Crown Lands: White Buffalo (12"EP) [SPINEFARM]

Why you'll love it

This 12" EP is cut at 45 RPM and pressed in Canada. Produced by Toronto's David Bottrill, it caught Crown Lands in the year they won the Juno for Breakthrough Group of the Year.

This edition

• 12" EP
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Pressed in Canada

About the album

Crown Lands come from Oshawa, just along the 401 from us, and two people should not be able to make this much noise. Cody Bowles sings and drums, Kevin Comeau plays guitar, bass, keyboards and Taurus bass pedals, and between them they sound like a full 1970s prog band on a very good night.

The EP opens with "Inner Light," their first instrumental, a King Crimson-inspired workout on 12-string acoustic guitars, tablas and Taurus pedals that slips between 4/4, 7/8, 15/8 and 5/4. "White Buffalo" completes a trilogy that began with "Mountain" and "End of the Road," looking toward a hopeful future. "The Witching Hour (Electric Witch)" plugs in a song first heard acoustic on Wayward Flyers Vol. 1, and "The Oracle" unfolds over 13 minutes and several movements. Bottrill, who also worked with Rush, helped shape the arrangements, including the 7/8 and 11/8 riffs in the "Witching Hour" bridge.

James LaBrie of Dream Theater named them his best new band of 2021, and Gene Simmons told Rolling Stone to check them out. When the man from Kiss says you're loud, you have arrived.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Spinefarm (cat# 0243827641), the 2021 EP.