Halifax's Quiet Parade got caught right in the middle of a massive audience shift at the Holiday Inn: the older Saturday night Truro crowd there to see acts like Dylan Guthro and Chelsea Amber were winding down their night as the clock struck midnight, while the younger wristband types ready to go for more hadn't really arrived from other shows yet. It felt like a comedown in between two peaks — which wasn't a bad fit for the band, all things considered.
At their best, Quiet Parade evoke folk artists like Woodpigeon in their ability to create small songs that sound localized but broad, personal but inviting. Sometimes they can be a bit on the nose — Old Haunts' "Edge of the Ocean," for example, never succeeds in breaking its small-town crumble tale out from under cliché — and the band's upbeat songs never quite match their slower, smoldering ones. What was promising was how strong the new material was: songs like "We Were Here" and "Light Back Home," from the band's forthcoming release, had an engaging weight to them.
The band closed with what is still their best track, "How Come You Never Call (or Write)," a slow-burning torch song about losing touch with people over time. It started small, simple, repetitive, but by the end its two main chords had grown to become aching, speaker-rattling beasts — anything but "quiet," really, and even more powerful for it.
At their best, Quiet Parade evoke folk artists like Woodpigeon in their ability to create small songs that sound localized but broad, personal but inviting. Sometimes they can be a bit on the nose — Old Haunts' "Edge of the Ocean," for example, never succeeds in breaking its small-town crumble tale out from under cliché — and the band's upbeat songs never quite match their slower, smoldering ones. What was promising was how strong the new material was: songs like "We Were Here" and "Light Back Home," from the band's forthcoming release, had an engaging weight to them.
The band closed with what is still their best track, "How Come You Never Call (or Write)," a slow-burning torch song about losing touch with people over time. It started small, simple, repetitive, but by the end its two main chords had grown to become aching, speaker-rattling beasts — anything but "quiet," really, and even more powerful for it.
