Wisely, the Bills (formerly the Bill Hilly Band) open their third album with an overture because the quintets essence is diversity and, at fifteen tracks, their new album sprawls gloriously, and not a little eccentrically, all over the musical map.
The overture forewarns of whats coming, with snippets of North American folk, ragtime and even gypsy airs cunningly knitted together while humor rubs elbows with bittersweet melodies and sweeping symphonic passages. Thats not easy to do with just a mandolin, accordion, fiddle, guitars and a couple of other acoustic instruments, but the Bills who hail from Victoria, B.C., and have been kicking around the Canadian music scene since 1996 are past masters at this sort of thing.
In fact, their obvious ease with such a broad palette (and we may as well add sea shanties, bluegrass and Cajun music at this point) is one of the Bills defining characteristics, alongside their ear for a memorable melody and the sheer exuberance of their compositions. Textured without being overproduced, tight without being stiff, the Bills music oh, and it does include touches of cabaret and echoes of Django Reinhardt, by the way is good, clean fun.
True, Let Em Run does threaten to spin off in a thousand directions at times not surprising when you add klezmer and traditional French-Canadian music to the mix but who said homogeneity was a virtue anyway?