Grass

From the ’60s style packaging and group hug photos, it’s easy to assume that this young Dartmouth, NS sextet are following in the grand folk rock tradition of the Band and Fairport Convention. While this debut album doesn’t exactly reach those lofty heights, the Grass do manage to lay down some lively performances throughout, which reflect an obvious natural group interplay. Songs like "Red Carpet Treatment” and "Cocaine Bills” do exude a certain ramshackle charm, but unfortunately the album can only coast so far on that, as the painfully out-of-tune "Mister Bird” shows. Still, the Grass generally succeed at capturing the Basement Tapes flavour they were clearly after with Mulgrave, although by putting a little more effort into production the next time out, they could easily start turning a lot of heads in the folk rock world.