Where I Started

Details: Amazon.ca The second major-label album from hard-hitting Saskatoon rock trio Wide Mouth Mason could as well be titled We’ve Got a Wah-Wah Pedal and We’re Going to Use It, at least with respect to the first three numbers. However, once the windy blues-rock clichs of “Why,” “Alone,” and “Burn” are out of the way, Where I Started really begins. The band’s poppier instincts come to the fore on “Companion (Lay Me Down),” “Half a Chance,” “Empty Seat,” and the melancholy closer, “Falling Down.” Stylistically ambitious tunes like “Sugarcane,” which works in a reggae rhythm, and the sea-shanty-ish “King of Poison” give the album further heft. As on the group’s debut, Shaun Verreault manages to redeem even the more pedestrian material with Velcro-like riffs (“Old,” for instance), while the rhythm section of Safwan Javed (drums) and Earl Pereira (bass) serve the time-honoured blues-rock-band tradition of matching the front man’s vocal and g