It’s not often that you get two chances to hear a great album for the first time. But that’s the odd outcome of Toronto band the Skydiggers’ unfortunate luck with record labels. Their 1992 sophomore album Restless has been unavailable practically since it was released, after the band fell out with their Canadian indie label FRE. The songs from Restless have remained entrenched in the hard-touring band’s live set, and the bulletin board at their website regularly is flooded with queries about the album’s unavailability.
Unable to secure the masters from a label that appeared to have no interest in reissuing the album, the Skydiggers have on their own assembled the demos for the original album and added bonus tracks to create something that is much more than the next-best thing.
One listen to the reconstructed album, retitled Still Restless, and it’s clear that something got lost between the recording of these demos and the formal album sessions three months later. As fine as Restless was, there’s a lively snap to the playing on these rough versions that sometimes felt muted in the formal album. “Feel You Closer” was a fine pop song on Restless, but here it is stripped down to the rudiments of guitar and vocal harmonies, allowing the quality of the songwriting to shine.
From the rustic charm of “Slow Burning Fire” to guitarist Josh Finlayson’s titanic guitar riff on “Accusations”, there’s a thread of immediacy and chemistry between the players. Singer Andy Maize does sterling work on the gentle “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” and “It’s Alright”, and rises to the occasion during their simmering labor-management parable “A Penny More”, neatly counterpointed by Finlayson’s gnarly Crazy Horse-caliber solo.
As bonus tracks, the group has added “All Alone”, a gorgeous treatment of the traditional Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas”, as well as a full-band version of “Joanne” (which later surfaced as an acoustic number on the group’s third album, Just Over This Mountain, another record currently stuck in limbo).