Halifax band The Town Heroes have released their fourth album, Everything (will be fine when we get to where we think we’re going). Taking on a quieter tone than their previous three, Everything still features The Town Heroes’ signature sound and catchy style but comes at it from a new angle.
With the addition of two new members, Aaron Green on guitar and Tori Cameron on bass, in November of 2016, the band are able to flesh out their sound. What started as simply guitar, vocals and drum has now become all of that plus bass, harmonies and more.
“Our previous three releases were recorded as a duo. On those records we never really wanted to stray too far from what we could do live. That approach essentially crafted what our sound was, but also put sonic limitations on what we would do in the studio,” says guitarist and vocalist Mike Ryan.
“With this record we didn’t want to have any limitations on what we were creating. We wanted each song to have the room to go in any direction.
“A number of the songs on the album have been floating around for a while now. Words For Days is from 2011, Poets from a few summers back. […] What we could do as two people was something unique on it’s own, but for some of the ideas moving forward, there needed to be more instrumentation. we wanted interplay between guitar parts, vocal harmonies, parts where I could ease up and not have to be strumming 100% of the time.”
With the added instrumentation, the tracks of Everything (will be fine when we get to where we think we’re going) have a smoother sound, blending the individual elements rather than them each having their own individual punch. The guitar and drums are no longer the main points of focus, and instead everything ties together in unity. This gives the album a more calm and mellow feel than The Town Heroes’ previous three albums while still maintaining the band’s signature catchy riffs. The rhythm work get shouldered where you’d expect to find it: on the bass and drums.
Standing out for its catchy and unique sound is “Babe Ruth,” a track about doing anything for someone you care about… even if means taking a few swings with a bat. The track slowly builds, quickening the bassline and drumming until it crescendos with something more upbeat. “Babe Ruth” is also a good example of the direction that album has taken with the lessened role of the lead guitar. The bass and percussion do the heavy lifting in the track and the guitar takes the backseat during the verses.
The album takes on a less distorted and heavy sound than we have previously heard from The Town Heroes. But what we do get is songs that are more dynamic in terms of progression, with peaks and valleys that take listeners on an auditory rollercoaster, whether in an individual track or the album as a whole.
Without being a full-fledged concept album, many tracks take on a uniform theme: the incessant search for one’s place in this world. This is reflected in the album’s title as well as in tracks like “More” with lyrics “when I close my eyes I see something more,” and “Everything” with “all I want is to feel everything that is real. Do you know where you’re going? Tell me what you can show me.”
“A lot of the songs talk about trying to find your place in the modern world. I think it’s a fairly difficult thing to do nowadays. A lot of people are kind of just floating lately, myself included,” continues Ryan.
“A lot of us seem to always be waiting for the next thing in our life… whether it’s a job, a partner, an album or whatever. We think that when we get there everything will be fine, our life will be fulfilled and our worries will disappear. […] This album is about stepping back and trying to look at things from 50,000 feet to analyze our own habits, dreams and idiosyncrasies. It’s about perspective, becoming less detached and trying to zero in on who we really are. And for that matter, what we need.
“There’s a line in Kerouac’s On the Road, when a man stops and asks, ‘you boys going to get somewhere, or just going?’ I think a lot of the time now it seems like we’re all just going. This is about trying to figure out how to get somewhere. This is about trying to figure out how to get somewhere.”
Everything (will be fine when we get to where we think we’re going) is available from wherever quality music is sold.