Medicinals Explained

Medicinals
Type:studio
Artist:Timber Timbre
Cover:Medicinals.jpg
Released:2007
Genre:Blues
Folk
Length:32:00
Label:Shuffling Feet Records
Prev Title:Cedar Shakes
Prev Year:2006
Next Title:Timber Timbre
Next Year:2009

Medicinals is the second album by Timber Timbre, released in 2007.[1] The album was initially recorded in Taylor Kirk's apartment in Toronto soon before he moved out, and reflected his own sense of disconnection from the city and his longing for the more rural environment he had recently moved to Toronto from.[1]

According to music journalist Michael Barclay, the album "has much more in common with early Cowboy Junkies recordings than anything heard on classic rock radio -- or even the current indie rock scene Timber Timbre is based in. Considering their dark, haunting sound, it's not hard to believe Kirk when he says that Timber Timbre was born in isolation, while he had cabin fever on a farm outside of Bobcaygeon."[2]

The album was released on Jonas Bonnetta's independent Shuffling Feet Records label.[1]

Critical response

Vish Khanna of Exclaim! asserted that the album "connects the earnest rural bent of Royal City with the post-rock stomp of Bruce Peninsula", writing that "it might purport to be some unknowable old world record but the give away is the contemporary pain within the lyricism and unconventional musical sensibility."[3]

In Maisonneuve's recurring "The Music We Hate" feature, writer Marit Mitchell described the album as one she hated "beyond description", and dismissed the band's 2009 self-titled album as sounding "like those same fools from Medicinals found one of those percussion eggs I got in my stocking one Christmas, set their synthesizer to “Groove” and went to town."[4]

Notes and References

  1. "Timber! Singer falls into scene". Kingston Whig-Standard, December 8, 2007.
  2. Michael Barclay, "A sparse, sombre approach to blues". Waterloo Region Record, November 22, 2007.
  3. Vish Khanna, "Timber Timbre: Medicinals". Exclaim!, January 28, 2008.
  4. Marit Mitchell, "The Music We Hate: Timber Timbre". Maisonneuve, June 22, 2010.