Elliott BROOD Release Country Today
New Album Completes Town and Country Cycle Watch “C’Mon Let’s Go” Here
Photo credit: Dustin Seabrook
With the release of Country, out today, Elliott BROOD officially enter their Town and Country era. Country completes an album cycle that travels through familiar haunts and charges down new paths, all in the name of growth, love and family.
On Country, their second album in 12 months, Elliott BROOD play on both the genre and its signposts. The trio deftly matches sounds with settings, opting for twangy, electric guitars, sad but true humour-tinged lyrics, and obligatory whiskey references to create a cross-border quilt of stories that are both personal and from characters passing.
Country highlight “C’Mon Let’s Go” starts up like a car engine, powered by a rumbling organ and a sense of melancholic mayhem. Alternating between major and minor, sweet, soft verses and grungy, spooky choruses, “C’mon Let’s Go” calls us on a tour of local hamlets with mischief in mind. The distorted backing vocals and guitars playfully add texture to the escapist’s tale.
Watch a live performance of “C’Mon Let’s Go”:
Hitting on southern rock moments with “Postcard Pretty” and the old Memphis waltzes of “They Never Want to Sing Along,” Country winds its way through the boundary lines at a frenzied pace then slows to gentler speeds, bringing us satisfyingly around switchbacks and through long, sparse stretches. Windsor, ON may be their city of origin but the BROOD are clearly country lovers at heart.
Paying homage to a few of their musical heroes with covers of “Out of Time” (The Rolling Stones) and Rodney Crowell’s “Bluebird Wine”, Elliott BROOD share pieces of their personal lives and tell their favourite tales of country and kinfolk alike.
Over their twenty years as a band, Elliott BROOD have earned the familiarity that’s felt on both sides of the Town and Country coin. Home is about who you’re with, wherever you are.
TOUR DATES
Amen, NL: Cultureel Café de Amer, Apr 12
Antwerp, BE: Djingel Djangel, Apr 13
Edam, NL: A Walk About Music, Apr 14
Krefeld, DE: Kulturrampe, Apr 16
St Gilles Croix de Vie, FR: RockSea, Apr 19
Paris, FR: La Boule Noire, Apr 20
Haarlem, NL: Roots of Heaven, Apr 21
Lint, BE: ’t Groot Verzet, Apr 22
Köln, DE: MTC, Apr 23
Wiesbaden, DE: Schlachthof, Apr 24
Berlin, DE: Privatclub, Apr 25
Hamburg, DE: Nochtwache, Apr 26
Deventer, NL: Des Konings Festival, Apr 27
Middelburg, NL: Kaffee ‘t Hof, Apr 28
Lincoln, ON: Redstone Winery, Aug 8
Kingsville, ON: Kingsville Music Festival, Aug 9
Grande Prairie, AB: Bear Creek Music Festival, Aug 16
Kawartha Lakes, ON: The Grove Theatre, Sept 4
Tickets and show details here.
ABOUT ELLIOTT BROOD
“Doing it the hard way for 20 years,” is a badge Elliott BROOD wear with honour. Two decades on, work, life and love have taken the trio in many directions, away from their hometowns and headfirst into an ongoing musical journey through distance and time. Now, Elliott BROOD is never more at home than in the wash of distorted, evocative strings and stomps that make their signature alt country sound.
Elliott BROOD appeared on the cover of Exclaim Magazine in 2008 as the new ambassadors of a roots, folk rock and alt country wave that flourished in Toronto’s early aughts. The band’s arrival came with a level of buzz that launched them directly into the heart of a vibrant Toronto scene that centered at label Six Shooter Records, where they have returned to release their newest music. Their live show, a maelstrom of frenetic energy and fuzz, has brought them back and forth across continents countless times on bills The Sadies, Wilco, The Black Crowes, and many more. Their albums, meticulously crafted, detail-packed collections, have brought some of Canada’s highest musical honours and awards, including a Polaris Music Prize Short List and a JUNO Award.
In their twenty years, the band has remained fiercely loyal to their mysterious namesake. The stylized, imaginary character has guided the band’s travels over mountains and meadows, and through the more harrowing sides of history. Elliott BROOD has grown into a vessel for the trio’s shared history too, with new songs finding connection and communion in themes that hit much closer to home. With smile lines and guitar fingers long hardened with callouses, Elliott BROOD has been doing it the hard way, but making it sound easy.