The first track on Poorfolk’s self titled debut made one thing
painfully apparent: naming a CD after another genre and adding some
swishy guitars isn’t always enough to distinguish an album from that
burgeoning heap of mostly uniform, pleasantly mediocre indie bands,
especially when Jonathan Pearce’s voice sounds exactly like half the
lead vocalists already going. But unfortunately for the snide cynic
in me (who’s nonetheless snacking happily after the above longwinded
sentence), Poorfolk opted to put the worst song first and the rest of
the album is actually quite listenable. Stallin’ and Topple the Pride
are fine examples of meandering melodic folk-rock, sounding a little
bit like an understated, more layered Shins, or a less distinct
Calexico. Despite my initial misgivings, for the most part Pearce
lifts the ‘folk’ aspect above being simply an unnecessary gimmick.
Skip the first track, but not necessarily the whole album. Promising.
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Meta
Hey there,
I just discovered the review of the album. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen and the review the album. I just have a few questions – where are you from and how did you get the album?
thanks again and take care
Jonathan Pearce
Hi! what a surprise.. actually I reviewed the album through the McMaster University student newspaper – the Silhouette (where this was originally published). The arts and ent section there gets in a wide variety of CDs and it’s up to the random writerfolk to choose which ones we want to review. A lot of the stuff is from really small labels, and this album was actually one of the ones I came back to listening to after reviewing it. I’m in London Ontario right now for the summer, but during the school year I’m at McMaster.
Keep up the good work and best of luck with your musical adventures!