City And Colour – Bring Me Your Love

Dallas Green is definitely making a name for himself in the music industry. On top of sweating it out on stages across the world with Alexisonfire, his solo project, cleverly titled City & Colour, has been serving him well over the past few years too. While he already had a few fans who followed over from his original group, the explosion of singles like Save Your Scissors and Coming Home enabled him to sell out shows all across Canada as he crisscrossed the country playing his stripped down acoustic material. That’s where he shined. The album, Sometimes, had a few decent tracks but the real beauty of City and Colour was in his live performance, something which he helped cement with last year’s live CD/DVD release. Now he’s back with his sophomore album, Bring Me Your Love, which falls nicely in between Liveand Sometimes.

Not quite as raw as the live CD but not as polished as Sometimes, Bring Me Your Love features a more folk oriented sound than it’s predecessors. It still contains not only Green’s signature vocals but also that acoustic pop edge that filled up his debut but where the pop edge seemed to navigate Sometimes, it falls in as an afterthought here. Instead, Green focuses on a more down to earth approach, an older style of writing that still relies heavily on the pop influence but also nods his head towards the folk tunes of the past. It is on the songs that he fully accepts his folk influence that the album really flourishes.

The Death of Me explodes with a sense of energy brought through not only the layered vocals and mandolin but by it’s jubilant joy despite the pessimistic nature of the lyrics. It sounds like a an old song to be sung around campfire with friends. The harmonica on Against The Grain grabs your attention instantly as it is one of the most evident deviation from his normal writing style and the banjo on What Makes A Man follows closely in that footsteps. However, it is on The Girl that Green really excels. The song itself can be somewhat repetitive, but there is an honest sincerity in it that can not be mistaken and that lifts the song above the other tracks. Other than the banjo at the beginning, the song starts off pretty much like every other song on the recor but two and a half minutes into it, that changes. Daniel Romano (who appears on almost every track on the album) and Spencer Burton of Attack In Black count Green in with an energetic “1,2,1,2,3,4!” and from then on The Girl becomes the only song that I’ve heard by City & Colour that accurately depicts his live presence. The acoustic guitar is rawer and doesn’t sound as polished and with Burton and Romano shouting in the occasional back-up vocals, the song becomes the perfect acoustic number.

Unfortunately, from then on, the album goes downhill. The closing two songs, Sensible Heart and As Much As I Ever Could, fall flat after hearing The Girl. Not only do they seem to be overly polished, something that hurt Sometimes, but they’re also too long and slow to really capture the listener’s attention. There were a few other tracks prior to those that felt that way, but it is only those two songs that I find it really difficult to listen to all the way through.

Despite the few bumps like the closing tracks, City & Colour‘s sophomore effort impressed me more than I expected. Bring Me Your Love is an acoustic folk pop album and while the pop aspects are all well and good, it is when he fully embraces the folk side of it than the songs truly shine. Still not as good as he is live, but a step in the right direction compared to Sometimes.