Sadies - Northern Passage

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 3 / 4 / 2017

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Review

Though better known for the people they’ve collaborated with (too many to list, but Neko Case and Neil Young are on there), the Sadies have now reached their tenth album and their twentieth year as a band. They mark these two anniversaries with an album that takes them right back to their roots. Underneath them, to be more precise, as the record was recorded in the basement of their parents’ house. ‘Northern Passage’ begins with what appears to be an apology for a comparatively long gap between records (their last came in 2013). A country-ish ditty addressed from one bandmate to another, ‘Riverview Fog’ tells us he is “just checking in, nothing much with me is new, I’ll check again in another month or two, but I thought I’d let you know you’re on my mind.” He goes on to explain that he’s been playing their old records and would love to come over and jam, “but I know that’s not where you’re at today.” It’s a deceptive start, which could have fallen straight off the back of a JJ Cale album, all lolloping strums and a melody that sounds like it could have written itself. As soon as it is over, we move into the furious guitar workout of ‘Another Season Again’, with the band on the kind of rocking form that suggest, contrary to what we heard on track one, that nothing has changed in the band’s world for decades. We get another name to add to their list of collaborators, as Kurt Vile drops by to lend his hands and laid-back vibe to album’s catchiest tune, ‘It’s Easy (Like Walking)’. This is classic power pop and marks the band out as kindred spirits of Fountains of Wayne. Elsewhere, there are more infectious melodies, though none are quite as infectious as this. You have to work to find some of them though, as the vocals are deliberately murky and the tunes are often drenched in delightfully fuzzy guitar noise. But, more even than the tunes, the album’s real highlights come with the codas that crop up seemingly at random, the sound of a band having so much fun they don’t want to stop. It would have been easy to edit these passages out, but I’m glad they haven’t, as they underline what I feel to be the fundamental point of this record – that it’s not one the band needed to make, just one that they wanted to. They will probably never be as famous as the people they’ve worked with, but ‘Northern Passage’ is evidence that as long as the Sadies are playing together, they should never give up on their own tunes.

Track Listing:-

1 Riverview Fog
2 Another Season Again
3 There Are No Words
4 It's Easy (Like Walking) (feat. Kurt Vile)
5 The Elements Song
6 Through Strange Eyes
7 God Bless the Infidels
8 The Good Years
9 As Above, So Below
10 Questions I've Never Asked
11 The Noise Museum

Band Links:-

https://en-gb.facebook.com/TheSadies/
http://www.thesadies.net/
https://twitter.com/thesadies
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSadies

Label Links:-

http://www.yeproc.com/
https://www.facebook.com/yeproc
https://twitter.com/yeproc