Just Breakin’ Even, the latest album from Pictou County, Nova Scotia’s StoneHouse, is a disappointment. Which isn’t to say the album is a bad one, Just Breakin’ Even might be one of the best hard rock albums to come out of Nova Scotia this year, but it’s a hard shift down from StoneHouse’s raw and energetic live performances, if you can imagine that. There’s just this sensorial dissatisfaction that comes from hearing what is undoubtedly a respectable effort to contain the full might of their live experience forced through an inherently feeble and flawed medium.
Though, from what we’ve been told, that situation is better than it was.
“On this album, we really went back to what we know best, which is live playing,” explains StoneHouse’s lead singer Mike Mcgrath.
The band owes much of their swagger to Mcgrath as a frontman, and being blessed with the young Donny Stewart, who we can assume made some crossroad dealings for his talents as a guitarist, makes for a dangerous combination on stage.
Mcgrath acknowledges that capturing that energy has been an ongoing struggle doing the bands recording process. Now, with a couple of releases behind them, they seemed to have refined their approach to almost, just almost, give a glimpse into the full experience. But while the album may not slam into your eardrums with as much rawness and energy as StoneHouse’s live performances, it does demonstrate the synergy of the band and provides listeners with ten catchy rock tracks.
“On the first album we did a lot more tracking separately and there was a bit of a disconnect we found from what we were really after. When we got in the studio this time we felt more seasoned and had a much better idea of how to fix what we felt ‘went wrong’ last time. We made sure to do as much as we could together and doing bass and drums live off the floor at the same time really helped tighten the overall record.
I’d say our confidence was through the roof and we were just itching to get in there and get these songs heard. This album was way more of a collectively written album where we would just bounce idea after idea around vs. someone writing a song and everyone learning it. We really wanted to bring the energy we leave on the stage to the studio and in order to do that we felt it was key to have that fly by the seat of your pants improvising alongside a well polished up arrangement.”
The band possesses that special ability of making each track sound like a hit you’ve heard a million times, at least if you grew up in the late eighties or early nineties, despite pushing them through your earholes for the first time. Just Breakin’ Even is full of nods to a glorious era of big hair, torn denim (no, not the ones you paid for) and unironic crop tops. Imagine if Rage Against the Machine had grown up down the street from Whitesnake, and occasionally invited Billy Squier over to jam in the garage.
Standout hits include “Somebody,” which would have broken the top 40 in 1994 and shutdown every sock-hop for years with their Blind Melon-meets-4 Non Blondes sound and “What’s Going On,” a slow groove with a guitar solo ripping through it. The opening track “Runaway” leans into that early-90s funk with what sounds like proto-Rage Against The Machine, but tinged with the flavour of East Coast jam bands. Leaning on the talents of Donny Stewart once again, “Get What She Needs” gets a strong presence of his skills on the keys mixed some radio friendly pop-rock power-chords.
Despite a slight sense of being trapped in a time-warp there’s not a lot of filler on Just Breakin’ Even, the album is rife with hits, but do yourself a favour and go see StoneHouse live.