In this golden age of DIY music, artists are forever coming
up with ingenuous ways of getting their sound out to both new and established
audiences. The latest venture by Canadian trio The Crooked Brothers is based
around blending the visual artistic talents of band member Jesse Matas and a self-gratifying
desire to preserve the timeless and under threat postal system in their homeland.
However with keeping a foot on either side of the
communication timeline, the band have launched three new songs which are
primarily being made available by a limited edition of re-usable postcard
downloads. The spirit is in posting the card on to a new user and thus
spreading the content of some very good old time roots music laced with authentic
instrumentation and delectable harmonies.
Each limited design postcard, featuring art originating from
within the band and across Canada, has a restricted print run of 100 but rest
assured a popular download site is making the tunes accessible in a more
technological friendly format. The track earmarked for promotion is the breezy ‘There Ain’t No One’, which the ‘brothers’
imply is their inaugural happy track, and a song driven along by harmonica. Elsewhere
the song writing threesome of Darwin Baker, Matt Foster and the previously
mentioned Jesse Mata, interchange banjo, mandolin, guitars and Dobro with
perhaps the EP’s most heart-warming track being the sublime back porch number ‘I Think I Need To Be Alone’. The final
track, where the guys revert to their sad song comfort zone, possesses possibly
the strongest chorus line of the three with ‘If
I Had Known’ also having a more rootsy live feel to its sound.
With two full length albums behind them, POSTCARD EP is
surely a bridging interlude to more timeless offerings from The Crooked
Brothers who will use the release to support a handful of UK dates in May. At
present there seems to be a bias of female Canadian artists flowing into the UK
on the traditional roots bandwagon so a touch of gender balance is welcome
especially with the substantial talents on show of The Crooked Brothers. There
is also the prospect of your local postman personally delivering the postcard
download, which will keep one group of Canadian artists happy.
www.crookedbrothers.com