Sins We Made

The second outing from Canadian duo Harrow Fair – Miranda Mulholland (from Great Lake Swimmers) and Andrew Penner (musician and theatre actor) – is a more rambunctious and sonically epic affair than their debut, Call to Arms. They once characterised their music as ‘old folk and country music mixed with garage rock’ and Sins We Made opens with a devastating one-two punch of the title-track's old-time stomping and hollering social commentary, followed by the fierce, T-Rex-like boogie of ‘Rules of Engagement’ about standing up to a bully. Indeed as the ten tracks shimmy and shake their way through all manner of musical forms one constant remains outrage at all sorts of injustice.

Lines like ‘I've heard enough of your excuses/I've weathered all of your abuses/So it's time for you to sit right down and hear what I have got to say’ ring as strong and true now as ever. On a lighter note ‘I Just Wanna’ laments the unfairness of not being able to directly mention sex in a song if you ever want to hear it on the radio, while tracks like ‘Loved You Enough’ and the lush ‘Shadow’ might not sound too out of place in one of Penner's theatre shows.