The Be Good Tanyas

Hello Love This is lazy-Sunday-summer-day, back porch music. The Be Good Tanyas have always excelled at this, and Hello Love is no exception. The combined efforts of Frazey Ford, Trish Klein and Sam Parton have resulted in a collection of songs that are gently soulful and delicately wrought. The softness of the melodies and harmonies is countered by the raw acoustic down-home feel of their sound, which is once again steeped in guitar, banjo and mandolin. The tunes range from bluesy ("For The Turnstiles") to fiddle-on-fire country ("Opal") to lamentable balladry ("Nobody Cares For Me"). The album wraps up with a cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry." Somehow, that's pretty damn cool. - Chartattack - Shannon Whibbs

Vancouver’s The Be Good Tanyas show a streak of alt. country in their indie pop ballads. All girl groups are often lumped into the “pretty girl” compartment by much of the mainstream music media who are more focused on looks and sex appeal than songwriting and performance. Fortunately The Be Good Tanyas have a bit of both with much more emphasis placed on their gritty and tight songwriting ability. The singing is AAA-worthy while the backing instrumentation is downright Americana roots rock driven. Nice songs that are packaged in a nostalgic indie pop album riddled with gripping folk rock nuances. - Smother.net

They’re usually found in the folk section but the genre doesn’t do justice to this Vancouver female trio’s reconfiguration of their influences. Hello Love yields covers from Prince’s When Doves Cry to Neil Young’s For the Turnstiles and a cracking version of Sean Hayes’s A Thousand Tiny Pieces. Arrangements lie between a barn dance and a wake, and merge with exquisite originals such as Human Thing and Crow Waltz.
- Times Online

The Be Good Tanyas may have replaced the Townes Van Zandt and Peter Rowan covers of Chinatown with material by Neil Young (For the Turnstiles ) and Prince (When Doves Cry ). Yet, its latest effort Hello Love still manages to retain the haunted, rustic essence that clung so tightly to each of the group’s first two endeavors. Traditional, gospel-imbued songs such as Out of the Wilderness and What Are They Doing in Heaven Today alternately are filled with chillingly ominous overtones and a sense of wistful, weary warmth, while streams of sunlight succeed in filtering through the instrumentation that graces the moody melancholia of Mississippi John Hurt’s Nobody Cares for Me .

Nevertheless, Hello Love also finds The Be Good Tanyas continuing to push its music ever so slowly in a more contemporary direction. Its modifications are subtle, yet the rock ’n‘ roll undercurrents undeniably are both present and effective. Hints of Young’s work hover over the hushed, ethereal piano ballad Song for R. , and they blow through the harmonica accompaniment and droning chug of Human Thing . Elsewhere, Ootischenia settles comfortably into its rolling, country groove, while Old Crow Medicine Show assists in adding some extra propulsion to the backwoods bluegrass of A Little Blues . The highlight of Hello Love , however, is a tender cover of folk singer Sean Hayes’ A Thousand Tiny Pieces . Here, The Be Good Tanyas combines an intimate, bare-bones arrangement with delicate vocal harmonies in order to convey the wondrous beauty of the universe.

For the record, there is a fractious quality that lingers beneath the surface of Hello Love , and it’s likely that the collection was stitched together from individual components rather than assembled by The Be Good Tanyas in a fully cooperative fashion. A little tension within a group isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, and for now at least, it has helped drive the competitive spirits of the ensemble’s individual members, thereby keeping the overall quality of its recordings aloft.
- The Music Box

Those who appreciate its simplicity, beauty, and construct have carried traditional folk and bluegrass music through generations. While many hands go into making a good record, The Be Good Tanyas compare their third full-length release to the making of a quilt: composed of different pieces and put together by many participants, each bringing various elements of creativity and custom.
Hello Lovespeaks to this collage with traditional folk and blues foundations bridging the Vancouver trio's original material with its take on old and new, brilliantly preserving vintage sounds with a contemporary spin. While multi-instrumentalists Sam Parton and Trish Klein bring grassroots elements with the piano, banjo and guitar, their charming vocal harmonies are heard throughout with the ease of Frazey Ford's apologetic and emotional lead vocals, most hauntingly on the mournful 'What are they doing in Heaven Today'.
Originals 'Ootishchenia' and 'Human Thing' display the group's signature raw sound with the steel of the banjo underlying the various supporting instruments. They get down and dirty with the gripping take on Neil Young's 'For The Turnstiles' with Klein's soulful harmonica while Ford lets loose on the vocals.
Enchanting is the intensity of Jeremy Lindsey's 'Scattered Leaves' while they take Prince's confessional 'When Doves Cry' to a different level with new arrangements and instrumentation providing a greater appreciation of the group's ability to identify with the heart of a song even when pulled from a completely different genre.
The heart of The Be Good Tanyas lies in their ability to sustain a range of levels while staying respectful to an untainted genre.
- Lina Nijmeh
- SceneandHeard.com