[review 2008 - half-measures and quiet victories]

When I was first introduced to Forest City Lovers a year and a half ago, it was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in early spring—the kind that re-introduces you to the concept of wanting to be outside without a jacket. They played a fantastic set that perfectly captured that sense of reawakening, and it was all anchored by an as-yet-unreleased song, “Don’t Go, Please.” Around the same time, the Toronto band recorded a version of the song for the Friends in Bellwoods compilation. Kat Burns had started Forest City Lovers as a solo project, and first album The Sun and the Wind was recorded with a few friends backing her up. But that early version of “Don’t Go, Please” was supposedly the first time Forest City Lovers had recorded not as a solo project, but as a full band—Burns had found a permanent group of musicians to play with around town, and planned to record a full album for release sometime in the following year.

As befits a band in the process of transforming itself into something new, many of the songs they’d played in gigs around town were reworked in the months following the spring gig I attended. “Don’t Go, Please” became simply “Don’t Go,” the lead track off Haunting Moon Sinking. Gone is the gentle yet insistent electric guitar that anchored the early recording, replaced largely with the violin of Mika Posen. Gone, too, is that quiet springtime atmosphere I associated with the song. And though the new version sounds alright, it’s just not the Forest City Lovers I’d been hoping for.

This is probably far more my problem than Kat Burns and company, for Haunting Moon Sinking is a perfectly good album. It’s a more ambitious album, with a wider palette of instruments and variation in emotional impact. There’s also a couple of great songs, including the obvious single-if-there-was-one “Country Road” and “Pirates (Can’t All Sail the Indian Ocean).” But with that variety comes a corresponding loss of intimacy. On The Sun and the Wind, Kat Burns’ guitar and voice served as the foundation; that’s no longer the case here, and sometimes it just feels like that much more distance between you and the heart of the music.

But such is probably what happens when you associate a band so closely with a specific time and place. I can’t blame Forest City Lovers for not being able to repackage that lovely Saturday afternoon into their new album; I just hope they don’t blame me for not embracing it the way I did the last one.