Crown Lands: Crown Lands [SPINEFARM]

Why you'll love it

This pressing comes with a poster and lyric sheet. Recorded in Nashville with producer Dave Cobb, the album helped win Crown Lands the 2021 Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of the Year.

This edition

• Poster included
• Lyric sheet

About the album

Two people shouldn't be able to make this much noise, and yet. Cody Bowles sings and drums, Kevin Comeau plays guitar, bass and keyboards, and between them they sound like a classic-rock power trio with a prog habit. They started jamming in a friend's barn in 2015, Comeau with a classical music degree from Western and Bowles fresh from studies at York in Toronto, and by 2018 they were opening for Jack White on his Canadian dates.

For their first full-length they went to Nashville and producer Dave Cobb, who Bowles said pushed them to trust their first instincts. "Spit It Out" and "Leadfoot" ride big, bluesy riffs, "River" and "Howlin' Back" swing harder, and "Forest Song" and the closing "Sun Dance" open up into longer, more psychedelic territory. "End of the Road," the lead single, is a protest song about violence against Indigenous women, and its video features narration by Tanya Tagaq. The band's name and lyrics draw on Indigenous resistance to colonialism.

A Rock Album of the Year nomination at the Junos followed the debut, and their love of Rush later produced a ten-part tribute song. We'll happily claim them as locals; Oshawa is close enough that we can hear the drums.

Also at Kops: more Crown Lands on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Spinefarm (cat# 0250880137), the 2020 album.