Hailer - Good Canyon

Wed 29th Sep, 2010 in Music Reviews

Sydney three-piece Hailer’s debut Good Canyon is full of subtlety with its textured spacey guitars and harmonies. The feeling throughout is organised and deliberate, never sloppy and better still, nothing is forced. There is plenty of space in the guitar sound and the lack of clutter is refreshing; no angst-driven screaming vocalists here, no killer guitar solos, no flash drum pyrotechnics, just quality playing and good songs.

The album opens with Forever – an Eastern sounding cruisy love song that starts quietly and builds gently finishing up with a simple but effective riff coming across the top. It reminds me a bit of the Stone’s under-rated Satanic Majesties, but what makes this different is that it is as if this song is just allowed to happen.

My pick for a single is the drippy catchy pop rocker_Je m’en fous_. Again, there is a bit of a Stones feel to this, but it is more about the process than reconstruction. There is a serious point of difference, though – the Stones hardly ever wrote for harmonies because they simply didn’t have the voices. These guys can sing.

Come On It’s All Inside Your Head has a more mysterious and edgy sound and it is one of the best on the album. Again, there’s room for the guitars and the voices to occupy the space. Keep you happy contrasts with dreamy vocals on top of a gentle melody.

The first couple of bars of Let It Ride had me expecting a big silly rock ‘n’ roll song, but it delivered a taught, toe tapping rocker with layered guitars and a sense of nervous urgency. Distant Land is a different animal – a relaxed semi-acoustic piece with three part harmonies that cruises along nicely. Nice words too, affectionate without being too soppy.

The redundancy song bounces along without too many cares while the pace picks up again with Angel of Snow. There is a bit more of an edge with this one with its rougher guitars and plaintive vocals.The edgy theme continues with Clouds. At a bit over six minutes, it is allowed to develop its dark mood, with the rough guitars providing a sense of menace.

Dead Bodies at nearly 10 minutes is the longest and best track. I would have moved this further up the album as this was the track that really did it for me. While this track gets noisier in places, it still allows plenty of room for all the bits to breathe before some Crazy Horse-style chaos at the end. The album closes with Heaven Knows another semi-acoustic piece with layered harmonies and a pleasant riff in a sort of Stones meets California in the seventies way that works.