Saturday, October 27, 2012

Recording: The Wilderness of Manitoba

Artist: The Wilderness of Manitoba

Songs: Echoes + Help Me [Joni Mitchell cover]

Recorded at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church, October 26, 2012.

The Wilderness of Manitoba - Echoes

The Wilderness of Manitoba - Help Me

Full review to follow. A celebratory night for The Wilderness of Manitoba as they launched their new Island of Echoes album to a hometown crowd. This big church-y space is exactly the sort of place I wished I was seeing the band play every time they were drowned out by the semi-indifferent patrons of a bar. The interesting thing is that the band has evolved to a state where they are so much bolder in their presence that they'd have much more of a fighting chance in that sort of environment. It's been happening in stages in front of our eyes, so it's striking to step back and see how much the band has evolved — the close-harmonized folk base is still there, but now the band can just as organically pull off, say, the Fleetwood Mac-flavoured "Echoes".

This was also a coming out party of sorts for new-ish singer/violinist Amanda Balsys, so it was befitting that in the encore she got a vocal spotlight with a sterling take on Joni's "Help Me" — and didn't it feel good.

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