An exercise in style that couldn’t be more honest about faith, like in the early days of country music, this ace storyteller’s third album is certainly the best of its kind to come out of Montreal, and it has little to envy the best of alt-country. Recorded at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Church, it’s slow, soulful, and set with a particular echo. Andrew McLelland found the perfect tone for his incantations of death, illness, redemption and wonder, and bathed them in remarkable arrangements. Moreover, it was the album that made us discover Joe Grass’ pedal-steel skills.
