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Beloved Montreal quartet the Barr Brothers – Brad and Andrew Barr with multi-instrumentalists Sarah Pagé and Andrés Vial – sound confident and heavy on their second album. But aside from the textured power of arena rocker Love Ain’t Enough – in which Pagé’s harp is a constant presence amidst the satisfying boom of Andrew’s drums and Brad’s falsetto – it’s mostly still a folk album.
Even The Darkness Has Arms flows with pretty guitar parts and backups by Little Scream’s Laurel Sprengelmeyer, and How The Heroine Dies recalls vintage Leonard Cohen. Half Crazy is a dark, sinewy blues jam, while Valhallas has heart-lifting buoyancy.
Most impressive is how the band synthesizes diverse instruments and rhythms without appropriating or grasping for novelty. Contrabass, for example (played by Miles Perkin and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry), is all over the album. Abou Sissoko plays ngoni alongside singer Katie Moore on gentle Little Lover, the most obvious nod to the band’s love of West African music.
Top track: Valhallas
The Barr Brothers play the Danforth Music Hall November 5.
