City and Colour has returned with a new release, an album about dealing with the loss of a friend, ‘The Love Still Held Me Near’. The album is full of wonderful tracks with beautiful lyrics, and the song ‘Hard, Hard Time’ uses a twangier sound to tell the tale of one’s skepticism of the other side.

The song opens with a really tasteful bluesy guitar riff played in a more folk-country style that compliments the more acoustic side of blues so wonderfully. There’s a prog-rock feeling to the introduction of this track, which will be further highlighted in the bridge and chorus. I almost felt a little taste of ‘I Know What I Like’, a song written by Genesis in their 1973 opus ‘Selling England by the Pound’. Once the vocals, the song takes a bit of an edgier turn, especially considering the context of the album. Within the chorus, the infectious melodies take control with beautiful lyrics about the transcendence of love after death. The bridge section continues with the rhythm and the time signature from the rest of the track, but fakes out punches to make it sound as if it was playing off beat in a really creative way. As a progressive rock fan, I felt like this validated my original intuition with the song. There’s a very thin guitar sound that plays out at the end, almost perfectly replicating the one found on ‘The Colony of Slippermen’, on Genesis’ 1974 album ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’. The song ends with that guitar, and a fadeout from the rest of the instruments.

The progression of ‘Hard, Hard Time’, brings you on such a dynamic journey City and Colour perfectly crafted. The rhythm section really punches, especially in the choruses, and finds a way to dial it back for the verses. Dallas’ vocal performance in this track is a highlight on the album, where he perfectly channels the softer-spoken tone and harsher belting that he embodies in his other project, Alexisonfire. It’s a masterful song, and a fantastic entry in an already beautiful album.

Author: Nicholas Gaudet

Music producer and writer from Dieppe, Canada.