Shore Leave

The title track or 'Drinking in the Graveyard' are the sort of Celtic-tinged pint-raisers fans have come to expect form this Celtic rock group which serves up a heady brew of topical numbers from the moving 'Trains Not Taken' to the breaking-out-of-jail fiddle on 'Rainville', which paints a wild slide-show of their hometown. Throughout the Town Pants seem to raise the bar (pardon the pun) on the Celtic rock oeuvre. The somber 'Angel' and steam-of-unconsciousness thunder of 'Death Feels Like Me' sit well on Shore Leave, with 'Coming Home' being perhaps the only true ballad of the record. Both lyrically and musically, these are not plain old Whiskey and street songs. The bands imagination obviously running much deeper than the genre's normal fare, as with the group's tip of the hat to the fatal wild-man British actor on 'The Unlikely Redemption of Oliver Reed'. Recorded in Vancouver in 2009, and featuring a few guest appearances from Spirit of the West's Geoffrey Kelly and ex 54-40 keys-man David Osborne who lends a Blue Rodeo-esque Hammond organ to the recording. The Town Pants have never sounded both wilder and more mature. From 'Rasputin' on their previous live album, The group pulls a 180 degree turn with considerable elan with Shore Leave finishing off with an Appalachian-metal cover of Iron Maiden's 'Run to the Hills' that really scores, showing that the lads haven't taken themselves too seriously. Yet.