OUTFIT - PRESERVERS OF THE PEARL

Welland, Ontario's Daniel Romano might just be the busiest man in Canadian indie rock. When he's not running the longstanding independent record label You've Changed Records with Constantines' Steve Lambke, or playing guitar in the Southern Ontario hardcore super-group Pig Pen with celebrity chef Matty Matheson and Alexisonfire guitarist Wade MacNeil, you'll find him leading his own prolific band, the Outfit. Their most recent release, Preservers of the Pearl, marks the fifth studio album for the band in six years, coming hot on the heels after a decade or making country records as a solo artist.

Preservers of the Pearl is in many respects a mission statement to save all that is pure and good about their self-proclaimed "Rock & Roll Magick". Recorded entirely in the analog domain at Romano's Camera Varda studio in Welland, the songwriting and performances are steeped in 60's and 70's musical influences while still sounding entirely modern in the current musical climate. The album opens with a beautiful one-minute violin/trumpet instrumental, appropriately titled the "Preservers Theme," which recalls "String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill" that opens the second side of Neil Young's 1968 debut album. What follows are thirteen varied rock songs that lean into both folk and country influences proudly, whether it be on the serene "The One/The Many" or the blink-and-miss-it album closer "Metanoia".

First and foremost, the Outfit is a band and not a solo endeavour, and as such each member of the band is given their opportunity to share the spotlight. As such, percussionist/vocalist Carson McHone takes the lead on the beautiful "Cardinal Star," a song that metaphorically details building a society up from stone, only to proclaim: "if we rock and roll it, it can be overturned." Likewise, the white-hot take-no-prisoners "Firebreather," which debuted on last year's Live in Oslo, appears here as two-minute garage rock mini masterpiece, due in no small part to Tommy Major's fuzzed-out bass line and the wailing organ masterfully performed by guest player Mark Lalama.

The album's second half is rounded out by the singles "Autopoiet" and "Phantasy," the latter of which offers the most memorable sing-along lyric on Preservers of the Pearl: "It goes: glean, dream, tambourine," complete with a masterful tambourine performance by McHone. The band is clearly having fun, and that fun pours through the speakers with every note played. While saving Rock & Roll could be deemed a low-stakes proposition in a world torn apart by war and political unrest, the Outfit deliver the fourteen songs that comprise Preservers of the Pearl with the earnest sincerity that only true believers can. The world might be in need of saving, but so is Rock & Roll!

-Leks Maltby