Kingston native Luther Wright’s brand of down-home tunes doesn’t fit easily or comfortably into the genres it’s stuffed into. The songs are too weird to be country, too traditional to be alt-country (whatever that is) and too ambitious to be simply folk. He occupies a distinct space thanks to off-kilter phrasing and a refusal to be sonically restricted. At times his style can border on annoying, but when he hits his marks, Wright (with his Wrongs) pulls off some truly magical Canadiana.
The One Girl shows a spark of Wright’s punk roots and adds a dose of 80s pop drive à la the Replacements, like the defining track in a John Hughes flick. But the quirky kitsch-folk of jaunty Front Porch and marginally more successful The Parking Lot Song doesn’t hold up against more thoughtful, less gimmicky tunes like Lucifer. The album hits its emotional high point on Northern, where subtle, sweet pedal steel brushes up against Wright and (former Weeping Tile bandmate) Sarah Harmer’s tried and true harmonies.
Top track: Northern
Listen to Hearts And Lonely Hunters here.
