When listening to "Canaries," the new album by local roots-music band The LoneTones, do not attempt to adjust your CD player.
You may think you're experiencing technical difficulty -- especially as the album's second song, the title track, begins. There's a gentle wave of white noise that fades into the music, something that on an album by any other band would hardly be noticed.
But this is The LoneTones. Led by the husband-wife team of Sean McCollough and Steph Gunnoe, it's a group with deep roots in the local folk scene. McCollough and Gunnoe are activists for a number of causes as much as they are musicians, green advocates who campaign against mountain-top removal and can be counted on to get behind any number of causes that protect the landscape from irresponsible development.
Which makes it even more surprising to hear on "Canaries" something so ... mechanical, for lack of a better word.
"I think there's something really pleasing about dissonance," Gunnoe told The Daily Times this week. "I think we're really melodically driven musicians, but it's so pleasing to somehow wed something really melodic with a more complex dissonance or background. After a while, you begin to kind of lose interest in your earlier work, and on 'Canaries,' I truly like that old keyboard we found with the crazy noises it can make. We're pretty happy with this record, and it may be a prototype for a new style."
That dissonance may seem out-of-place on an initial listen to "Canaries," but repeated plays find McCollough and Gunnoe at a creative peak. The sound effects are understated -- sly and soft, contributing to a song's mood or melody in almost indefinable ways. The layers are arranged in gorgeous stacks, like the shimmering icing of a wedding cake -- intricate, detailed and personable. Gunnoe's girlish voice is another instrument in the mix, and as it swirls and bobs on a sea of lush instrumentation, there's a dreamlike quality to "Canaries" that's fascinating and endearing.
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Steve Wildsmith - Maryville Daily Times
(Apr 30, 2009)