54-40 - Northern Soul

54-40 have been around for 28 years, sold millions of albums in their home country Canada and wrote I Go Blind, as covered by Hootie and the Blowfish. With that kind of ‘pedigree’, you’d be forgiven for writing off 13th album Northern Soul before it begins. But then you’d miss out on a surprisingly enjoyable record that flits between REM’s country ballads and latter-day Idlewild. OK, so that means it pretty much all sounds like REM, but as far as rock-behemoth contemporaries go, there are worse role models (exhibit A: Get on Your Boots). 54-40 only really stumble on the title track, which attempts an emotional anti-war message but only manages a mawkish cliché-filled duet that requests that we "love one another in the darkest hour", while asking “mama, what was he fighting for, did he really understand” with all the subtlety of a pair of throwable ‘Bye-Bye Bush’ trainers.