Aug. 22, 2012 - Issue #879: Is The Party Over?
Dominion Day
Murdoch & Sparrow {recordings_bands_mg} Dominion Day {/recordings_bands_mg}
Independent,
4
Albums with a storyline can be tricky vessels to successfully chart a path for: where do you strike the balance between overt, overarching narrative and letting the songs go where they need to go, unrestrained by the need to fit into a greater tale?It's not an easy thing to craft, but on Dominion Day—James Murdoch and Jay Sparrow's joint-album, written on a 10-day pilgrimage to Nashville, and recorded live in February of this year—the narrative never overwhelms the songs themselves, which shine out as a diversified spread of country-flecked tunes.
The plot as such follows a pair of turn-of-the-century lovers that find themselves separated by the expanse of this country, but it exists more to give the album an natural arc for its songs to follow. The lush, early sweep of "Introduction," "Madeline" and "Juvenile, Mad and Crazy" colours Dominion Day's tone as it sets up the story: ochre guitar chords, rising dual melodies, a tale of two young people falling in love with each other.
The sound shifts and spreads as the story does: "Inkerman" finds Murdoch and Sparrow in full-on rocker mode, "All Men Must Bear a Heavy Load" plucks a grievous ballad that leads into the simpler aching beauty of "Lay Down Your Arms." As a method of arcing an album's emotional pathway, a narrative here is deftly effective.
For my money, I would've preferred more of the live elements left in the recording—at one point at the show, the wrong song was introduced, an endearing moment of live performance that here is excised entirely—but even if the live-aspect is reduced to the applause between songs and none of the banter, the off-the-stage recording still gives a quality sound, performed with skill by a crack backing band, and adds another layer of well-executed uniqueness to Dominion Day. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.