Don’t let me hesitate, don’t sit around and wait while the others are having fun.
Port O’Brien: All We Could Do Was Sing
If there has been a song released this year more immediately, infectiously gratifying than this new version of “I Woke Up Today” then I haven’t heard it. Man, what a rush. It’s the same stomping, wild fervor that imbued the classics that bands like The Rolling Stones built their legend on. Percussion reigning supreme and joyous voices raised together in song, cutlery thrown about. Too damn good.
Van Pierszalowski sings with a resonance not unlike Conor Oberst’s, but with a more gleeful tenor, and more lived-in. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, Port O’Brien have a positive outlook, a sense of great, long friendship that comes through in every note of these impeccable singalongs. These are songs about fishing and living in a fishing town, but that’s just surface. The themes run a lot deeper, and a lot more personal, touching on old romantic truths about life and love. The offhand whistled coda to “Don’t Take My Advice” works as beautifully as the ragged, clipped electric guitar intro to “Pigeonhold” because they both fit the emotional wavelength of the songs, and their stylistic shifts never feel like forced eclecticism. Speaking of “Pigeonhold” (and while we’re at it, “The Rooftop Song”) for a folk band damn these cats can rock out, and what better time to pull out the guitar heroics?
‘If I come back as fire, if I come back as flame, will you be there to catch me?’ Van sings on “Will You Be There”, one of those chills down the spine moments that appear throughout this album. For all its rock heights, this is a deeply personal, intimate collection of songs of the isolation and loneliness of the cold, open Northern waters, with a fisherman’s stoical good humour. As Van concludes at the end of “Close the Lid”, ‘I like it better here, where I can be cold all year, and at least I’ll be by myself.’ Then everyone joins in for a sing-along. How right that is.
82% => ****
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