Track Listing

1. Introduction
2. First Inquisition, Pt. 4
3. What's Left Behind
4. Sunset to Dawn
5. Yours to Discover
6. Anna Leigh
7. Trial
8. My Heart of Wood
9. Simple Aspiration
10. Wolf Tones
11. Never Again
12. Land Between
13. Last Inquisition, Pt. 5

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118715 in Music
• Brand: Dig
• Released on: 2007-10-02
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
The Sadies return with their fifth studio album, New Seasons. Featuring the brotherly harmonies and dazzling guitar interplay of Dallas and Travis Good, New Seasons is the band's most confident studio album to date. The Sadies' inspired amalgam of psychedelic country rock, surf, bluegrass and Ennio Morricone-inspired instrumentals has made them the preeminent torchbearers of cosmic American music. This time, the band that has previously collaborated with Neko Case, Jon Spencer and Garth Hudson has brought Jayhawk Gary Louris to produce the album's gorgeously layered harmonies. New Seasons proves that The Sadies have the vocal chops to equal their instrumental mastery. The Sadies follow the roots of American music to their logical end and in a transcendent leap of faith, forge on to new planets, new worlds, New Seasons. This is a limited edition LP, there will only be one pressing of New Seasons on vinyl. Be sure to reserve yours now! All pre-orders of this album come with a free digital version, available in your Stash on release date. Check your Stash on October 2nd to download the tracks! Release Date: October 2, 2007.

Amazon.com
Though Canada's premier country-rocking quartet has previously established itself as a killer live act and an in-demand back-up band (Jon Langford, Neko Case), the first studio release by the Sadies in three years represents a big sonic advance. Featuring the brotherly vocal blend of Dallas and Travis Good, who also provide plenty of guitar twang, the music establishes the Sadies as direct descendents of the Byrds and the Jayhawks--no surprise, since former Jayhawk Gary Louris co-produced with the band and contributes plenty of harmonies as well. The results lack the relentless pace of some of the band's earlier fare, but compensate with shimmering musical backing, lush harmonies, and cinematic aural expansiveness. From the Western balladry of "The Trial," to the garage-band urgency of "The First Inquisition (Part 4)" and "A Simple Aspiration," the band shows both its range and its command of the studio. --Don McLeese

Amazon.com
Seldom does a band-of-brothers grow creatively like the Sadies, now a decade into their tenure as the reigning kings at the psychedelic post-punk/surf/twang crossroads. Dallas and Travis Good astonish newly on New Seasons, not with the lovelorn "What's Left Behind," where the crystalline guitars sound simultaneously woven together and tumbling crisply away from each other, but also with their persistently gorgeous, laconic vocal harmonies throughout Seasons. Behind the production desk, Jayhawk Gary Louris has helped hone a sonic atmosphere that billows (especially on the strangely gentle "Yours to Discover") as the brothers Good twine guitars and voices. "Anna Leigh" is a peak moment, setting a psych-twang vibe that's eerie and down-home just based on the vocal malaise and the finely picked acoustic solo. Love and death mingle with visions and hallucinations. And then there's the muted lo-fi haze of "The Trial," where the Sadies (and Louris) bring the vocals way up in the mix, guitars like a brittle lattice in the distance, so lines like these stand out: "… if I'm still alive when the autumn kills the leaves/I guess I'll be what they consider free." Amen, brothers. Twang on. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Astounding collection of Americana sounds
The Sadies newest amalgam of Americana sounds is simply breathtaking. They careen through hot-picked bluegrass, grungy post-punk garage psych, firebrand electric country-rock, badlands western and drag-and-surf with impressive instrumental chops and a master's disregard for coloring across the lines. Especially impressive is that they never sound like dilettantish genre-hoppers; segueing from the Shadows of Knight meets Gun Club grunge of "The First Inquistion (Part 4)" to the Clarence White styled guitar picking sparks of "What's Left Behind" they're completely fluid, with the difference in the songs' sonic temperaments overruled by matching moods of urgency.

Several musical threads bind the band's influences together. Extended codas bring several songs to rest, with a waltz-time restatement ending "Anna Leigh" and an extended fusillade of guitars taking "The Trial" into a blurred sunset dissolve. The cinematic nature of that western imagery is repeated in the surf-meets-Morricone instrumental that closes the album, "The Last Inquisition (Part 5)," and the rolling rhythms of "Yours to Discover" and "The Trial" are equal parts dusty trail and '60s folk, with the former sung hushed and low, the latter Leonard Cohen bitter. Several songs would have sounded at home in the early '80s Paisley Underground revival. "My Heart of Wood" has a diffused guitar line that brings to mind The Dream Syndicate, "A Simple Aspiration" takes the psych and garage sounds onto the terrain of The Leaving Trains or Droogs, and The Byrdsian "The Land Between" could have turned up in the catalog of The Long Ryders. None are derivative, but the Good brothers have clearly been drinking from the same musical spring as these predecessors.

The lyrical mood is often dissolute, turning nearly suicidal on "Sunset to Dawn." There's a strain of fatalism that opens "The Trial" with the lyric "I wish that I could be the way that I once was / But God's got other plans for me," and preordination marks the protagonists of both "Yours to Discover" and "Anna Leigh." The dark themes are echoed in the band's music, with atmospheric, low-stringed guitar solos and rhythms that canter like a chasing posse. These songs are remarkably complete works, with lyrics that are both allusive and concrete, and instrumental backings that offer both the foreground joys of fleet string picking and the superbly anchoring rhythm work of drummer Mike Belitsky and bassist Sean Dean. The few tracks that aren't blindingly impressive only pale in comparison to the brilliance of the opening and closing salvos. This is a disc that will stick in your CD player for days at a time and have you hitting the repeat button to hear individual tracks over again. [©2007 hyperbolium dot com]

Sing that Simple Little Song--The Sadies Emit Pop Vibes on New Seasons
Reading the initial reviews of The Sadies' latest record, "New Seasons" (Yep Roc YEP 2148), one could quickly compile a laundry list of named cool musical influences, that will make a dude's or a lass's head spin. Of course, that's what Toronto's Sadies do so well--weave diverse musical influences into a seamless whole and make it look easy. I could join the fray and drum up yet another list of influences in this review that would maybe further titilate the alt.country or indie music connoiseur to scramble out and buy this nifty record but I'll leave that task to the other guys.

I like this album because it sounds good, plain and simple. The guitars chime and twang in all the right places. Good, Good, Belitsky and Dean even sing harmonies on several tracks. Gary Louris's production is first rate, as he allows the Sadies to play their distinctive brand of alt.country tinged rock and roll with deftly added pop textures that will hopefully bring the Sadies to a much wider audience. I mention pop textures because when one clears away the heaps of "cool" musical references, there is solid pop at the core of "New Seasons". I hear country-rock chords of the Outlaws "Green Grass and High Tides" on "What's Left Behind". I also hear the haunting instrumental melody of Kansas's folk-infused "Dust in the Wind" on "Anna Leigh", and I hear the spooky re-verbed guitars of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well Pts. 1 & 2" on "The Last Inquisition (pt.V)". Now name dropping three seemingly un-cool 70's bands may be wacked (have I lost my alt.country credibility and otherwise general hipness in all things neo-trad?), but I hear what I hear...and I hear strong pop melodies in The Sadies' new songs. The Sadies have pulled off quite the skillful feat, since they shroud their latest record in all sorts of garage rock and cult-band sounds but at the heart of their tales of ecological doom and human despair is a rock solid pop record of the kind that was made in the 1960's and 1970's by such artists as, The Byrds, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Gordon Lightfoot...just to name a few "pop" musicians. Too square or dated for you? Well for all of their musical attempts to capture the far-out sounds of the then new acid-drenched consciousness that erupted in the summer of love, bands like The Byrds, Pink Floyd, and Fleetwood Mac, grounded their musical trips in road tested country, rock and blues back beats, pop vocal harmonies and hooky jangly guitar licks.

Oh yeah, this album is a trip, but don't be fooled by all of the critics who are eagerly falling all over themselves spewing out the names of as many obscure musical influences they can "hear" on "New Seasons". The Sadies are too smart a band to just splatter musical paint. No, the Sadies finally have mixed the perfect blend of pop, rock and country and created a fragile yet sturdy pop masterpiece that you can dance to and think about. Yeah, believe the other critics and reviewers when they say that these guys are that good but I believe it but for different reasons. The Sadies are that good because they have brought pop sensibilities to alt.country without compromising their unique sound and distinctively Canadian vision one bit. Mother nature's in trouble and men shall face an ultimate judgment someday, but for now just sit back and groove on the coolest music this side of Lake Ontario, eh!

If the "Notorious Byrd Brothers"
had stuck together and added Clarence White to the lineup, something like NEW SEASONS might have been the result. Great tunes, great harmonies, the guitars all ring true and, at just 32 minutes, this release lasts just long enough to satisfy most retro folk-rock fans.

4 1/2 stars. Recommended.