Acorn Association

The Acorn are a Canadian band that I've championed for quite some time. In the past, I recall to have drunkenly described them as Paul Simon meets Arcade Fire, which upon sober reflection is not terribly accurate, but they are certainly on the adult alternative side of folky world music. But good (salesman!). I don't pretend to have stepped in on the ground floor, but I've certainly been a fan since hearing them on CBC one lazy winter Saturday, following up on their Myspace page, and subsequently searching out their Glory Hope Mountain album - which I am pretty confident will be regarded as their masterpiece when all is said and done.

After a few failed attempts at locating this album (GHM) in Halifax, I finally tracked it down in Ottawa while traveling by myself for work (fitting, given that they are from Ottawa). As such, I will forever associate their music with the boredom of traveling alone; with the stress of a new and challenging project; with eating alone in restaurants; with staring down a wintery dark and dreary Hull/eastern Ottawa from my 16th story hotel room; with freezing fingers and numb cheeks and aimlessly wandering the streets of a marginally familiar city for photo ops. Their quiet lullaby folk songs and layers of raucous percussion and pretty acoustic finger picking streamed through my laptop speakers as I blogged and surfed - killing time before I quit on the night and turned out the lights. Comforting. That night's blog can be found here: http://muiseam.blogspot.com/2007/11/greetings-from-ottawa.html - know that it was prepared with rosy pink fingers and accompanied by decent, new-to-me music.

While my current relationship with the band is not so positive - I feel their new album is only okay, and for my one live Acorn experience, they were severely outclassed by a staggeringly beautiful Ohbijou - I still have the above comforting associations.

What I'm trying to say is: you should check them out. I likes them.