The Heavy Blinkers

"The album goes beyond simple accomplishment, however, and into the realm of masterwork thanks to the production and pure genius arrangements. From beginning to end, The Heavy Blinkers is guileless delight. But more than that, it is a tour-deforce of unequalled pop excellence." -Rolling Stone.com - Rolling Stone

“Twelve slices of melodic melancholia from Canadian sunshine popsters who occupy emotional ground between Dusty In Memphis and late-period Beach Boys. Better Weather is an album of sophisticated white soul, simply recorded but brimming with ingenious arrangements and complex harmonic blends. A number of the tracks are pure singalong sunshine pop a la their debut album, Hooray For Everything, a largely solo effort recorded by chief Blinker Jason MacIsaac before the band line-up crystalised for last year’s eponymous second LP (the latter rated highly in Uncut last year). For their third album, the band expand their palette to allow country, R&B (in the Beach Boys of Wild Honey sense) and gospel influences. Simple piano shuffles are now augmented by big band horn sections (hear ‘Baby Smile’) or jazz and gospel choirs (to great effect on ‘Malmo’, an instrumental that sounds like something Dennis Wilson might have done).



Central to the band’s refined creative vision is ‘I Used To Be A Design’, which brazenly splices together contradictory musical styles and eschews traditional song structures. Originally shopped to Dusty Springfield before her untimely death in 1999, we shall never hear what she would have made of it, but it’s not as great a loss as it may seem – Ruth Minnikin’s interpretation here is dazzling in all its raw and vulnerable beauty. At 34 minutes, Better Weather may be short, but it’s emotionally candid and spiritually vast, dealing with the weight of life itself.” -Paul Johnston - Uncut Magazine

Sunny orch-pop from snowy Nova Scotia.
From a fact-packed biography we learn that living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, The Heavy Blinkers see and average of 43 days of snow a year. Yet with clever use of brass, pedal steel and pristine orchestration, the Canadian quintet conjure the same blue skies as West Coast idols The Beach Boys or The Carpenters. Multi-layered vocals and parping horns give a swing to the upbeat Far As You Are, while a 24-piece choir and peaceful pedal steel bask ballads like Malmo in perpetual summer. Which isn’t to say it’s sunshine all the time: for every triumphant Bacharach horn flourish there’s sadder soft-pop relection. With it’s mournful strings, I Used To Be A Design is tinged with the same melancholy as Surf’s Up, but the light always breaks through. -Jenny Bulley - Mojo Magazine

"Crest-riding harmonies, glockenspiel, and 24-piece choirs -- these indulgences can turn geniuses into delusional sandbox dwellers. But Halifax, Nova Scotia's best orchestral poppers had Ruth Minnikin's aching voice as an icy balm to keep the sunshine in check. Alas, Heaviest Blinker Jason MacIsaac has labored on a rumored double album for years." SEAN HOWE, SPIN - SPIN Magazine (online)