Great Rock From The Trews
Bruce Von Stiers
The Trews is a Canadian rock band whose fan base stretches across their country and far down into the U.S. The band's music has been called prolific and electrifying.
The band recently recorded their sixth studio album. The title of the album is Civilianaires and it was released by Cadence Recordings.
The album has thirteen songs and a play time of forty eight minutes. It was produced by Derek Hoffman, who had previously worked with The Elwins and Seaway. A few of the tracks on the album were co-produced with Max Kerman and Bob Rock. Kerman is the lead vocalist for the band Arkells. Rock has produced such notables as Aerosmith, Bryan Adams and Bon Jovi.
The members of The Trews are Colin McDonald, John-Angus McDonald and Jack Sperek. Colin does the lead vocals and plays rhythm guitar. John-Angus is on lead guitar, backing vocals and keys. Jack does backing vocals and plays the bass guitar.
Additional help on the album came from Chris Gormley, Gavin MacGuire, Anthony Corone, Dennis Passley and Tom Moffett. Gormley, who is known from the band Big Sugar, played drums on several of the song on the album. MacGuire played drums on the other songs. Corone plays keys for Arkells. He does the keys on this album as well. Passley has played on albums for Arkells and Sharon Jones. He plays sax on this album. Moffett has played on albums by Arkells and Ninja Sex Party. He play trumpet on this album. Derek Hoffman provided some backing instruments and programming. Bob Rock played backing bass on one song and Max Kerman did backing vocals on three of the album's songs.
Vintage Love opens the album. It is a toe tapping anthem of love. The songs has catchy lyrics and great music.
Leave It Alone is a hard hitting rock anthem.
The New Us has some harsh lyrics in front of some tough rock music.
Time's Speeding Up is a moderately paced ballad.
Bar Star is soft and gentle.
Harder To Love is a cool rock anthem. It's about how messed up some people are and how they are incredibly hard to love because of it.
Is It Too Late? is a beautiful, yet sad love lost ballad with subtle guitar and terrific keys backing fluid vocals.
Up Sweet Baby has a mixture of tough rock and mellow pop sound. The mellow part reminded me of a Wet Willie song from the ‘70's.
The title track, Civilianaires, has some cool music, almost U2 sounding.
No More Saying Goodbye is my favorite song of the album. It is a slick love loss rock anthem with some parts that made me think of INXS.
Amen is a solid ballad about losing love. It has a mostly acoustical sound.
Let The Great World Spin is another ballad, this one with a good drum backbeat.
The final song on the album is Jericho. It is a head bobbing, toe-tapping song. A few of the vocals made me think of INXS again.
Canada has provided the world with some of the best rock bands. Rush, Loverboy and Bachman-Turner Overdrive come to mind. If The Trews keep going like they did on this great album, they too might be as notable as those who came before them. It's no wonder that one critic called the band “Canadian rock royalty.”
Civilianaires can be found at most music retailers. You can learn more about the band, and the album, at their official band site at http://www.thetrewsmusic.com/ They also have a band page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/thetrewsmusic/
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© 2018 Bruce E Von Stiers