Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The mournful cry of a lost soul in the darkness is soon replaced with the almost sheer joy of a set of instruments let loose upon the mind, for the Young Benjamins, Less Argue is that place between weathering the storm and cursing the tempest as she swells and fires water bombs of destruction at your ever despairing life, and the warmth felt as the sun fight back and warms up the small island you have been cowering upon as you cling onto what remains of that soul.

Less Argue is an album that sits at that perfect juncture between darkness and light, it sits wonderfully in the shade, the twilight between Time and occasion and the songs make it such an interesting proposition to listen to because of it.

The province of Saskatchewan might not be the first place in Canada that the music listener would think of when taking stock of what notes and aural pleasure comes from that part of the world, yet that train of thought is not only departmental to this fine band but also to the listener as well. The sense of disbelief is compounded by the worry of what else this could mean, what else you have forcibly been missing because of unintended blinkered vision.

For the Young Benjamins, Less Argue is Canadian Folk but like everything else in that spirited and admittedly superb country has to offer, it comprises the best of everything anyone has ever brought to the lands between the Atlantic and The Pacific Oceans and made it sound quite unique, almost typically Canadian, but certainly gracious and complete.

From the mournful beginning that accompanies the heart in The Colonial PT.1 (You’re Only Twenty), Young Argument, Oh Marie and the blistering Common Thief and its pertinent reflection on the everyday, Less Argue is a trip into the sublime, one in which is a great listen and one that should be a reminder that the great can come out of the least likely of places; in a world which still grasps onto the idea that it can only come out of one place, that change is never really a good thing, Less Argue is something to hold up to the light and to banish shade from.

Ian D. Hall