VILLAGES are returning to our stage, Saturday, March 11th, and believe us when we say, “You don’t want to miss this show!”
Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 8pm.
Tickets are $40 (+tax) and are NON-refundable.
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More about VILLAGES
Dark Island Tour —
Away to the westward, I’m longing to be
Where the beauties of heaven unfold by the sea
Where the sweet purple heather blooms fragrant and free On a hilltop, high above the Dark Island
- Traditional Scottish folk song
The concept of the Dark Island is metaphorical: When you’re at the end of your life, taking stock of it, what will you think about? No matter what you land on, good or bad, that island is yours - the dark surely looms, but it also covers all you’ve ever experienced.
For the folk-rock quartet Villages, the concept is also literal: Hailing from Cape Breton Island, on the farthest flung northeastern corner of Nova Scotia - itself already flung far - and jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, it’s a lush landscape of great complicated beauty, its rocky coast covered in sea salt and leaning defiantly into harsh winds.
On its new full-length, Dark Island, Villages marries metaphor to roots on 11 tracks that offer an experience meant to echo a visit to Cape Breton itself: Otherworldly, euphoric, sobering, celebratory, and reverent.
The band - Matt Ellis, Travis Ellis, Jon Pearo, Archie Rankin - tapped the JUNO-winning composer and soundscapist Joshua Van Tassel (David Myles, Great Lake Swimmers, Fortunate Ones) as producer, stepping into Joel Plaskett’s Fang Recording for a whirlwind eight days. Van Tassel directed the band to play the songs fully live off the floor (three takes max) capturing the boisterous energy of Villages’ live performances and making the album a series of present moments strung together.
The combination of Van Tassel - whose own work is largely instrumental and played on rare instruments - and Villages - the band has also made three indie-rock albums as Mardeen -results in a type of Celtic music that respects its heritage while taking sonic chances. Dark Island’s opening seconds are comprised of birds chirping and Matt Ellis’ voice stutter-stepping through “Good morning,” before dropping into a full-on shanty in the form of “Wearing Through the Pine.”
The lead single “Love Will Live On” is a gently rolling foot-stomper lamenting the hard times of modern-day life: “I’m too poor to be buying this round,” Ellis notes whose upbeat chorus offers a hopeful solution: move to the country and live a quiet life on “an island in the Maritimes”.
In between album-wide kitchen-party whoops, Ellis pulls his voice as high as it can go on “Easy When You Know How,” sure to be a live sing-along challenge. The final minute of “Willow” hops into a classic Wall of Sound pop cacophony surrounding a chorus of traditional la-la-las and a refrain of high, airy oohs carries “Mother” to its gentle conclusion.