Over The Bluffs, the debut release from The Holiday Crowd is described by the band as a love letter to Scarborough, the childhood home of singer Imran Haniff and guitarist Colin Bowers. Maybe so, but there’s more than enough flirting with late 80s British jangle pop here to make Morrissey blush with affection. “While She Waits” could easily have been on Meat Is Murder, and even though its sound references such a specific time, it’s simple melody sounds timeless.
There’s much to love about The Holiday Crowd, basically because they’re going against the grain of what seems to be popular and trendy in 2011. Hmmm, where have we heard that story before? Over The Bluffs is available now via New Romantic Records, and the whole thing is streaming over at Exclaim.ca for those who want to sample before they commit.
Back in ’10, when writing about John K. Samson‘s Provincial Route 222 EP, I called it “a succinct, lush 3-song set that makes the listener beg for more.” Perhaps my begging wasn’t emotive enough, for no new work showed last year, but Samson wasn’t resting on his laurels. He recently told Exclaim! magazine “I decided to do this project of three seven-inches covering three different sections of road in Manitoba. And then after I did two, I realized I wanted it to be four ― there wanted to be two more sections, and also one about home. And then it just kind of started to make sense to make it into a full-length,” and thus Provincial was begotten, his first solo album proper without the Weakerthans.
Including all the songs from his two previous EPs (each one re-recorded for Provincial) plus the new, unreleased material, Samson has crafted a travelogue-as-love letter to his home of Manitoba, offering up vignettes of life along four stretches of provincial road in his distinct narrative style. They could be set anywhere, but even the tale of a teacher who’s had an affair with a married colleague in “The Last And” sounds like a short film shot through a frost covered window, all colours bleached out and muted by the pale light of winter as only a small Manitoba town could produce. The song was devastatingly beautiful when I first heard it back n 2010 and it still has the power to haunt me now.
The trip ends at home with the song “Taps Reversed”, recorded in his living room with wife Christine Fellows on backing vocals, and the clicking of his three animals across their floor, but you’ll just want to get back in the car and do the road trip all over again as soon as it’s done. Samson is the quintessential Canadian songwriter, capturing not just the physical landscape, but the mental and emotional geography of frozen winters. Whether it’s songs about waking up in front of frozen computer screens, online petitions to get former NHLers into the Hockey Hall of Fame, or a grad student struggling to finish his thesis, Provincial‘s songs are songs about my people, our people.
Who’s needs any more than that?
Provincial was released on January 24, 2012 by Anti- Records.
Over The Bluffs, the debut release from The Holiday Crowd is described by the band as a love letter to Scarborough, the childhood home of singer Imran Haniff and guitarist Colin Bowers. Maybe so, but there’s more than enough flirting with late 80s British jangle pop here to make Morrissey blush with affection. “While She Waits” could easily have been on Meat Is Murder, and even though its sound references such a specific time, it’s simple melody sounds timeless.
Back in ’10, when writing about 
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