专辑简介

by Tim SendraA quartet from Montreal, the High Dials are firm believers in the three Bs: the Beatles, the Byrds, and British psychedelia as purveyed by the Who and the Pretty Things. Their second record, A New Devotion, is a pleasant trip back to the '60s that is also a quaint concept album dealing with the travails of Silas, an average guy trapped in a futuristic nightmare. As with most concept records, the narrative flow is kind of fuzzy, but that is no big deal because the songs themselves (like the dreamy "Desiderata," the subdued "Leaving Alphaville," and the peppy "Morning's White Vibration") are mostly pretty decent. The group blends the soaring harmonies and jangling guitars of the Byrds with the charging songcraft of the mid-period Beatles and tops it all off with a heady dose of pastoral psychedelia in the lyric department and on the occasional tune like the trippy "Can You Hear the Bells?" The melodies are strong and the performances convincing, and if you dig where the bandmembers are coming from, it is hard not to be impressed at the skill with which they capture the feeling of the mid-'60s. The only faults with the record: at a little over an hour, the disc is about 20 minutes too long, and the band doesn't seem too interested in the thing that helped make the three Bs so groundbreaking -- a sonically imaginative and exciting sound. The High Dials are too polite-sounding and too willing to play things straight to truly measure up to their heroes in any meaningful way. Too many of the songs feel like rote imitations; by the end of the record one is left with an impression of a band with no imagination. All this really is in the end is a pleasant exercise in nostalgia, and when it comes down to a choice between listening to A New Devotion or pulling out your copy of S.F. Sorrow again, S.F. Sorrow will win out every time.