Especially in the last decade and a half, musicians on the East coast of Canada have been trying to shake the image that the rest of the world has of them. Not that it isn’t cultivated; if you believe the lyric sheets of the top or longest standing maritime bands, the band members perpetually do their lovers wrong or are wronged regularly by them, they’re usually sauced out of their minds or are gearing up for another epic bar mission (just ask Great Big Sea or Ashley MacIsaac) and the only available influence upon which to base their music is that created by the folk community on the British Isles. Some, like Nathan Wiley and Joel Plaskett, have broken out of the East coast box by disavowing any semblance of Celtic influence and embracing pop wholeheartedly, but doing that is a crap shoot because the field is just as broad and the risk of simply being a face in the crowd is there too. The Tom Fun Orchestra, however, is an honest-to-god, genuine article, brand apart from anything else in the country – maybe even the world.
The band’s debut, You Will Land With A Thud, opens dramatically with “When You Were Mine”. While it does bear some of the marks of coastal conventionality, the epic scale of the sound that the ten-piece Tom Fun makes here and the evident fact that they’re holding back gives the impression that this song is only an overture – a salacious taste of what’s to come.
They remove all doubt as “Rum & Tequila” explodes. The band dives headfirst into jump and swing tones but makes them feel homegrown by the inclusion of fiddle, cello, upright bass, accordion, horns, banjo and mandolin and to further fan the flames of innovation, Tom Fun also imports elements of punk, vaudeville and cabaret for good measure and insisting upon every listener’s undivided attention for the duration of the record’s runtime in the process. At no point does the band slow down for sentimentality in songs like “Throw Me To The Rats”, “Heart Attack in an Old Motel” and “Bottom Of The River” that focus on the compositions unwaveringly (some of the songs, like the title track, are incredibly long and proof positive that the compositions are the thing and no effort was made to edit for time) but while the tracks occasionally feel indulgent, they never drag or get boring.
Through it all, singer/songwriter Ian MacDougall ensures that the band is wound into a tight frenzy at the beginning of each song before setting the players loose by the first chorus like a maniacal whirling dervish that will floor unsuspecting listeners (“Watchmaker” is the best example). While the chaos erupts, MacDougall is always standing in the eye of the storm and howling in his gruff, smoky snarl at the passing instruments. If ever a case needed to be made to illustrate the possibility of a band operating as a force of nature, it can be found in “Highway Siren Song Breakdown” but, even there, the singer establishes himself as the aural maelstrom’s master – a screaming goliath with fifteen pounds of cocaine locked in the trunk of his car and an itchy finger on the trigger – he controls it carefully, but wants desperately to set it free.
By the time the record starts to wind down at the bottom of the river in a track by the same name, the gang vocal that cuts through the entire song is the last imaginable avenue that anyone would have expected the band to take, but completes the picture perfectly and when the band lands at the bottom of the track list with a thud, you can gasp for air at what the band has done. They’ve envisioned an alternate reality where Tom Waits spontaneously elected to leave his California confines and relocate to an equally strange place: the Canadian Maritimes. In that situation, You Will Land With A Thud would certainly be the result of Tom Waits’ otherworldly housewarming celebration and kitchen party.
For more information, check out: www.tomfun.ca and www.myspace.com/tomfunorchestra
Downloads:
– "Last of the Curious Thieves" from You Will Land With A Thud – [mp3]
– "Highway Siren Song" from You Will Land With A Thud – [mp3]
