Great Big Sea

We’ve made Canada the brunt of a few good jokes over the years, but they know it’s all in good fun. Besides, we Minnesotans are about as close to the Canadians as any American can legally be without renouncing citizenship. The problem isn’t so much that Canada doesn’t have a national identity separate from America’s (we do cast a pretty broad shadow, after all), but that they don’t embrace the one they have. All their best artists invariably pull up stakes and move south—Alanis Morissette, Neil Young, Barenaked Ladies, heck, even Peter Jennings turned tail on the True North as soon as the siren call of superstardom beckoned him to the land of sin. In recent years, though, Canadians have begun to quietly nurture a hipster underground of punkers posing as traditional folk artists, especially among the celtic folk fiddlers and cloggers out on the Atlantic provinces. Sadly, this micro-movement was nearly capsized by that Nova Scotian nitwit Ashley MacIsaac. Now Great Big Sea promises to heal the wounds and further the cause. This Newfoundland quartet is, for want of a better comparison, a Gen-Y Canadian version of Boiled in Lead—which is to say a cleaner, less angry version with someone who sounds a lot like Gordon Lightfoot singing. (That’s a good thing! Just wait until next month’s Broken Clock.)