Rating: NNNN
Listening to Eamon McGrath’s voice is like being dragged along a gravel road by Tom Waits. The young Toronto-based Edmonton native sounds more like a 60-year-old barfly ordering his first bourbon shot of the morning through a cloud of his own cigarette smoke.
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This is a good thing, because Peace Maker is a dirty old bar album full of lap steel and tambourines. Cold Alberta Nights’ chorus calls up memories of Ryan Adams’s Oh My Sweet Carolina, with rougher edges. McGrath’s advertised punk influence are less evident than his folk ones, though distorted alt-country comes through on tunes like I Am The Deer.
The record’s highlight, Wrecking Ball, evokes Emmylou Harris or Gillian Welch, but it’s very much its own beast – the kind that kicks gritty dust in your eyes before galloping away. What I can’t figure out is why there’s a sketch of two people having sex on the cover. Maybe something to do with farm ploughs?
Top track: Wrecking Ball
