Young and Old, a perfect title for the debut album from Hamilton Ontario’s Harlan Pepper. Listening to the album it sounds like old music as it takes bits and pieces from past folk, blues, rock, and alt-country genres and put them together in a well assembled package. Yet surprisingly this is all coming from a band that just completed their high school degrees. This album sounds like they are rock veterans who have spent the better part of a few decades touring, yet they only formed in 2008.
Musically this album is diverse featuring what you might expect in an alt-country rock release: the electric organ sounds, harmonicas, and banjos along with guitars and drums. A song like “Yeah” shows that the band is just as comfortable rocking out for five minutes as they are playing a softer more personal acoustic guitar based song like that of “Sweet Lucy”. Opening track “Great Lakes” pays homage to the area where they are from, playfully referencing all of the different Great Lakes, but also setting the tone for the album with an opening track sure to attract the listener’s attention. The production and engineering on the album is fantastic showing a real maturity in their musicianship as well as knowing their limits. There aren’t any moments on the album that seem like they are out of place or trying to be something they are not.
Already this band has shared the stage with bands such as the Sadies, Two Hours Traffic, Huron, and Feist. With their young age, maturity, ambition, and past achievements, the sky is the limit from Harlan Pepper.
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