Pop: New Releases: The Sadies: Favourite Colours
STEWART LEE


THE SADIES
Favourite Colours
Yep Roc YEP-2068

Early exposure to the Sadies revealed the usual alt-country moves: the Toronto quartet released four albums of breakneck roots-rock that the genre’s folksy journal, No Depression, probably described as “twang-some”. But their fifth album builds boldly on these solid foundations. Song of the Chief Musician is a swirling haze of psychedelic pedal steel. The Curdled Journey transforms standard spaghetti-western soundtrack riffs into abstract shapes, courtesy of reverberating guitars of impossible vastness. The English rock icon Robyn Hitchcock sings the closer, Why Would Anybody Live Here?, while As Much as Such adds a punk edge to the quicksilver country sound of the Byrds’ Untitled album. In the 1960s, Gram Parsons hankered after the concept of “cosmic American music”. Three decades later, these Canadian interlopers might yet discover it. Three stars