There’s nothing really new about The Hurry and The Harm but why would you want there to be?

For all the connotations of a complicated life that Dallas Green puts forward in his music, he doesn’t come across as a twisted artist, wracked by a pain unfathomed by us mere mortals. In fact, in interviews, he seems like a pretty well-balanced individual. He’s just a man who really digs sad songs. There are millions of us out there, and Dallas Green, in his City and Colour guise and with his former band Alexisonfire, has been giving us melancholy folk music to wallow in for a decade now. The prolific songwriter has recorded eight albums (four with Alexisonfire and four solo efforts as City and Colour) over the last ten years with his latest, The Hurry and The Harm released on Dine Alone Records, the same label that’s released all of his solo work from his debut 2005 LP Sometimes.

Centred around his acoustic guitar and his lilting voice, The Hurry and The Harm meanders through folky, finger-picking moments that would make Nick Drake proud (the beautiful ‘Take Care’), through to fuzzy, bluesy rock’n’roll assaults (lead single ‘Thirst’). The album isn’t so much a departure from his 2011 album Little Hell but a continuation. All the additional instrumentation that featured on his previous LP is still present, but it feels refined. With studio help from the likes of Bo Koster (My Morning Jacket) and Jeff Lawrence (The Raconteurs), it’s warmer and fuller, with Green’s reverb-drenched vocals playing a starring role. Thematically, theinsecurity and doubt that littered his previous work has ceded some ground. Green sounds quietly confident and stronger in 2013 and even gives a shot to the faceless internet haters on the upbeat ‘Commentators’.

3.5/5 stars

BY RICK WARNER

The Hurry And The Harm is out now through Dine Alone Records.

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