Pure Bossa Nova CD

' Gravelly vocals, raw as a skinned knee in their best moments, cover topics ranging from the Spanish Civil War to Canadian mining history and turn even the driest subjects into rollicking barnburners. A pair of quirky instrumental covers ('Flaco's Waltz' and 'Smoking in St. Henri') round out the collection nicely. Fresh Pint goes down like a tall cold one on a hot summer afternoon. (Kettledrum) With a collective forty years or more experience in the roots and punk scenes of Montreal, Vancouver and Berlin it is no great surprise that The Slaters have made a debut record of such diversity. What may shock, though, is how the group manage to sound uniquely themselves while integrating so many disparate influences into the eleven songs on Fresh Pint. Produced, mixed and mastered with the help of Canadian musical mainstays Marc L'esperance and Craig Northey, the trio of multi-instrumentalists are joined by Brendan Griffin on pedal steel, Laura Lee Officer on violin and viola and Miles Perkin on contrabass. With a backwards nod to the folk music past of Canada sharing space with a probable roadmap for it's future, the album remains both firmly rooted in the geography of the band's native Montreal and ...