Before Our Time

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1987

Label: Resonance

This Toronto-area quartet started out playing loud, adolescent rock-pop with greater artistic ambitions than most such bands, both in the literate lyrics and in the broadly dynamic instrumental designs. While singer John Critchley (guitar, keyboards) and Australian émigré guitarist Mike Robbins write dramatic songs that cry out for intricate wide-screen arrangements, the group's reliance on simple rock tools creates an exciting tension between grand imagination and basic execution. Fortunately, 13 Engines has the chops to keep the material from sounding shortchanged