The Barr Brothers 'Sleeping Operator' - Album Review

The Barr Brothers are not native Montrealers. Brad (guitar/vocals) and Andrew Barr (drums) originally started making music in Boston as The Slip, but relocated to the French Canadian city in 2005, where they soon hooked up with harpist Sarah Page and Andres Vial (bass/piano) and started making music as The Barr Brothers. We should be forever thankful that they did, as listening to Sleeping Operator is like wrapping yourself in your thickest duvet, shutting out the world and curling up for the day with a great book.
The quartet are joined on this sophomore release by a host of luminaries from Montreal’s music scene, including Richard Reed Parry from Arcade Fire, as well as members of The Luyas, Little Scream and Patrick Watson’s stellar band. The result is a warm fuzzy blend of acoustic guitars, pedal steel, piano, brushed drums, marimba and lesser-known instruments like the west African ngoni, which together create a beautifully bittersweet, perfectly autumnal album.
It veers from the folky, acoustic ‘Even The Darkness Has Arms’ or the funereal waltz of ‘How The Heroine Dies’ to the blues fugue of ‘Half Crazy’ or the drivingly insistent ‘England’, where the guitars build to a substantial buzz. The hypnotic ‘Little Lover’ kicks off like a laid-back Fleet Foxes. It morphs into a Tom Waits-ean percussion fest, where it seems that anything metallic within arm’s reach is given a belt or two in time. Then there’s the old time country of ‘Valhallas’, the resigned falsetto of ‘The Bear At The Window’ and the dreamily ululating harmonies of ‘Please Let Me Let It Go’.
Pick of the bunch is the epic ‘Come In The Water’, which begins slow and stately, but builds in intensity over its almost seven-minute duration until it’s almost a sister piece to The Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. A truly beautiful album to lose yourself in.
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