Initially formed in Kingston, Ontario and featuring Colleen Brown, Elijah Abrams, Shea Connor, Trevor Mann and and Murray Wood, the Edmonton, Alberta-based indie rock, All-Star band Major Love is comprised of members of several locally and regionally renowned bands including Scenic Route To Alaska, Jesse and the Dandelions and singer/songwriters Colleen Brown and Elijah Abrams. And since their formation, the band has specialized in what they describe in press notes as “soulful pop-rock music for their hoser friends.” The band’s latest single “Tear It Down” has started to receive some attention across the blogosphere, and as the members of the band explain in press notes, the song was inspired in the aftermath of two explosions at an Edmonton area senior residence, which as it turned out was across the street from where the band’s vocalist Colleen Brown lived. Two people died — as a the result of a bizarre murder/suicide. Over the course of the next three years, Brown saw the building gutted, rebuilt and furnished. And while contemplating the disparity between the tradesmen who were responsible for rebuilding the senior home and her life as a musician, she began writing a song, which thematically asks one of the biggest questions in our lives: is there beauty in destruction? But along with that the song subtly focuses on the passage and brings up leitmotifs about life and death.
In some way, the song suggests that there are certain unassailable facts of life: that despite the tumults and joys of our lives, time keeps moving forward and that all things will inevitably die, but from that there’s something truly profound — an awareness of everything’s mutability, of everything being finite, and life’s constant renewal. Interestingly, the band manages to pair Brown’s gorgeous, pop belter-like vocals with twangy and jangling power chords, a propulsive yet old-timey backbeat and a rousingly anthemic hook that features Brown joyously singing ” Tear it down/down/down/Let’s start over,” and sonically speaking the song reminds me of Northern Aggression-era Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three, Fleetwood Mac and others, as the Canadian act reveals some effortless yet incredibly crafted songwriting with a pop leaning.
Look for Major Love’s self-titled full-length debut early next year.
