City and Colour - If I Should Go Before You: ALBUM REVIEW

Another review at the request of a friend!

In fact, my friend's request was the first time I had heard of City and Colour, the recording alias of singer-songwriter Dallas Green. After doing my homework, I found that I had heard of Dallas Green's original band: Alexisonfire. They were one of those post-hardcore bands everyone listened to in middle school and high school, along with Thursday, Underoath, Silverstein, etc. That genre has never been my cup of tea, so I never kept tabs on Alexisonfire, its albums, or what became of its members.

You can bet, though, that I will be keeping tabs on City and Colour from here on out, after listening to this gorgeous new album, If I Should Go Before You. I was totally blown away by the difference stylistically between this and anything Dallas wrote in Alexisonfire. The latter is simplistic, needlessly grimy and rough, melodramatic. If I Should Go Before You is tender, thoughtful, heartfelt, and beautifully rendered.

Of course, to long time fans of Dallas Green's work, the fact that City and Colour is a complete 180 from Alexisonfire is old, old news. But, Dallas has delivered these fans another surprise. City and Colour's last two albums have generally been acoustic, being spiritual cousins of Fleet Foxes or Iron & Wine. On If I Should Go, Dallas plugs these folk roots into the amplifier and goes full electric, delivering one of the most sonically beautiful rock records you'll hear this year.

Look at him, going all Bob Dylan 1965 Newport Folk Festival on us

Opener and lead single "Woman" displays all of the qualities that make this album so gorgeous. For starters, the production is top notch. There's heaping amounts of reverb on this track, but it's used deliberately and doesn't wash out the rest of the album (like some other people...) The instrumentation has a very classic feel to it, very easy on the ears, emotional. And on top of everything are Dallas Green's soaring tenor melodies. It's really the main attraction here. In fact, the instrumentation seems to primarily exist to provide a backdrop as pretty and colorful as Dallas' voice. This is especially the case with title track "If I Should Go Before You" and "Lover Come Back." The latter actually hyperfocuses on Dallas' voice, which indeed does its job, but unfortuately, on this track, leaves everything else high and dry: not much going on instrumentally or lyrically to write home about.

Which leads me to my gripes. While this is an incredibly sonically beautiful album, it certainly has flaws. The biggest of these to me is Dallas' lyrics. Let's take "Lover Come Back" and look at its chorus:

"I sing lover come back, lover come back to me
Won't you ever come back, ever come back to me
How could I have been so foolish to let you leave
Lover come back, lover come back to me."

There are at least one hundred songs with these exact same lyrics. The lyrics only go uphill from here, but not by a whole lot. At best, Dallas pens lyrics that are honest and serve to get one of his good hooks stuck in your head, like the chorus of one of my album favorites, "Killing Time." "I'm running from the shadow of my former shadow's life." An evocative image for sure, but it's no poetry.

My other main gripe is intrinsically tied to the main appeal of the album: it's very, very safe. Dallas seems to take very minimal risks stylistically. While, yes, again, the alt-country rock is a fresh sound for City and Colour to be trying on, it's only fresh because he's never done it before. Hundreds of other artists have picked this genre clean, and Dallas doesn't leave the middle road much at all. Of course, that's deliberate. If I Should Go wouldn't have the nostalgic, classic feeling it has if it wasn't so deeply rooted in Americana tradition like it is. You've heard, for instance, "Map of the World" before without even listening to it. But that doesn't mean it's not highly enjoyable or well-executed, and we have Dallas Green's stellar musicianship to thank for that.

It's the strange paradox of taking the middle of the road: You can't go wrong, but you can't take your listeners anywhere they haven't been before. In the musical atmosphere of 2015, though, when a good rock record is hard to find among the droves lining up to hop on the indie bandwagon, it's nice to see someone return to tradition. And it's downright exciting to see someone like the former clean-vocalist for a post-hardcore band do it.

OVERALL SCORE: 8.1
City and Colour – If I Should Go Before You
1. Woman 2. Northern Blues 3. Mizzy C 4. If I Should Go Before You 5. Killing Time 6. Wasted Love 7. Runaway 8. Lover Come Back 9. Map of the World 10. Friends 11. Blood	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.