Share – Pedestrian

Share is the brainchild of Canadian songwriter Andrew Sisk. He hails from small town Canada; Chipman, New Brunswick to be exact. Three albums in, Share write warm songs with heart and charm. Pedestrian is a record with lo-fi intimacy, and an odd ball sense of playfulness. Opener 'The Great Before' tells of the torment of post break-up adjustment, the ache of attempting normality. There is an immediacy to this record, like on 'Foreign Church', its twilight melody and simplicity disarm you and you become part of the story.There's an air of Stephen Malkmus in Sisk's delivery and in the feel of the songs too. The maturity of his songwriting shows, like he has reached a point where the stories he is telling, lyrically, are as important as the music, which is often sparse and ambient. It does suffer from being too bare at times and, whilst it may not last a full listen, there's plenty of soul in there that's worth burrowing into.'Murderer' breaks that sparseness with a hint of distorted guitar, but only a hint though. It is almost "spoken word" still. Sisk obviously likes to experiment with his songwriting and as the record develops it takes on different directions, the shape of the songs mutating slightly. 'Dance Dance Retribution' is an exercise in minimalist electro, harking back to his last record Can Can Missile (2005). It's DIY at heart, sounding like they were written in his bedroom. 'The Yard' is the first time where the sound of a band is evident, and that's near the end of the album”¦ well, if a band can be distilled to a drummer.Sisks songwriting always has a sense of the lone singer songwriter - part Malkmus, part Mountain Goats. The charm is in his ability to craft really small intimate songs that sound gigantic. Pedestrian is a record of poetry, full of stories to embrace. 68%Share on MySpace