Friday, February 20, 2009

Eureka! Human Highway



Nick Thorburn and Jim Guthrie have teamed up again, this time bringing us the gentle and dreamy creation known as Human Highway. The two are well accustomed to working together, seeing as Guthrie was formerly a guitarist in Thorburn’s band, Islands.

The album, Moody Motorcycle, is a direct result of one week spent on Guthrie’s couch in his Toronto home and it has a sleepy, lullaby-like quality to match. Comprised of folksy low-key melodies, and channeling a little Simon & Garfunkel here and some Everly Brothers there, these songs make for perfect beach music, preferably when the sun is beginning to set and the crowd has left.

Throughout the album, Thorburn and Guthrie’s voices weave in and out of thick blanketing harmonies. The title track has a darker sound to it but retains a hopeful quality with lyrics, “Remain in the lane I travel in/ I won't spin out of control again/ The city shrinks, carefully shedding skin”.

“My Beach” came to be at the Hotel Congress in Tucson, Arizona, when the two were touring with Islands and began to play in front of a recorder. The result is a song of peaceful and endless dedication. Anxious to please, they sing, " I built you a castle/ But the tide took it away/ And now you think I'm an asshole/ So I try to make it okay."

The album finishes off with a less urgent cover of Billy Taylor’s, “Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” and appropriately so. It ties up all the loose ends of the album with the simple desire to “say all the things I should say” and signs off with the optimistic sound of birds chirping and a motorcycle driving off into the distance.

  • Moody Motorcycle mp3
  • Pretty Hair mp3
For more information check out Human Highway's myspace page.

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