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Written
by Montey Zike, posted by blog admin
This is a band interested in much more than
churning out good time four minute rock songs. Circus of the West is cut from
the same cloth driving many serious singer/songwriters but places their
ambitions much of the time in a decidedly vivid rock context rather than
keeping the audience at meaningful distance from what they do. There are many
literary and even poetic flourishes filling their songwriting, but these aren’t
highbrow songs in any respect – instead, both in words and music, Circus of the
West perform tracks that reach out to people with straight forward but
intelligently put statements that inhabit our everyday world rather than flying
over our collective heads and remaining too personal of a project. This is, in
key aspects, the final perquisite to full songwriting maturity – a willingness
and talent for writing much more than self-referential terms and looking
outside one’s self for inspiration – and it’s a quality sweeping across the
entirety of We’ll See Ourselves Out.
“Birdhand”
begins with a organ flourish before launching like a rocket with some
turbo-fueled guitar pyrotechnics. This is the ideal opener for Circus of the
West’s debut because it brings together so many of their strengths. It has
attitude to burn without ever being vacant of coherence and sense, an attentive
and committed vocal performance from Edwin Caldie, and a plethora of
combustible moments between the string players, particularly lead guitarist Ben
Court and rhythm guitarist and one of the band’s primary songwriters Joel
Leviton. “Some Connections”, the second song on We’ll See Ourselves Out, has a
much less cluttered attack and the dynamics vary much more. The band couldn’t
have chosen a better one-two punch to start things off because it gives the
audience a revealing glimpse of how well this unit can pivot between radically
different approaches. “Boxes” one of the best tracks on the album, begins as a
relatively straight forward acoustic track but reveals an appreciation for
dynamics as it develops not shared by any other track up to this performance.
The band constructs strong, sturdy choruses and “Boxes” features some of their best
work in that regard thanks to how well the backing vocals build on the song’s
inherent tension.
“Valentine
Eye” opens with some lightly applied guitar feedback before segueing into a
subdued melody. Caldie’s half-hushed voice and the slightly fragmented vocal
melody bring a lot of added atmospherics to bear that will draw in any
listener. There’s a little darkness creeping in along the edges of this song
that the band artfully enhances as the song progresses. No moment ever comes
when the song explodes into life and it is a better tune for the lack. “Looking
In” is the first all-out rocker since the opening track and proves their
ability to command attention in this style isn’t a fluke. They are obviously
just as comfortable with slowly developing numbers like “Valentine Eye” as they
are with pieces like this and such range speaks well of their overall promise.
We’ll See Ourselves Out ends with the brief acoustic track “Epilogue” and it
makes for a wonderfully fitting conclusion to an album that will linger in your
memory.
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