The Wooden Sky: Let’s Be Ready
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Let’s Be Ready Tracklisting
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Saturday Night 02 Our Hearts Were Young 03 Baby Hold On 04 When The Day Is Fresh And The Light Is New 05 Kansas City 06 Write Them Down 07 Maybe It’s No Secret 08 Shake For Me 09 Let’s Be Ready 10 Don’t You Worry About A Thing
Release Date: June 16, 2015
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When I took this assignment, The Wooden Sky was a new band to me. I had never heard their music. Hearing it for the first time is what prompted me to review Let’s Be Ready. I wanted to hear more of what they had to say.
In researching the band, I learned about their unique approach to making this record. They wanted to better capture their live sound on a studio album. So they recorded demos, performed them live, and then decided which parts to use and which parts to cut based on what translated best to a live audience.
Listening to this album, I feel like I’m in a field on a perfect summer day. I smell freshly cut grass. In this fleeting moment, everything is right with the world. These songs are moody; sometimes bordering on melancholy, yet still they somehow manage to remain soothing and upbeat. There is a distant echo of pedal steel throughout the record. At times there are female backing vocals, at other times male. You’ll also hear some occasional string accompaniment. These songs range from alt-country to alt-folk to rock, so there is no surprise that this band is tough to categorize. That’s a good thing. Here I’ve highlighted some of the songs that especially stood out for me.
The album starts out strong with Saturday Night. This song has high energy and a beautiful guitar hook; a series of sounds like a rock falling down a slope, bouncing off protrusions. The rock is the guitar, and the protrusions are notes.
Kansas City is a stripped down ballad; haunting, moody and sad. Female backing vocals reinforce the idea that a man is communicating his feelings to a woman. When Gavin Gardiner sings “what I wouldn’t give to touch you now, tell you everything’s alright,” his beautiful longing breaks your heart.
Our Hearts Were Young is definitely a song where you’ll hear distant pedal steel. Gavin Gardiner neatly clips off each individual word he’s singing; it’s as if he has a lot to say and only a limited amount of time to say it. The vocals on this song are a bit reminiscent of Paul Simon’s style in the 1990s.
Don’t You Worry About a Thing is the album’s final track. It features male backing vocals with a hint of a Tom Petty twang. I learned from an article on Canada’s indie88.com that The Wooden Sky often play Petty’s American Girl as an encore at their live shows, so this may explain the Petty sound. The repetition of the lyrics “don’t you worry about a thing” is both soothing and catchy.
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I feel like I’m in a field on a perfect summer day.
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By far my favorite song on this album is the title track Let’s Be Ready. This song is a breakup song, and a heartwrenching one at that. There is no malice between the lovers who are about to split. She simply needs to leave: “she’s got Memphis on her mind,” and although he doesn’t want her to go, he seems to have made up his mind to support her decision. The chorus “Sara, baby, let’s be ready, ‘cause when it all comes down it’s gonna get heavy” is a wonderful piece of songwriting. The singer acknowledges that he’s competing with the state of Tennessee, as if it’s not a place but rather another, somehow better man. In my mind it seems as if Sara is leaving to pursue a music career. He supports her aspirations, but he likes where he lives and wants to stay, and there is nothing he can do to convince her to stay with him.
I was especially impressed by When the Day is Fresh, and the Light is New. It’s upbeat and fast-paced. Repetition of the refrain “you gotta let somebody know” really sticks in your head long after the song has ended. The guitar hook is sharp but also ethereal. The title itself brings to mind a world full of promise, which is precisely what I think this band has ahead for them.
The Wooden Sky’s Let’s Be Ready will be out June 16th, the same date at their live show at St Paul at Turf Club, as part of the Communion Night Club Residency.