There are always two ways to approach a hangover: you can either stay in bed till noon and sleep it off sipping at a glass of water in an effort to baptise the pain, or you can drag yourself downstairs, immerse yourself in coffee and daytime television and make the occasional pass at both your housemate and sobriety. And this is pretty much what we have here: a lo-fi, slightly inexpert, slightly impaired plea bargain. Whether it’s the wine ‘validating sorrow’, living life ‘miserable’ or all the ‘lonely stories’ that he’s told, Dallas Green offers to exchange the bottle for the throttle – switching out of second gear, turning left at the crossroads and chasing whatever uncertain rainbow happens to be around at the time. Ever had one of those dreams in which your mind is awake but your body is still sleeping? You can’t scream, you can’t move, you can’t get the attention of the person lying next to you? It’s a paralysis of sorts. And in this respect, Dallas Green’s, ‘Bring Me Your Love’ is the sound of one man moving his fingers, clearing his throat and slowly coming out of a coma.
What his bandmates will make of it, however, is anyone’s guess.
As the melodic, celestial counterpoint to George Pettit’s raucous, Neanderthal caterwauling in the Canadian, post-hardcore band, Alexisonfire, Dallas Green has for the best part of a decade been mitigating someone else’s disasters. By the band’s own admission, Alexisonfire is ‘the sound of two Catholic high-school girls in mid-knife-fight.’ And they’re not far wrong, either. Only it’s not nearly as entertaining. Green has been like the proverbial rock in a hard, hard place, his terminal sweetness the only redemption offered by the band’s confusing, schizophrenic blend of death-metal and punky-emo hardcore. The solution has always been that Green has been able to release a handful of variously acoustic solo-albums under the moniker, ‘City and Colour’ (the name a more prosaic interpretation of ‘Dallas’ – a city – and ‘Green’ – a colour’), first releasing them as downloads for fans before compiling them for 2005’s ‘Sometimes’ album.
Confessional, apologetic and rarely amounting to anything beyond the strum of an acoustic, a chuckling banjo and the purr of a harmonica, ‘Bring Me Your Love’ is a gentle and unassuming album, more folky perhaps than its predecessors but still more than adequately graced by Green’s undulating voice and an outlook a saint might die for.
‘GO AWAY WHITE’ – RELEASED 10.03.08