would think more bands would try this but for some reason it's not the case. Anyway, this is an okay song but it gets better.
The third song is friggin' sick! It has this killer guitar riff that basically carries throughout the entire song and torments me in my dreams at night. It's called "You Are The Jaguar" and it is fucking cool. After a tantalizing build up, it starts to get to the part where lyrics are intense. I really love the way the vocals blend with the haunting guitar. I don't know why, but one guitar riff could be stuck in my head for almost two days if I didn't actively pursue a way to wipe it from my memory. If there is a way you can get ahold of this song you should value it, because it's wicked.
The saga continues with "Queen St. vs. Park Ave.," which is one of the cooler tracks on the album. The vocals have an interesting filter on them because they are fucking creepy. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the music on the track; it gives this feeling of scariness that just turns into some chill beach drama. I think it would be pretty sweet to see live because of how the vocals would sound couldn't be the same as they are on this track. If they are able to reproduce it with some sort of special mic, that'd be sick. The drums just keep the pace and beat of the song moving along and the guitar is rather laid back. I think it's more of a song where they showcase their production.
"Peril Of Snap Decisions" is one of my favourite songs. Again, it uses the build-up at the beginning of the song but it's a very positive flow and it just makes you wanna groove along all the while knowing that something is about to erupt. The song changes a bit and moves into an interesting rock track; it still has this incredible positive feeling to it which is weird because the title of the track would make you think otherwise of the sound. There is one creepy-sounding part but it doesn't last that long. This is just really cool song -- actually, I think this might be my favourite song on the disc. I was thinking about it and I don't think that I like anything else more.
We'll end where the album does, at "Noise Submitted To Order." This song is a slow song that's very trippy and drugged out. I think that if you wanted to get cabled up and just bake away on your couch you could listen to this song and be quite content. It doesn't have much to it and it's only two minutes long, but it's still okay. I'm not into slow but I can see if I was ever all chilled out that I might enjoy listening to this song because it's that type of song. Inevitably it's not my favourite but even the slower tracks are still pretty good to me with Dearly Beloved. This is absolutely the best work Higgins has done in years; Dearly Beloved is something you should seek out.
Tracks to Hear: There's only ten songs and it's hard to find, just use myspace.com
What did I think of Dearly Beloved? Am I a sucker for dual vocalists that are male and female?
Score: 8.3
This is a pretty good album. I wish it were a bit longer and I wish that some of the slower tracks had the same energy level as the rest of the album, but that didn't really hurt it. I was just really digging this one. It's not my ideal album either, so I'm pretty shocked that I liked it this much.
- Brandon