qr5
Pharmakon
Draft Tattoo : 2006

So, here I come again, asking a band for my own forgiveness.  qr5 - your album arrived, looked brilliant [the photography & design is clearly enticing, clearly] - yet it somehow got flushed into a sea of new / incoming music.  The entire drive home consuming this vibrant album, I mentally kicked myself down the expressway.  Pharmakon is glowing, it's "fresh" - as in something new; a band traveling one grooved direction while clearing a new path entirely.   There are traces of dub / reggae on Pharmakon ["Living Large", "Revisited Gone"] - quite possibly the sole reason I passed you by in the initial reading of the accompanying press release[1].  Yet, like Paul Simon seeking a deeper understanding on Graceland [less "You Can Call Me Al"] - or the highly influential Talking Heads and their South African [to name but one - less the "punk" tag] meld in styles (think "(Nothing But) Flowers", Stop Making Sense ) - qr5 are clashing age-old musical rights and crafting exciting tunes as a result.   

In the liners, qr5's lyrics read well enough - but when channeled through singer / multi-instrumentalist Matthew Maaskant and set in his very own unique delivery [not unlike David Byrne[2], at times] - you are introduced to a marvelous new outlook on the words.   "I'm singing out from a form how would I etch water into stone / for you my vapor friends / I'm leaving out what you won't / how could I deny a body's own Unavoidable defense?". Sure it reads well, but the way this band transforms words into - for lack of a better way to put it - "fresh air", you really want to succumb and bask in their garden of mandolin, bass, banjo, percussion and pleasantly unique instrumentation[3]. Toronto / Ontario wins big - and this is positively the one band you have been told little about that matters the most.  You qr5 fellas should be well proud of this album I am hearing - it's a stunner - and you know it.  Music to be heard with ears beyond open, Pharmakon[4] arrived with little to no hype - yet has charmed this cynic-by-diagnosis into a new fan.  I am not afraid to flood the praise when it is well deserved.  Highly recommended, if nothing else for the fresh air alone. 

"Fences and roads - A lifetime explodes - A heart to choke - Ask yourself this every day - Can you heal?" 

kaleb :: [ August of '06 ]

[1] judge only after hearing the given submission. "It's meaningless to me, I do it all the time".

[2] D. Byrne has quickly become a quick-fix for linking the "it band[s]" of modern blog-o-sphere to the masses. Maaskant has a genuine delivery that actually achieves Byrne's craft and passion.

[3] tin whistle, dobro, recorder, jews harp.

[4] pharmakon: . meaning both remedy and poison. In ancient Greek it also means to paint with an artificial color; a chemical dye, that imitates nature.