I have been obsessing over their music for almost 2 years with no intention of stopping. The music freezes you dead in your tracks. It is haunting and spooky and otherworldly. Every time anyone brings this band up in conversation (or lets face it, music in general), I can’t help but start (literally) shouting their praises and ordering everyone in earshot to listen to them.
Unfortunately, I had to miss their latest concert in Ottawa last Friday and, just my luck, they are going on an international tour for the next few months so there is no chance I will be able to catch a show anytime soon. However, my charming and thoughtful friend, who we will call J to protect his identity ;) went to the show and got me their latest release on vinyl. And I melt. Ah-may-zing. I have been listening to the album on repeat for the last few days fantasizing about how music could sound like this…….
Taylor Kirk must have locked himself inside an abandoned oratory for months, starving and dehydrated, his voice like broken-in leather after being left out in the rain, limitless in his pursuit of perfecting that melancholy cry.
Maybe he went running into a wheat field in the middle of the prairies, armed with nothing but a violin, a guitar and a gun and in the night he would howl and purr his lyrics, both tempting and warning nearby coyotes.
Or perhaps he sat in a recording studio with the rest of the producers and musicians and everybody else and forced them all to sit in the same room, trapped in their own individual wooden cages, sharing stories of childhood and heartbreak and ghost stories and sweaty summer nights. No one was allowed out their cage until the record sounded like hope and despair.
Best gift ever.