Thursday 28 January 2010



Keep me on your radar

There’s definitely a restraint to the songs on Chris Page‘s new solo album, A Date With a Smoke Machine, but don’t take that to mean the songs are in anyway restricted.  Page’s work with Camp Radio or The Stand GT may be rooted in punk and rock, but on this solo album he’s let his inner singer-songwriter out for some air, and he’s certainly breathing deeply.  The more I listen to this record, the more it reminds me of prime Billy Bragg, like Worker’s Playtime, an album of fierce intensity that doesn’t get loud to get it’s point across.  You can feel the tension just bubbling below the surface of songs like “Slideshows” that can clearly rock out if they’re allowed, but Page manages to hold that in and channel the intensity internally, letting the emotions out but not letting them get the better of him.  It works amazingly well, especially on the somber and haunting “Quit While I’m Behind”.  The 12 songs are over in a flash (just under 40 minutes), and you’ll find yourself wanting to go back and listen again and gain, to catch what you might have missed, and relish in what you loved the first time ’round.  It may seem like a cliché but A Date With a Smoke Machine is one of those albums that gives more and more with each listen.

Page will release A Date With a Smoke Machine on February 16 (on Ottawa’s Kelp Records), and is in Sudbury, Ontario on the 13th of the month, and Toronto on the 18th.  Camp Radio should have some new music coming out this year, too.

MP3: Chris Page “Two Twenty Twos”
Video: Chris Page “Coax the Ending Day”
Myspace: Chris Page





by J. Di Gioia | Comments Off

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