THE SADIES > New Seasons

Updated:

June 30, 2009 10:34 am

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The title of the Sadies’s eighth album-not to mention the fuchsia iridescence of the foliage on the cover-foretells a change in the color of the surroundings and the feel of the air. The music bears it out. The Toronto quartet must have gotten their fill of surf rock on last year’s entirely instrumental film soundtrack Tales of the Rat Fink. Likewise, they seem to have shed the more ragged garage impulses of early albums like Precious Moments and Pure Diamond Gold along the way. What’s left is cosmic, reverb-drenched country rock. More tracks than usual feature the submerged, easy harmonies of brothers Dallas and Travis Good, and the lyrics to several revolve around themes of journeying and becoming. “The First Inquisition (Part IV)” and “The Last Inquisition (Part V)” more or less serve as bookends to the album, the former a lurching, dystopian musical vision and the latter a cathartic, instrumental ebb and flow. In sound and sentiment, New Seasons is positively transcendental.