Ringing with horrors
There are always too many options at Canadian Music Week and SXSW and NXNE, but don’t worry.
You’ve just gotta explore your options, look at what you think you want, then throw yourself at it in the hopes that it’ll be good. I learned a valuable lesson at CMW this year: with Elliott Brood on the bill, you never have to hope.
They performed a CMW showcase at Lee’s Palace last Saturday and put every other act on the bill to absolute shame. So much so that headliners Cuff the Duke apologized in advance for not being as awesome as Elliott Brood. OK. Not quite. But Wayne Petti did thank the “extrememly hard to follow Elliott Brood.” For their part, Cuff the Duke played extremely well. They’re almost ready to release a new album and I’m gonna be right there to buy it. That said, it was just Elliott Brood’s night.
It was ridiculous - no, INSANE - they way they brought the house down. From the second Mark Sasso, Casey Laforet and Steve Pitkin bounced onstage to play their set of country death metal songs, we were at their command. They just killed it. Just put their heads down and bashed out a solid set of murder ballads, angry, scratchy country laments and plain ol’ rock n’ roll.
Back in the day, Pat and I were roommates in Brandon, Manitoba. He rescued me from a hellishly hot, stanky attic apartment that I shared with at least one mouse. When we moved in together, I was taking part in a mix tape exchange. For one exchange, I made a disc of murder ballads and got Pat to pose for my CD cover.
Thanks, Pat! Mighty fine blood you got goin’ on there.
Elliott Brood’s Mountain Meadows is an album of murder ballads based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre of Sept. 11 1857, when the Mormon militia, disguised as Natives, attacked the Fancher-Baker emigrant wagon train in the Utah territory.
Mark Twain wrote about the massacre in Roughing It: “The whole United States rang with its horrors.”
A large party of Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of emigrent wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses of their wagons, and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the sort of scurvy apologies for “Indians” which the southern part of Utah affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them. At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They retired to the upper end of the ‘Meadows,’ resumed civilized apparel, washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to the beleagured emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with cheer after cheer….”
And then, they were slaughtered. About 120 men and women were executed there, their bodies left out in the open, their bones scattered across the plains.
I’ve always had a fascination with death. Maybe that’s where my love of murder ballads comes from. The militia left about 17 children from the group alive. They were raised in the Mormon faith, where it was assumed they would not remember what happened. Elliot Brood’s Mountain Meadows doesn’t really get into the gory details of this fight. But it wonders what happened to the survivors. There’s talk of bones and graves and schoolyards and memories. All things you need to write really good murder ballads.
Beyond that, these guys have something else going for them: Showmanship. They dress in dark suits and collared shirts. They remind me, simultaneously, of morticians and gangsters; Proper, but foreboding. It’s like going to a raucous funeral.
Casey Laforet, wearing head-to-toe black, sat crouched on a stool and launched into a song, punctuating his frantic, furious guitar-playing (and he’s doing double duty on bass pedals) with wild headbanging, shouts and yelps. Steve Pitkin storms in and keeps things chugging along with meaty thumps and stomps. Meanwhile Mark Sasso (who, it must be said, bears an uncanny resemblance to Stephen Harper with dark hair) stood, tall and intimidating, strumming the banjo, the guitar and yes, the ukulele, and letting loose with an unholy wail of a voice that sounds like Brian Johnson ate Bryan Adams and washed it down with a glass of Tom Waits.
Near the end of their set, they handed out baking sheets and wooden spoons and encouraged the crowd to bang on them at the appropriate moments. Those moments came during the song Write It All Down For You and people pounded along and it all sounded so fine. The evening coalesced right then. It was the perfect moment. Everybody was along for the ride for their entire set. I only wish it had went on longer.
Basia Bulat played the bill at Lee’s last Saturday too. She had a lot of technical difficulties, especially with a troublesome ukulele. It was a sweet, small little thing, perfectly made and nice. Just like Basia Bulat. But when she went to plug it in, it wouldn’t work and she started losing the crowd. Enter Elliott Brood’s lead singer, Mark Sasso. He gallantly let her borrow his ukulele. (I know. Two groups with multiple ukuleles. It’s way better than I’m making it sound.) She picked it up. It was bigger than hers, rough and black and scratched and nicked. It looked dirty and broken, but it sounded sweet when she played it and it worked perfectly for her. You can draw your own conclusion here, but I’ll draw one too: Elliott Brood may not be pretty or perfect-looking, but they are not fucking around. When they play, shit does not dare go wrong. YOU HEAR THAT UKULELE?
Often, the most morbid tales are the ones told in a fast-paced, energetic way. You can’t listen to Ralph Stanley croon Pretty Polly or Johnny Cash romp through Cocaine Blues without learning that. Like the man in black himself, this band lays down some potent music that stays with you. I haven’t stopped thinking about them since I saw them.
They play like the hounds of hell are on their heels. They’re taking you down dark, twisty roads and they’re taking you there at a dangerous, breakneck pace. It’s breathtaking and exciting.
It’s like waking up in the middle of the night when you’re camping and you really have to pee and you play that game with yourself where you tell yourself there’s nothing out there in the woods. You can totally get up and take a piss real quick, then be back in your warm sleeping back before you even know it. Except in Elliott Brood’s songs, there IS something out there. It’s crouched in the brush and it can’t wait to gut you. It’s licking a knife right now…
I have a hard time making best of lists and stuff, but Mountain Meadows is on my list of best albums of 2008, so you should buy it and try to see this band live if you can. They’re at SXSW this week before they head back to Canada for Juno Fest in Vancouver on March 27 (They’re nominated for best roots/traditional album and best CD design) They’ll be back in their native Ontari-ari-o May 1 for a gig at The Gig Music Hall in Kitchener.
Elliott Brood albums can be purchased at Six Shooter or their personal website. You can also listen in at their myspace.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I love these dudes. So much so I added another song, the amazing first track “Fingers and Tongues.”
