Royal City – Little Heart’s Ease
Their 2003 breakthrough release Alone At The Microphone earned Royal City comparisons to the Byrds, but the Canadian quartet has toned things down way down for its follow-up album. Lacking the bluegrass-meets-gothic feel of its predecessor (not to mention its obsession wit bodily fluids), Little Hearts Ease plays like a coalescence of early 70s Neil Young and a less-spindly-sounding 16 Horsepower. Like the latter, its well-considered, consistently beautiful and somewhat ponderous, filled with lots of Jonathan Edwards-style biblical imagery and profligate usage of words such as flesh and thee, as well as one memorable reference to the sharpened tusk of the boar.
Frontman Aaron Riches (current a theology major, in case you hadnt guessed by now ) proves expert at crafting initially slight, anemic-sounding lo-fi folk songs that get denser with each listen. With the exception of the albums few truly dire, apocalyptic tracks, Little Hearts Ease is more vaguely spiritual than expressly Christian; its best songs, the loping album centerpiece Jerusalem and the dizzily agreeable She Will Come, with it layered harmonies and almost snappy beat, can be taken as either love songs or hymns, or both.
Though both tracks do much to quell the oppressive feel that can occasionally overtake Little Hearts Ease, it still remains on easier record to admire than to love.