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Written
by William Elgin, posted by blog admin
The
release of We’ll See Ourselves Out from the recently formed band Circus of the
West marks the first recording appearance of an outfit sure to achieve great
things. Few debuts are this cohesive or confident. The five piece gained a lot
for this first album thanks to the production efforts of Adam Levy,
singer/songwriter and front man of longtime indie darlings The Honeydogs. They
are a guitar band, first and foremost, but that doesn’t mean other elements of
their sound are neglected or that the band doesn’t experiment with alternate
textures or seemingly enjoy occasionally upending listener’s musical
expectations. The songwriting team of lead singer Edwin Caldie and guitarist
Joel Leviton are clearly positioning themselves for possibly making albums that
withstand posterity’s often withering glare. They manage that with ease thanks
to, among other reasons, the rich musical arrangements and tweaking their nose
at convention.
We’ll
See Ourselves Our kicks off with the mildly raucous guitar rave up “Birdhand”.
It’s one of the more rough hewn rockers on the album and vocalist Edwin Caldie
delivers a forceful introduction to his talents as a front man. The band turns
in an equally driven performance full of rock and roll muscle, but it remains
surprisingly light-footed despite its aggressive attack. “Some Connections”
sports a much leaner, focused musical slant not as reliant on massed banks of
guitar chords and centered on drummer Alan Einsman’s dexterous and powerful
playing. The band’s penchant for bringing backing vocals in at rousing points
during their songs hits an early zenith on “Boxes” and the manner they adopt
orchestrating this from a relatively low-fi acoustic beginning into electric
guitar powered crescendos makes “Boxes” one of the album’s best tracks. “Nothing
Special” features the first appearance of piano on We’ll See Ourselves Out and
the marriage of Caldie’s plaintive emotion with melodic, slightly melancholy
piano passages is an excellent pairing that sets the stage for the performance
as a whole. Electric guitar makes its presence increasingly felt and, when the
whole band comes in, Circus of the West has built an impressive and patiently
dramatic momentum that carries the remainder of the tune.
“Resurrection”
is one of the album’s more nakedly ambitious numbers and a drumming showcase
for Alan Einsman. The circular, slightly hypnotic guitar riffing guiding the
song matches up well with Einsman’s playing and they opt for placing the
musical flourishes at points when they will prove most effective. It certainly
boasts one of the album’s best choruses. “Finale” rides its performance
metaphor throughout and it meshes well with another piano centered arrangement,
but the real highlight here is an open-hearted and deeply emotion performance
from Caldie. “Asma” takes a slightly idiosyncratic approach to its arrangement and
it distinguishes the song from much of the other album while sounding very much
a part of the band’s over-arching creative vision. We’ll See Ourselves Out is a
punchy and charismatic first release with more intelligence in its eleven songs
than many other bands muster over eleven full length albums. It is an
entertaining and rollicking ride as well.
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