MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: GORD DOWNIE, THE SADIES, AND THE CONQUERING SUN

It sure looks good on paper.  The combo of one of the country's greatest front men, and arguably the best band around immediately has the promise of something grand.  And so we've been waiting, seven years now this has been brewing.  Having heard them live 18 months ago, I still wasn't sure what to expect.  You know what?  It sounds just like Gord Downie fronting The Sadies.

What I mean by that is that neither party has changed much of how they sound.  Downie brings the drama, his gruff, tense story-telling in full flight.  The Sadies riff and smash through some tunes, turn up the psych machine on others, some alt-country here, full-out rock on others.  "It Didn't Start To Break My Heart Until This Afternoon" explodes with punk/Neil Young-Rust Never Sleeps intensity.  Budget Shoes has The Sadies Spaghetti Western style, and Downie's slightly surreal dream state lyrics, hard to understand but words that sound just grand.  Devil Enough has that great Sadies trick where they have three different music sections in a tune, slow, medium and fast, with some of that great country picking from Travis Good. Demand Destruction is kind of poppy, in a post-Byrds world, a lighter break from the fine flow of guitars, drums and words.

The group is touring this summer, and it feels much more like a real band than other similar projects, and certainly not like a Gord Downie solo album.  Sometimes these dream team projects don't yield good results, but in this case, what looked good on paper sounds pretty fine too.